:grin:

I'm not at all sure what it is you are saying in you OP, so I am not in a position to say if what I say is agreeing with or "counteracting" it.

I guess I'm trying to understand what your claim is.

You now say that it is about "two types of truths"... Are you talking about "triangles have three sides " as opposed to "the sky is blue"? Well, one might argue that there are different types of statements, say necessary and contingent; or a priori and a posteriori. But that's again not saying that there are different types of truth.

And Quine can be read as saying that these two distinctions cannot be made clear. HIs empiricism says roughly that even supposed necessary truths can be subject to review.

Again, my point is the simple, small one that you seem to be talking about different sorts of sentences, but mistakenly saying that these are different sorts of truths.

There is only one sort of truth.

You now say that it is about "two types of truths"... Are you talking about "triangles have three sides " as opposed to "the sky is blue"? — Banno

Exactly that! Thank you

You claim that there is only one sort of truth, well I claim that there are two. Constant truth which never changes night or day and the variable type that changes the colour of the sky night or day.

You get me rudeboi!

You claim that there is only one sort of truth, well I claim that there are two. Constant truth which never changes night or day and the variable type that changes the colour of the sky night or day. — invicta

That's two different sorts of sentences, not to different sorts of truth.

@Banno

If we were to both take pictures of the sky where we are being in opposite sides of the world my sky would be dark yours would be blue.

We would of course both be right and both be truthful in our assertions relating to the colour of the sky.

If we were to both take pictures of the sky where we are being in opposite sides of the world my sky would be dark yours would be blue. — invicta

Yes.

We would of course both be right and both be truthful in our assertions relating to the colour of the sky. — invicta

Yes.

So what.

@Banno

So what ? Truth is not constant, perhaps re-read my op.

But it’s also constant.

See, if you changed your title to "Is what is true always context dependent", I'd say yes. But I suspect from what you have wirtten that you wodul say "no".

Instead you wrote "Is truth always context independent".

I’ll come back to this thread later but meanwhile an article from my reading list which you will find relevant

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-metaphysical-muddle-of-lawrence-krauss-why-science-cant-get-/10100010

So what ? Truth is not constant... But it’s also constant. — invicta

So what are we to make of this self-contradiction?

My simple answer is that truth remains constant, but that what is true can vary by context; and that your analysis did not pick up on this distinction.

Then you agree with everything that I’ve said and the duplicitous nature of truth so far discussed that it it always stays the same for some statements (truths, a la all triangles have three sides) and that it changes for in other statements (colour of sky)

That reality is intelligible is the presupposition of all scientific endeavours

Quite the opposite. That reality is ineligible is the conclusion of the scientific process.

Science works. Therefore the universe is intelligible.

Therefore the universe is intelligible. — Banno

Other way around Banno - it’s the fact that the world is at least in part intelligible that science can get a foothold. Intelligibility is a presupposition.

Then you agree with everything that I’ve said and the duplicitous nature of truth so far discussed that it it always stays the same for some statements (truths, a la all triangles have three sides) and that it changes for in other statements (colour of sky) — invicta

No.

Truth is not duplicitous. It is simple. "P" is true iff P. That's all there is to it. The "...is true" in "It is true that triangles have three sides" and "it is true that the sky is blue" are the very same. What changes is the other bit of each sentence.

And, seperate point, there is an historical division between sentences that are considered to always be true, and sentences that change their truth value according to circumstance. In his pivotal essay "Two dogmas of empiricism" Quine showed that this doesn't seem to work.

If what you suggest were true, then one could do science in a world with no order by supposing that there was some order. But one could not.

Instead, it's that we can tell stories about how things are that leads us to conclude that the world is ordered.

It is simple. "P" is true iff P. That's all there is to it. The "...is true" in "It is true that triangles have three sides" and "it is true that the sky is blue" are the very same. — Banno

They’re very different statements whose value however remains true of the former (a priori) and changes for the latter (empirical), as Quine rightfully investigated, although I was not aware of it until you brought it to light.

All scientific work presupposes an order.

No. Scientific work show that the world is ordered.

Your cited article does odd things with italics, but so far as I can tell the flow is that Krause wrote his book because he is scared of god. I wouldn't count Krause's musings as science. But what he does show, and what is avoided in the essay you cite, is that god is not necessary to explain the universe.

I might be wrong, there might be an actual argument in there. But I don't see it. So if there is, set it out.

Strictly, Quine's target is the analytic/synthetic distinction. This seems to be what you are so vaguely addressing. His main argument is roughly that there is no account of analyticity that is not circular. There are more problems with the distinction.

The conclusion is something like that treating supposed analytic statements as foundational is fraught with problems, and that some form of holism is needed.

Krause is confused on the issue of “nothing” that is all as he defines it as empty space i.e. dimensional which is not the same as nothingness (lack of all dimensions, space and time) from which no particle can pop into existence virtual or not.

His whole book revolves round this whole false premise.

Maybe. My only point is that rejecting Krauss does not mean there must be a god.

With the corollary that sometimes overreaches what can be concluded from what we know.

My only point is that rejecting Krauss does not mean there must be a god. — Banno

Indeed. Many atheists (Massimo Pigliacci, Susan Haack, for two) bemoan Krauss' lack of philosophical knowledge and his crude reasoning.

The salient points in the article and those which are particularly salient are the anxiety over contingency and the breakdown of what Lonergan means by rational grasp of the intelligible order.

The point which I think the OP wishes to convey is the distinction between necessary and contingent truths.

Truth is a property of propositions, and given that propositions, as used between people, are always used in a context, then truth is context dependent. I don't think you can separate truth from a context. Facts, on the other hand, are quite a different story, facts can stand alone, even without language.

The point which I think the OP wishes to convey is the distinction between necessary and contingent truths. — Wayfarer

Or is it that between analytic and synthetic statements - which is not quite the same thing?

Yep.

I think that is a summary view developed over a long period of time which needs to be re-analysed (which I will come back to later.)

If two or more parties agree by experience that it is currently hot then that is truth.

How do you get conspiracy out of that? — invicta

What if what these two agree to, is contrary to what everyone else is claiming? For example, if two parties conclude by their own experience that the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the earth, while most other people are telling them otherwise, does that make it true? Sounds like the beginnings of a conspiracy theory to me, because then those two would have to explain why everyone else is conspiring against them.

The sky is blue only applies during daytime therefore in this scenario truth is context dependent.

1+1 = 2 is true in all circumstances because it’s a calculation performed on numerical values.

In this aspect we get some truths being changeable and some being constant. — invicta

What I think you've sensed is about the distinction between contingent and necessary facts. In philosophy, this is explained in terms of the difference between a priori and a posteriori facts - meaning things that can be known by reason along (like arithmetic facts) as distinct from things were are dependent on circumstances (like the colour of the daytime sky).

There is an enormous history of discussion of those distinctions, but a pivotal moment was David Hume's distinction of the two kinds. The textbook examples that Hume gave are such statements as 'all bachelors are unmarried', which is true by virtue of definition, that bachelors are unmarried men. An example of an a posteriori fact was that 'all swans are white', which was certainly true in Hume's time as no Europeans had yet set foot in Western Australia, where there are black swans. Hume went on to cast doubt on the logical status of the latter kind of facts, those being dependent on experience and custom, thereby undermining the status of causal relations which until then had always been assumed to be grounded in logic. This was a fork in the road for Western philosophy.

However this was later addressed in Kant's famous 'answer to Hume'. Very briefly (and literally thousands of volumes have been written about it) according to Kant, causality is not an empirical concept at all - that is, it is not derived from experience - but a necessary condition of experience. It is one of the categories of the understanding by which we make sense of experience. In other words, we do not derive our knowledge of causality from experience; rather, we bring our concept of causality to experience, which allows us to understand and interpret experience.

I interpret @Banno as coming from the 'plain language' school of analytical philosophy, which is not about any kind of abstract knowledge of truth, but only about what can meaningfully be said. This uses the famous last words of Wittgenstein's Tractatus ('That of which we cannot speak...') as a kind of firewall against many kinds of previously-contested metaphysical questions. That kind of 'deflationary' approach is typical of much of 20th century philosophy, particularly in the English-speaking world.

But I think there's a deeper, underlying issue. I think in traditional (pre-modern) culture, there was a larger conceptual place for the 'unconditioned' or 'non-contingent' category of truths, which over the transition to modernity has gradually been eroded away. I think it's because the idea of the unconditioned is associated with the God idea which is of course anathema (pardon the irony) to secular culture. That's why I mentioned the review of Lawrence Krauss. The writer's point about the 'anxiety over contingency' draws out the issue of the limits of empiricism and the attempt to avoid the implications of that.

In fact Krauss has been criticized by a number of other reviewers for his failure to grasp the limits of empiricism, or put another way, his attempt to use empirical science to make metaphysical statements (e.g. see David Albert's review in the NY Times which provoked a notorious hissy fit from Krauss.) But the article I linked to, gives a much fuller account of the meaning of 'intelligibility', as distinct from what it calls Krauss' 'animal extroversion' (which basically means taking naturalism as a metaphysic. Notice the reference to Bernard Lonergan a Canadian Catholic philosopher who is considered a representative modern exponent of metaphysics.)

Much more could be said, but that at least points in the direction I think the OP is trying to head.

Hence it is sentences that are "context driven"; not truth. — Banno

Is truth always context dependent? Yes, because it is statements that are true, and stements are context-dependent. — Banno

Are you drawing a distinction between being context driven and being context dependent, or are you simply contradicting yourself?

I would agree with your second sentence that both statements and their truth or falsity are context dependent.

However this was later addressed in Kant's famous 'answer to Hume'. Very briefly (and literally thousands of volumes have been written about it) according to Kant, causality is not an empirical concept at all - that is, it is not derived from experience - but a necessary condition of experience. It is one of the categories of the understanding by which we make sense of experience. In other words, we do not derive our knowledge of causality from experience; rather, we bring our concept of causality to experience, which allows us to understand and interpret experience. — Wayfarer

This is a tantalizing notion and you can't help wondering, if we add (as Kant does) space and time to our cognitive apparatus, what is it we are 'really' able to apprehend about the the world via empiricism? Are the regularities we seem to observe part of the universe or a part of us? How are we to understand the capacity to make predictions work in such a context?

Predictions work perfectly well. Recall that Kant’s theory of nebular formation (slightly modified by LaPlace) is still considered current science and that Kant used to lecture on scientific subjects. Even though we may only ever know things as they appear to us, those appearances are consistent across a vast range of empirical facts. But empirical observation doesn’t amount to metaphysical insight. That’s the crucial distinction. (Beware of taking the thread into Kant, however, it’s almost as notorious a derailer of threads as interpretations of quantum mechanics.)