I think this is really the point; that Reality is spirit; which cannot be mapped, but which does the mapping and which the maps are expressions of. — John
Of course you probably don't think of reality as purposive, intentional or teleological as spirit is thought; you would probably think of it as a virtual chaos or something like that — John
But when you get down to this level it is a matter of faith, or personal preference, as to how you think about the Real. — John
Do you mean that we construct & share a worldview, the fact that it is shared, gives it reliable meaning, it has pragmatic use. — Cavacava
We have consciousness of an existent object, a tree for example, and we have a claim to knowledge of how it appears & how trees appear is part of our concept of a tree. So two separate claims: a) the thing is(we understand it is separate from us) & b) what that things is (how its concept epistemologically ties into its appearance). — Cavacava
Or not. My argument is that it is about models that demonstrably work. It is about conceptions expressed clearly enough for evidence to falsify them.
Faith and preference are the weakest possible basis for truth pretty much by definition. — apokrisis
I've probably said it hundreds of times that I believe in the natural systems view and so finality is a real cause in the world. That is why the second law of thermodynamics stands out as the Cosmos's most generic constraint. — Apokrisis
It might be a scientifically accurate depiction of physical processes, but as a philosophy...? — Wayfarer
My view is that human beings are in some real sense intrinsic to the Universe. We're not accidental byproducts of a random process, but the means by which the Universe discovers itself. — Wayfarer
From the perspective of 'the natural sciences', then you have to account for phenomena in terms of causes that naturalism can deal with. But that doesn't make it comprehensive or complete. If I got your total medical history, or a DNA sample, I could find out a lot about you, in one sense - but how much would I know about your biography? Little or nothing, I would say; and that is an exact analogy. — Wayfarer
but I would go further and say that the process of self-realisation is something other than, and greater than, what current naturalism is able to imagine. — Wayfarer
The world exists separately from us, this is its facticity. What happens in the world happens regardless of our presence. Sure we can learn about it, study fossils, the cosmos, learn how the world works, but since we are also part of the world, our viewpoint has to be circular. — Cavacava
Numbers, some of the particles physicists presuppose, our concepts or ideas, are also part of reality, they are in the world insofar as we too are in the world, but they are not factual part of it in the same manner as a tree. Part of the problem is that in saying 'a tree' we are using a general term (b) to specify a fact, a particular, which necessarily only points to the appearance and not (a), which is presupposed but not known, and we have no guarantee of the correctness of the correspondence between a & b except pragmatically. — Cavacava
You have not yet abandoned naturalism if you feel you need to inquire about my specific social and cultural development too. — Apokrisis
But then - if we stop to think about it more carefully - all we really "know" is that these are the signs we interpret in such and such a way. So we can ascribe truth to that habit of interpretation. We can point to the robustness of a relation. But the territory itself stands beyond the map. And we might not really "know" it at all. It is only our particular habit of relation that is ever actually tested, and so has its "truth" demonstrated, by some act of interpretation. — apokrisis
The world exists separately from us, this is its facticity. What happens in the world happens regardless of our presence. Sure we can learn about it, study fossils, the cosmos, learn how the world works, but since we are also part of the world, our viewpoint has to be circular. — Cavacava
Don't you think that we mostly assume that there is some kind of "truth" which is beyond our interpretations? — Metaphysician Undercover
Oh, and hi @theorem! — Wayfarer
My view: truth is mind-dependent, because it is the predicate of a proposition. Propositions are true, or not true, and whether they are, or are not, is a matter of judgement, and judgement is by a mind. — Wayfarer
But there's another point - a mathematical proof, for example, may be 'mind-independent' in one sense - that is, it is not dependent on being grasped by this or that mind; it's not a matter of convention as to whether it is true or no; so in that sense, it is 'mind-independent'. — Wayfarer
This type of understanding actually tends towards 'objective idealism', that there is a rational or intelligible order, which is grasped though the intellect ('nous'); which I think is a strong underlying strain in the history of Western philosophy, until Hegel, but it's objective reality is now contested, due to the fact that physicalism generally rejects the idea of an 'intelligible order' (which is, however, still preserved in schools such as Feser's 'Aristotlean-Thomism'.) — Wayfarer
So... care to elaborate? — Sapientia
To deny this would be to say that for any arrangement of things in the world that logically or conceivably could be interpreted, according to some imaginary linguistic system, in a certain way, in fact already is: and so you'd be forced to say that basically everything is a sentence, and everything expresses every conceivable proposition, always (since there will always be a logically conceivable linguistic convention that could be so arranged). — The Great Whatever
I don’t yet know how you define any of those terms ("fact", "statement", "truth", "world") so it’s hard to evaluate your claim at this point, but at face value I’d tend to take issue with the claim that statements (for instance) are mind-independent, so perhaps we can start there. To bring this intuition out more clearly I’ll pose the following question and see where it takes us:
1. Were any statements ever made prior to the emergence of intelligent life in the universe?
The way in which you answer this question should help provide some insight into your theory of statements and, hopefully, help drive the discussion forward. — Theorem
My view: truth is mind-dependent, because it is the predicate of a proposition. Propositions are true, or not true, and whether they are, or are not, is a matter of judgement, and judgement is by a mind. — Wayfarer
But there's another point - a mathematical proof, for example, may be 'mind-independent' in one sense - that is, it is not dependent on being grasped by this or that mind; it's not a matter of convention as to whether it is true or no; so in that sense, it is 'mind-independent'. — Wayfarer
But consider that any rational proposition, whether mathematical or otherwise, can only be grasped by a rational mind. So in that sense, it's not 'mind-independent'. — Wayfarer
This type of understanding actually tends towards 'objective idealism', that there is a rational or intelligible order, which is grasped though the intellect ('nous'); which I think is a strong underlying strain in the history of Western philosophy, until Hegel, but it's objective reality is now contested, due to the fact that physicalism generally rejects the idea of an 'intelligible order' (which is, however, still preserved in schools such as Feser's 'Aristotlean-Thomism'.) — Wayfarer
My view of the idea of 'mind-independence', is that when it is turned into a philosophical tenet, as distinct from a methodological step, it is based on the missapplication of the scientific attitude. — Wayfarer
Why do you think that whether a proposition is true or false is a matter of judgement? — Sapientia
It just doesn't make sense to me, and seems unbelievable, that all of these facts, all of these events, which can be - and can have been - stated, would not, as statements, have a corresponding truth-value for that reason alone, but would instead require a mind there judging them to be true or false.
I think that a realist can straightforwardly acknowledge that any rational proposition, whether mathematical or otherwise, can only be grasped by a rational mind, and is not independent in that sense.
If Person A judges Proposition P to be true, and Person B judges P to be false, then either P is true and false, which is a contradiction, or P is true relative to A and false relative to B. But that isn't truth, that is merely judgement, which you are calling "truth". — Sapientia
And he could never be wrong by his own judgement, i.e. he would always be right relative to his own judgement, since if he judges something to be true, then it is true relative to his judgement, and likewise with regards to falsity. — Sapientia
A realist might deny that it would need to be grasped to be true, and that would be relevant to this discussion. — Sapientia
I didn't look at that thread, so if my comment is wonky.. sorry. — Mongrel
The question of whether anything at all is mind-independent is one that can be debated. — Mongrel
But independently of that situation, we frequently use the concept of truth to speak of the unknown.
"No one knew who killed the butler. The detective sought to reveal the truth."
This implies some proposition regarding the butler's killer which is true, but unknown. In this case, it's clear that "truth" does not indicate a mind-dependent property. — Mongrel
But "the world" is a construct, and the idea that what happens in the world happens regardless of our presence is a construct as well. So it's really not useful to take this type of realist position because it lacks in what we would call "truth". And once you dismiss this position as ill-founded, something which is commonly believed but not true, you no longer will see yourself as part of the world, but the world as part of yourself. The true territory is not external.
It really doesn't matter. If a sentence has a conventional semantic content that can be modeled as a proposition, the sentence can express the proposition in that any utterance of it will express that proposition. You're just defining the relation arbitrarily narrowly. — The Great Whatever
Yes, I agree. The other position has to go against the way in which this language is usually used. — Sapientia
But that is implicit in acknowledging we are limited to interpretations. So there is always going to be uncertainty about what is left out. — apokrisis
And yet also - at least for pragmatist accounts of truth - it is an important point that we are also only trying to serve our own purposes. We can afford to be indifferent about "the Truth" in some grand ontic totalising sense. — apokrisis
Whether any particular proposition a sentence might express is true isn't mind-dependent unless that proposition is specifically about or involves minds essentially.
...and what a sentence expresses, is dependent on a linguistic practices in turn dependent on minds in some way. — The Great Whatever
The world exists without us, we have the remains of previous life forms that inhabited the world for millions of years. The world does not contain truth in itself, it is factual. We construct 'a world', a view we share with others that is comprised of what we and others have learned. — Cavacava
The point is that this facticity, what is in-it-self, is different from what is for us. The existence of thought is contingent, the world exists without it. The factual world must have a structure which is independent of us, which exists even if we do not. — Cavacava
Truth is not in the factual world as such, it is a constuct we lay over the world to make it intelligible, but clearly there is no guarantee that our maps correspond to what the world is in itself. — Cavacava
It really doesn't matter. If a sentence has a conventional semantic content that can be modeled as a proposition, the sentence can express the proposition in that any utterance of it will express that proposition. — The Great Whatever
You're just defining the relation arbitrarily narrowly — The Great Whatever
Also the Platonic view of logic is that what we really know are the 'objects of the rational mind', of which ordinary objects are mere instantiations; but the 'real intelligibles' are known by exactly that process of the intellect 'being united' with them.
No, there weren't. But that there needed to be intelligent life doesn't mean that there needs to be. — Sapientia
Do you think that there needs to be? If so, I wonder why. — Sapientia
If Person A judges Proposition P to be true, and Person B judges P to be false, then either P is true and false, which is a contradiction, or P is true relative to A and false relative to B. But that isn't truth, that is merely judgement, which you are calling "truth". — Sapientia
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