Why don't we go back and see if we can define proposition. What forms do propositions take? If I were to look for a proposition where would I look? What would I see or hear? — Harry Hindu

I don't know, as I previously said.

I've seen a few main approaches:
1. Propositions are abstract entities like universals. They are mind independent in the same way that spheres and squares don't require a mind to be defined or to have properties that are true or false of them.
2. Propositions are linguistic constructs and not mind independent. (This is somewhat less popular because it seems to entail statements like "the moon exists" aren't true or false outside the context of communications or beliefs).
3. Propositions are the main ontological primitive of reality, i.e., all of reality can be compressed and encoded into true/false statements. Essentially this is just #1, except that this goes a step further in saying that other abstract objects end up being derived from propositions. The case for this is that you could encode everything that's going on in a physical event, say when one pool ball hits another, in binary.

I've noticed a tension between 1 and 2 in that often the people who want to deny that abstract objects are mind-indendent tend to also be the people who want to claim that the truth or falsity of propositions is, in at least some cases, mind-indendent. I do not know of a good way to resolve this myself. Perhaps propositions can be merely metalinguistic constructs, but the truth of a thing is a property the thing itself, or a property emerging from a thing and its interactions with another thing (i.e. information transfer). I'd like a theory like that but I don't know of one that holds up.

For some reason, propositions existing as abstract objects independent of minds never bothered me as much as universals doing the same.

the whole argument of Davidson's "The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" assumes that translation leaves the language into which we translate unaffected.
— Joshs

I don't think this is so. Davidson's description is of an ongoing and growing conversation.

So do you have an argument for this? — Banno

I’m going to cheat and use Putnam again:

“The word "meaning" and its relatives may be used in a sense closely connected with linguistics (counting lexi- cography as part linguistics). of Using the notion in this way, we ask what a word means, and expect to be given, if not a synonym, at least a paraphrase of a kind that any native speaker of the relevant language might give, or if the para- phrase is in a different language, one that counts as a reason-able translation. This is the notion of meaning that concerns Donald Davidson, my predecessor in the Hermes Lectures. In this sense of "meaning," the criterion as to whether two expressions have the same meaning is translation practice. But there is another, perhaps looser, notion of meaning made famous by Wittgenstein, in which to ask for the mean- ing of a word is to ask how it is used, and explanations of how a word is used may often involve technical knowledge of a kind ordinary speakers do not possess, and may be of a kind that would never appear in a lexicon or be offered as translations. In short, there is a difference between elucidat- ing the meaning of an expression by describing how it is used, and giving its meaning in the Davidsonian, or narrow linguistic, sense.”

“Conceptual relativity, as I already in-dicated, holds that the question as to which of these ways of using "exist" (and "individual" "object," etc.) is right is one that the meanings of the words in the natural language, that is, the language that we all speak and cannot avoid speaking every day, simply leaves open.”

Again you present the banal as if it were extraordinary. Davidson quite happily sets truth-conditional semantics as a part of meaning as use, then asks: if you have the truth conditions for a sentence, what more do you want?

It's not a rhetorical question.

And again, you seem to hint at some great point you have in mind, but which you are unable to articulate.

Logic since Frege has been able to set out much of the subtle variation in our use of existential words such as "is". But it is not apparent how you might use this in support of antirealism.

Davidson quite happily sets truth-conditional semantics as a part of meaning as use, then asks: if you have the truth conditions for a sentence, what more do you want?

It's not a rhetorical question. — Banno

And the non-rhetorical answer is that truth conditions play only a minor role in determining the rightness of meaning , due to the fact that rightness is predominately a matter of fit between habit and what appears. Fit is relative to purpose, and there are no things in the world that are external to all purposes.

As Nelson Goodman puts it:

“Truth, far from being a solemn and severe master, is a docile and obedient servant. The scientist who supposes that he is single-mindedly dedicated to the search for truth deceives himself. He is unconcerned with the trivial truths he could grind out endlessly; and he looks to the multifaceted and irregular results of observations for little more than suggestions of overall structures and significant generalizations. He seeks system, simplicity, scope; and when satisfied on these scores he tailors truth to fit. He as much decrees as discovers the laws he sets forth, as much designs as discerns the patterns he delineates. Truth, moreover, pertains solely to what is said, and literal truth solely to what is said literally. We have seen, though, that worlds are made not only by what is said literally but also by what is said metaphorically, and not only by what is said either literally or metaphorically but also by what is exemplified and expressed-by what is shown as well as by what is said.”

"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" would thus be a perverse and paralyzing policy for any world- maker. The whole truth would be too much; it is too vast, variable, and clogged with trivia. The truth alone would be too little, for some right versions are not true-being either false or neither true nor false-and even for true versions rightness may matter more.

What I have been saying bears on the nature of knowledge. On these terms, knowing cannot be exclusively or even primarily a matter of determining what is true. Discovery often amounts, as when I place a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, not to arrival at a proposition for declaration or defense, but to finding a fit. Much of knowing aims at something other than true, or any, belief.

An increase in acuity of insight or in range of comprehension, rather than a change in belief, occurs when we find in a pictured forest a face we already knew was there, or learn to distinguish stylistic ditterences among works already classified by artist or composer or writer, or study a picture or a concerto or a treatise until we see or hear or grasp features and structures we could not discern before. Such growth in knowledge is not by formation or fixation or belief, but by the advancement of understanding. Furthermore, if worlds are as much made as found, so also knowing is as much remaking as reporting.”

“ Briefly, then, truth of statements and rightness of descriptions, representations, exemplifications, expressions-of design, drawing, diction, rhythm--is primarily a matter of fit: fit to what is referred to in one way or another, or to other renderings, or to modes and manners of organization. The differences between fitting a version to a world, a world to a version, and a version together or to other versions fade when the role of versions in making the worlds they fit is recognized.”

To me this is the key point. We gain nothing by assuming a set of facts about the world supposedly existing independently of all versions, purposes and uses. Such an assumption is completely vacuous. It has no work to do.

I don't know, as I previously said. — Michael

That was your answer to my question about where the rules of inference were. You seemed to be shocked that I might question the existence of rules of inference, but you can't even show them to me or even know what they are either. It's like asking for proof of your God that you insists exists and you don't know how show proof.

You can't even prove propositions exist yet you used the term in your attempt to use rules of inference. If you can't show me what you're talking about when talking about propositions and rules of inference then it appears you don't know what your taking about when using those terms.

You should work that out before trying to make arguments using propositions and rules of inference.

You can't even prove propositions exist yet you used the term in your attempt to use rules of inference. — Harry Hindu

I'm not interested in proving that propositions exists. I am simply, for the sake of argument, taking as a premise that "p" is true iff p, or to use a specific example, that "the cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat. I then show what follows from assuming this premise. You're welcome to reject the premise if you like, and then my argument just isn't directed at you anymore.

I'm not interested in proving that propositions exists. — Michael

But you were interested in how they exist, which is what I've been asking you:

OK, but do propositions exist when nothing is said? Do propositions exist when nothing is thought? Does the existence of a proposition depend in some sense on us? — Michael

For us to continue, I need to know how you are using the term, "proposition", so that I'm not wasting my time or yours in talking past each other.

I am simply, for the sake of argument, taking as a premise that "p" is true iff p, or to use a specific example, that "the cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat. I then show what follows from assuming this premise. — Michael

Which I agreed with (go back and look). The relationship between the scribbles, "the cat is on the mat", and the cat and the mat is true IF it is the case that the cat is on the mat. If the cat is not on the mat, then the relationship between the scribbles and the cat and the mat is false.

...truth conditions play only a minor role in determining the rightness of meaning — Joshs

...and yet it plays a role....

Truth is where the world and language meet. Some of our beliefs are true, some not. Not just anything will do.

And this makes sense only if we say that there are truths that are independent of our attitude towards them, or even of our having articulated them at all.

We gain nothing by assuming a set of facts about the world that supposedly existing independently of all versions. — Joshs

We gain the capacity to distinguish truth from mere belief.

There are numerous issues with Goodman's turn of phrase. I expect you would agree that the notion of meaning having a "rightness" is fraught.


Elsewhere, you wrote:

Discursive
conventions are what allow us to come to agreement on ethical , inter social and scientific issues. — Joshs

But that is twaddle. What allows agreement is that we share the same world. "Discursive conventions" are our agreeing, they are what our agreeing consists in. PoMo remains hopelessly muddled.

Discursive
conventions are what allow us to come to agreement on ethical , inter social and scientific issues.
— Joshs
But that is twaddle. What allows agreement is that we share the same world. "Discursive conventions" are our agreeing, they are what our agreeing consists in. — Banno

Then I guess Trump supporters and liberals
in the U.S live in different worlds, as Goodman says, given that they disagree profoundly on ethical, political and scientific issues. No pointing to the true facts , while castigating our foes for their laziness, stupidity or malevolent motives, will change this situation.

Truth is where the world and language meet. Some of our beliefs are true, some not. Not just anything will do. — Banno

No, rightness is where the world and language meet, and rightness is not about truth and falsity but coherence of fit. What fits and what does not , and in what way, depends on lour purposes. We can ignore the particularities of our participation in social activities on some occasions , such as when we create broadly general categories of purpose that abstract
away all of these particularities. Technology and physics are examples of this abstractive generalizing of discursive meaning, allowing liberals and conservatives to agree on why planes stay up in the air even as they cannot agree on much else. Only because we can construct such broad generalities can what seem like the ‘same true world’ appear as shared by an entire community.

No, rightness is where the world and language meet, and rightness is not about truth and falsity but coherence of fit. What fits and what does not , and in what way, depends on lour purposes. — Joshs

So, where do we find truth then?

Truth is where the world and language meet. Some of our beliefs are true, some not. Not just anything will do. — Banno

This is too abstract: I think it would be far better to say that it is in actuality and significance that the world and language meet. Some of our ideas are workable, some not. Some of our ideas are insightful and inspiring, others not. Who gives a shit if the cat is on the mat or the cup is in the cupboard?

No, rightness is where the world and language meet, and rightness is not about truth and falsity but coherence of fit. What fits and what does not , and in what way, depends on lour purposes. — Joshs

:up: I see you are making a similar point.

Then I guess Trump supporters and liberals
in the U.S live in different worlds, as Goodman says, given that they disagree profoundly on ethical, political and scientific issues. No pointing to the true facts , while castigating our foes for their laziness, stupidity or malevolent motives, will change this situation. — Joshs

Yes, dualistic thinking is unhelpful and I can see the merit of this view. Is deescalation of culture war possible and how do we find our way to a less disruptive, violent world in the light of this?

Truth is where the world and language meet. Some of our beliefs are true, some not. Not just anything will do. — Banno

But language is part of the world. We perceive and have beliefs about how certain scribbles and utterances can be used just as we have perceptions and beliefs about anything else.

And this makes sense only if we say that there are truths that are independent of our attitude towards them, or even of our having articulated them at all. — Banno

If there are truths that are independent of our attitudes towards them, or even of our having articulated them at all, then truth is not where the world and language meet. Truth would simply be what is the case and what is the case is independent of our having articulated what is or isn't the case.

Then I guess Trump supporters and liberals
in the U.S live in different worlds, as Goodman says, given that they disagree profoundly on ethical, political and scientific issues. No pointing to the true facts , while castigating our foes for their laziness, stupidity or malevolent motives, will change this situation. — Joshs

Most people are not in these extremist political camps. People with open minds must play a part in this relationship with the world.

It's not that they live in different worlds. It's that they have different perceptions of the world, which includes language.

No, rightness is where the world and language meet, and rightness is not about truth and falsity but coherence of fit. What fits and what does not , and in what way, depends on lour purposes. We can ignore the particularities of our participation in social activities on some occasions , such as when we create broadly general categories of purpose that abstract — Joshs

Then maybe you and Banno need to iron out the distinction between rightness and truth. I think both of you are making the antiquated mistake of separating language from the world. We can disagree on the use of language as much as we can disagree about the usefulness of the Democrat and Republican parties.

This is too abstract: I think it would be far better to say that it is in actuality and significance that the world and language meet. Some of our ideas are workable, some not. Some of our ideas are insightful and inspiring, others not. Who gives a shit if the cat is on the mat or the cup is in the cupboard? — Janus

Language is not separate from the world. What makes language so special as to have a special meeting with the world while everything else in the world lacks this kind of meeting with the world? I have to learn to understand language just like I have to learn to ride a bike, or how babies are made. The world and our perceptions of it precedes any use of language as language must be perceived in the world to make any use of it.

. Truth would simply be what is the case and what is the case is independent of our having articulated what is or isn't the case. — Harry Hindu

And is this your belief about the nature of truth? Do you agree with Hilary Putnam that “while there is an aspect of
conventionality and an aspect of fact in everything we say that is true, we fall into hopeless philosophical error if we commit a "fallacy of division" and conclude that there must be a part of the truth that is the "conventional part" and a part that is the "factual part””, and that "this dichotomy between what the world is like inde­pendent of any local perspective and what is projected by us seems to me utterly indefensible."?

Or do you prefer David Lewis , Donald Davidson or San Dennett’s attempts to hold on some form of separation between fact and convention?

. Truth would simply be what is the case and what is the case is independent of our having articulated what is or isn't the case.
— Harry Hindu

And is this your belief about the nature of truth? — Joshs

No. I was explaining the implications of Banno's belief about the nature of truth. If "there are truths that are independent of our attitude towards them" then truth is not a meeting of the world and language, rather truth is "simply what is the case in the world" independent of what we articulate (how we use language).

I'm more interested in what we mean by terms like "truth", "fact" "right/wrong", not really the terms themselves as they seem interchangeable. If you mean different things when using these terms, then I want to know what that distinction is.

Do you agree with Hilary Putnam that “while there is an aspect of
conventionality and an aspect of fact in everything we say that is true, we fall into hopeless philosophical error if we commit a "fallacy of division" and conclude that there must be a part of the truth that is the "conventional part" and a part that is the "factual part””, and that "this dichotomy between what the world is like inde­pendent of any local perspective and what is projected by us seems to me utterly indefensible."?

Or do you prefer David Lewis , Donald Davidson or San Dennett’s attempts to hold on some form of separation between fact and convention? — Joshs

I don't like putting myself in a camp designated by some philosopher's name. So I probably don't fall neatly into any camp. I want to know what you mean by "fact" and "convention". Is a convention a fact, or a state of affairs, or what is the case? How humans use scribbles and utterances are themselves a state of affairs, or what is the case.

Language is not separate from the world. What makes language so special as to have a special meeting with the world while everything else in the world lacks this kind of meeting with the world? I have to learn to understand language just like I have to learn to ride a bike, or how babies are made. The world and our perceptions of it precedes any use of language as language must be perceived in the world to make any use of it. — Harry Hindu

Language is about the world, and I would include mathematical and visual representation in that characterization. So, it is via language that a kind of separation appears between the world and what is about it. Of course from one perspective that which is about the world is within the world, but from another perspective the world appears only within that which is about the world. Remember the nature of the dialectic; every idea holds within it its own negation.

I want to know what you mean by "fact" and "convention". Is a convention a fact, or a state of affairs, or what is the case? How humans use scribbles and utterances are themselves a state of affairs, or what is the case. — Harry Hindu

I agree that how humans use language is a state of affairs, but is there an ultimate arbiter of the truth of certain statements about the world, for example about the truth of empirical propositions? Are there objective
truths about physical nature, or are these truths relative to contingent and conventional linguistic states of affairs?
Is the claim that dinosaurs existed before anybody talked about them incoherent? What if we instead say that SOMETHING existed before language-using communities named and defined them, but we can’t say that they were dinosaurs , since that is a conceptual convention?

Or would you agree with Nelson Goodman?

“Is it a consequence of Goodman's philosophy that we made the stars?” Goodman answered that while there is a sense in which we did not make the stars (we don't make stars in the way in which a brickmaker makes a brick), there is indeed a sense in which we did make the stars. Goodman illustrated this by asking us to consider a constellation, say the Big Dipper. Did we make the Big Dipper? There is an obvious sense in which the answer is no. All right, we didn't make it in the way in which a carpenter makes a table, but did we make it a constellation?
Did we make it the Big Dipper? At this point, perhaps many of us might say yes, there is a sense in which we made “it” the Big Dipper. After all, it is hard to think of the fact that a group of stars is a “dipper” as one which is mind independent or language independent. Perhaps we should give Goodman this much, that we didn't “make” the Big Dipper as a carpenter makes a table, but we did make it by constructing a version in which that group
of stars is seen as exhibiting a dipper shape, and by giving it a name, thus, as it were, institutionalizing the fact that that group of stars is metaphorically a big dipper.
Nowadays, there is a Big Dipper up there in the sky, and we, so to speak, “put” a Big Dipper up there in the sky by constructing that version. But—and Goodman is, of course, waiting for this objection—we didn't make the stars of which that constellation consists. Stars are a “natural kind”, whereas constellations are an “artificial kind”.

But let us take a look at this so-called natural kind. Natural kinds, when we examine them, almost always turn out to have boundaries which are to some degree arbitrary, even if the degree of arbitrariness is much less than in the case of a completely conventional kind
like “constellation”. Stars are clouds of glowing gas,glowing because of thermonuclear reactions which are caused by the gravitational field of the star itself, but not every cloud of glowing gas is considered a star; some such clouds fall into other astronomical categories, and some stars do not glow at all. Is it not we who group together all these different objects into a single category “star” with our inclusions and exclusions? It is true that we did not make the stars as a carpenter makes a table, but didn't we, after all, make them stars?

Now Goodman makes a daring extrapolation. He proposes that in the sense illustrated by these examples, the sense in which we “make” certain things the Big Dipper and make certain things stars, there is nothing that we did not make to be what it is. (Theologically, one might say that Goodman makes man the Creator.) If, for example, you say that we didn't make the elementary particles, Goodman can point to the present situation in
quantum mechanics and ask whether you really want to view elementary particles as a mind-independent reality. It is clear that if we try to beat Goodman at his own game, by trying to name some “mind-independent stuff”, we shall be in deep trouble.”

No, rightness is where the world and language meet, and rightness is not about truth and falsity but coherence of fit. What fits and what does not , and in what way, depends on lour purposes.
— Joshs

So, where do we find truth then? — Metaphysician Undercover

We find truth all around us, whenever we participate in forming broad abstractions that mask the interpersonal differences in purpose and perspective that accompany our social engagements. These broad abstractions can take the form of propositional truth statements producing the picture of objects existing independently of human conceptualization, and are true facts for all of us.

This works well when our generalizations produce such things as physical objects and laws, but when we attempt to apply such broad abstractions to more complex phenomena, like human relationships and behavior, it can be disastrous. We end up wielding truth as a weapon of conformity.
In dealing with human behavior ( ethics, politics, etc) what we need isn't the notion of an objectively true world, but ways of relating to each other in more and more intimate ways. Abandoning talk of a single real world doesn’t mean anything goes, it means becoming sensitive to the contexts of persons’ ways of understanding their world and opening ourselves up to multiple ways of being.

Then I guess Trump supporters and liberals
in the U.S live in different worlds, as Goodman says, given that they disagree profoundly on ethical, political and scientific issues. — Joshs

No They are what we in trade call "wrong". Some of their beliefs are what we call "false". One of the interesting things about truth is that it allows us to point out when this or that "Discursive convention" does not match what is the case.

SO for examples drinking bleach will not cure COVID, regardless of the convention one espouses. Even if you believe it as part of a large, coherent body of discourse, drinking bleach will not cure COVID. That's because belief and truth are different things.

Overwhelmingly, we agree as to how things are. What disagreement there is, tends to how we want things to be. Your notion of denying agreement as to the facts leaves open precisely the sort of radical disagreement you wish to avoid. Your Trumpian friends can reply to you with the very argument you wish to use: they to will pretend that there are no facts of the matter. If all you have is coherence, you've already lost.

Yes, dualistic thinking is unhelpful and I can see the merit of this view. Is deescalation of culture war possible and how do we find our way to a less disruptive, violent world in the light of this? — Tom Storm

One of the tools you will have used in your counselling is some variation on the "reality rub", where one gently points to beliefs that are incompatible with the facts.

The United States is doing something similar at a national level.

I am not trying to give offence here, Angelo, but why should anyone care? Are you saying that morality is simply a matter of personal preferences - between you and your god/abyss? In which case is there any position that can't be justified using this personal approach, from pedophilia to genocide? — Tom Storm

But language is part of the world. We perceive and have beliefs about how certain scribbles and utterances can be used just as we have perceptions and beliefs about anything else. — Harry Hindu

Truth would simply be what is the case and what is the case is independent of our having articulated what is or isn't the case. — Harry Hindu

Yes.

Did you think there is something here with which i would disagree?

We find truth all around us, whenever we participate in forming broad abstractions that mask the interpersonal differences in purpose and perspective that accompany our social engagements. These broad abstractions can take the form of propositional truth statements producing the picture of objects existing independently of human conceptualization, and are true facts for all of us. — Joshs

Well Joshs, I don't understand this post at all. I don't see how truth could be a masking. I think it is more the opposite, an unmasking. So I think your explanation is a movement away from truth, toward deception, rather than toward truth.

Well Joshs, I don't understand this post at all. I don't see how truth could be a masking. I think it is more the opposite, an unmasking. So I think your explanation is a movement away from truth, toward deception, rather than toward truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Truth as correspondence with what is out there independent of us is one sort of attempt to discover ordered relationships. When I say this way masks something, I mean that it treats a complex series of intricate relations as one single sort of relation. Why does it do this? Because these more intimate dynamics within the abstraction that we call a fact of the matter are too subtle to be noticed. The generalizations that truth produces reflect what seems obvious to us: there are real objects out there in a real world, whose features are subject to conceptual interpretation but whose existence does not dependent on our concepts. What I am arguing is not that the real world is actually fake or imagined. I am arguing that this real world is not a conglomeration of objects, laws and forces that are what they are independent of us. We and the world form a single integrated web, and each human perspective contributes to the evolution of that web. Knowledge doesn’t passively represent, it changes, builds and creates within this web. The notion of objective truth assumes parts of the web of reality just sit there waiting for us to capture what they are and do. But no aspect of the web of reality remains unchanged by what changes in any other aspect of it. The world is a moving target for our scientific inquiries, and our participation in its transformation through our investigations of it change its rules, laws and facts in subtle ways. But this reciprocal
dance between us and world we call science gradually makes the world more intelligible, and thus more ‘true’ , by allowing us to build more intricate and intimate interconnections in the way we interact with the world and each other. The world becomes more anticipatable in its behavior over time this way. This is a deeper notion of truth than that of simple correspondence between concept and object.

One of the tools you will have used in your counselling is some variation on the "reality rub", where one gently points to beliefs that are incompatible with the facts. — Banno

You’re referring to the old Cognitive therapy and rational emotive therapy programs , which were reality-based forms of psychotherapy. There have been modifications to this objectivist way of thinking within psychotherapy that replaces the notion of inaccurate or false beliefs with unadaptive beliefs , and an emphasis on useful narratives rather than factually true conceptions.

Your Trumpian friends can reply to you with the very argument you wish to use: they to will pretend that there are no facts of the matter. If all you have is coherence, you've already lost. — Banno

I’ve heard this many times. Where on earth do you get the idea that it is the far right in the U.S. that believes truth is something made up? I mean, it’s one thing to claim that they ignore or distort facts , it is quite another to assert that they have taken radical relativists to heart and think that there are no correct facts. I’ve heard it said the right is living in a post-truth world. My response is that one could not a find a group of people more wedded to a doctrinaire and almost fundamentalist concept of truth.Talk about facts of the matter. The Trumpian right fetishizes and reifies facts with a religious zeal. Unfortunately they reduce scientific facts to simple causal relations. It is this Ayn Randian mentality toward rationality that makes them unable to appreciate ambiguities and complexities of the sort that crop up in climate change and covid science. The continual
on-the -fly adjustments in medical recommendations in response to new study results over the course of the pandemic do not fit the simplistic image many Trump conservatives have of how science was supposed to operate. As a result , they lost faith faith in the veracity of what they were being told.

Overwhelmingly, we agree as to how things are. What disagreement there is, tends to how we want things to be. — Banno

Agreement on how things are , in the way that you mean it , deals primarily with the sorts of broad abstractions that we use in the natural sciences and technology , or in talking about everyday objects in certain very general ways. I think you would agree that this agreement has to do with anticipating how another will behave in response to our using scientific or everyday concepts. We know we have agreement if they respond as we anticipate they should if their conception is the same as ours. We ask for the chair and when they give it to us , we have verification of our assumption that we agree.

But there are other kinds of anticipations that I would argue are much more central to our lives than what can be articulated as true-false propositions.

I am among those who believe that the central core of our emotions is cognitive assessment, and that this assessment is , as free energy neuroscientists argue, a predictive endeavor. That is, we feel anxiety , guilt , anger when our predictions concerning the way we anticipate others ( or ourselves) to act is disappointed, surprised , violated. One could say that whenever we feel a negative emotion , there is disagreement between ourselves and another, or between ourself and ourself. Our prediction does not agree with the situation at hand with regard to the other’s behavior, attitude, ideation. We have been let down, or let ourselves down , with a violation of expectation.

So do we overwhelmingly agree as to how things are in our interpersonal relationships? Given the fact that for most of us emotional stability, much less happiness, is a tentative achievement at best, I would say that based on the very sensitive measure of our emotions , rather than the very broad and generic measure of propositional truth statements, we struggle all the time to find agreement between our expectations concerning the behavior of others and their actual behavior. We struggle with low self-esteem, we wonder what others think of us, we become terrified of embarrassment in speaking before a group, we need to keep secrets , even from those closest to us, we are kept up at night with gnawing guilt over something we didn’t say or should have said, we are consumed with anger over the disregard a colleague or former friend shows us. These are all failures of agreement , expressions of the gaps which separate us from others.


You might be tempted to argue that human behavior is fundamentally arbitrary, and so we cannot expect to achieve the sort of predictability in interpersonal relations that we can in modeling other aspects of the natural world. In other words, we can agree that human emotions and motives are capricious , irrational or arbitrary whereas other aspects of the world are predictable and thus subject to agreement. This we are i. overwhelming agreement. concerning what it is possible to agree on, given the facts of nature.

But are our failures to anticipate the behavior of others the fault of human capriciousness or our beliefs that humans. behavior is capricious? That is , the inadequacy of our models of human behavior rather than bedrock facts about human behavior? I think the kind of model that simply labels scientific , ethical or political attitudes as simply correct or incorrect is part of the problem rather than the solution. What you are doing is blaming the other’s ‘irrationality’ for your failure to understand the basis of their thinking. This does not at all mean that you cannot prefer your understanding or behavior to theirs. It is possible to see the rationality and validity in their actions at the same time that you find your approach superior. Rationality can evolve.
We can subsume the other’s simplistic thinking within our own, allowing us to understand why they did what they did without invalidating it ,while allowing us to determine ways of moving them closer to our direction. That way we dont up with a schizoid dualism between ‘overwhelming agreement on the way things are’ and hopeless resignation when it comes to anticipating each other’s actions. Unfortunately. the first sort of ‘overwhelming agreement’ isnt worth a damn when it comes to 90% of what makes our lives worth living, relating intimately , empathetically and insightfully with others. Do we really want to write off possibilities of achieving more of the second kind of agreement by claiming that we already see the world the same way and simply want different things from it?

Truth as correspondence with what is out there independent of us is one sort of attempt to discover ordered relationships. When I say this way masks something, I mean that it treats a complex series of intricate relations as one single sort of relation. Why does it do this? Because these more intimate dynamics within the abstraction that we call a fact of the matter are too subtle to be noticed. The generalizations that truth produces reflect what seems obvious to us: there are real objects out there in a real world, whose features are subject to conceptual interpretation but whose existence does not dependent on our concepts. What I am arguing is not that the real world is actually fake or imagined. I am arguing that this real world is not a conglomeration of objects, laws and forces that are what they are independent of us. We and the world form a single integrated web, and each human perspective contributes to the evolution of that web. Knowledge doesn’t passively represent, it changes, builds and creates within this web. The notion of objective truth assumes parts of the web of reality just sit there waiting for us to capture what they are and do. But no aspect of the web of reality remains unchanged by what changes in any other aspect of it. The world is a moving target for our scientific inquiries, and our participation in its transformation through our investigations of it change its rules, laws and facts in subtle ways. — Joshs

I take this to be saying that there is no such thing as "objective truth".

But this reciprocal
dance between us and world we call science gradually makes the world more intelligible, and thus more ‘true’ , by allowing us to build more intricate and intimate interconnections in the way we interact with the world and each other. The world becomes more anticipatable in its behavior over time this way. This is a deeper notion of truth than that of simple correspondence between concept and object. — Joshs

So how are you using "true" and "truth" here? You've denied any objective truth as correspondence, but now you say there is some sense of real truth, a "deeper notion of truth", but you haven't given any indication of what it is. Is it a subjective truth? If truth is simply "intricate and intimate interconnections in the way we interact with the world and each other", then the way I understand my relationship with you and the world is completely different from the way that you understand this relationship, and truth, it appears, would be completely subjective. Or do you propose some objectivity to these relations? In which case, I think we're back to what you denied above.

I’ve heard this many times. Where on earth do you get the idea that it is the far right in the U.S. that believes truth is something made up? — Joshs

Kellyanne Conway denies Trump press secretary lied: 'He offered alternative facts'

Language is about the world, and I would include mathematical and visual representation in that characterization. So, it is via language that a kind of separation appears between the world and what is about it. Of course from one perspective that which is about the world is within the world, but from another perspective the world appears only within that which is about the world. Remember the nature of the dialectic; every idea holds within it its own negation. — Janus

It's the other way around. Every negation holds within it its own assertion. You have to know the truth to lie. You don't need to know how to lie to tell the truth. We often give unconscious signals to others about our mental state but it takes conscious effort to lie. Telling the truth (unconsciously) is prior to the act of deceiving.

Is your mind about the world? Is your visual experience of colors and shapes the world, or about the world? Are colors about wavelengths of light? The world only appears in such a way via a mind and language is like everything else in the world that we visually and audibly experience and learn to use via the mind.

It makes no sense to say that language is in the world but separate from the world. We learn and use language in the world and thinking of it as separate stems from the antiquated religious idea that humans and what they do are special or separate from nature.

What does it mean to be about something? Aboutness is a causal relationship. The crime scene is about the crime. Your current beliefs are about the way in which you were raised and your life experiences. So words are not the only thing that have an aboutness to them.

It makes no sense to say that language is in the world but separate from the world. — Harry Hindu

I think you're being too literal in your reading. They're just saying that the utterance "the cat is on the mat" is not the cat being on the mat. What is said is not what is being talked about.