I like to keep things as simple as possible. If someone was to read through this thread trying to understand the concept truth, they'd be confused as hell.

I think most of us would agree, maybe I'm wrong, that statements, viz., propositions expressed as beliefs, can be true or false, and these beliefs are separate from facts. A belief is an expression of what someone believes is a fact. Whether a proposition turns out to be true or false, depends on the facts of reality. So, there is a correspondence between true propositions and reality (the facts), and mostly we see this in the way we use propositions in various contexts. This is the way I explain truth to a beginner, and I think most people understand it.

No, this is wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's a meaningful joke. It is a matter of observation that people who keep emphasising the truth of what they are saying are habitual liars. "Wolf - truly, Wolf, I mean it sincerely. Let me be absolutely clear about that." What one ought to understand is the opposite of what is intended.

A "true" statement is one which expresses an honest judgement. So "p is true" means the statement "p" is what the person making that statement honestly believes. — Metaphysician Undercover

But I say, A false statement is one that expresses a dishonest judgement. So "p is true" means that the person making that statement is presenting themselves as making an honest judgement. which only an habitual liar needs to do. The rest of us always present our honest judgement and the truth of it it 'goes without saying'. That is the redundancy of truth (amongst honest speakers).

"p is true" means that the person making that statement is presenting themselves as making an honest judgement. which only an habitual liar needs to do. The rest of us always present our honest judgement and the truth of it it 'goes without saying'. — unenlightened

Ha! Suspicion of the emphatic, those who have to proclaim they are the truth tellers. I like it. It goes nicely with my suspicion of those who divide the world into the "habitual liar" and the "rest of us" who "always present our honest judgement".

It goes nicely with my suspicion of those who divide the world into the "habitual liar" and the "rest of us" who "always present our honest judgement". — Isaac

Oh ye of little faith!

Actually, you illustrate the truth of what I am saying, and we can see it happening in society, that there is no trust, no honesty, and no meaning; we are witnessing the collapse of the social world which is the linguistic world. One points it out and is accused of epitomising what one is indicating. :shrugs: and it is a joke: the collapse of society is a joke.

"true" and "false" are attributed to judgements. Ignoring this simple feature of truth leads to endless discussion getting nowhere. — Metaphysician Undercover

Simple feature...agreed. What would you say if “truth” and “false” weren’t so much attributed to judgements, but ARE themselves judgements?

Well, I'm glad for you, despite still not grasping what it is you were asking...:wink:

T-sentences allow us to either assume meaning and explain true, as Tarski does, or to assume truth and explain meaning, as Davidson attempts.

All I'm saying is that people are both wrong/confused about what 'true' means, and people have different (but perfectly successful) uses of 'true'. — Isaac

Sure.

I like to keep things as simple as possible. — Sam26

As do we all. But what counts as a simple depends on what one is doing.

But I say, A false statement is one that expresses a dishonest judgement. So "p is true" means that the person making that statement is presenting themselves as making an honest judgement. which only an habitual liar needs to do. The rest of us always present our honest judgement and the truth of it it 'goes without saying'. That is the redundancy of truth (amongst honest speakers). — unenlightened

Oh, I see. We assume the person is speaking honestly, unless the person is known to be dishonest. And the person who knows oneself to be known as dishonest, will apprehend a need to qualify "p" with "is true".

But wouldn't some forms of insecurity, or paranoia, also incline a person to not necessarily assume that the others are being honest. Maybe some type of skeptic is insecure in this way. It would probably do no good to ask another, 'are you telling the truth?', because if the person were lying they wouldn't admit it.

Since it is very common, that for one reason or another, people do not honestly reveal their judgements, and there are also many people who are skeptical about whether or not what is stated represents an honest judgement, there is a need for the concept of "truth" and it is not redundant at all in these common situations.

What would you say if “truth” and “false” weren’t so much attributed to judgements, but ARE themselves judgements? — Mww

That's a good question. But I think that this is actually what I was trying to avoid. If we make a judgement of true or false, then there must be something which is judged according to those terms. That something being judged, would be judged as having the attribute of true or of false. What I am saying is that this something, which is judged, is itself a judgement. So a judgement of true or false is a judgement of a judgement. It is not the statement itself, or the proposition, which is actually being judged, it is the judgement which produced the statement which is being judged. In the example, "p" is what is said to be true, so "p" represents a judgement which is judged as a true judgement.

I think it is important to understand truth in this way, because this is the way toward understanding why we must allow the law of excluded middle to be violated. When the judgement which is to be judged as true or false has not been made, it is suspended, then the judgement of that judgement is neither true nor false. The judgement has not yet been made, therefore it can be neither true nor false, as in Aristotle's famous example of the possible sea battle tomorrow. This is also the situation alluded to in the title of the thread. Pilate chooses not to judge Jesus, so there is neither truth nor falsity to his judgement concerning Jesus' guilt. He refused to judge what what was said about Jesus, so he neither truly nor falsely judged Jesus.

True.

I find it quite telling that a twenty-seven-month-old child knows when "there's nothing in the fridge" is false
— creativesoul

Yet you've not demonstrated that to be the case within the context of this discussion... — Isaac

The fridge had stuff in it. Someone stated, "there's nothing in there", talking about the fridge. The statement was false. The child knew that the statement was false. She demonstrated that much.



:brow:

This discussion is about what 'false' means. — Isaac

That's where you've staked your claims, as well as your objections, I suppose. You're not very good at providing valid objections. Just sayin'...

1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p" — Michael

The issue with the first is that it entails that all propositions exist: — Michael

This is problematic because it suggests that propositions exist as abstract entities (à la Platonism) which may be unacceptable to some. — Michael

Why? To me all it entails or suggests is that for every actuality a true corresponding proposition can be formulated.

Well, I'm glad for you, despite still not grasping what it is you were asking...:wink: — Banno

I lost sight of it myself. What got me into the discussion was @Pie's position as stated in the OP:

In other words, for any proposition p, p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact." But is it not cleaner to just understand p as a fact, iff it is true ? — Pie

I have difficulty accepting that if a proposition is true, then the proposition is then identical with the fact that the proposition describes. So, for example, if "snow is white" is true, then the linguistic proposition somehow becomes the worldly fact that snow is white.

The SEP article on Truth that you linked to supports that this is the deflationary view:

To a deflationist, the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth. — SEP article on Truth

I don't see how it can be true that snow is white if "snow" does not refer to the worldly soft white bits of frozen water that fall from the sky in cold weather.

In the example, "p" is what is said to be true, so "p" represents a judgement which is judged as a true judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Understood, and here is an assertorial judgement, insofar as “p is true” affords none other than an affirmation.

I won’t agree “p” represents a judgement, but even without that, “p is true”, does, so the feature of truth residing in judgement, holds.

I am not sure I follow 6.3.

Do you agree, or am I missing something?

We have that substantial accounts of truth - I'm understanding this as at least correspondence theories - have an alternative to Tarski's T-sentence:

p is true IFF a ∈ p

where p is a set of truth conditions and a is the "actual world", what ever that is.

This removes the disquotation in Tarski's T-sentence.

In opposition to this, the right hand side of A T-sentence is being used, it's where the spinning wheel of the T-sentence hits the bitumen of the world.

The T-sentence is preferable to the "a ∈ p" sentence for this reason.

It seems to me to be the difference between setting the rule out, "a ∈ p", and actually implementing the rule.

So, for example, if "snow is white" is true, then the linguistic proposition somehow becomes the worldly fact that snow is white. — Luke

As I see it, 'snow is white' expresses a belief. If true, that belief is a fact.

If possible, it'd be great to make due with just the string of words and the meaning of the string of words. The meaning of the string of words is the world (or part of it rather.)

The meanings of true assertions just are the world.

To imagine a true statement becoming false is to imagine a different world.

I'm not sure I'm versed well enough to speak on these conceptual schemes of Davidson. I'm not sure what Banno means here by: — Jerry

In case it's helpful or just a fun thing to talk about, we can switch to a related theme. How does the acolyte understand the guru ? Or a mediocrity a genius ? How does an inferior mind conceptualize a superior mind ? To believe that the guru or genius possessed something hidden from me in the first place, I'd have to recognize at least the usual sapience. But how can I recognize sapience except in terms of my own conceptual scheme ? Presumably I need to project goals and clever solutions, ones that I could understand as such, in order to see intelligible life as such.

Didn't notice that, but clearly it is wrong. If an entire island decides that the way to survive a famine is to erect giant statues... — Banno

Hold on, sir. You misleadingly quote me, removing a vital conditional phrase. I'm not saying it was intentional or nefarious, just setting the record straight.

Redundancy suggests this: If an entire community passionate believes P, then P functions as a truth for them, as an automatically allowed premise, so long as that shared, strong belief persists. — Pie

From the 'inside,' a strong belief functions as a truth...until, perhaps, disaster strikes. That's why they are dangerous.

I don't see how it can be true that snow is white if "snow" does not refer to the worldly soft white bits of frozen water that fall from the sky in cold weather. — Luke

Why wouldn't 'snow' refer that way ? Isn't what you say about snow true ?

I don't see a good reason for dropping an analysis of 'truth' founded on a study of the ways it is used. — Isaac

:up:

Indeed. I'd just include it among other worthwhile inquiries.

I won’t agree “p” represents a judgement, but even without that, “p is true”, does, so the feature of truth residing in judgement, holds. — Mww

That's not necessarily the case. "P is true" represents a judgement, but the truth or falsity of that judgement is not a feature of that particular judgement. That's why I explicitly said that truth is what is attributed to judgements. And this does not imply that the property which is attributed, necessarily inheres within the thing it is attributed to. So for example, "the grass is green" represents a judgement in which the colour green is attributed to the grass, as a property. What makes that judgement true (honest), is the judgement's relation to other judgements. Therefore truth is not a feature within the judgement itself, just like a property is not a feature within the thing itself, which is claimed to have that property.

The meanings of true assertions just are the world.

To imagine a true statement becoming false is to imagine a different world. — Pie

Is there a ‘same’ empirical world that different languages link up to, placing a barrier to conceptual relativism by assuring translatability?( Davidson’s argument as I understand it).

Is there a ‘same’ empirical world that different languages link up to, placing a barrier to conceptual relativism by assuring translatability?( Davidson’s argument as I understand it). — Joshs

Good question, intricate issue. Disclaimers: I haven't studied Davidson directly (just mostly read Rorty's use him, and I'm not eager to add the adjective 'empirical.'

Assume there is no such 'same' empirical world. What are you imaging this assertion to be 'about' ? (To be part of...) Your world or ours ? Do you imagine this hypothetical truth applying to aliens too?

I claimed in another thread that the minimum rational epistemic commitment is a plurality of persons subject to the same logic/concepts/language and together in a world that they can be right or wrong about (equiprimoridal trinity). The argument for this trifold 'given' is that its negation, if binding, depends on what it would deny. I understand 'world' here as maximally unspecified, synonymous our situation, the one we talk about with one another...as whatever happens to be true.

Is it safe to assume that Davidson is right or wrong about our world ? (I'd include ambiguous and incoherent as two more categories for statements. With irony, we could get all sorts of complicated blends, suggestive and possibility undecidable.

Are you tempted to say that we all live in different worlds ? But, if you were to say that, wouldn't you somehow talking about my world, while claiming to be stuck in your own ?

One issue to consider here is what we could mean by an alien conceptual scheme without having already made sense of it to some degree in terms of our own. We don't want to write checks we can't cash, like a pure fetishized otherness which is semantically nothing but a negation of everything intelligible.

All of these but the last seem to have aged pretty well.

The world is all that is the case.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.

For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.

The facts in logical space are the world.
— Wittgenstein

This is green, but let's try.

Beliefs articulate the world's possibilities.

True beliefs are the world's actuality.

Much of our language has developed so that we can talk about things like beliefs and logic and truth.

That various beliefs exist in the world is a fact, without of course (all of) those beliefs being facts themselves.

Possibility is greater than actuality in the sense that, for us, we exist primarily in the first...in what might happen, in ways the past might be interpreted. 'Truth' seems useful like North on a compass. If P, then Q seems to aim at the truth of P, not just our belief in it.

re you tempted to say that we all live in different worlds ? But, if you were to say that, wouldn't you somehow talking about my world, while claiming to be stuck in your own ? — Pie

I would say that we all live differently in the one world. My world is not your world or anyone else's world but it is, like everyone else's world, part of the world. The salient point is, that common world is not something we ever experience, but is a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory.

To understand this, think about the fact that we never perceive a whole object, we only perceive impressions or images, the continuity and resemblance of which lead the rational intellect to posit the object as the (transcendent) origin of the impressions,

we all live differently in the one world. — Janus

:up:

The salient point is, that common world is not something we ever experience, but is a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory. — Janus

we never perceive a whole object, we only perceive impressions or images, the continuity and resemblance of which lead the rational intellect to posit the object as the (transcendent) origin of the impressions, — Janus

It's only when we theorize and slow down that we infer that we must be 'automatically' synthesizing objects from light hitting our retina, but surely our sense organs, along with the rest of us, take their own unique tours through this world.

Inquiring into our individual ideas of the shared world does make sense to me, but I don't think one can reduce the shared world very much trouble. Consider the claim that the common world is 'a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory.' Isn't this claim itself, according to itself,a part of 'a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory' ?

If you just mean our visual image of the world, so that metaphysical statements aren't self-referential, that makes more sense. My hunch is that the visual imagination is what makes the correspondence theory of truth attractive. One lays eyes and hands on the plums in the icebox, confirming 'there are plums in icebox.' Perhaps the same thing is happening here ? It seems to me that our conceptuality is mostly automatically public. We talk about the couch not my view on it (unless that view becomes relevant...and, since we have the words for it already , it sometimes has been.)

You misleadingly quote me, — Pie

My apologies. I was uncritically following .

It's only when we theorize and slow down that we infer that we must be 'automatically' synthesizing objects from light hitting our retina, but surely our sense organs, along with the rest of us, take their own unique tours through this world. — Pie

Right, I think per-linguistically things are more or less familiar to us as "affordances" of one kind or another. They already disclose themselves prior to our naming of them. Birds recognize trees as things to perch in, for example. But the idea of the tree as "whole object" is what I referred to as a "formal stipulation" whose rational identity is contingent upon the fact that we have named it 'tree', and most specifically "that tree".

Consider the claim that the common world is 'a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory.' Isn't this claim itself, according to itself,a part of 'a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory' ? — Pie

Right, prior to any conceptualization such that the common world and its objects are "formal stipulations" we always already all recognize things because of the commonality of our images and impressions with our own at other times and from other directions and with those of others, as manifested in our agreement of speech and action.

But I would argue that once we have consciously conceived the world in terms of individual entities that are the whole unities that are the origins of our images and impressions, we have already mad the formal stipulation, and we easily and naturally reify that as mind-independent objects, without being conscious of our acts of hypostasis.

My hunch is that the visual imagination is what makes the correspondence theory of truth attractive. — Pie

It seems that it is mostly on account of visual experience that we conceive of a world of real objects that correspond to our images and impressions, and constitute the states of affairs that render our propositions true or false.

In opposition to this, the right hand side of A T-sentence is being used, it's where the spinning wheel of the T-sentence hits the bitumen of the world. — Banno

According to the SEP, Tarski is not a deflationist:

Tarski considered (T) to provide a criterion of adequacy for any theory of truth, thereby allowing that there could be more to say about truth than what the instances of the schema cover. Given that, together with the fact that he took the instances of (T) to be contingent, his theory does not qualify as deflationary. — SEP article on Deflationism About Truth

As I understand it, nothing in the deflationist's theory of truth "hits the bitumen of the world". (Also, do you mean the "actual world"?) It might be worth summarising section 6.1 on truth bearers firstly:

Candidates (for truth bearers) typically include beliefs, propositions, sentences, and utterances...

Consider the role of truth-bearers in the correspondence theory, for instance... It is in virtue of being meaningful that truth-bearers are able to enter into correspondence relations. Truth-bearers are things which meaningfully make claims about what the world is like, and are true or false depending on whether the facts in the world are as described.

Exactly the same point can be made for the anti-realist theories of truth we saw in section 4.2, though with different accounts of how truth-bearers are meaningful, and what the world contributes...

Though Tarski works with sentences, the same can be said of his theory. The sentences to which Tarski’s theory applies are fully interpreted, and so also are meaningful. They characterize the world as being some way or another, and this in turn determines whether they are true or false. Indeed, Tarski needs there to be a fact of the matter about whether each sentence is true or false (abstracting away from context dependence), to ensure that the Tarski biconditionals do their job of fixing the extension of ‘is true’. (But note that just what this fact of the matter consists in is left open by the Tarskian apparatus.)

We thus find the usual candidate truth-bearers linked in a tight circle: interpreted sentences, the propositions they express, the belief speakers might hold towards them, and the acts of assertion they might perform with them are all connected by providing something meaningful. This makes them reasonable bearers of truth.

However, as I have quoted more than once regarding the deflationary theory:

To a deflationist, the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth. — SEP article on Truth

I take this to mean that truth is unrelated to the meaning of a truth bearer, such as a statement, proposition or belief.

The same section also notes that:

...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all.

I take this to mean that, according to the deflationary theory, the content of a truth bearer is unrelated to truth conditions; that is, the left hand side of a T sentence is unrelated to the right hand side. Or, in other words, the meaning of a sentence is unrelated to the facts of the world.