Consider the following situation: it's 4 million years ago, so there aren't any sentences. Yet at that time, the Earth existed, so was true that the Earth existed (that proposition was true). — The Great Whatever
Since one can be true while the other is false, they can't be synonymous.
Just to drive this home, let p = "the Earth exists."
1. It was true that the Earth existed.
2. The Earth existed. The previous sentence was true.
3. "The Earth existed" was true.
Notice that 3 doesn't follow, since ex hypothesi there was no such sentence, so a fortiori it wasn't true. This is because the second sentence in 2) is clearly false, and doesn't follow from the fact that the Earth existed.
With regards to the last part, I simply ask: why would there need to be a mind to assume that something was meant? Either it would or would not be the case that something was meant. — Sapientia
It meant something then, and unless that meaning has somehow changed, it would mean the same thing now. — Sapientia
It depends what is meant by having a meaning. I think it makes sense to say that it has a meaning, and that this is what the author meant. — Sapientia
Did the kid speak? Does that count as speaking? What does the rulebook say? That is what matters, not what you or I think. If the kid spoke, then the rule was broken. — Sapientia
the Earth exists in this situation — The Great Whatever
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
So, there is a situation in which the Earth exists, but "the Earth exists" is not true, viz. the situation I just presented to you. — The Great Whatever
What you've done is addressed this fallacious biconditional: — Michael
The Earth exists in this situation iff "the Earth exists" is true in this situation. — Michael
Iff the Earth exists in this situation then that sentence of yours ("the Earth exists in this situation") is true. The biconditional is there. — Michael
Now, "the Earth exists" is a sentence. It follows that if there are no sentences, it cannot be true. So to find a situation in which it's not true, we suppose that the planet in this situaiton is as it was before thre advent of language. Since there are no languages, there are no sentences, and a fortiori no true sentences. So, in this situation, "the Earth exists" is not true. — The Great Whatever
But what's probably mind-dependent is whether something is a sentence, or whether a sentence expresses a certain proposition. So, if you were to define a notion of sentence truth, it would be mind-dependent whether a sentence is true, in virtue of its being mind-dependent what proposition it expressed. — The Great Whatever
Don't you think that we mostly assume that there is some kind of "truth" which is beyond our interpretations? So despite the way we interpret things, we assume that there is a truth of the matter, which our interpretations cannot grasp the entirety of. And as much as we might use 'truth" to refer to consistency in our interpretations, between multiple individuals, we still assume a 'truth' which is beyond this, standing in relation to the territory itself. — Metaphysician Undercover
I'll explain it in more detail if you need me to but the nutshell version is that truth is a judgment that individuals make about the relationship between a proposition and other things (such as states of affairs if the individual is using correspondence theory). — Terrapin Station
The map is language, the territory is the world, and when the former rightly depicts the latter, then they correspond. — Sapientia
Interpretation won't determine whether the map rightly or wrongly depicts the territory. — Sapientia
If what we think is right, and we express it as a statement, then it is true - even if nobody knows it to be true. — Sapientia
A bunch of symbols on a piece of paper don't need an inherent interpretation, so whether they have one or not is beside the point. An inherent interpretation strikes me as an oxymoron, anyway. They just need to be such that if there were an interpretation, then it could be correct or incorrect. — Sapientia
No, we know that the author meant something with the symbols. That is at least possible, so, as a thought experiment, that's what we're assuming. That being the case, it wouldn't matter whether the meaning, i.e. what the author meant, is known. Nor would it matter whether or how they are interpreted. — Sapientia
Ascribing truth doesn't entail truth. — Sapientia
But whereas a statement is what it is in virtue of expressing a propositional content which, in turn, is what it is in virtue of being inferentially related to other such contents, DNA is not. — Theorem
If we understand truth to work like this then we don't need to think of reference as our words matching themselves in some unexplained manner with the external world, like arrows hitting heir targets. — Dukkha
According to this theory (correspondence), truth consists in the agreement of our thought with reality. This view ... seems to conform rather closely to our ordinary common sense usage when we speak of truth. The flaws in the definition arise when we ask what is meant by "agreement" or "correspondence" of ideas and objects, beliefs and facts, thought and reality. In order to test the truth of an idea or belief we must presumably compare it with the reality in some sense.
1- In order to make the comparison, we must know what it is that we are comparing, namely, the belief on the one hand and the reality on the other. But if we already know the reality, why do we need to make a comparison? And if we don't know the reality, how can we make a comparison?
2- The making of the comparison is itself a fact about which we have a belief. We have to believe that the belief about the comparison is true. How do we know that our belief in this agreement is "true"? This leads to an infinite regress, leaving us with no assurance of true belief.
But notice that wasn't what you were asked. It's true that "The Earth exists in this situation" is true and the Earth exists in this situation: but the question is not whether "The Earth exists in this situation" is true, but whether "the Earth exists" is true in this situation. Since there are no sentences in this situation, a fortiori it isn't.
In the situation I presented:
1) The Earth exists
2) It's not the case that "the Earth exists" is true, since there aren't any sentences. — The Great Whatever
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