It's also perfectly possible that i've failed to understand your point — ChatteringMonkey
And the fact that they have a correspondence relation is a problem why? — ChatteringMonkey
I mean, does mere correspondence (in the sense of empirical justification) necessarily entail a metaphysical view on truth? — ChatteringMonkey
Science isn't really concerned with cats on mats, but scientific claims are couched in terminology that is provisional, because we can always be wrong about facts and theories. Therefore, science isn't really about truth, but rather empirical justification. So there's an important distinction to be made between the two, given that we can be wrong, and therefore our claims can be false.
In order for that to be the case, there has to be a difference between truth and empirical justification. Otherwise, how can we be potentially wrong? Fundamentally, the problem with deflation is that assertions can be false, so what makes the distinction between being true and being false? That's what any theory of truth has to grapple with. — Marchesk
This runs into a difficulty. Scientific statements are not true, they are rather confirmed by experiment and consistency with existing theory. But this is conditional upon future testing and theoretical development. Thus an empirical justification does not make statements about the world true. However, ordinary language does say that a particular cat is either on a particular mat, or it is not. That's a true or false statement in the ordinary language game, not a conditional scientific fact. — Marchesk
These are the acts that might arise consequent on the speech act 'the cat is on the mat', given the way we play the language game. — andrewk
Good points, so even if ordinary language clams are empirically based, there's still a discrepancy between truth and verification. — Marchesk
That is, if the statement "the cat is on the mat" is true (or false) then the statement "it is true that the cat is on the mat" is similarly true (or false). — Andrew M
In the bigger picture, I am quite confident in saying that truth, meaning, thought, and belief are all irrevocably entwined. — creativesoul
I think so as well. Saying the cat is on the mat involves meaning about cats and mats and what it is for that statement to be true or false, and why we would think so, but also how we can get it wrong. — Marchesk
If, and only if, the meaningful statement corresponds to reality; fact; the way things are; the unfolding events; etc; then it is true. — creativesoul
The snow is white is true if, and only if, the snow is white. This shows that is true adds the additional meaning to a sentence that there is a linkage to something that makes the sentence true. — Marchesk
Adding "is true" to a belief statement adds no additional meaning. — creativesoul
But that's a trivial observation at best. What's interesting is what makes a statement true or false. We already knew that "The cat is on the mat" was asserting a proposition. Focusing on that doesn't resolve any of the issues around truth. — Marchesk
I see what you're saying, but let's take this statement:
Julius Caesar had 46,873 hairs on his head when he breathed his last breath.
Now I don't believe that, but it could be true, if he did actually have that exact number of individual hairs when he died. I have no idea how many he had, but I read that he was balding, and the average number for a full head of hair ranges from 100 to 150 thousand. So maybe 46 thousand is somewhere in the ballpark.
Let's take another one:
Life exists in some form on Mars.
That statement is true or false, but we don't know which it is, so we can't say it's true. Adding is true would mean we had some reason for thinking there is actually life on Mars. — Marchesk
The point is that a deflationist is not trying to resolve issues around meaning or verification (rightly or wrongly). They are just pointing out that there is no great mystery to the ordinary use of truth terms. — Andrew M
...problems arose for our naive view of things such as truth just being a matter of checking to see whether the cat is on the mat. — Marchesk
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