Perhaps one can find ones way through supposedly incompatible beliefs by further articulating one’s own approach such that it is capable of subsuming alternative beliefs? — Joshs
Note that we don't want a string of words to correspond to cat-on-the-mat-ness. So even 'correspond' is too much machinery here and only makes a mess. — Pie
The thing on the right is a fact. And the whole is true."The cat is on the mat" is true ≡ The cat is on the mat
The thing on the right is a sentence. And the whole ill-formed."The cat is on the mat" is true ≡ "The cat is on the mat"
What might that correspondence be? — Banno
Here's my answer: that the cat is on the mat is a use of the sentence "the cat is on the mat". We have, not an association between two differing things, but two ways of making use of the very same thing. — Banno
If the "picturing" is true, in the sense of hitting the mark, of being accurate, then we have truth, if not, then we have falsity. — Janus
"The cat is on the mat" is a symbolic expression, or representation of that seeing or imagining, and the two are thus associated, although not in any absolute or essential sense, but just because we do associate them — Janus
Are we to understand the string of words as a 'picture' ? Do we really need this metaphor ?
I can see why it's tempting. We are such visual creatures that we use visual metaphors for grasping meaning. — Pie
The cat isn't on the mat if someone pictures it to be on the mat. It is on the mat if it is on the mat. — Banno
To me the terminology is not that important. — Pie
I would like us to do more with less, so I am defending an approach that uses the string-of-words (signifier) on one side and the worldly meaning (signified object-concept) of that string on the other. — Pie
...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. — SEP article on Truth
Husserl seems to be gesturing at the same 'pregiven' shared situation or primordial we-world that I'm calling the minimally specified world. — Pie
Let's call you a correspondence theorist, then. — Luke
You are now creating further issues by drawing a distinction between a truth bearer without meaning (i.e. string-of-words) and a truth bearer with meaning. — Luke
I'm not understanding what you]re saying here; can you explain further? — Janus
Truth is a unary. T(p) is a general representation of the statements, propositions, sentences, facts, or whatever you will, that we cast as true: "p is true"
Belief is binary. B(x,p) is a general representation of the statements, propositions, sentences, facts, or whatever you will, p, that we cast as being believed by x. "x holds that p is true" — Banno
But any truth has relevance only insofar as it could be seen to be true, or stipulated to be true in a fiction. — Janus
You are now creating further issues by drawing a distinction between a truth bearer without meaning (i.e. string-of-words) and a truth bearer with meaning.
— Luke
It's just the use/mention distinction. — Pie
If I tell you that there are plums in the icebox, I'm talking about those plums in that icebox. 'Phenomenologically' there's no detour through my imagination. The meaning of the assertion is worldly, directly revealing our shared situation. A rational reconstruction might include your motives, what you pictured, but this would be semantically secondary, in my view. — Pie
Means nothing to me; just sounds vaguely like an insult.Topic slide again. — Banno
Further, one chooses between a realist and an antirealist grammar. The best grammar for cats and mats is realist. — Banno
But I also think that truth plays a role in a structure. Mostly we care about belief, and 'true' seems like a tool for talking about beliefs, perhaps in imagining them as certain, for instance. As Brandom might put it, we've invented words that allow us to talk about our thinking. Humans become self-consciously logical through inventing concepts like inference and truth...which 'only' made explicit what they are already in fact doing. — Pie
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