Try this...
Thought/belief is prior to language.
Some pre-linguistic thought/belief is true.
True thought/belief is existentially contingent upon truth.
Thus, some truth is prior to language.
You wrote:
All thought and belief, not reflexive cognitive reaction, is informed by and shaped in language. There is no pre-linguistic thought/belief that is true, or any actual pre-linguistic thought belief at all.
All thought/belief consists entirely in/of mental correlations drawn 'between' 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or oneself(the creature's state of 'mind').
That holds good for humans and other beasties alike.
That doesn't make much sense to me sand. What is contemplation and conception if not mental correlation? They're typically more complex than simple correlation, but nonetheless they consist in/of mental correlation(s).
The difference between human and beastie is one of complexity, both of the correlations and states of mind, not of elemental constituents.
You wrote:
That something which is not meaningful could be true, is contrary to what you said earlier. So this new position of yours, "not all truth is dependent on meaning", is something you'll need to clarify. Obviously, we had agreement earlier that meaning is required for the truth of a statement. A sentence which is meaningless cannot be true. Are you rescinding your agreement?
You wrote:
I don't see how non-linguistic thought/belief affects my argument...
You wrote:
Well, I really don't know what you mean by "true thought/belief is existentially contingent on truth"...
You wrote:
What is truth other than a concept?
You wrote:
Are you claiming here, that if there is a true belief, then there must be an existing concept of "truth"? How is that a viable premise? If there was green plants on the earth prior to human beings, then the concept of "green" must have existed prior to human beings?
Let's say that there was green plants prior to language, why would these green plants be existentially contingent on the concept of greenness? Likewise, if there was true thought/belief prior to language, why would this be existentially contingent on truth (trueness)?
I wrote:
What is contemplation and conception if not mental correlation? They're typically more complex than simple correlation, but nonetheless they consist in/of mental correlation(s). The difference between human and beastie is one of complexity, both of the correlations and states of mind, not of elemental constituents.
You replied:
Mental correlation is the mere attaching objects to other objects such as the snake seeing a rat and correlating it with food and its feeling of hunger. (So, yes, your definition does support the idea that rats and ants would think like humans, since you claim that is all there is to thought). There is no conception of what that means or any contemplation over whether or not it is right and wrong to eat that rat.
Human contemplation and conception has the ability to move beyond that simple correlation and think about (contemplate/conceive) what is happening, decide its meaning to the world and themselves, and even give an ethical judgment of it. Rats and snakes and ants depending solely on what you define as thought cannot do that.
You then continued:
...as I've shown above, it's more than a matter of complexity, its a matter of elemental constituents of thought the beasties don't have and the humans do.
I take it that true nails down the particulars of the particular. What does truth do? . — tim wood
Not all correspondence(truth) is dependent upon meaning. — creativesoul
Non-linguistic thought/belief doesn't consist of language. Your argument concerns only that which does. That's how... — creativesoul
That is a matter of logic Meta. Whenever there is true thought/belief there must be truth. — creativesoul
Correspondence is a relationship that is necessarily presupposed within all thought/belief formation itself — creativesoul
Conceptions of "truth" require language. Correspondence does not. — creativesoul
On my view, contemplation and conception are comprised entirely of much simpler correlations. In other words, contemplation and conception are complex correlations.
It seems you disagree?
I believe it is as I said to creativesoul, truth is the universal, the concept of what it means to be true. So for example, we have individual green things, like we have individual true statements, and we have the concept of what it means to be green, greenness, like we have the concept of what it means to be true, "truth". — Metaphysician Undercover
It seems to me that true is a quality that some propositions have, calling them here meaningful sentences (MSs). But I cannot do any better with truth than to say that truth is simply, and only, the abstract generalization of true taken across all true statements. It's a little like saying number means quantity, but that (clearly) "number" provides no clue as to any particular quantity. — timw
When a sentence is said to be "objectively true", the interpretation of the sentence is judged as corresponding with the interpretation of the objective reality (how the objective reality appears to us). So we cannot say that the sentence is "objectively true", in the sense of implying that the meaning of the sentence actually corresponds with the assumed objective reality, but that it corresponds with how the objective reality appears to us, our interpretation of it. — Metaphysician Undercover
Here's one thing that's curious: "true" takes that-clauses like the propositional attitudes, modal operators, all that intensional stuff. But "true" remains transparent in just the way the other that-clause governors don't. — Srap Tasmaner
This is because, as Frege already noted, adding 'true' to a sentence doesn't change its meaning, and in fact adds nothing over and above what you get when you simply assert the sentence. "Snow is white" and "it is true that snow is white" mean exactly the same thing. — Fafner
This is because, as Frege already noted, adding 'true' to a sentence doesn't change its meaning, and in fact adds nothing over and above what you get when you simply assert the sentence. — Fafner
What I said doesn't amount to a redundancy theory though. I was just repeating something that Frege himself said, and surely Frege wasn't a 'redundancy' theorist (or deflationist, or however you call it).1. You can assert the equivalence in truth-value of "P" and "P is true," but if you want to explain meaning in terms of truth conditions, then you cannot treat that equivalence as an account of truth (i.e., the redundancy theory). You just have to be careful here. — Srap Tasmaner
It is more complicated than this (because you also have de-dicto and de-re interpretations etc.).most ways of making a new sentence S' out of S by prefacing it with something that governs "that S" change the S part of S' from extensional to intensional -- you lose substitution salva veritate. — Srap Tasmaner
I'm not quite sure what you have in mind here, because it doesn't really makes sense to speak about truth intensionally (if by 'intensional' you mean expressions not being substitutable salva veritate). After all substitution salva veritate simply means the preservation of truth (literally), and of course the prefix 'true' is going to preserve truth no matter what. If 'P' is true then obviously 'it is true that P' must be true as well - it is a kind of a tautology really.or maybe ordinary language is misleading and that's why it can be so hard to make sense of truth (and facts). — Srap Tasmaner
As to giving and taking, you seem to say truth really just collapses into true. Seem to. What you really say is that truth "is the "concept of what it means to be true." Just like the concept of what it means to be green. — tim wood
Concept of what it means? Where and how does "concept of what it means" come to ground? What does it mean?
Had you said "truth" is just the generalization of true, akin to "green" as a generalization of greenness in green things, then no problems here. But as you have expressed it, I can't figure it out. No doubt a failure on my part. Would you craft an edit for greater precision? — tim wood
I have a lot to say about this, but it will suffice for now just to note that nothing in what you said (in this quote or in the rest of your post) proves that our 'interpretations' of reality (whatever that means) don't actually correspond with the reality which they interpret. The most that it can show is that we do not know whether out interpretations correspond with reality, but it doesn't prove that they in fact do not. — Fafner
This means that if our 'interpretations' of reality happen to be the correct ones, and they 'correspond' to our interpretations of sentences, then it is perfectly possible that our sentences are objectively true (correctly represent reality). And nothing that you said proves that this is not the case. — Fafner
Compare this with the case of believing something you don't know. I believe that somewhere in the universe there's intelligent extraterrestrial life. Now, I do not know whether it exists, but it doesn't prove that if I say "intelligent extraterrestrial life exist" that I said something false, because it might very well be true for all that I know. Ignorance doesn't prove anything about the objectivity of what you are ignorant about. — Fafner
I wrote:
Not all correspondence(truth) is dependent upon meaning.
You replied:
Ok, then give me an example of an instance of correspondence which is not meaningful.
I wrote:
Non-linguistic thought/belief doesn't consist of language. Your argument concerns only that which does. That's how...
You then replied:
That my argument only concerns language, is only true if you define "meaningful" in such a way that only language is meaningful. Many things other than language are meaningful...
You wrote:
Firstly, it's good we have come to some agreement; that is always value in itself. However, there are two problems with your seeing contemplation as merely correlations, albeit complex ones, between objects:
1. Contemplation means profound thought, and profound thought is always thought beyond mere correlation; it is drawing meaning from those correlations and moving into concepts.
2. Human contemplation goes way beyond correlation of objects, which is as far as animals can go...
For example, in the following sentence--"We Americans need to defeat the Nazis before they spread their evil they showed in the Holocaust and fully destroy freedom"--we see concepts expounding on and moving beyond mere objects. "We" are no longer just the objects in a group, they are defined by the concept of nationhood: not an object. The same goes with the ideological concepts of evil and freedom, which have no clear object correspondent; they are concepts that have moved beyond them. And we haven't even discussed the lingusistic dynamics giving all these words meaning beyond their object correspondents.
1. Contemplation means profound thought, and profound thought is always thought beyond mere correlation; it is drawing meaning from those correlations and moving into concepts.
Here you're affirming the consequent. You're assuming precisely what needs argued for. That said, I wholeheartedly agree that human thought/belief as we know it is far more complex than mere simple correlations. The ability for abstract thought and conceptualization is proof of that. However, it still boils down to mental correlations, no matter how you slice it.
Profound thought is nothing more and nothing less than novel correlation. Conceptualization is often described in terms of a concept being the container, and it's content being everything ever thought/belief and/or attributed to the concept. Again, that starts simply and gains complexity.
I find myself wondering why you keep on saying 'mere correlation'.
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