If it doesn't make sense in this case, why not? — Srap Tasmaner
I have not read through the entire thread, so apologies if this point has already been made.
Maybe I'm being naive or missing the point, but I use the word "truth" pretty much as it is used in a court of law. When you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Basically you are saying that your words and sentences will - to the best of your ability - describe facts. I'm not super knowledgeable about all the different schools of philosophy, but I'm pretty certain that this is some variation of the Correspondence Theory.
So when you say "This sentence is false"? In order for for this sentence to have any meaning, the pronoun "this" must refer to some statement that makes a factual assertion about reality/existence/the universe/etc. In this case, no such assertion is being made, hence the sentence is meaningless and cannot take a truth value. — EricH
Philosophy can never be reduced to mathematics. But we can often produce mathematical models of fragments of philosophy and, when we can, we should. No doubt the models usually involve wild idealizations. It is still progress if we can agree what consequences an idea has in one very simple case. Many ideas in philosophy do not withstand even that very elementary scrutiny, because the attempt to construct a non-trivial model reveals a hidden structural incoherence in the idea itself. By the same token, an idea that does not collapse in a toy model has at least something going for it. Once we have an unrealistic model, we can start worrying how to construct less unrealistic models. ("Must Do Better")
Another example: Far more is known in 2007 about truth than was known in 1957, as a result of technical work by philosophical and mathematical logicians such as Saul Kripke, Solomon Feferman, Anil Gupta, Vann McGee, Volker Halbach, and many others on how close a predicate in a language can come to satisfying a full disquotational schema for that very language without incurring semantic paradoxes. Their results have significant and complex implications, not yet fully absorbed, for current debates concerning deflationism and minimalism about truth (see Halbach (2001) for a recent example). One clear lesson is that claims about truth need to be formulated with extreme precision, not out of knee-jerk pedantry but because in practice correct general claims about truth often turn out to differ so subtly from provably incorrect claims that arguing in impressionistic terms is a hopelessly unreliable method. Unfortunately, much philosophical discussion of truth is still conducted in a programmatic, vague, and technically uninformed spirit whose products inspire little confidence. (ibid.)
Far more is known in 2007 about truth than was known in 1957 — Williamson
The sentence itself, is in fact true, because it's a sentence. — 3017amen
Sounds kind of like Kantian things-in-themselves... . — 3017amen
sentence is just a string of words; how could a string of words be true or false? I think it is more in keeping with what is commonly meant to say that sentences express propositions, and that it is propositions which may be true or false. I say this because a propositions can be expressed in many different ways (sentences). — Janus
The liars paradox in neither true nor false. — 3017amen
if we just ignore its truth claim in the first instance, seeing that it refers to no possible state of affairs which could make it true or false; then we simply step aside and the whole absurd logical machinery rolls past without touching us. — Janus
others may not be so satisfied, though — Janus
I take it that there are two ways of interpreting your objection to the use of formal systems. One is a ban on the significance of formal systems tout court---they are merely a game. The other is a ban on formal systems as tools for interpreting ordinary practices. — Nagase
A sentence is just a string of words; how could a string of words be true or false? — Janus
I think it is more in keeping with what is commonly meant to say that sentences express propositions, and that it is propositions which may be true or false. — Janus
Firstly you can't reasonably claim that what someone is about to say is false because you don't know what they are going to say, that is there is as yet no coherent object your statement refers to. But putting that objection aside for the sake of argument, the problem is that there is no coherent object to assess their truth in either of these statements. — Janus
Consider this: Socrates: What Plato said is false
Plato: Socrates has spoken truly
In this case there could be a coherent object in the statement of Plato's being referred to (which we have not seen) and we are not able to make any assessment as to whether both are correct in their agreement that the statement was false until we know what that statement is. — Janus
How could a word denote an object? How could a coin have a value? How could a hammer have a purpose? How could a note be a quarter-note?
By convention / a game of pretend. — bongo fury
Unnecessary platonism. — bongo fury
Actually, you can. it's done quite often in everydayness when people banter about. — 3017amen
But back to the OP, all this basically means is that there will always exist certain true statements that cannot be proved to be true (just like in mathematics/Gödel). — 3017amen
No empirical statements (propositions proper) can be proven to be true, but we can, in principle at least, check to see if they are.
Also I think you are misusing Gödel. His Incompleteness — Janus
Yes, of course, obviously the meaning of words, what they refer to, is established by convention, by praxis. How else? — Janus
You're misunderstanding; I am not promoting platonism. — Janus
The logic behind what I said is simple; the same proposition can be expressed in many different sentences, and when we say a sentence is true the meaning of 'sentence' as 'proposition' is the appropriate one. No platonism required. — Janus
But it seems clear you want to warn me that people round these parts believe in propositions as a separate class of entity. Well that's what I meant by "unnecessary platonism". — bongo fury
is that systems of this kind will be either incomplete or inconsistent. — Janus
More modestly I would say that a proposition is the semantic content of some sentences or statements. — Janus
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