I know human thought goes beyond 'mere' correlations. Not all correlations are 'mere'. Most are quite complex...

You're arguing against an opponent borne of your own imagination.



"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."

Again, moving beyond 'mere' objects isn't a problem for my position. Getting to very complex notions without those consisting in/of more simple one would be.

My quote above argues against your original statement and it shows exactly why your model is insufficient for human thought and human thought is more than correlations.

Sigh. Offer an example and I'll gladly deconstruct it for you. I've seen no definition which claims what you've stated...

I gave you an example with my sentence I gave you earlier. You didn't deconstruct it and you won't be able to do so now.

I know human thought goes beyond 'mere' correlations. Not all correlations are 'mere'. Most are quite complex...

And as I showed, human thought involves more than simple and complex correlations.

How about this Sand...

The term "we" is meaningful as a result of drawing correlations between the term itself, others, and oneself. The term "American" is meaningful as a result of drawing correlations between the term itself, the country, and a place of birth....

You've shown no such thing Sand. Gratuitous assertions won't do here.

There's something to be said about our ability to become aware of that which is not existentially contingent upon our awareness of it.

Correspondence is one such thing. Thus, calling correspondence a concept would be equivalent to calling anything else that is not existentially contingent upon our awareness of it... a concept.

Correspondence is presupposed within all thought/belief, including but not limited to pre and/or non-linguistic. Correspondence is not "correspondence". The former is the relationship that the latter takes an account of. It doesn't require being taken an account of.

As to your first sentence: OK

As to your second paragraph, of course correspondence is a concept; there is no material existence of "correspondence" without human conception of it. And saying correspondence is not "correspondence" makes no sense whatsoever.

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You've shown no such thing Sand. Gratuitous assertions won't do here.

Of course I have, Creative, and you haven't shown I haven't.

Looks like there's some reading comprehension issues.

Be well Sand. Come back when you actually know how to present an argument.

How about this Sand...

The term "we" is meaningful as a result of drawing correlations between the term itself, others, and oneself. The term "American" is meaningful as a result of drawing correlations between the term itself, the country, and a place of birth....

How about this, Creative, the term "We" clearly denotes more than the definition in this sentence, it points to a conceptualized people, the "Americans." And the term American does more than draw correlations since everyones' concept of what an American is and how many Americans there are are different. So, there is no common object or even the same concept for people to correlate to. So, your deconstruction fails.

Looks like there's some reading comprehension issues.

Be well Sand. Come back when you actually know how to present an argument.

Yes there are reading comprehension issues, and they're all yours.

Be well, Creative, I well presented my argument; you need to learn how to actually present your own.

And saying correspondence is not "correspondence" makes no sense whatsoever.

It means you can call anything you like "correspondence" but that does not make it correspondence. I can call a dog's tail a "leg" if I like but the dog still only has four legs.

You can say thought / belief = X and then you can define X in any flexible way you want so that whenever X pitches up in any discourse it's made to mean thought / belief. But all you've done is invented a new word for thought or belief and not explained anything about either of them.

It means you can call anything you like "correspondence" but that does not make it correspondence. I can call a dog's tail a "leg" if I like but the dog still only has four legs.

No, it does not mean that at all, since you've still used the word "correspondence.' And your example fails too since "dogs tail" and "leg" are different phrases; correspondence and "correspondence" are the same words and they're both being used.

In this case your argument is really about knowledge and not truth (which are different topics), so it was false advertisement all along.

And also, your argument doesn't really prove that we don't know the objective reality either. You cannot derive this conclusion just from the premise that we somehow 'interpret' reality (and I'm not really sure what you mean by this claim anyway - it is ambiguous between a semantic and epistemic sense of 'interpretation').

You can call anything you like whatever you like. But that is different from explaining it in terms that are to be understood. Scare quotes are a sign that an expression is being used in an unusual or perverse way. So "correspondence" may be quite different from correspondence; just as a "leg" may not be a leg.

Scare quotes don't change the fact you're still using the same word. Sorry.

Yes, it is indeed the same word. The scare quotes indicate that the same word is being used in two different senses, of which one is perverse or confusing. So to say that a "leg" is not a leg is to say that there are two senses in which the word is being used: one sensibly and correctly and the other equivocally and strangely. Same with "correspondence" and correspondence.

I wouldn't say that truth collapses into true, because there is a distinction to be made, between the particular instance, something which is true, and the generalization, truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

I see it as being unable to speak of - define - the generalization (except generally, of course) without resort to the particular. It seems to me that reduces "truth" to a shorthand that refers to something that truth isn't, and that beyond that "truth" has no meaning at all. Maybe this is a Socratic aporia: we look into the heart of a thing and are thrown back with some violence.

Remember when I described justification. In my opinion, this is how we get objective concepts, objective knowledge, through agreement amongst us. This is what is accepted as right, correct. It is objective in the sense of "inter-subjective", so it is not a true objectivity in the sense of "of the object", independent of the subject. It is created by a unification of subjects through communication, and I call this justification because it comes about through the demonstration of what is believed to be the correct way to use words. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'd be happier if you had included the distinction between the a priori and contingently true. One is demonstrated, the other hermeneutic, a matter of persuasion. I assume you have a firm grasp of the difference.... But I take your point. The thing isn't green except as we agree it's green, whence the objectiveness of green.

A concept may come into existence and evolve, as the correct way of using words evolves, and this process is a justification of that usage which is accepted as the correct usage. This is contrary to platonic realism, which places concepts as independent of subjects, making them more truly objective, in the sense of "of the object", resulting in the need to assume eternal concepts or ideas. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here that distinction matters. I feel no need to assume eternal concepts, nor an eternal mind to maintain their being. 2+2=4 means nothing at all, except as and until someone has a use for it, on which occasion I trust it will always be so and not otherwise. That is, I create contingent truths; I merely find and recognize the a priori.

By the way, the inadequate, preconceived notion of knowledge, which led them astray, was the idea that knowledge had to exclude falsity. They could not find a way that knowledge as we know it could exclude falsity. And we can bring this to bear upon our search for instances of "being true". Should "being true" exclude the possibility that the thing which is true, is false? Is it correct to oppose true with false? — Metaphysician Undercover

Short answer, with the contingent, yes; with the a priori, no. Proof is immediate: the contingent could be false; the necessarily so, cannot not be so.

Maybe here we catch a glimpse of truth, a gleam of it. Let's go back to green. Green is certainly subjective and a matter of agreement. But spectral analysis isn't. If we elect to denominate the results of the analysis "green," then that green is objective - not a quality of what we think and agree about, instead a recognition of something that is so (and that as it is, it cannot be otherwise).

If you agree so far, do you care to assay a new definition of truth?

In this case your argument is really about knowledge and not truth — Fafner

I think this is right and what I have been, too indirectly, trying to suggest. For instance, even if the truth of a sentence is actually the truth of that sentence under a particular interpretation, that interpretation is not subject-relative. Just as whether a sentence is asserted by an individual is irrelevant to its truth, so whether an interpretation is applied to a sentence by an individual is irrelevant to the truth of the sentence under that interpretation. Truth has nothing to do with subjects at all.

But we do want to say that there is an intimate connection between assertion and truth. At the very least, that truth is the goal, or the point, or the intended object, of assertion. The problem here is not just that whatever warrant you have for asserting that P is no guarantee that P is true. We do what we do with an intention or purpose, based on our beliefs and expectations, and truth isn't even in this logical space at all. The connection is clearly through meaning, which is to say meaning has one foot in the space of intention and one in the space of truth.

Here's an example of how this can work. Suppose U assets sentence S, but S is ambiguous; we could use U's intention as a selector: if by S, U meant p, then we give S interpretation A, and treat S as meaning S1; if by S U meant q, then we give S interpretation B and treat S as meaning S2. Now suppose S1, i.e. S under interpretation A, is true, but S2, S under interpretation B, is false. If U meant p, S is true, but it's not true because U meant p; it's true because S is true under interpretation A.

And obviously U can know all of this, and aim at truth by asserting S.

The problem here is not just that whatever warrant you have for asserting that P is no guarantee that P is true. — Srap Tasmaner

Unless you are a disjunctivist.

Yes, it is indeed the same word. The scare quotes indicate that the same word is being used in two different senses, of which one is perverse or confusing. So to say that a "leg" is not a leg is to say that there are two senses in which the word is being used: one sensibly and correctly and the other equivocally and strangely. Same with "correspondence" and correspondence.

I know what scare quotes do. That doesn't mean that "correspondence" and correspondence are any different in semantics in their expressions themselves. They need further elaboration for that. But feel free to show how they're different without elaborating beyond the expressions themselves. You can't.

Unless you are a disjunctivist. — Fafner

This is the thing about perceptual reports -- "Either I see a truck or I am experiencing an hallucination" -- that sort of thing? Is there another disjunctivism? Care to elaborate?

Right. The main idea is that unless we understand sense experience as factive (e.g., you can see that P only if P is the case), then it's hard to see how the warrant or justification provided by experience can amount to knowledge. If seeing that P can give you any reason to believe that P, surely it can only because P itself is part of your experience (otherwise, if your experience falls short of being confronted with P itself, then what it has to do with P in the first place?).

This is at any rate McDowell's view of the matter, which I'm quite sympathetic with.

Right, right. I see I was accidentally dissing McDowell.

I was trying to stay kinda neutral, but back of my mind I was thinking about Dummett's idea that truth has its -- I guess "conceptual" -- origin in the idea of an assertion being objectively right or wrong, and that attempts to graft a richer concept of assertion onto Frege are too little, too late.

I'm pretty conflicted about all of this. Everything I post is an experiment.

I was trying to stay kinda neutral, but back of my mind I was thinking about Dummett's idea that truth has its -- I guess "conceptual" -- origin in the idea of an assertion being objectively right or wrong — Srap Tasmaner

It's more than that; Dummett's idea was that there's nothing more to truth than what you can justifiably assert. He was an anti-realist like our friend MU.

Sure. But antirealism is the position he gets to, not where he starts. (And it's not necessarily universal.) And the getting to is mainly through his reading of Frege and Wittgenstein, and his own work on language and logic. His lifelong intuitionism is in some ways enthusiastic but in some ways reluctant.

Maybe worth noting here that Frege's original Begriffschrift has an "assertion stroke" and a "judgment stroke" but those fall away eventually.

Every instance when meaning is first attributed. — creativesoul

This is very problematic. When meaning is "first attributed" it is rarely if ever, most likely never, a case of correspondence (truth). You hear a sound for the first time, it is non-random, exhibiting some form of order, therefore meaningful, so you attribute meaning. You haven't the vaguest idea of what that sound corresponds to, yet you know it is meaningful.

Your claim here is way of base. How do you suppose that the instance "when meaning is first attributed" is an instance of correspondence without meaning. If meaning is attributed, then there is meaning. I know you insist that this attribution could be mistaken, but even if I allow your proposition that it could be, then how could there be correspondence in this mistaken instance?

The issue Meta, was whether or not truth is dependent upon language. I claimed it's not. You argued otherwise as above. Now you're saying that meaning isn't dependent upon language. If there is meaning without language, then truth is as well. — creativesoul

You're completely missing the point of the op creativesoul. The intent was to analyze the difference between "true" and "truth". I agree with you that there could be instances of true belief prior to language, this is not an issue. I do no agree that there is truth prior to language. You do not seem to make a consistent distinction between the two. Sometimes you seem to suggest that if there is an instance of being true, then there is truth, and if there is truth then there are instances of being true, as if they are co-dependent. At another time you argued that true belief is existentially contingent on truth.

Tim had offered a working definition of "truth", such that it refers to a generalization. Do you recognize the difference between instances of being true, and the generalization, truth?

In this case your argument is really about knowledge and not truth (which are different topics), so it was false advertisement all along. — Fafner

If this is the case, then could you explain to me how you categorize both knowledge and truth, to maintain this separation which you are inclined to adhere to.

And also, your argument doesn't really prove that we don't know the objective reality either. — Fafner

You're correct here, I took this as a premise. If you want proof of this premise I would have to proceed to a different argument. That argument is not difficult though. "Objective reality" refers to a reality which is independent of the thinking subject. Knowledge is the property of the thinking subject. If we knew a reality which was independent from thinking subjects (objective reality), this would be a reality in which knowledge is impossible because there would be no thinking subjects. Therefore it is impossible that we know the objective reality. In other words, it is impossible to exclude the thinking subject from knowledge, or else there would be no knowledge. But this is what is required to know the objective reality (reality without the subject), something which is impossible.

I see it as being unable to speak of - define - the generalization (except generally, of course) without resort to the particular. It seems to me that reduces "truth" to a shorthand that refers to something that truth isn't, and that beyond that "truth" has no meaning at all. Maybe this is a Socratic aporia: we look into the heart of a thing and are thrown back with some violence. — tim wood

It only "refers to something that truth isn't", because of misconception. If we look at the particular instances of being true, and form a generalization, and this generalization is inconsistent with the common concept of "truth", then there is misunderstanding. Either the common concept of truth is a misconception, or the particular instances of being true which we referred to, are not actually instances of being true. For example, if you look at particular examples of horses, things which are commonly referred to by "horse", and we create a generalization, and then compare this to the biological concept of "horse", and find that there is a serious inconsistency between the two, we would assume that there is some sort of misconception going on.

I'd be happier if you had included the distinction between the a priori and contingently true. One is demonstrated, the other hermeneutic, a matter of persuasion. I assume you have a firm grasp of the difference.... But I take your point. The thing isn't green except as we agree it's green, whence the objectiveness of green. — tim wood

I do not understand this type of distinction at all, it has never made sense to me, as the two categories seem to reduce into each other. One is demonstrated, the other a matter of persuasion? Isn't demonstration a form of persuasion?

Here that distinction matters. I feel no need to assume eternal concepts, nor an eternal mind to maintain their being. 2+2=4 means nothing at all, except as and until someone has a use for it, on which occasion I trust it will always be so and not otherwise. That is, I create contingent truths; I merely find and recognize the a priori. — tim wood

So I don't understand this at all. What do you mean when you say that you "find and recognize the a priori"? To recognize implies prior identification. When you "find" an a priori concept, is it through recognition, meaning that you have previously identified it? How would you identify it in the first instance?

Short answer, with the contingent, yes; with the a priori, no. Proof is immediate: the contingent could be false; the necessarily so, cannot not be so. — tim wood

The a priori you say is necessarily true. But I don't see that anything could truly qualify as a priori. That's where I'm at. Perhaps you could explain this. The only time I can conceive of something that is "necessarily so", is to use "necessary" in the sense of "needed for a specific purpose". I need food to survive, I need a car to drive, etc.. But to use "necessary" in the sense of "impossible that there is a mistake in my thinking", doesn't seem realistic.

Maybe here we catch a glimpse of truth, a gleam of it. Let's go back to green. Green is certainly subjective and a matter of agreement. But spectral analysis isn't. If we elect to denominate the results of the analysis "green," then that green is objective - not a quality of what we think and agree about, instead a recognition of something that is so (and that as it is, it cannot be otherwise). — tim wood

All you have done here is decided to arbitrarily choose a particular range of the spectrum, and designate this as "green". Do you not see this as equally subjective? It's still a matter of agreement, or indoctrination.

If you agree so far, do you care to assay a new definition of truth? — tim wood

I don't think I'm prepared for that. It should be evident from what I've said, that I believe there is misconception concerning truth. To rectify this, we must thoroughly analyze instances where people
use "true" to say "this is true", etc.. It is already evident that there is inconsistency between what people refer to as being true, and what people say truth is. Either there is misconception in what people believe "truth" means, or there is misconception in the people who use "true" to refer to things, or both. I do not believe that the dialectic here has progressed far enough to work this problem out.

If this is the case, then could you explain to me how you categorize both knowledge and truth, to maintain this separation which you are inclined to adhere to. — Metaphysician Undercover

Knowledge has this form: For some subject S and some proposition P, S knows that P.
Truth has this form: For some proposition P, P is true.