OK, I think I understand you. You're saying that the "assumption" is not about a specific P being true prior to verification, but rather about truth in general being knowable and recognizable as such. Or if not truth in general, then truths of the sort that can (putatively) be verified by simple perceptual experiences such as seeing a cat, coupled with some basic background information. This procedure would reveal "truth-makers," if all goes well.

How is a state of affairs outside of the logical grid of language and logic possible to affirm since any affirmation itself is weighed within that very grid? — Astrophel

I don't understand this question re truth-makers. What does it mean for an affirmation to be "weighed"? Do you mean "judged true or false"? If so, one can only reply that there is a distinction between states of affairs, which would exist without any perceiver, and the statements we make about them, including judgments of truth and falsity. I suppose that is an assumption, if you like. We don't have to use the word "true" (or "false") at all if we really don't believe there are such things as statements that correspond (or don't) to reality in a Tarskian T-truth sort of way. And yes, it's very vexing that no account of how this works seems flawless. But to affirm P, and to have a justification for doing so, doesn't make P disappear into a vicious circle of linguistic/logical assumptions, unless you're a severe sort of Idealist . . . which is maybe what @Count Timothy von Icarus is getting at, above, with his Hegelian analysis.

Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. "The cup has a handle." is true, or it is false.

Beliefs are stated as a relation between an agent and a proposition. This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief. Adam believes that the cup has a handle.

So truth is a monadic predicate, while belief is dyadic.

A statement's being true is a different thing to its being believed.

Truth is analysable in terms of T-sentences.

"The cup has a handle" is true if and only if the cup has a handle.

A few things are important here.

First, the equivalence is truth-functional. It's "≡", and you can look up the truth table in any basic logic text.

Second, the statement on the left is in quotes. It is understood as a reference to the utterance in question. If you like, the statement on the left is mentioned, the one on the right is used.

Pretty much all other analyses of truth bring problems. This is far and away the simplest, and pretty hard to deny. It sets out a bare minimum for any understanding of truth.


The statement on the left is about language. The statement on the right is about how things are. T-sentences show that truth concerns how language links to how things are.

A statement's being true is a different thing to its being believed. — Banno

I think the OP might argue, we are having a field day with language here. Statements are made and discerned by agents with beliefs and a point of view. Statements are like dividing by 0 or something like that. It is simply an impossible thing to extricate as if "facts" exist independent of observers. Thus it goes back to idealism versus realism debate, as usually the case.

From here, all we have is appeal to [blank] (usually incredulity). And thus philosophy ends and emotions begin. And being apes, it's some form of verbal poop throwing.

That might come down to a difference in grammar, whether one wants to accept a bivalent logic and realism, or some alternative logic and antirealism.

Idealism hangs on in the form of antirealsim.

But it seems that @Astrophel has not seen that he is advocating antirealism.

That might come down to a difference in grammar, whether one wants to accept a bivalent logic and realism, or some alternative logic and antirealism.

Idealism hangs on in the form of antirealsim.

But it seems that Astrophel has not seen that he is advocating antirealism. — Banno

:up: Yeah, antirealism is probably the preferred nomenclature. Idealism has some baggage. Either way, just based on the OP it seems this is heading in the notion that "What is true" is always tied to some observer. But I will let @Astrophel answer if that is what he might have been implying.

I was just trying to provide a retort I can see, but that might have took a lot circling. I wanted to simply bring it up to the surface now, in case it was heading there anyways.

Otoh, a reciprocal , recursive, self-organizing model of causality can do the job that linear causality cannot. Reciprocal causality produces normative, goal-oriented sense-making consisting of anricipatory acting on and modifying a world that in turn feeds back to modify the cognizer, forming a loop of ‘aboutness’. — Joshs

Which does not sound like aboutness at all to me. To conceive of a world such that the foundational epistemology is causal in nature will not be sustainable, it can be argued, because the affirmation of the world itself is constructed out of this very causality, notwithstanding the complexity of reflexivity. I believe the bottom line has to be the "bare phenomenon" which qualitatively reaches beyond the way one thing mere influences another. Michel Henry's sense of the pure, or the "raw" and fleshy" encounter must stand as its own presupposition, not reducible to anything else.

So truth is a monadic predicate, while belief is dyadic. — Banno

I see why belief is dyadic. But I don't see that truth is monadic. Surely truth has an (often suppressed) object - "true of" or "true to". A true right angle looks monadic, but is not typical.

This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. ....... It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief. — Banno

These two sentences look contradictory to me.

.... a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. — Banno

But I agree with this.

It's very hard to give an account of knowledge that transcends the nature/mind, subjective/objective divide. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why do we want to?

I think you get at a confusion that comes up with correspondence definitions of truth. We say a belief is true if it corresponds to reality. No problem here, beliefs can be true or false - same for statements. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm afraid there is a big problem. What "correspond" means is completely unclear. Consequently, this theory - paradoxically - is the basis of some very strange ideas, such as the idea that reality is, in some mysterious way, beyond our ken.

Forward looking toward anticipated results, and this is an event of recognition that is localized in the perceiving agency, you or me. The object over there, the cow, "outside" of this is entirely transcendental because outside in this context means removed from the anticipatory temporality of the event. — Astrophel

Thanks for the explanation. I understand from what you say that the cow that I recognize exists independently of my recognition of it. Less exciting than I hoped.

Michel Henry's sense of the pure, or the "raw" and fleshy" encounter must stand as its own presupposition, not reducible to anything else. — Astrophel

How would you differentiate his notion of the pure encounter with that of Merleau-Ponty or Husserl? Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh as corporeal intersubjectivity has been incorporated into the reciprocally causal models of embodied, enactivist approaches. Husserl, however, considers causality to be a product of the natural attitude. We have to bracket empirical causality to arrive at its primordial basis in intentional motivation.

But I don't see that truth is monadic. — Ludwig V

truth has other senses, with other logics The individuals being considered here are propositions. “This angle” is not a proposition.

These two sentences look contradictory to me. — Ludwig V

Why? The point it simply to mark belief as a non-extensional context. That is, you can’t substitute extensionally equivalent expressions. Louise Lane believes clark Kent wears glasses, but not Superman.

For me it's important to distinguish between claims (statements/propositions) and facts, i.e., states of affairs. If a statement is true, then it represents a fact or facts in reality. The idea that there is an ontology connected with the truth has some merit, i.e., we're referring to the existence of particular states of affairs or the possible existence of a state of affairs. A statement is true if it mirrors a fact, but facts exist apart from the statements themselves (at least many facts). A statement can be true quite apart from any justification, which is to say, I may not know the justification, in which case I don't know it's true. I may claim it's true as a matter of opinion or mere belief, but it's not knowledge. All of us have opinions, some of which are true, and some are false. A claim is never knowledge in itself unless we're referring to statements like "All bachelors are unmarried men." Of course, one could claim that the statement refers to linguistic facts based on the meanings of the words. So, even in this e.g., we could use a linguistic justification.

Truth is always about claims, which come in the form of propositions. I can claim that X is true with little to no justification, but it's not knowledge unless it conforms to one of the many methods we use to justify a claim. I'm a Wittgensteinian when it comes to justification, i.e., we use several methods in our language-games to justify a claim—for example, testimony, reason (logic), linguistic training, sensory experience, and others. Justification is much broader in its scope than many people realize.

I think there is an ontology behind the truth of our statements, and it's in the form of facts, the facts of reality. — Sam26

I have trouble with this notion of representation. If a proposition represents some state of affairs, then one has to say what it means for something to be a state of affairs, and this would itself be done cast in more propositions. Then the post modern madness hits the fan: if a statement is true, it mirrors a fact (as you say), but facts themselves are statements that are true. If your statement beongs to a certain language game, then the game is always already in play the moment recognition of the state of affairs comes about. And what are facts if not IN the game? Or ON the grid of language possibilities? None of these establishes a knowledge that can allow the world to be posited in this stand alone way.

I see that there is a lot of talk here about states of affairs and facts, as if once a fact is established, a knowledge claim thereby has its basis, and no knowledge claim can stand if there is no fact to correspond to. But surely you see the radical question begging in this: How does one establish a fact, a state of affairs, to be there at all save through a knowledge claim about facts and states of affairs? It may be a fact the the sun is bigger than the moon, but to call the sun "the sun" is a knowledge imposition on "something" that itself is not a construction of language at all. It may well be that language and its non- language counterpart, the "existence" of an actuality that "appears," cannot be separated, for they are a unity.

This is a major point of Heidegger, that language and the world are "of a piece." But there is always a "distance" between language and such actualities that cannot eliminated. To understand this is to see something really quite profound. I "know" that my cat's existence is "other" than the language I deploy to think what it is.

What do you mean deliver aboutness in the mind to an object? Aboutness stays in the mind, it doesn't go anywhere. It is not necessary that something delivers information to us, yet we know it does all the time. Light shines on a red cloth, the red cloth reflects it towards my eyes, my nerves capture the stimulus and my brain produces information. We equate that with real world objects.
How about the converse: Is knowledge non-causal? If not, does it pop into existence randomly? — Lionino

Yes, I understand your position. But asking "does it pop into existence randomly?" is not an argument. It is a deficit. If not causality, then what? Well, something, certainly. I am simply working through a quasi-physicalist model. Assume I am here, the sofa there. How would a physicist say a knowledge claim I have about the sofa works? Much like you said above. But then, the philosophical question: how does this causal sequence generate a knowledge between the two, the brain on the receiving end and the sofa on the other?

Perhaps we are monads in a preestablished world of epistemic harmony and my knowledge of the sofa is already IN my monadic constitution. One thing does not cause another by this, but events in some primordial telos. But I doubt it. It is not that I am offering an alternative to causality. I am simply observing that there is nothing in this simply principle that makes knowledge possible. Philosophy is mostly negative, putting doubt where there is thoughtless certainty. And this is pretty serious doubt brought about the apriori argument that causality as a principle sijmply has nothing epistemic in it. the proof? There you are, there is your lamp or coffee cup; so ask, "how does that get in my head at all so that I know it?" Light waves are not lamps. Nor is brain chemistry. This should be clear.

hen the post modern madness hits the fan: if a statement is true, it mirrors a fact (as you say), but facts themselves are statements that are true — Astrophel

I think you're wasting your time with these people. They think that "a fact" is a statable state of affairs which is not necessarily stated. But you recognize how the proposition of an "unstated statement" is nonsensical, even self-contradicting. So I advise you to leave those people in their own world of nonsense, as there is no benefit for you to enter it.

But to affirm P, and to have a justification for doing so, doesn't make P disappear into a vicious circle of linguistic/logical assumptions, unless you're a severe sort of Idealist . . . which is maybe what @Count Timothy von Icarus is getting at, above, with his Hegelian analysis.

I don't think the problem requires "severe idealism." Hegel's idealism is generally labeled "objective," because it affirms the existence of nature as nature, not as something reducible to mind.

So, to 's question, "why would we even want to get into this and bother attempting to transcend the mind/nature distinction," I will attempt a straightforward expression of Hegel's thesis, which I think is similar to what the OP is getting at.

I think whoever wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica article on epistemology actually did a much better job at simplifying Hegel than most Hegel scholars (although they probably are one, come to think of it):

In his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel criticized traditional empiricist epistemology for assuming that at least some of the sensory content of experience is simply “given” to the mind and apprehended directly as it is, without the mediation of concepts. According to Hegel, there is no such thing as direct apprehension, or unmediated knowledge. Although Kant also held that empirical knowledge necessarily involves concepts (as well as the mentally contributed forms of space and time), he nevertheless attributed too large a role to the given, according to Hegel.

Another mistake of earlier epistemological theories—both empiricist and rationalist—is the assumption that knowledge entails a kind of “correspondence” between belief and reality. The search for such a correspondence is logically absurd, Hegel argued, since every such search must end with some belief about whether the correspondence holds, in which case one has not advanced beyond belief. In other words, it is impossible to compare beliefs with reality, because the experience of reality is always mediated by beliefs. One cannot step outside belief altogether. For Hegel, the Kantian distinction between the phenomena of experience and the unknowable thing-in-itself is an instance of that absurdity.

I think this is similar to what the OP is trying to communicate. , you let me know if I am totally misreading here.

I think modern mereological nihilism and indirect realism are instructive here. Some people deny that colors truly exist "out there" in the world. The mind creates them. Mereological nihilists go a step further, denying any whole/part relations exist outside the mind. So, there simply are no cats on mats to be the targets of propositions or fact relations. The ideas like "cats" and "mats" are constructed in the mind. They are constructed from nature, yes, but the essence of catness or any distinct boundary of any specific cat is mind-dependent.

But Hegel doesn't stop here. He points out that it doesn't make sense to present mind as some sort of totally separate, unique things, distinct from nature. Again, modern views are instructive here. There is no indication that causation works any different for bodies than it does outside of them. Information, mass, energy, and cause flow right across these boundaries, which is why mereological nihilists would deny the boundary "really" exists in the first place. There is just one world, one type of being. "Multiple types of being," is an incoherent notion; what would be a discrete type of being? All multiplicity only shows up on the mind side of the mind/nature divide.

So, this means that when we talk about propositions and their targets, their truth-makers, and related facts, we aren't actually stepping into some external frame outside of mind. "The cat is on the mat just in case the cat is actually on the mat," is just a statement of our own confusion. What does it mean to be a cat or a mat? We'll never get outside belief asking what it is these propositions actually mean and what their truth-makers would actually be.

But here, Hegel would depart radically from mereological nihilists. He says "wait a minute, mind exists, this is obvious, it isn't somehow 'less real.'" Thus, the relationship between some part of nature and a mind's experience of color, cats, or mats, isn't some sort of less real relationship, it's as real as any other. Actually, it's the only possible sort of relationship through which any knowledge could possibly be given, so it is in ways, more real because it is more self-determining in terms of what it essentially is (the influence of Plato shows up here).

This means there aren't "really no cats." Cats exist, and they don't simply exist in some sort of less real realm of mind. They exist in the Absolute, the category that wraps around the subjective/objective distinction, since both sides of that distinction really do exist and neither can be reduced to the other.

Essentially, the whole truth of "the cat is on the mat," requires an elucidation of how the related concepts evolve and unfold globally, and how the subject comes to know these things as well as their own process of knowing.

Truth then, knowledge of how it is that "the cat is on the mat," involves knowledge of how it is we have come to know that the cat is on the mat. The truth is the whole. Both mind and nature play a role in defining truth, and the attempt to abstract propositions into mindless statements of fact simply miss this.

Hegel's argument is more convincing if you get into his arguments vis-á-vis ontology as logic (the Logics) and his theory of universals, but those are too much to elaborate here. I think Pinkhard's "Hegel's Naturalism," does a good job at outlining this reformulation of knowledge and truth in clear, concise terms, but at the cost of some major simplifications and deflations. Houlgate's commentary on the Greater Logic and Harris' "Hegel's Ladder," clarifies this better, at the cost of significantly longer and denser projects, and in Harris's case, significant use of Hegelese.

...is simply working at different aims. Knowledge is simply no longer justified true belief, its a process being unfolding itself. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The trouble as I see it lies exactly in the unfolding itself, as if unfolding were a cognitive discovery. Which it certainly is, and I have to affirm this because agency requires this, meaning I can't imagine any account of ontology or epistemology without a structured self, which is what a science based metaphysics is. So what is agency, being a self? It is a pragmatic structure, in terms of its knowledge claims, though, to remember Kierkegaard, there is this "qualitative movement" that lies in our midst, which is realized when we understand the foundational indeterminacy of our existence; that is, we realize quite literally that we exist (something K thought Hegel had forgotten). So THE grand question that faces philosophy emerges here: either one is ontologically committed to the unified totality of our finitude (Heidegger) which is "open" yet free of essentially divisive features of the Cartesian kind; or one holds that there is a foundationally divided world, like Kierkegaard, whose "spirit" manifests as an existential anxiety of, as Heidegger will later put it, not being at home, feeling alienated in the everydayness. For Kierkegaard, faith breaks anxiety's grip as one affirms God in faith in freedom, while for Heidegger freedom is an ability to look upon one's "potentiality of possibilities" to self create.

But there is a middle ground, which is the Husserl inspired French theological turn, so called. This is Levinas, Marion, Henry and others who invite us to look at the phenomenological reduction in the most radical way: not to bridge the gap between subject and object epistemically, ontologically and morally with intentionality, but to embrace the distance, so to speak. And this has a tradition in Eckhart, pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, and others. And yes, this means that the matter of the question between me, the perceiving agency and the cow near the barn and the knowledge claims that leap into play the moment I see it, whether these knowledge claims are mostly pragmatic (Heidegger) or otherwise, is "threshold mysticism".

But knowledge certainly is not what is sought in all this. It is value. All of these endless ruminations in philosophy end here, in the pursuit of what can be generally called value. Any utterance made by a human dasein (or a fish, cat or cow dasein) has its telos in value, and value is the ONLY, I claim, no reducible phenomenological dimension of the world's presence. The only absolute.

This is all arguable to the death. Heidegger was right calling it a feast for thought, this endless inquiry. One stops inquiring when one is happy enough, and no question (the question: the piety of thought!) intrudes.

I suppose what I have put out here is a response to your "process unfolding itself" and the idea being that such a process has context, and the context here is the human condition at the most basic level of inquiry. And here, one encounters the value we extend into the world as the highest epistemic/ontological priority. Value-in-Being, call it.

Just a thought.

Light waves are not lamps. Nor is brain chemistry. — Astrophel

Right. Lightwaves, brain chemistry etc set the causal conditions that satisfy seeing a lamp, which in turn is justification for the belief that there is a lamp.

Perceptions are different from beliefs. I can't detach my conscious awareness of there being a lamp in front of me when I see it. The belief, however, that there is a lamp can be maintained or rejected regardless of the whereabouts of the lamp.

For something to be true, there must be a reason why it is true — Lionino

If the quoted statement is true, what is the reason?

Isn't Reason itself the reason (I.e. the rule internal to Reason that there must be a cause)?

I think epistemology and metaphysics are entangled. We think about truth and know truth, and all of our conclusions thereof, because both are constructed within the same framework: our Minds, and for us, there are no metaphysical conclusions known without both knowing and concluding having first evolved as constructions.

how does this causal sequence generate a knowledge between the two, the brain on the receiving end and the sofa on the other? — Astrophel

For a physicalist, it is clear how it does. What is the problem exactly? Problem of consciousness? Rehash of the problems of mind-body dualism?

There you are, there is your lamp or coffee cup; so ask, "how does that get in my head at all so that I know it?" Light waves are not lamps. Nor is brain chemistry. This should be clear. — Astrophel

Ok, so intentionality. There are several different alternatives for that, none is preferred over the other, there might never be agreement.

Credit: Dr. Tomas Bogardus.

What I meant by "For something to be true, there must be a reason why it is true" is if something is the case, there is a reason why it is the case, there are causes that took place in the past for the current subject-matter to be true — aside from brute facts. — Lionino

"Something" here is not a proposition, but X in "it is the case that X". Things in the world have causes.

"The cup has a handle" is true if and only if the cup has a handle. — Banno

I was going to say that this is simply the deflationary view of truth, but it is not, it is simply a tautology.

Things in the world have causes. — Lionino

Ok. Do you think there is a cause for Reason? Or are some things exempt from the need for cause? Or, back to the original question, is "cause and effect," itself, a "thing" caused?

Cause and effect applies to things in the real world, at least physical things. What do you mean by "reason" exactly?

What do you mean by the Real world? Physical things? Is Reason a thing outside the Real World? What things are real (not as in, accessible to our perception--but ultimately real) and not physical? And with respect to such--if you think they Really exist--whence their cause?

Why?

Because I'm suggesting Reason is constructed; knowledge is constructed. And truth for humans, the only species that cares about truth, is not known as in discovered, but rather, constructed. Epistemology and metaphysics are entangled: both so called Truth and how humans pursue/access Truth are constructed by the Minds busily doing so.

You're saying that the "assumption" is not about a specific P being true prior to verification, but rather about truth in general being knowable and recognizable as such. Or if not truth in general, then truths of the sort that can (putatively) be verified by simple perceptual experiences such as seeing a cat, coupled with some basic background information. This procedure would reveal "truth-makers," if all goes well. — J

But one does not know a truth. Knowing IS the truth. My position is that knowledge, belief, truth, at the level of philosophical inquiry, which is the most basic, while obviously useful expressions in varying contexts, are events in the perceiving agency. In order to make a move to talk about something that is outside of this agency ( cat and cow agencies alike) would be a transcendental leap that is not demonstrable. NOT that there is nothing "over there"; this is absurd as well. But to say we have an avenue open to the thing over there FREE of the perceptual act would be like talking about moonlight as a astronomical phenomenon while altogether leaving out mention of sun light. As if the moon were a stand alone radiance of light. Things do not simply present themselves free of perceptual contribution. In fact, apart from G E Moore's hand being raised in defiance of the idealist's skepticism, and Moore does make a very good point in doing this, I am aware, there is NO explanatory basis for affirming anything about the "cow thing" over there that altogether overthrows Kant. Physicalist just have to admit that a brain-thing is massively complex, and the survival of the "thing out there" in the processes of brain chemistry is patently absurd.

This is perhaps the point of the OP. Moore's hand raised is a POWERFUL argument, as I see it. The hand IS there, notwithstanding the presence of synthetic apriori structures that are IN the hand's being there. So we are at this really impossible crossroads where at once we know something is there, over there, and not me but separate from me, a cat, a coffee table, etc., yet the only tool in the physicalist's basket is causality, and I don't mean at all physicists do is talk about one thing causing another...but this is implied in everything they say, obviously, and if you think unproblematic cases of causality, and there are zillions, you will find nothing that can make my thoughts about the cat really ABOUT the cat. They would be more about the physical systems of the brain...but wait, not even this. How, after all, would neuronal systems generate awareness, a knowledge claim, of themselves???

Such is the paradox of an uncompromised physicalism.

I don't understand this question re truth-makers. What does it mean for an affirmation to be "weighed"? Do you mean "judged true or false"? If so, one can only reply that there is a distinction between states of affairs, which would exist without any perceiver, and the statements we make about them, including judgments of truth and falsity. I suppose that is an assumption, if you like. We don't have to use the word "true" (or "false") at all if we really don't believe there are such things as statements that correspond (or don't) to reality in a Tarskian T-truth sort of way. And yes, it's very vexing that no account of how this works seems flawless. But to affirm P, and to have a justification for doing so, doesn't make P disappear into a vicious circle of linguistic/logical assumptions, unless you're a severe sort of Idealist . . . which is maybe what Count Timothy von Icarus is getting at, above, with his Hegelian analysis. — J

States of affairs existing without a perceiver is nonsense, unless you can say what this would be without "saying" what it would be. The moment you begin to speak: there is the history of your language and culture education and the structures of a remembered past informing the perceptual moment as to the what, the how of it, stabilizing the givenness into familiarity. Hegel gave us, in part, Heidegger, only Hegel thought that IN the moment of intimation of the things before me there was a metaphysical historical disclosure.

It is not that causality is not flawless. there is a difference between a paradigm that leads to others because it possesses possiblities for a new thesis. Rather, causality possesses nothing at all that, on the assumption of physicalism, or some variant thereof, that can deliver knowledge. The moment you say, well, the light radiates upon the cup, and the surface reflects or absorbs certain of its wavelengths, and those reflected reach the eye....and I stop you there where you haven't even entered the eye, and I ask: how is a wavelength of light anything like the object? And the same applies to all of the sensory data. How is a sound wave even remotely like the object? In the exhaustive analysis of sensory data, one will not find the object. This is the point. And once the brain actually get hold of these vibrations or light waves, forget it. A brain event is NOTHING at all like cup or cow.

This may sound simplistic to you, but it is this simplicity that is so remarkable. One is so conditioned by everyday talk and referencing that the philosophical question is entirely ignored. And again, philosophers in the science-friendly analytic vein are just tired of Kantian or neo Kantian thinking. This changes nothing about the radical deficit in explaining the simple knowledge claim.

Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. "The cup has a handle." is true, or it is false.

Beliefs are stated as a relation between an agent and a proposition. This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief. Adam believes that the cup has a handle.

So truth is a monadic predicate, while belief is dyadic.

A statement's being true is a different thing to its being believed. — Banno

Well, an agent judging a proposition is an agent of a propositional nature "it" self. Agency conceived apart from propositional possibilities is metaphysics. So it is really that beliefs are between beliefs and beliefs. I judge the cup to have a handle, but what makes for such a judgment if not the body of implicit propositional beliefs that are at the ready every time I encounter cups, handles and their possibilities. I am doxastically predisposed in any occurrent doxastic event.

So truth is a monadic predicate? But this just assumes truth to be some stand alone singularity in the world. Such a thing has never been, nor can it be, witnessed apart from belief.

It may well be that language and its non- language counterpart, the "existence" of an actuality that "appears," cannot be separated, for they are a unity.

This is a major point of Heidegger, that language and the world are "of a piece." But there is always a "distance" between language and such actualities that cannot eliminated. To understand this is to see something really quite profound. I "know" that my cat's existence is "other" than the language I deploy to think what it — Astrophel

Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the -world determines that language and world are precisely not at a distance from each other. On the contrary, language discloses self and world together, as our always already being thrown into worldly possibilities. Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein make related points. The distance is not between language and the world, it is between our self and our self, due to the fact that, through language, we always come to ourselves from the world.

My cat’s existence is an existence for me, as a function of the relevance of the cat for my ongoing social practices. The discovery of this relevance through language both discloses the meaning of the cat anew and alters my previous sense of meaning of the cat for me. What would it even mean to refer to the cats existence apart from what I want to do with the cat in thinking about its existence?

It isn’t that we are presented with a pre-sorted world where catego­ries kneel for us to affix words to them like Adam naming the animals, but that we are always already in a linguistic world. We cannot sift out pristine reality from our reality, making the distinction empty. (Lee Braver)

What do you mean by the Real world? — ENOAH

Things outside one's mind, be it spirit or matter.

Physical things — ENOAH

Is Reason a thing outside the Real World? — ENOAH

I will ask once again for you to specify which of the several meanings of "reason" you are using here. I specified mine.

What things are real (not as in, accessible to our perception--but ultimately real) and not physical? — ENOAH

God, soul, monad, if you believe in those.

I'm suggesting Reason is constructed — ENOAH

By whom?

Truth is analysable in terms of T-sentences.

"The cup has a handle" is true if and only if the cup has a handle.

A few things are important here.

First, the equivalence is truth-functional. It's "≡", and you can look up the truth table in any basic logic text.

Second, the statement on the left is in quotes. It is understood as a reference to the utterance in question. If you like, the statement on the left is mentioned, the one on the right is used.

Pretty much all other analyses of truth bring problems. This is far and away the simplest, and pretty hard to deny. It sets out a bare minimum for any understanding of truth.


The statement on the left is about language. The statement on the right is about how things are. T-sentences show that truth concerns how language links to how things are. — Banno

Thinking like this leads to a failure to understand the world. "How things are" is exactly where the issue begins.

But knowledge certainly is not what is sought in all this. It is value. All of these endless ruminations in philosophy end here, in the pursuit of what can be generally called value. Any utterance made by a human dasein (or a fish, cat or cow dasein) has its telos in value, and value is the ONLY, I claim, no reducible phenomenological dimension of the world's presence. The only absolute — Astrophel

Nietzsche certainly thought that the buck stops with value. To be more precise, with a value-positing will to power. So in truth , the irreducible is the endless self-overcoming of value. But I don’t think that’s the kind of value-thinking you have in mind.

Reason: (simplified) that set of Laws/Dynamics/Process/tools including such as Logic, cause, linear movement, justification used to arrive at and settle upon a belief which is adopted as true (as opposed to so arriving/settling/adopting by way of alternative means such as convention, or fantasy).


Do you really think God, soul, monad are Real I.e., not constructed by Minds over time?

And on that note, Reason is constructed by Mind through its "membership" over time. Like Language was so constructed. In this sense "evolved" . That is, not deliberately constructed. Or do you mean to suggest that both Reason and Language are Reality pre-existing, independent of humans; inherent to the Universe?

If it is the latter, then I can see how epistemology and metaphysics are separate, because knowing is the process of discovering Truth.

But if, as I suspect, it is the former, and both Reason and our truths are constructed, then epistemology and metaphysics are entangled as yet another process/outcome of such conditions.

Finally, as for "physical things," I accept prima facie that they are Real; albeit your periodic table is a human construction; an example not of physical things in Reality, but of how we construct that in human Mind.

that set of Laws/Dynamics/Process/tools including such as Logic, cause, linear movement, justification used to arrive at and settle upon a belief which is adopted as true — ENOAH

That has nothing to do with my application of the word "reason", so I wonder why you even bring it up. It is not like I disagree with what you are saying, as far as I even understand it, it is just that it has no connection to what was being said.

Do you really think God, soul, monad are Real I.e., not constructed by Minds over time? — ENOAH

Many people do.

In any case, none of this has anything to do with my addition to the ambiguous OP.

albeit your periodic table is a human construction; an example not of physical things in Reality, but of how we construct that in human Mind. — ENOAH

It is not a periodic table and it lists things which exist in the real world. Obviously the table doesn't exist as an object in the real world, unless we print it.

Thank you for clarifying. Apologies for any misinterpreting.