As if triangles, parallel lines and chess were not real.

By real I just mean, "out in nature." There are no observable one-dimensional lines with no thickness that can contain an infinite number of points, are perfectly straight, and endless. Sort of like you won't find a Hegelian Taco at a food truck:



I think there is a useful distinction between the ways mathematical objects exist and the way concrete ones do.

I mean, imagine in the next several decades Berolina Chess or Ultima get so popular that 95+% of Chess tournaments and games are played in them. This becomes what Chess is, our current Chess being now a game refered to as Old Chess.

Despite this possibility, we can still be certain about what is true under the rules of Old Chess; this has to do with it being closed.

But this represents a pretty small sample of all things we can know about. "All triangles have angles that sum to 180 degrees," is the sort of thing that seemed to be a truth of that sort, and turned out not to be, because it was a proposition about "all triangles," as opposed to "all triangles given Euclid's axioms." The certainty comes from introducing something to the effect of "given X is true (or X are the rules), then Y is true (where Y is something that follows from X)." You can be certain of this, but that's because it's contained in the premises, which are taken as a given.

"If Chess refers to a game where the Bishop never changes their color then in Chess the Bishop never changes its color," essentially, although obviously the full rules of Chess makes this one consequence of them less obvious.

Well, thank you for that reply.

I completely agree. Its much the same stuff as I went over in the thread on Searle and intentionality. WE can be more specific by adopting his counts as... terminology; moving a bishop counts as a move in Chess only if certain rules are followed.

Now the weird part is that what you wrote here does not seem to me to address the body of the three fairly specific arguments I presented:

• That it's unhelpful to introduce novel terms that do not have a clear meaning, and then behave as if their meaning were clear; I think this is what is done with "absolute"
• That doubt only happens against a background of certainty, and so cannot stand as a beginning position.
• That the starting point must be we, not I.

So thanks, and I'll leave you to consider the issue further.

Your Hegelian taco came over as a blue square with a question mark in it.

Sorry, I didn't mean anything technical by absolute. Just in the sense that we can be relatively certain of things. Like I know 100% that the Royals won the 2015 World Series because they beat the Mets, where as I am fairly certain that the Cards won in 2006, the last time the Mets made it to the NLCS before that, but maybe the AL team won.

That doubt only happens against a background of certainty, and so cannot stand as a beginning position.

Agree 100%. It doesn't make sense to doubt something that you don't think is at least likely. Radical skepticism in this way is more like "a flight from all definiteness," a sort of epistemic rioting lol.

You can be absolutely certain that you are a cat, if you like. — Banno

You cannot be absolutely certain that you are a cat, if you are not. You might feel absolutely certain about it even though you are not a cat. On the other hand, you could be absolutely certain that you are a human being, even though you might not be absolutely certain about that, because being absolutely certain must entail feeling absolutely certain, whereas feeling absolutely certain need not entail being absolutely certain.

I commend dropping "absolute" altogether.

So truth has a lot to do with facts and evidence. With mathematics and physics and chemistry. And no better chemistry than taco love!

Then the kind of 'sticky' truth we are referring to is something else! Then the kind of gospel truth (Logos, Jesus Christ) is something else. Then the truth of Chess is something else :)

So would you say there is a strong distinction between truth, facts & laws-of-physics?

Everything is predetermined.

Just saw this. Thanks for the heads up that nLab has Hegel articles.

Here are some of my beliefs on this matter :

1. All we ever have is beliefs.

2. We [ mostly ] use 'true' to say that we have or share a belief.

3. My belief is how the world is given to me ---reduced to its conceptual aspect, because I can't put the world in its sensual fullness in my talk.

4. The world is only given to individuals who experience it as meaningfully structured (who 'live' in those beliefs as simply the concept-aspect of world for them.)

5. All we can do is try to get better and better beliefs --- get a better 'view' on the one world we share -- often by discussing our beliefs with others to discover biases and inadequacy in those we currently have.

Note that truth doesn't matter. No one sees around their own perspective to some naked reality, because that reality would not be meaningfully/linguistically structured.

Belief is the intelligible structure [conceptual skeleton ] of the world as given to or grasped by a person. — plaque flag

Ha, is that so? Is it true? Or is it just your belief? — Banno

I shared some beliefs about belief. how I understand belief. I of course call them 'true,' for this (as I make explicit) is simply to trivially agree with myself. My beliefs are roughly the articulation of my perspective on the world, the way I see things which I understand to transcend me, to be things in our one shared world.

And if it is just a belief of yours, why should we pay it any attention? And if you believe it, don't you by that very fact believe that it is true? — Banno

I've already answered that question: All we can do is try to get better and better beliefs --- get a better 'view' on the one world we share -- often by discussing our beliefs with others to discover biases and inadequacy in those we currently have. I expect that you read newspapers or their modern equivalent, the 'mere beliefs' of various philosophers.

We do differentiate between what folk believe and what is true. A pragmatic account such as you present loses this distinction. — Banno

We differentiate between what we do and do not believe. My account does not lose this distinction. It seeks to clarify what 'true' means. To take 'P' for true is to 'have' the world in a certain way.

You may believe in something like a world from no perspective that makes statements true, a world of things in themselves, apart from human cognition and language. But such a view seems paradoxical and confused to me. As Peirce saw, the game is settling beliefs.

What is familiar to us is the modification of our beliefs. Entire communities (we rational, scientific ones) end up 'knowing' this or that, accepting various statements as premises in arguments. Certain interpretations become obvious and dominant, pretty much unquestionable. We probably agree here about the massive background of shared beliefs that make ordinary life and conversation possible.

I've already answered that question: — plaque flag

I don't think so. You just hid truth in "better and better". You are just paraphrasing "A statement is better if it more closely approximates the truth".

Or will you say that a statement is better if it is more strongly believed? Disney method: Just believe with all your heart, and it will come true.

You cannot be absolutely certain that you are a cat, if you are not. — Janus

I commend dropping "absolute" altogether. — Banno

So, even though I am not a cat I can still be certain that I am? Just not absolutely certain.

The two of you are breaking new philosophical ground here. :cool:

Ah, that was a reply to , not Janus.

Oh dear. But I still purr. Confusing. Disregard.

So, even though I am not a cat I can still be certain that I am? Just not absolutely certain. — jgill

No, you can feel certain that you are a cat, but you cannot be certain that you are a cat if you are not. The point was to draw a distinction between being certain and feeling certain. I say you can only be certain of those things which cannot be, without contradiction, denied or which can be directly observed. On the other hand, you could feel certain about all kinds of things you cannot be certain about.

:sweat:

I don't think so. You just hid truth in "better and better". You are just paraphrasing "A statement is better if it more closely approximates the truth". — Banno

That's just you reading in your own biases, as far as I can tell.

Some philosophers have imagined that to start an inquiry it was only necessary to utter a question or set in down upon paper, and have even recommended us to begin our studies with questioning everything. But the mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There must be a real and living doubt, and without this all discussion is idle.
https://www.bocc.ubi.pt/pag/peirce-charles-fixation-belief.pdf

Sometimes we aren't at ease with our beliefs. We don't know, ultimately, how we should behave (and this includes what we should call 'true,' but even more so whether we should ACT this or that way in the world.)

It is a very common idea that a demonstration must rest on some ultimate and absolutely indubitable propositions. These, according to one school, are first principles of a general nature; according to another, are first sensations. But, in point of fact, an inquiry, to have that completely satisfactory result called demonstration, has only to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual doubt. If the premisses are not in fact doubted at all, they cannot be more
satisfactory than they are.

Strong beliefs are enough. Calling our strong beliefs 'true' sprinkles no magic dust upon them. Get a gang of verbal primates together, and you'll have all the 'truth' you can stand.

Calling beliefs 'better' is, I admit, similar to calling them 'true.' But that doesn't defeat the perspectivist point here. Of course (usually!) my beliefs are true and better. We tend to write Whiggish histories of our sets of beliefs. 'I know better now.' Moving from an anguished state of doubt to the resolution of a fixed-for-now-belief is sweet relief.

In short, you haven't shown any role for 'true' after all, beyond mere endorsement (the prosentential (pronounish) use I don't deny, but it's not that exciting here.)

[ Note that I don't follow Peirce all the way, but I endorse what's quoted here.]

That's just you reading in your own biases, as far as I can tell. — plaque flag

I'm sorry you can't see the arguments. Here's the first, set out explicitly.

The first argument is simply to note the difference between truth and belief. Belief is between someone and a supposed state of affairs, it is an attitude towards a proposition. It is dyadic. Truth relates to a proposition (sentence, statement...) and is monadic. They are not the same. But further, the attitude adopted is that the proposition is true.

A corollary of this is that to say that you believe p is to say that you believe that p is the case; that p is true. Hence belief presupposes truth.

Your reply is that all we have is better and better beliefs. This does not actually address the point made above. But further, a better belief is exactly one that more closely approximates the truth. This was Peirce's view, he did not drop truth entirely, the way you propose.

You might suppose (and at times seem to propose) that you can get by this by working with what is most useful, regardless of it's truth. Here you have dropped both truth and belief, in favour of what is expedient. The trouble here is that what is useful depends directly on one's goals, and you are immediately thrown into a trumpian relativism. The consequence of rejecting truth is that anything goes, which of course means that the nature of the world is determined by those with power.

One cannot speak truth to power if there is no truth.

The next argument is simply to point out that there are things you take as true. That you are reading this post, for example. The list from there quickly become innumerable, everything from that you love your partner to that you have a body through that the bishop in Chess stays on it's own colour. There are things that it makes no sense to doubt, that you admit you take as true by your very actions, say in replying to this post.

The next argument is a simple ad populum; very few of the folk who have paid attention to these issues have come to the conclusion that you have. Correspondence and semantic theories of truth hold the high ground, with pragmatics making a small appearance in response to scepticism.

And so on. I think the underlying issue here is giving too much import to truth, so much that it becomes frightening, inspiring the desire to dislodge it altogether. Truth is, after all, a small thing, as shown by deflationary and semantic analysis. It has a small role, but it is indispensable, since it sets the place of our words in the world.

None of this presents the classical arguments against pragmatism, which might also be addressed.

Hence belief presupposes truth. — Banno

Belief presupposes a belief in truth, not the possession of it. If the truth cannot be determined, it is a mere human presumption that says there must nonetheless be a truth.

Belief presupposes a belief in truth, not the possession of it. — Janus

Sure, Janus, if you like. The salient bit is that to believe that p is to believe that p is true.

If the truth cannot be determined, it is a mere human presumption that says there must nonetheless be a truth. — Janus

Yep. the presumption that truth is divalent. The alternative is anti-realism. Help yourself.

:up:

Your reply is that all we have is better and better beliefs. — Banno

I say only that we tend to settle beliefs, when troubled by cognitive dissonance, and that we often tend to understand ourselves as making progress, that we 'know better' now --- we write Whiggish autobiographies. The 'race realist' finally 'sees the light.' Someone is 'red pilled' or 'black pilled' or whatever) and understands themselves to see the world more correctly or completely now. An observer might see decline and ruin. But 'ground truth' presupposes someone infallibly in touch with the mystic Real, someone who isn't just another believer.

You might suppose (and at times seem to propose) that you can get by this by working with what is most useful, regardless of it's truth. — Banno

I've explicitly rejected this pragmatic criterion in many posts. Note that I don't need to get around anything in the first place. Purveyors of mystic truth syrup are in the position of having to make a case. To call P true is basically [only] to communicate (and, secondarily, reason about) [ one's belief that ] P.

I think this gets it pretty much right:

The truth predicate is not used to say something about sentences or propositions. It is used to say something about the world. As Grover (1992, p. 221) puts it, prosentences function “at the level of the object language.” Even when someone makes an utterance such as “John’s last claim is true”—which uses a referring expression that explicitly mentions an antecedent utterance token—the prosentential theory still denies that it is the utterance that is being talked about. The person uttering this sentence “expresses an opinion about whatever (extralinguistic thing) it was that John expressed an opinion about” (Grover, 1992, p. 19). W. V. Quine (1970, pp. 10-11) makes a similar claim, stating that the truth predicate serves “to point through the sentence to reality; it serves as a reminder that though sentences are mentioned, reality is still the whole point.”

https://iep.utm.edu/truthpro/

I suggest understanding belief as the intelligible structure [conceptual aspect ] of the world as given to or grasped by a person. To be troubled by doubt is to have a blurry or flickering world. Did I forget to set my alarm ? Does she like me ? Will I get caught if I only take a little bite ?

That we seek 'better' beliefs is not so problematic, for many of us have beliefs about what makes beliefs better. A closer walk with God, whatever.

It seems to me, that no one sees around their own perspective to some 'naked' reality, because that 'reality' would not be meaningfully/linguistically structured. So reality-from-no-perspective is mystic nonsense, at least for creatures like us. Our beliefs (the current linguistic-conceptual structure of the world from our perspective) might always change, some more plausibly than others, of course.

A corollary of this is that to say that you believe p is to say that you believe that p is the case; that p is true. Hence belief presupposes truth. — Banno

Maybe we aren't that far apart after all. My belief is (I claim) just the 'meaningstructure' of the world from my point of view. I live 'in' that structure. It may change, but it is real now. It is 'my truth.'

I am my world...The world is all that is case.

I'd make assertion or conceptual structure itself fundamental. The world is 'always already' meaningfully ( logically, linguistically ) structured, at least for sentience which is also sapience. This world is 'for' that sapience, and its meaningstructure is the belief of that sapience. It's a minor detail we could debate, but I'd include silent realizations. I can update my beliefs without telling anyone right away.

I think Wittgenstein was something like a perspectivist in this way:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits... In fact what solipsism means, is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it shows itself. ...That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which I understand) mean the limits of my world. — TLP

.

The consequence of rejecting truth is that anything goes, which of course means that the nature of the world is determined by those with power. — Banno

I choose this is a mere sample. Maybe 2/3 of your post was just (I'm sorry ) sentimental sophistry. I agree with some of your criticism of pragmatism, but they are irrelevant here. My 'rejection of truth' was a clarifying explanation of the concept truth in terms of what I suggest is a more basic concept: belief. I take belief to be something like the conceptual dimension of a perspective on the world. The [my] world is [when reduced to such a dimension] 'all that is case.' Something 'being the case' is fundamental. You might have this in mind when you try to derive belief from truth. Perspectively, they are the same thing. I call my own beliefs true, but I say perhaps that you are deluded.

To call P true is basically [only] to communicate (and, secondarily, reason about) [ one's belief that ] P. — plaque flag

The unaddressed point remains: to believe the p is to believe that p is true.

We add belief to truth because what we believe is not what is true. Sometimes we are mistaken, or we have a different opinion to someone else, or we find out new things. These three things rely on there being a difference between what is believed and what is true.

What do you think of Meno's paradox?:

"If you know what you're looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If you don't know what you're looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible." — frank

This one seems trivial. There are two senses of "knowing what you are looking for", which you might label the "question" sense and "answer" sense.

Question: Where are my car keys?
Answer: In the drawer.

Both of these can be referred to as "knowing what you are looking for", but of course they mean totally different things. To begin an inquiry, you need to know what you are looking for, but only in the question sense. And knowing the question obviously doesn't make the answer irrelevant.

Sure. I've long found Meno's paradox to be a powerful argument for innateness. The topic is a little more nuanced than some take it to be. :grin:

I recently took up the structure of a moral truth. It is a bit technical but it doesn’t have to be, though that may take some reading through everything.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11976/the-structure-of-a-moral-claim-to-truth

Shouldn't we have a single, perpetual thread for this question? — Banno

Actually I second this motion. @Jamal @Baden @fdrake
Not to be necessarily punitive in this instance, but it is hard to be helpful if someone isn't even taking a position. @Kevin Tan, I think those are actually just six questions.