It's one of the many jokes he scatters through the text — Banno

I have to concede that if Davidson is making jokes or being cute I don't have the background to recognize it.

SO no thing makes a statement true; that is, there is no depth in being true, nothing to be explained, no correspondence to facts or what ever. Quite deflating. — Banno

To deepen my understanding...

Take the sentence: "The snow is white" is true iff the snow is white.

I take this formula to be the linguistic form the truth must take; but it's a formula without the ability to make a truth-claim. Nothing in this formula is claiming that it's true that the snow is white. The entire thing is a conditional.

So we have a formula, but to put it to use we need a fact: Namely, the snow's whiteness.



In your view, is it accurate to say the T-sentence reflects the form (or formulatability) of truth, without actually saying a thing about what is true?


(After saying - "The snow is white" is true iff the snow is white - we still don't know whether it's true that the snow is white. We do, however, know that if the snow is white, it follows that "the snow is white" is true...)

Thus falls the Churchland's attempt to eliminate folk psychology. — Banno

Curious about what this means.

I do not think that conceptual schemes inhere in the mind without or prior to language. To quite the contrary...
— creativesoul

Glad to hear it. But sometimes. — Banno

Sometimes... I'm either not clear enough, or you misunderstand. As you well know, my own position regarding thought, belief, and meaning is unique.

What do you make of Davidson's take on the need for a workable theory of meaning and an acceptable theory of belief?

From the top of page 18...

I suggest, following Quine, that we may without circularity or unwarranted assumptions accept certain very general attitudes towards sentences as the basic evidence for a theory of radical interpretation. For the sake of the present discussion at least we may depend on the attitude of accepting as true, directed at sentences, as the crucial notion. (A more full-blooded theory would look to other attitudes towards sentences as well, such as wishing true, wondering whether true, intending to make true, and so on). Attitudes are indeed involved here, but the fact that the main issue is not begged can be seen from this: if we merely know that someone holds a certain sentence to be true, we know neither what he means by the sentence nor what belief his holding it true represents. His holding the sentence true is thus the vector of two forces: the problem of interpretation is to abstract from the evidence a workable theory of meaning and an acceptable theory of belief.

"The crucial notion"...

Belief.

This is my third attempt at a reply to your post...

There is considerable background here that I was taking for granted, but it seems would be fair to point out.

I'm not grasping coming from the generalized form that Davidson cites

"S is true iff P"

to the conclusion that we could not make sense of a simultaneously true and untranslatable "x" — Moliere

SO let's unpack this:

We recognize sentences like" 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white" to be trivially true.Yet the totality of such English sentences uniquely determines the extension of the concept of truth for English.

You will already understand that extension is a technical term, opposed to intension, and referring to the very things that a term picks out as opposed to the criteria use to do that picking. What Davidson seeks to do is to bypass talk of the criteria we use to assign "...is true" to sentences, sweeping aside all that messy stuff about correspondence and coherence and so on. So the extension of the concept of truth in English is just the true English sentences.

So here we have the whole of the truth, set out as T-sentences.

I hope that's clear, but just in case we can approach the issue in another way. Tarski had sort to define "...is true" by playing with meaning. Davidson realised that we could flip this, take "...is true" as fundamental and use T-sentences to set out meaning.

"Schnee ist weiß" is true IFF snow is white. If, for every possible German sentence, we had a true T-sentence with the German quoted on the left and the English used on the right, we would be able to look up any German sentence and find an English equivalent.

We would have used "...is true" to provide a complete translation of German into English. And it would be purely extensional.

If someone were to ask what some given German sentence means, we could look up our database of T-sentences and find the equivalent English sentence. That is, Davidson shows how to replace talk of meaning with talk of truth and translation.
_________________________

So we have a triumvirate of meaning, truth and translation.

Any given conceptual scheme must be both true and meaningful - if not to us, then to those who understand it. Consider someone who has found an incommensurable conceptual scheme. They must be in a position to say "here is a conceptual scheme that is true and meaningful to those who adhere to it, and yet is not translatable into our conceptual scheme".

Now, how could they recognise it as meaningful and true, and yet not have some translation of it?

That is, if there were incommensurable conceptual schemes, we could not recognise them as such.

Hence consideration of incommensurable conceptual schemes makes no sense - literally, is meaningless.

Eliminative materialism

Now, how could they recognise it as meaningful and true, and yet not have some translation of it? — Banno

Do they have to recognize it as being meaningful and true, or merely recognize that it could be meaningful and true for all they know?

Eliminative materialism — Banno

I'm familiar with this idea - there's a lot of it around the forums - and a lot of different varieties - but I'm not sure which type you mean to underscore or how it connects to Davidson.

Any given conceptual scheme must be both true and meaningful - if not to us, then to those who understand it. Consider someone who has found an incommensurable conceptual scheme. They must be in a position to say "here is a conceptual scheme that is true and meaningful to those who adhere to it, and yet is not translatable into our conceptual scheme".

Now, how could they recognise it as meaningful and true, and yet not have some translation of it?

That is, if there were incommensurable conceptual schemes, we could not recognise them as such.

Hence consideration of incommensurable conceptual schemes makes no sense - literally, is meaningless. — Banno

This is the part that I completely agreed with earlier...

The only sticking point to me is the criterion of being both true and meaningful. I'm not sure why a conceptual scheme must be true, unless being true is equivalent to being coherent, consistent, lacking self-contradiction. If that's the case, then I've no issue. Re-reading you, that seems to be your take, but I didn't note Davidson saying as much when reading the paper. Did he? Is it irrelevant to the main thrust?

Yep; with certain reservations about "...to put it to use we need a fact...".

Those reservations are to do with there not being any facts of the mater, apart from that snow is white...

That is, we should avoid the reification of facts into something that sits between the statement "snow is white" and the white snow, making it true. That's the "unmediated touch"between statements and stuff.

See here.

Meaning, truth and belief are interlocked.

Or better, the meaning of our various statements is in some part the attitude we adopt towards them.

Belief as a propositional attitude; something perhaps you cannot accept.

The T-sentence is trivially true. It's not a theory and it explains nothing. Deflationary truth is compatible with any kind of ontology.

Do they have to recognize it as being meaningful and true, or merely recognize that it could be meaningful and true for all they know? — Janus

See the discussion of dolphins, earlier in this thread.

Those reservations are to do with there not being any facts of the mater, apart from that snow is white... — Banno

This is a bad example since snow is always white. (Unless someone adds something, like pee, to it.)

Let's say:

1) "The sun is setting" is true iff the sun is setting.

How can we put this sentence to use without "pointing to" or "attaching it to" or "corresponding it to" a fact? (Not wanting to quibble over the phraseology.)

Without connecting 1) to some fact, how can it be put to use? It's fine as a formula. But we still don't know whether "the sun is setting" is true.

If T-sentences have no use - if they're just a satisfying, deflationary (setting the extensionality of truth) formula - I don't see an issue. But if T-sentences have a use, it seems they can only be put to use when some person links them to some fact (in this case a setting sun).

I have no issue with the T-sentence formula, but in connection to truth, and the desire to make truthful statements - especially on subjects more complex than snow and the sun - I don't see a way to put it to use.

I think Davidson's example of the Minister of Scientific Language eliminates eliminative materialism.

I think Davidson's example of the Minister of Scientific Language eliminates eliminative materialism. — Banno

Ah, okay.

Did he? — creativesoul

He did.

The point is that for a theory to fit or face up to the totality of possible sensory evidence is for that theory to be true.

and thereabouts.

The T-sentence is trivially true. It's not a theory and it explains nothing. Deflationary truth is compatible with everybody's ontology. — frank

So what?

It's a lot to read through. Can't you just answer my question according to your own understanding, or at least link a specific post or posts that you think will answer it?

It's a lot to read through. — Janus

OK.

Do they have to recognize it as being meaningful and true, or merely recognize that it could be meaningful and true for all they know? — Janus

A fart could be meaningful and true, for all we know. Do you want to start a discussion on farts?

Go ahead; I'm not interested.

I think Davidson's example of the Minister of Scientific Language eliminates eliminative materialism. — Banno

In other words: The eliminative materialist - "for all [we] know" (this phrase strikes me as significant to any assessment of the Ministry's old and new dialects) - while using the new dialect may well be referring to the old "mental riff and raff."

I'm not interested. — Banno

Right, you're not interested in being challenged: I understand.

Belief as a propositional attitude; something perhaps you cannot accept. — Banno

Yep. That's a sticking point for me... as a general criterion. However, in this context, I can happily accept it, for it is imperative - I think - to grasping the totality of the denial, which I completely agree with. Pre language thought and belief are irrelevant here, for they cannot count as conceptual scheme. Although, they are a part of the world prior to sentences, that may not be a problem.

Right, you're not interested in being challenged: I understand. — Janus

I agree there's something important in this phrase: "For all I know." (As connected to the Ministry-of-Scientific-Language parable.)

Read the thread and set it out for us. Everybody has to read the thread. Yep, it's a lot to read through.

Yeah.

I'm with Austin: the language we use every day has evolved over tens of thousands of years; what we have is what has survived generation after generation of elimination of weak expression. It'sour best bet.

you're not interested in being challenged: — Janus

It's a lot to read through. — Janus

Not by someone who is too lazy to engage with the challenge, no. I have enough to be getting on with.

Was it Davidson who claimed that if we know what it takes for a statement to be true, then we know what the statement means?

Is convention T showing this?

I'm with Austin: the language we use every day has evolved over tens of thousands of years; what we have is what has survived generation after generation of elimination of weak expression. It'sour best bet. — Banno

So you agree that the phrase "for all I know" is an important part of the parable?

I think the point about the ministry was that a change in terminological use alone does not always guarantee talking about the same things(referents). Hence, for all I know... the person could be using new phrases as names for the same old notions.

I think the point about the ministry was that a change in terminological use alone does not always guarantee talking about the same things(referents). — creativesoul

Right. The new dialect may or may not be referring to the old referents. It's unknown.