What I'm unsure about is the implication that concepts don't have to do with the brain's relationship, as you put it, to objects. I mean, sure, "mind" is probably a much better starting point, but you went with brain, so brain it is. Is that not more or less exactly where we expect to find concepts? — Srap Tasmaner
But then are we going to say that societies have concepts but individuals, even individual members of societies, don't? That sounds terribly odd. So if the social demands to be brought in, how exactly? And is the social, shall we say, aspect entirely linguistic? — Srap Tasmaner
Well, this was part of my question, whether experiments were relevant to your position, or whether you understood concepts to be inherently linguistic phenomena in some sense. So are you saying that this is an empirical question after all? — Srap Tasmaner
Notions/concepts of "tree" are existentially dependent upon language. What we pick out with those notions/concepts is not. Trees are not existentially dependent upon language. Much the same holds good for the notions of "true" and "false"... — creativesoul
We seem to agree that "snow is white" is a sentence — Banno
and that snow is white is a fact, — Banno
yet you seem to need to slip something else in between the bolded bit and the white snow. I don't. — Banno
Well, I'm going to just stipulate that names are not facts. The person Luke is not a fact, but that Luke posts on the forum is.
And I don't think I will be alone in doing this. — Banno
As we pointed out above, one view about facts is that to be a fact is to be a true proposition. On another, incompatible view, facts are what make true propositions true, or more generally, account for their truth. The search for what accounts for the truth of propositions is, as we have seen, actually one main rationale for the introduction of facts...
As we have emphasized, one of the main rationale for introducing facts has been to account for the truth of true propositions. The idea is that whenever a proposition is true, its truth is to be explained in terms of the existence and / or non-existence of some facts...
Our definition of truthmaking fails to capture the explanatory character of the notion people have usually in mind when they talk about truthmaking. If something makes a given proposition true, it is usually assumed, then the existence of that thing explains the truth of the proposition. Now it should be clear that truthmaking as we have defined it is not explanatory in this sense...
Representation, as we have defined it, is also quite remote from what people usually have in mind when they speak of propositions representing facts: propositions which cannot be true represent (in our sense) any fact whatsoever, and if the proposition that Socrates exists represents (in our sense) the fact that Socrates exists, then it also represents (in our sense) the fact that [Socrates] exists (granted that these two facts exist at the same worlds).
Despite the fact that truthmaking as defined above does not to capture the usual concept of making true, we shall not deal with the latter concept here. And we shall not deal either with the usual notion of representation. — SEP article on Facts
Saying "it is true" in this case is indeed redundant. But this is a simplistic example; actually a commonplace. Like "It is true for you what it is true for you".It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, 1918)
— link — Pie
I would word it slightly different, the concept tree, includes the notion of something existentially separate from language. Whereas the notion of true and false seems dependent on linguistic content in an important sense. In other words, I can imagine a dog seeing a tree apart from language, but not a dog observing true and false apart from the application of these concepts within our linguistic framework. This can be a bit confusing, because when we talk about true and false, we often refer to objects (i.e., facts) that we observe, although not always (referring to facts as abstract objects).
There is definitely much more to say, and I'm sure we're not going to see eye to eye on some of this.
Sorry I didn't respond to all of your posts. I have a difficult time sitting for hours responding. So, I tend to take long breaks (sometime hours, days, weeks at a time). I find that social media can be a bit taxing, and in some ways unhealthy. — Sam26
Your link is not entirely supportive of your claims: — Luke
The resulting view is thus extremely strong. — Facts as propositions
I am not alone in rejecting the notion that a fact is what makes a true proposition true — Banno
.And what are facts? The notion of a fact as some sort of ontological entity was first stated explicitly in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Correspondence Theory does permit facts to be mind-dependent entities. McTaggart, and perhaps Kant, held such Correspondence Theories. The Correspondence theories of Russell, Wittgenstein and Austin all consider facts to be mind-independent. But regardless of their mind-dependence or mind-independence, the theory must provide answers to questions of the following sort. “Canada is north of the U.S.” can’t be a fact. A true proposition can’t be a fact if it also states a fact…
These questions illustrate the difficulty in counting facts and distinguishing them. The difficulty is well recognized by advocates of the Correspondence Theory, but critics complain that characterizations of facts too often circle back ultimately to saying facts are whatever true propositions must correspond to in order to be true. Davidson has criticized the notion of fact, arguing that “if true statements correspond to anything, they all correspond to the same thing” (in “True to the Facts”, Davidson [1984]). Davidson also has argued that facts really are the true statements themselves; facts are not named by them, as the Correspondence Theory mistakenly supposes.
Defenders of the Correspondence Theory have responded to these criticisms in a variety of ways. Sense can be made of the term “correspondence”, some say, because speaking of propositions corresponding to facts is merely making the general claim that summarizes the remark that
(i) The sentence, “Snow is white”, means that snow is white, and (ii) snow actually is white,
and so on for all the other propositions. Therefore, the Correspondence theory must contain a theory of “means that” but otherwise is not at fault. Other defenders of the Correspondence Theory attack Davidson’s identification of facts with true propositions. Snow is a constituent of the fact that snow is white, but snow is not a constituent of a linguistic entity, so facts and true statements are different kinds of entities — IEP article on Truth
Davidson also has argued that facts really are the true statements themselves; facts are not named by them, as the Correspondence Theory mistakenly supposes. — IEP article on Truth
A shame that the Children's Encyclopaedia of Philosophy does not provide adequate references. That might be an argument worth addressing if it were filled out. What is it for snow to be a constituent of the fact that snow is white? Facts have parts?Snow is a constituent of the fact that snow is white, but snow is not a constituent of a linguistic entity, so facts and true statements are different kinds of entities — IEP article on Truth
I'm a bit surprised to see you entertaining the notion of concepts. In. Wittgensteinian terms they are rather fraught. For some folk they consist in private mental furniture, so that they end up saying things like that my concept cannot be the same as yours, and so on; stuff with which neither of us would agree. But if a concept is instead conceived of as a public item, then is it anything more or less than the use to which a term is put? — Banno
What is it for snow to be a constituent of the fact that snow is white? Facts have parts? — Banno
On another, incompatible view, facts are what make true propositions true, or more generally, account for their truth.
[and]
If something makes a given proposition true, it is usually assumed, then the existence of that thing explains the truth of the proposition. — Luke
I would say, as per the context of this thread, that true and false are necessarily not part of the conceptual framework of non-linguistic animals. — Sam26
So even as it seems to apply to linguistic artifacts, True is a somewhat odd duck. Not alone, though. Many such usages come to mind, especially 'modal' adjectives like ” probable", " likely", "impossible", and so on. — Srap Tasmaner
According to the SEP article on Facts:
Facts are what make a proposition true or account for the truth of a proposition. — Luke
Here's the point at issue:
on the one hand we have the view that facts and true propositions are distinct, but related in that facts are what make true propositions true.
on the other hand we have the view that a fact just is a true proposition.
I take the latter, you the former, views. — Banno
But your contention, the one with which I disagreed, was that an individual can be a fact. The Queen is not a fact. — Banno
Well, no. Rather according to the SEP article, one view is that facts are what make a proposition true. — Banno
My initial contention with which you disagreed was that a river is a fact. — Luke
Facts, philosophers like to say, are opposed to theories and to values (cf. Rundle 1993) and are to be distinguished from things, in particular from complex objects, complexes and wholes, and from relations. — SEP: Facts
Ok, a river is not a fact. That a river exists might be. — Banno
See the bit in bold? Are you claiming it is wrong? — Banno
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