Well, yeah. But you've yet to demonstrate that it doesn't represent what it models, you've only shown that it's possible to model language in other ways (as about a state-of-affairs (mental and physical states) in the world.) — Isaac

Sure I did. You're not paying attention. Is Searle's use of language (his model of language) about language-use? Is language-use a state of affairs? If so, then his model is about a state-of-affairs. If not, then what it Searle saying (modeling)? What is he talking about? Yours and Banno's interpretation of Searle's model defeats itself.

I don't see why. I can model a car with cars, I could build a model of a brick out of bricks... — Isaac

model: an example for imitation or emulation.

A model is not the real thing.

I addressed this. The christening changes some of the properties of the object but not others. Christening a particular stone 'a bishop' changes some of its properties (the way we treat it) but not others (how heavy it is). Christening some things 'gold' changes some of its properties (the way we treat it) but not others (how heavy it is). — Isaac

There's a difference between changing the meaning of the word "gold" such that it includes lead and deciding to use a stone as a bishop.

The criteria that qualifies something as gold (as the word "gold" is currently understood) is criteria that has nothing to do with human institutions and everything to do with its chemical composition.

The criteria that qualifies something as a bishop (as the word "bishop" is currently understood) is criteria that has to do with human institutions.

That's all there is to it. That we can change the meaning of the words "gold" and "bishop" (and even switch them) is irrelevant to the distinction Searle is making.

The criteria that qualifies something as gold (as the word "gold" is currently understood) is criteria that has nothing to do with human institutions and everything to do with its chemical composition. — Michael

...because a human institution decided so.

...because a human institution decided so. — Isaac

Yes, which is beside the point. You continue to fail to understand the use-mention distinction.

"iron" is a four letter word but iron isn't a four letter word.

That "iron" refers to the element with 26 protons is a human decision but that iron has 26 protons isn't a human decision.

The direct realist argues that I'm looking at you and the indirect realist argues that I'm looking at your reflection. I don't see why we can't say both. — Michael

I don't think that we can say both.

I look at a rose and light of a wavelength of 700 nm travels from the rose to my eye. I look at a sunset and light of a wavelength of 700 nm travels from the sunset to my eye.

The Direct Realist would say that I have direct awareness of the external world.

If, as a Direct Realist would say, that I have a direct awareness of the external word, how does the Direct Realist know that the wavelength of 700nm entering the eye was caused by a rose or a sunset ?

that iron has 26 protons isn't a human decision. — Michael

Of course it is. That anything has 26 protons is a human decision. That we even bother looking at, let a lone counting the number of protons is a human decision. Iron doesn't even exist but for a human decision to group all things with 26 protons into one group. Otherwise there's just stuff.

Iron is a class of objects, not an object. Classes are human inventions with human criteria and humans bring them into existence by declaration, they neither exist nor have properties without humans.

A model is not the real thing. — Harry Hindu

Nor am I suggesting it is, but I can build a model of a car out of cars. these four cars represent the wheels, these two cars are the doors, this car is the engine...and so on. There's no problem with building a model using that which is being modelled.

Consider a group of Harvard Business School students on graduation day.

In one possible world, they each individually decide to go out into the world and make as much money as possible, for the good of humanity.

In the other, they meet and agree to go out into the world and make as much money as possible, for the good of humanity.

Are these two different? Well, it seems that in the first, each says "I am going out to get rich". In the second, "We are going out to get rich". We-intentionality is different to I-intentionality. — Banno

I was thinking how language is unnecessary for we-intentionality. For example, my dog and I both have mental representations of ‘going for a walk’, though our respective mental models of ‘going for a walk’ may differ to some degree. I can have the intention to walk the dog and as I prepare for that activity there will be some point where Red (my dog) will recognize the cues and we will then have we-intentionality. So I guess the institution of walking that we share is represented by a sequence of events involving a leash, shoes, a hat, and other signs. The signs are representations with intention but not the thing represented so are fictional.

Iron doesn't even exist but for a human decision to group all things with 26 protons into one group. — Isaac

The stuff we refer to by the word "iron" exists even if we don't use the word "iron" to refer to them. And I'm saying that the things we refer to by the word "iron" have 26 protons, and will continue to have 26 protons even if we change the meaning of the word "iron". You still don't seem to understand the use-mention distinction.

Iron is a class of objects, not an object. — Isaac

When I eat a banana I don't eat a class of objects. A banana isn't a class of objects; it's a fruit. Iron isn't a class of objects; it's a chemical element with 26 protons.

When I use the word "iron" I might be referring to members of a class, but I nonetheless am referring to the members of the class, not the class.

That seems fine to me. That shared intent explains the usefulness of a dog as a hunting and farming tool.

But you and your dog can't collectively intend to go for a walk next Tuesday.

We need language to have Monday, Tuesday...

But Status Functions allow this. We collectively "declare" today Wednesday, and repeat this each week, resulting in the social fact of week days, which you and I can use to make plans, but which are unavailable to Fido.

Thank you for that summary, which goes to the point of assuming realism as a background upon which this discussion sits. You have presented a pretty clear account of how realism works for Searle.

I'd add that the realism he sets out is pretty much that of Austin in Sense and Sensibilia. Those around us arguing about this issue would do well to re-read that text.

I hadn't payed attention to the description of social facts as hallucinations, but I now see its value. I would point out that if they are hallucinations, they are more than a Folie à deux - we all share in the hallucination of property, of weekdays, of English, of taxes... There is something in the notion of society as a form of mass hysteria!

Cheers.

Yes! The implications of the performative utterance are manyfold. More so status functions and social facts. It's a shame the discussion here has been hooked by the petty, incessant squabbles over realism.

@Michael, it seems to me that @StreetlightX has misunderstood Searle's notion of basic facts.

A. Regardless of what (if anything) we call a 'dog' or a 'leg', dogs have four legs. There are brute facts.
B. Dogs having four legs depends on what we decide to call 'dog' and 'leg'. There are no brute facts. — Cuthbert

Notice that "dogs have four legs" and "That dogs having four legs depends on what we decide to call 'dog' and 'leg'" are both true.

The first is what Searle would call a brute fact. That brute fact is represented using the institutional facts of our referring to legs with "legs"... So, yes, Street, it is "all counting-as, all facts, everywhere, all the time"; and yet dogs still have four legs. We can do this because we can understand a rule not just by interpreting it (using more words), but also by implementing it (taking the dog for a walk) - Philosophical Investigations §201, again.

So, Cuthbert, you may agree that it does not follow from "that dogs having four legs depends on what we decide to call 'dog' and 'leg'", that dogs do not have four legs.

Anyway, from experience we know that neither this post, nor any other, will stop the wrangling. The odd thing is that despite the argument, @Isaac will agree that we cannot feed people by declaring dirt to be bread. I do not think there is a substantive difference of opinion here.

There's more to say on Searle's ideas. it's good to see some applications dropping in to the discussion.

The stuff we refer to by the word "iron" exists even if we don't use the word "iron" to refer to them. And I'm saying that the things we refer to by the word "iron" have 26 protons, and will continue to have 26 protons even if we change the meaning of the word "iron". — Michael

Iron is a class of objects, not an object. Classes are human inventions with human criteria and humans bring them into existence by declaration, they neither exist nor have properties without humans. — Isaac

I think you can both be right, depending on whether we believe the world exists -- or beings exist -- even without human beings. Provided I'm understanding you both accurately.

Michael, I take you as saying "the being to which I refer when I say the word 'x' persists regardless of what I call it." So that blob of "stuff" over there that I'm pointing to is still what it is, no matter what symbols or sounds we create to refer to it. I think in the real world of everyday experience, of course this is true. That thing coming towards me at 80 kph is still going to kill me, whether I call it a "truck" or not.

Issac, I tend to sway more towards the position of "classes are human invention" as well. It all comes from the human mind, ultimately. To me this echos Kant. "Gold" doesn't exist any more than Ursa Major does.

I think you can both be right, — Xtrix

I think you are right. I'm pretty sure that the problem is to do with direction of fit; that the status function of "gold" is dependent on the bi-directionality of declarative utterances.

So we can say that our use of the word "gold" has a direction of fit such that the word use is modified to match the world - it is an institutional fact that "gold" refers to gold; but also, our use of the word "gold" has a world-to-word direction of fit; the world is such that we can usefully divide the gold stuff from the non-gold stuff.

Another example: "the cup is on the table" is true; and it requires both that we make the declaration that "cup" refers to the cup - changing the use of the word to match the world; and that we can divide the world up into cups and non-cups - changing the world to match the words we use.

The realism discussion is one side saying it's word-to-world, while the other insists it is world-to-word; and they are both correct.

Meanwhile, @StreetlightX keeps saying we could divide it all up quite differently, and he is right about that, too.

I'm saying that the things we refer to by the word "iron" have 26 protons — Michael

We refer to all things with 26 protons as "iron", so in your proposition {the things we refer to by the word "iron"} is tautologous with {all things with 26 protons} so by substitution, your proposition is the things we refer to by the word "iron" all things with 26 protons have 26 protons. True, but trivially true. It doesn't tell us anything non tautological. The non-trivial fact in this is the we choose proton number to group elements where we could have chosen otherwise, and had we chosen otherwise "iron" would not even exist. As such iron (the class of metals, not the word "iron") is a human institutional fact, we declared that there shall be a class, determined by proton number, even before we named it "iron", the class itself (the thing being named) did not exist prior to our declaring it to.

When I use the word "iron" I might be referring to members of a class, but I nonetheless am referring to the members of the class, not the class. — Michael

I don't see how, you'd say "some iron", or "an example of iron", or "that iron". You'd have to indicate in some way the actual member other than by the word "iron", the word alone is insufficient to identify the object entirely because it identifies only a class of objects. You could say "this object" (pointing) has 26 protons, but that's just a matter of belief based of trust in the institution that told you it was iron and told you all iron has 26 protons - it's not as if you looked. You're trusting (quite rightly) the human institutions behind that classification and naming process. If, on some weird science day the object, on investigation, turns out to have 26-and-a-half protons, something we'd previously thought impossible, we have to make an institutional decision as to whether it was iron, or not. up to that point, it's just 'stuff'. Once made, "all iron has 26 protons" is no longer true, not by virtue of us changing to what we apply the word "iron", but by us changing what iron is as a class (it now includes substances with 26-and-a-half protons, substances which didn't previously even have a class name).

It was for this reason that Ramsey was inclined to say (a little tongue in cheek) that there are no facts, only events. A fairly extreme position on the status of universals, but one I've a lot of sympathy with.

I think you can both be right, — Xtrix

The realism discussion is one side saying it's word-to-world, while the other insists it is world-to-word; and they are both correct. — Banno

I think if we accept classes as human inventions, then the 'correctness' of a word-to-world fit depends largely on how existent the properties upon which the classes are founded actually are.

Say I could divide my book collection by author, by title or by publication year. I decide on author and create the class {all books by Wittgenstein}. The class is my invention, but its still a world-to-word fit because all the books are authored by someone and those in my class are authored by Wittgenstein.

But say I choose to divide my book collection by 'feel' and I create the class {books that make me feel happy}. Now we're perhaps a little more leery of saying this is a world-to-word fit, after all, how would we know that a book's being in the class {books that make me happy} isn't itself a reason why that book might make me happy (priming effect). We might be moving to a word-to-world fit.

So essentially, I see the problem as one of deciding to what extent our divvying up of the world affects the way we perceive potential members of sets - the extent to which the existence of the sets themselves has any determining influence over the decision about what objects are members of it. This problem, I think, goes all the way from active inference in perception (within my wheelhouse), to all the 'spooky' stuff in QM (none of which I understand, other than to know it's not a simple matter to say "this electron is...")

And what, if anything, do you think is here in contrast to what Searle has said, or to my view?

This by way of trying to see how you view both.

The implications of the performative utterance are manyfold.

Private Facts and Public Facts

I see an object. There are brute facts that it is made of wood, has a weight and is larger at its base than its top.

I declare in a performatory act that "this piece is a bishop and can only move diagonally". The fact that this piece is a bishop and not a castle is a Private Fact for me. Someone else could equally have said "this piece is a castle and can only move perpendicularly". The fact that this piece is a castle and not a bishop is a Private Fact for the other person.

However, we could have both declared that this piece is a bishop, and the fact that this piece is a bishop for both of us becomes a Public Fact, ie, an Institutional Fact (assuming that we are both important figures in society).

But note that the piece becoming a bishop as a Public Fact, an Insitutional Fact, only happened after the declarations had been made

The apparent paradox "this statement is a lie"

Consider the paradox "this statement is a lie. We can then compare the statement "this piece is a bishop" with "this statement is a lie". The fact that this piece is a bishop only happened after the performative declaration, ie, the piece was not a bishop before the declaration. The fact that this statement is a lie only happened after the performative declaration, ie, the statement was not a lie before the declaration.

On the first reading, the statement "this statement is a lie" is a paradox of self-reference, in that the statement seems to have one meaning that is paradoxically self-contradictory. However, the statement "this statement is a lie" has in fact two different independent meanings. The first meaning is before he conclusion of the performatory act. The second meaning is after the conclusion of the performatory act.

IE, as these two independent meanings are not contradictory, there is no longer any paradox.

what, if anything, do you think is here in contrast to what Searle has said, or to my view? — Banno

I think it's at the interface of assertive and declarative speech acts. You say (if you'll excuse the paraphrasing)...

These (human-christened) statements are true. Yet they are true not in virtue of a "state of affairs" in the world; they are not true for the sort of reasons that some 'factual' statements) are true. — Banno

Yet it seems to me that those statements are true for the very same sort of reason (not the actual same reason).
"The bishop is made of wood" is declarative "this (the bishop) is the sort of thing 'wood' is" It's the continued use of these speech acts which creates the institutional class 'wood'. At lot of these things also have scientific bodies who act as authorities for the definitions, but these are post hoc, the definition preceded their attempts to codify it.

"Game" might be easier, and more familiar an example. There's a class of objects {games} such that it can be seen as a world-to-word fit (assertive) to say "Monopoly is a game". But the membership criteria for {game} is created ad hoc by the very repeated use of expressions like "Monopoly is a game".

I think, maybe, we'd agree about 'game' but disagree about 'wood'? So I suppose the relevance of active inference and 'spooky' QM is to explain why I would think the same of 'wood' and you and I both might think of 'game'. That we create, by interaction, models of our environment, and, more importantly here, social methods to keep our models similar to each others. One of those social methods is the institution of naming and grammar.

To say "that's a tree" is jointly a mere assertion, but also a method by which I keep my model of what-sort-of-thing-a-tree-is similar enough to your model of what-sort-of-thing-a-tree-is that we can get along and do stuff cooperatively (such as harvest apples from the tree), and so in that sense it's a word-to-world fit because other models were possible, but I want yours similar to mine and you want mine similar to yours - we have a mutual interest in each other's model.

We refer to all things with 26 protons as "iron", so in your proposition {the things we refer to by the word "iron"} is tautologous with {all things with 26 protons} so by substitution, your proposition is the things we refer to by the word "iron" all things with 26 protons have 26 protons. True, but trivially true. — Isaac

And when I say that we can't make iron into gold by decree I'm saying that we can't just decide that those elements which have 26 protons now have 53 more. That's the sensible interpretation of my claim. Which is why I don't understand why you respond by saying that we can just redefine the word "gold". That we can change the meaning of a word has nothing to do with this discussion.

But we can just decide that a stone is a bishop. That's why a stone being a bishop is an institutional fact but iron not being gold isn't.

Okay, I have a few thoughts on this.

First, language is an instituation, and it's a pervasive one. Almost all other institutions will involve langauge in some capacity, but it's not central. For a bishop to be a bishop, you need to treat it like bishop while playing the game. Calling it a "bishop" is one way to treat a bishop like a bishop, but it's not a necessary part of playing the game chess. I, who speak no Chinese and don't know what chess pieces are called in Chinese, can play chess with a Chinese player of chess who doesn't know what chess pieces are called in any language I speak. If we announce our moves in our respective language, we can learn those terms, and I'd argue that we'd have learned more about each others language than the game of chess, which we were using to learn.

In terms of "collective intentionality", we share the institutional context of chess, which is why my meaningful move is followed by my opponents meaningful moves. If I say, "bishop d 2 - e 3" and move my bishop, and if this goes on long enough, a non-English speaker could eventually figure out what the piece is called, and what the letters and numbers are. But I could be pranking them and say "knight d2 - e3," while moving my bishop (and be consistent all through the game). This would lead to false assumptions about the language of chess, but the game would go on without a hitch.

The point about institutions is that you can only meaningfully engage in them, if you share assumptions. Austin/Searle divide, for this reason, speech acts into illocutionary acts (what you intend to say), and perlocutionary acts (what actually gets across). A successful speech acts needs both illocutionary and perlocutionary acts to succeeds. In layman's terms, if you talk to me in a language I don't understand, you're not really saying anything to me.

Collective intentionality is easiest to understand with formalised transactions. Consider the following sentence:

"I sold you my car, but you didn't buy it." Out of context, that's rather hard to make sense of. If I succeed in selling you my car, you bought it. On the language front, that's just ye olde married bachelor. Selling and buying are the same transaction viewed from the perspective of two different stereotypical participant roles. That's what the institution is.

Selling isn't an "illocutionary act", because the locution-part means speech. But it's the equivalent half of institutional behaviour. "Buying" is the other. If two people aren't on a page, a muck-up may occur, and then saying something like "I sold you my car, but you didn't buy it," might make sense (and mean something like "I thought I sold you my car, but you thought it was a gift.") We can understand the sentence as institutional failure: what we have in common is not the institutional transaction of buying or selling, but the situation of the muck-up (and only after we both realise that there's been a muck-up, and what it's nature is).

"Institutional facts" are what we need to know to perform institutional acts. And performing institutional acts, is what reproduces institutional facts. We create a chicken-egg situation, here. And metaphorical mutations are possible: Institutions change, sometimes by conscious negotion, sometimes by unacknowledge "reproduction error".

I feel like Michael's distinction between mention and use is a red herring, because institutional facts aren't about language in the first place. They're about shared meaningful behaviour, such that whenever I sell something to someone that person buys that thing from me. Institutional facts aren't absolute or eternal; but they must hold to some degree for their to be any interaction in the first place.

That English is a nominative accusative langauge and not an ergative absolutive language is an institutional fact about English, and that we have these terms is an institutional fact about linguistics. What this means is:

Yes: [I'm eathing a cake.] and [I'm eating.]
No: [I'm eating a cake.] and [Me's eating.] [Disclaimer: I don't actually know about verb agreement in ergative absolutive language. It might have to be "Me am eating." I don't know. Anyone here speak Basque?]

Basically, an ergative absolutive language treats the agent of an intransitive verb like the object of a transitive verb. It's... weird if you're not used to it; normal otherwise.

(It's possible that some dialects display situational eragtivity in that way. Not sure. It's not the default.)

Linguistics describes this state of affairs; it's native speakers who create and recreate it. It's rooted in their practical consciousness to a degree that it's invisible and it takes awareness of other languages to see that what they do could be different. The sentence "I'm eating," and the linguistic analysis of this sentence occur in different institutional contexts. This means in practise that native speakers of English use "I" instead "me" before an intranstive verb like "to eat" (as opposed to it's transitive version "to eat something"), without being able to use linguistic terms to describe what they do. That linguists might not agree with other on how best to describe this instituional fact does nothing to change this. Non-linguistically-trained people can't even join that conversation; they lack knowledge of the relevant instituional facts - how to talk like a linguist about what they routinely say.

Each and everything we ever do, whatever is meaningful, occurs in an instituional context. So much is true. We can talk about the number of protons in iron till the cows come home, but we've been processing iron for longer than we've known about protons. Iron itself isn't an instituon, but whatever we do with iron occurs within instituions, and those instituitions are interconnected. Forging a sword from iron, and then cleaning it so it won't rust as quickly doesn't require knowledge of the periodic table. There's a cultural connection, an we can trace a memetic path for iron through inconnected institutions. We can't talk about iron without referencing institutions. We can't use iron without engaging in instituions. But iron itself isn't something we do; it's something that means different things in different contexts and provides cross-intstituitional continuity, by virtue of being real. But at the same time, whatever is real about iron doesn't necessarily need to give rise to "iron" as cross-instituitional cutlural practise (of which language and naming is a minuscle albeit pervasive part).

Long post, and i'm not even sure I made sense to myself.

I feel like Michael's distinction between mention and use is a red herring, because institutional facts aren't about language in the first place. — Dawnstorm

The use-mention distinction is important. There's a difference between using the word "iron" in the context of saying "iron has 26 protons" and mentioning the word "iron" in the context of saying "'iron' refers to the element with 26 protons". Isaac and StreetlightX appear to be saying that because the latter is an institutional fact then the former is an institutional fact, but that's a non sequitur precisely because of the use-mention distinction.

Iron will continue to have 26 protons even if we change the meaning of the word "iron", and Joe Biden will continue to be President of the United States even if he changes his name.

This thread needs its own category!

I wouldn’t know where to start with this. All I know is everywhere I look and everything I think about is a messy mess of a mess. Nothing makes ‘sense’ and people seem to just be doing stuff unconsciously all the time … and why this is part of my day-to-day life (this ‘view’) is in and of itself an absurdity.

Ironically (considering your apparent stance) I call the whole thing ‘religious’. Meaning that all ‘facts’ are at different layers of resolution relative to our experiencing self and how we ‘constitute’ ourselves as ‘among’ and ‘apart’ - the intentionality.

A book is not a book, and a tree is not a tree. Things we experience (or imagine) make up our world. How we ‘feel’ about things matters more than we seem to let on to ourselves. The possession of items or the experiences of items are one and the same yet we split them into distinct categories.

There is a a coffee cup on the table and a glass of chilled water … everything about them is spectacular to observe and contemplate … where did they come from? Who made them? Who designed them? Why that design? Was it given much though? The dried froth around the rim of the cup of coffee I recently finished. How now can I look at this items as merely ‘a glass of water’ and ‘an empty cup of coffee’. I have imbued them with emotional content and for those reading this maybe you too will now look at something near you and imbue thoughts and feelings into items that were previously mundane and never really worthy of note.

There is no end to this. It is horrifically beautiful! It is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’.

The use-mention distinction is important. There's a difference between using the word "iron" in the context of saying "iron has 26 protons" and mentioning the word "iron" in the context of saying "'iron' refers to the element with 26 protons". Isaac and StreetlightX appear to be saying that because the latter is an institutional fact then the former is an institutional fact, but that's a non sequitur precisely because of the use-mention distinction. — Michael

They don't appear to me to be saying that, though.

See, the use/mention distinction is only relevant to the word iron. And words occur in the instituion of language.

"Iron has 26 protons," is not an instituional facts because "'Iron' refers to the element with 26 protons." is an instituional fact. They're both institutional facts because you need to understand chemistry to make sense of it.

"Iron has 26 protons," is an instituional fact within the instituion of chemistry. It's meaningless if you don't know what protons are, and why they're important to the periodic table.

"'Iron' refers to the element with 26 protons," is an instituional fact within the instituion of language. You still need to know about chemistry (because it's the specialised language of chemistry), but before that you need to know that what it means for words to refer.

Both these sentences express an instituional fact, but you can just demonstrate knowledge of those facts by engaging in relevant institutional activity (looking through a microscope and counting protons; using the word "iron" correctly).

I think the cunfusion here comes from an overfocus on language (understandable in a thread about Searle). Language, as a social institution, is used to talk about relevant things. And it's hardly a coincidence that instituions form around relevant things. Without boundries of relevance, you can't demarcate facts of any kind, and since relevance guids action, and we live together with other acting people, our personal relevance structure grow together with those of people around us. That's how we get institutions: a stream of call-and-response, consistently meaningful to all successful participants. That you talk about iron in terms of protons tells me you're more likely to wear a lab coat than a blacksmith's apron.

Instituional facts are the imputed shared meaning that makes instituions work. They needn't be expressed in words, and if they're not, there's really nothing the use/mention distinction could be applied to. If the imputation of shared meaning fails, what you thought was institutional fact ended up merely a personal, mental fact, and you need new theories.

They don't appear to me to be saying that, though. — Dawnstorm

We can't turn lead into gold just by deciding that it's gold — Michael

Of course we can turn lead into gold just by deciding that it's gold. We only need say that the definition of gold is now anything with between 79 and 82 protons. Voilà, lead is now gold. — Isaac

This is a textbook use-mention distinction error.

I'll quote Searle:

Institutional facts are so called because they require human institutions for their existence. In order that this piece of paper should be a five dollar bill, for example, there has to be the human institution of money. Brute facts require no human institutions for their existence. Of course, in order to state a brute fact we require the institution of language, but the fact stated needs to be distinguished from the statement of it.

The fact that iron has 26 protons does not depend on human institutions. The statement "iron has 26 protons" does depend on human institutions.

Conflating the two is to collapse the use-mention distinction.

It's more interesting to think of an alien who can't understand the idea of Iron because her form of life is so different.

This alien experiences time as weight (not too far fetched, actually). If iron weighs as much as a bag of sand, she can't tell the difference. It's an amount of time, not material.

So would we say that "You can't change iron into gold" is true eternally? Or is it only true for people to whom it's meaningful?

that a stone is a bishop — Michael

What constitutes being a bishop? If I said "that stone is a bishop" and then preceded to use it as a rook, would you assume the rules of chess had changed, or would you say "it's not a bishop, it's a rook"?

We can collaboratively agree that "that stone is a bishop", but it's contingent on the human activity of it being used that way. The moment it isn't, its status as 'a bishop' is called into question, no matter what I say.

Likewise with "that stone is iron", it's contingent on the human activity of us classifying elements by their proton number. The moment we stop doing that, its status as iron is called into question.

You can say "but it will still have 26 protons no matter what we call it", but the claim in question was not "that stone has 26 protons", the claim was "that stone is iron".

And if the claim were "that stone has 26 protons" (with 'iron' just standing in for [something with 26 protons]), then, as points out, it would still be contingent on the human activity of classifying subatomic particles by their mass, charge etc.

What constitutes being a bishop? — Isaac

Being used as such in a game of chess.

Likewise with "that stone is iron", it's contingent on the human activity of us classifying elements by their proton number. The moment we stop doing that, its status as iron is called into question. — Isaac

You're making a use-mention mistake again. Joe Biden doesn't stop being President of the United States if he changes his name.

So would we say that "You can't change iron into gold" is true eternally? Or is it only true for people to whom it's meaningful? — frank

The answer is that it depends on what we think of as a truth bearer. If a sentence has to be placed in context before it's truth apt, then the issue of 'true for you, but not true for her' doesn't exist. We don't locate facts or speak of them as occurring here, but not there. A statement is always indexed. This is the concept of a proposition.

If the truth bearer is something else, like an utterance, then relativity seems inevitable.