...the problem we find ourselves faced with when attempting to take an account of a)that which is not existentially contingent upon our awareness, b)that which is not existentially contingent upon language, and c)that which is not existentially contingent upon thought/belief...
Well, on the assumption, which I make, that truth and true are different, I think truth is indifferent to true. If truth just is reality, etc., then that truth does not speak. It grounds; it warrants; it gives license for the expression of true propositions. But it provides nothing towards what makes true propositions true...
...it provides nothing towards what makes true propositions true - how could it? That requires correct judgment.
We're supposing truth is just reality. We select a sample of reality, a brick. In doing so non-critically we sidestep a lot of questions - problems - about how we know it's a brick, and what a brick is anyway, and so forth. I think it is correct in this context to ignore/suspend/bracket for the moment all of those questions. There's no law against coming back to them, but if we cannot get to reality or a sample of it, then we really cannot get anywhere.
Anyway, we have a brick, and we say, "This here is a brick." A proposition (p) we can here define as true (T). We can abbreviate a generalization as Tp.
We ought to stop here and think a bit. We have a brick and a Tp. What do they have to do with each other. On the specification that the brick is just a piece of reality, I feel comfortable saying that it - the brick itself - does not and cannot have anything to do with the Tp (or anything else). And what is the Tp? To begin with, it is just a p, a proposition. It could be true or false. If we have constructed it carefully, it is contingently either, but certainly one of them. What it is that settles the contingency? What settles it is the "that" referred to above, that I call an act of correct judgment.
Its brickness just is; and it is its isness, its being-as-a-brick, that allows judgment to create a proposition with respect to its brickness. — tim wood
We're supposing truth is just reality. We select a sample of reality, a brick. In doing so non-critically we sidestep a lot of questions - problems - about how we know it's a brick, and what a brick is anyway, and so forth. I think it is correct in this context to ignore/suspend/bracket for the moment all of those questions. There's no law against coming back to them, but if we cannot get to reality or a sample of it, then we really cannot get anywhere. — tim wood
I wrote about "sidestepping" with you in mind, MU. Two problems I have with your way of looking at this are 1) it seems you will never have truth, or really any gold-standard proposition about pretty much anything. If we accept or offer a definition, that's always equivocal. If we just say the heck with it and define it ourselves, then how do we know it's right. I acknowledge the point, but it has narrow application, and beyond that quickly becomes absurd. After all, its atomic structure is always whizzing around, therefore from moment to moment it's never the same brick - we cannot even give it a name. — tim wood
And 2), in our encounter with the brickness-of-(what we call)-the-brick we did not use any definitions at all. At the building supply store, for example, we might just as well have asked for a pallet of these. — tim wood
And all of this is why I mentioned some time previously the ideas of right focus and right magnification - right understanding. It's getting pretty clear that the absolute quality of true is a product solely of the criteria in force; and of truth, its exemplification in something outside of itself. Admittedly this surrenders any notion of absolutes or ultimates apart from application, but for the price it secures both truth and true. Did I just win? (Did you have a moment to look at the brief article referenced above?) — tim wood
For example, in the same way (not sense) we say a lemon is yellow, we are, for the moment, saying that reality is truth (let's call it T1). — tim wood
It happens that "truth" also has meaning and significance with respect to "true." My point here is that this is a simply a different sense, not to be confused with truth as reality, a distinction not always maintained in this thread. This second truth (T2) appears to derive its meaning from how it employs T1. T2 differs from T1 is that T2 is T1 in use propositionally. — tim wood
Fair enough. I'd go further. (I think) we're starting with the hypotheses that there is a reality; reality is real; and we're content for the moment to let a brick informally represent what "reality" means. And that "truth" is a word that we define, for the moment, as naming a quality that reality has. For example, in the same way (not sense) we say a lemon is yellow, we are, for the moment, saying that reality is truth (let's call it T1). — tim wood
The assumption that there is a correct definition of brick is the assumption that someone else has made a correct judgement, someone has correctly judged what it means to be a brick. The attitude of confidence is the assumption that I have made the true judgement. So this is where we find truth, in the assumption that I have made the true judgement, not the assumption that I am following the judgement of someone else, because it is correct. — Metaphysician Undercover
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