If you already believe the statement, then adding "is true" adds nothing meaningful to it. — creativesoul
Problems will certainly arise from conflating verification with truth. — creativesoul
If you already believe the statement, then adding "is true" adds nothing meaningful to it.
— creativesoul
But I don't believe that there is life on Mars or that Julius Caesar had that number of hairs on his head. I don't disbelieve it either, because I just don't know, although my number is unlikely to be the correct one. — Marchesk
Problems will certainly arise from conflating verification with truth.
— creativesoul
Right because a BIV can verify that a cat is on the mat, while wrongly believing this means there is an external world cat on a mat. — Marchesk
You lost me here.. — creativesoul
However, it's interesting to note that if a BIV is an idealist, their statement is true. — Marchesk
So perhaps you meant to say that if the BIV is an anti-realist then their statement is true? — Michael
Because it entails the correspondence theory of truth, which is a metaphysical understanding of truth that deflationism is trying to avoid. — Marchesk
Right, there isn't, as long as one isn't doing philosophy and is only speaking in ordinary terms. But at least as far back as the ancient philosophy, 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. Why is that? Well, because of things like skepticism, relativism, and the problem of perception. — Marchesk
I get what the deflationist is trying to do, but it seems to me like it does so by ignoring what motivated the whole truth debate in the first place. — Marchesk
According to the deflationary theory of truth, nothing is added to the assertion, "The cat is on the mat.", by saying the "The cat is on the mat is true.", since to assert it is to say it's true. — Marchesk
However, the cat might not be on the mat, and thus the assertion could be false. What makes the statement true or false? Whether the cat being referred to is actually on a mat. And that's a situation in the world, which we might call a state of affairs or fact of the matter. It is the world which makes statements about the world true or false. But this is the correspondence theory of truth. — Marchesk
.because if the cat is not on the mat, then "The cat is on the mat" will be false, and
"The cat is on the mat" is true only if the cat is on the mat.
will still be true.
It looks like a non-starter. — Banno
What makes "the cat is on the mat" true is that the cat is on the mat. The End. — Banno
And of course, on a common sense reading, it's just looking and seeing that the cat is on the mat. — Marchesk
But that's just the start of the matter, because philosophy isn't simply espousing common sense. — Marchesk
They're not answering that question.
— Michael
Yeah, but it seems to me they need to. Otherwise, deflation is stating a truism. — Marchesk
Otherwise, deflation is stating a truism — Marchesk
It is the world which makes statements about the world true or false. — Marchesk
So if your argument is that somehow deflation requires correspondence... — Banno
Ok, so what is it in the world that makes "the bishop always stays on the same colour square" true? What in the world makes "twice two is four" true? What make "I am Banno" true?
This to show that correspondence, despite it being intuitive, itself requires considerable finessing. — Banno
So if your argument is that somehow deflation requires correspondence... — Banno
The deflationary theory holds that truth is not a predicate. — Banno
However, the cat might not be on the mat, and thus the assertion could be false. What makes the statement true or false? Whether the cat being referred to is actually on a mat. And that's a situation in the world, which we might call a state of affairs or fact of the matter. It is the world which makes statements about the world true or false. But this is the correspondence theory of truth. — Marchesk
In many ways the difference is just a simplified ontology given the belief we don't need all these extra additions to our metaphysics (e.g. propositions, correspondence, facts and so on). — MindForged
So if your argument is that somehow deflation requires correspondence - and it is not clear that this is your argument - then you haven't gotten very far. — Banno
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