You appear to be assuming mathematical platonism? — Michael

No, I'm not assuming mathematical Platonism or anything else.

The proposition "X is a prime number" is assessed as accurate/true when uttered. — Michael

As I said I'm not proposing anything. I just write down a number and ask the question as to its primeness. I know the truth regarding its primeness is prior to even writing the number down and certainly prior to my discovering it. And of course I will have to discover it, most especially in the case of extremely large numbers.

But "a truth" means "a true proposition", and so you are saying "there is a true proposition about whether or not that number is prime; no proposition required". — Michael

You are simply asserting, without supporting argument, that truth is only a property of some propositions. If you open your mind and think about it you will see that my example of prime numbers throws that assumption into question—makes it look like the partial, not the whole truth.

Also, accuracy is not a precisely d;eterminable quality.
— Janus

Then neither is the truth of the proposition "the painting is accurate — Michael

I agree, but it is irrelevant to the question about prime numbers.

If you open your mind and think about it you will see that my example of prime numbers throws that assumption into question — Janus

You seem to be saying that the proposition "X is a prime number" is true or false before it is uttered but denying that this is a case of a proposition being true or false.

I'll try one last time If you won't address what I actually write, there is no point continuing. I haven't uttered any proposition; I've just nominated some extremely large number and asked the question about its primeness. Do you deny that the truth regarding the number's primness is prior to my proposing anything about it, and in fact prior to my even nominating it, or not. If not, why?

- See this exchange and following:

Just as a sentence being true (or false) before it is said makes no sense. — Michael

What are the chances that anyone has ever said that 799168003115 + 193637359638 = 992805362753? — Srap Tasmaner

Right...a very similar point. And yet @Michael remains oblivious it seems...or willfully blind.

I'll try one last time If you won't address what I actually write, there is no point continuing. I haven't uttered any proposition; I've just nominated some extremely large number and asked the question about its primeness. Do you deny that the truth regarding the number's primness is prior to my proposing anything about it, and in fact prior to my even nominating it, or not. If not, why? — Janus

I went over this with the existence of gold, but I'll do it again with a number being prime:

1. "11 is prime" is true
2. It is true that 11 is prime
3. 11 is prime

(1) asserts that a proposition is true. (3) asserts that a number is prime (and says nothing about truth).

(2) either means the same thing as (1), in which case it asserts that a proposition is true, or it means the same thing as (3), in which case it asserts that a number is prime and the phrase "it is true that" is vacuous, being nothing more than grammatical fluff.

When you ask about the truth regarding a number's primeness it's unclear if you're asking me about the truth of the proposition "X is prime" or if you're asking me about the number's primeness, and this ambiguity is causing you to equivocate.

The unambiguous and correct answers to your question are:

1. If I say that the number 11 is prime then what I say is true
2. The number 11 is prime even if I don't say that it is
3. If I say that the number 12 is prime then what I say is false
4. The number 12 is not prime even if I don't say that it isn't

And to a different question:

1. If I say that gold exists then what I say is true
2. Gold exists even if I don't say that it does
3. If I say that vibranium exists then what I say is false
4. Vibranium does not exist even if I don't say that it doesn't

When you clear up the grammar of the questions and answers then it's clear that truth and falsity are properly properties of propositions/sentences/beliefs/utterances, not something that can be divorced from them by clever word play, and is why the SEP article on truth says:

We thus find the usual candidate truth-bearers linked in a tight circle: interpreted sentences, the propositions they express, the belief speakers might hold towards them, and the acts of assertion they might perform with them are all connected by providing something meaningful. This makes them reasonable bearers of truth.

So the relevant discussion concerns whether or not platonism about truthbearers is correct, or if we should adopt a non-platonistic interpretation that allows for a distinction between truths in a world and truths at a world, and I am firmly in favour of the latter.

So the relevant discussion concerns whether or not platonism about truthbearers is correct, or if we should adopt a non-platonistic interpretation that allows for a distinction between truths in a world and truths at a world, and I am firmly in favour of the latter. — Michael

It seems to me your thinking is too black and white. If there are countless prime numbers which no one will ever identify, then we can write down extremely large numbers and for any number we write down it will be true or false that it is prime, even if we don't know the answer. If the truth about the primeness of those countless numbers precedes their being enunciated, then what is it that determines that truth or falsity. It's a different case than with concrete particulars because the latter can be observed in order to find out whether what we thought about them prior to knowing the answer is true or false.

This is a difficulty for the idea that truth is simply a property of propositions, but it doesn't follow that Platonism is the answer. Maybe the question cannot be answered, but even so that doesn't remove the difficulty..

for any number we write down it will be true or false that it is prime, even if we don't know the answer. — Janus

What is the word "it" referring to here?

Either it's referring to a proposition, as I have been arguing, or it's not referring to anything, in which case truth and falsity are being predicated of nothing, and so the phrases "it will be true that" and "it will be false that" are vacuous, as I have been arguing.

If all you are saying is that any number we write down is either prime or not, even if we don't know the answer, then I agree and have never claimed otherwise.

If all you are saying is that any number we write down is either prime or not, even if we don't know the answer, then I agree and have never claimed otherwise. — Michael

That is all I'm saying. It being prime and it being true that it is prime are exactly the same. No proposition need be uttered. Same as with the existence of gold.

Now the tricky part: we can say (although some don't) that existence is independent of minds. Can we likewise say that primeness is independent of minds? If it is, does that necessarily entail Platonism? Or?

It being prime and it being true that it is prime are exactly the same. — Janus

Which I addressed above. If "is is prime" and "it is true that it is prime" are being used interchangeably then the phrase "it is true that" is vacuous; "it" refers to nothing and so truth is not being predicating of anything.

But when "truth" and "falsehood" are being predicated of something – when truths and falsehoods are some thing – that thing is a proposition/sentence/utterance, and if platonism about propositions is incorrect then even if there are truths about a world without language there are no truths in a world without language.

Repeating the same error does not correct it.

You just keep asserting the same thing over and over—the very thing which is at issue. Forget about truth for a moment. The salient question I asked which you failed to address was 'if existence is mind-independent, is being prime likewise mind-independent?'.

I suppose we could quibble about the boundary between philosophy, psychology and neurology. — fdrake

Roughly, philosophy does the conceptual stuff and psychology does the empirical stuff. Whether we "learn that the practice of counting as", as you ask, seems to me to be an issue for empirical investigation.

I think they're species of counting as. — fdrake

i didn't see that in your example. Sure, the paper can count as different things, bitt hat' not different types of counting as...

Counting as... has a world-to-word direction of fit; the world is changed so that the crate becomes a calf raise platform. (I had to look that up. Though at first it had something to do with animal husbandry.)

That reversal of the direction of fit is what embeds mind into the world. It's what gets mistaken for implying idealism. @Wayfarer does this in many of his posts. @Michael thinks it invokes platonism. But it seems to me a relatively trivial thing.

Counting as... has a world-to-word direction of fit; the world is changed so that the crate becomes a calf raise platform. (I had to look that up. Though at first it had something to do with animal husbandry.) — Banno

Yes. Though I don't enjoy limiting it to words, or cleaving language from world as if there could be a single direction of fit between the two. My visual impression of a duck counts as a duck. The duck counts as a duck. "the duck" counts as a duck.

Sure. It's just easy to say it with word than with ducks, or rabbits, or some combination.

But folk will use that to go all Hegelian.

But folk will use that to go all Hegelian. — Banno

Yeah it's a quagmire. But Big Mad H might've been on to something.

But Big Mad H might've been on to something. — fdrake

(p & ~p)⊃q. That's all.

Brandom sees something in him, I don't know what, but I trust his eyes.

If you like. Much like

Less realism, more mysticism. — frank

I'm not so keen.

You wouldn't refer to it as a straw or as tinder though, as the object isn't baptised that way. Things tend to keep their name from their primary context of use in the broader society - like my plastic crate keeps being called my plastic crate despite its primary use in my home being as a calf raise platform. Which it absolutely counts as for appropriate exercises. — fdrake

I should admit that I don't really recognize your "counts as" idea:

So if something counts as the ingestion of food, it counts as eating. — fdrake

I think is right that eating is not a custom or convention. If eating is the ingestion of food then someone who ingests food eats. It doesn't make sense to talk about something "counting as eating." Eating is not something we make up. It is not something we ratify.

You wouldn't refer to it as a straw or as tinder though, as the object isn't baptised that way. Things tend to keep their name from their primary context of use in the broader society — fdrake

Names of artifacts are to a large extent arbitrary. Eating is not. A dollar bill has many uses. I don't see anything mysterious or important in this.

One might say that all humans do is coordinate norms, and that the norms are plastic and arbitrary. But things like eating, dancing, copulating, swimming, etc., just aren't plastic and arbitrary norms. And therefore norm-coordination is not all humans do. In fact to think of human behavior as mere norm coordination strikes me as more or less backwards, given that all the norms are grounded in things which are not mere custom or convention, and none of these things that are not custom or convention are grounded in mere norms. It's a bit like trying to make words explain reality, when in fact reality is what explains words. Words aren't worth much apart from their referents in reality.

The duck counts as a duck. — fdrake

Do we agree that, "The duck is a duck," is not the same as, "The duck counts as a duck"? Ducks have a different relation to ducks than pictures of ducks or signs of ducks, and to say that a duck counts as a duck is to miss this rather important fact.

The duck is a duck," is not the same as, "The duck counts as a duck" — Leontiskos

Eating is not something we make up. It is not something we ratify. — Leontiskos

Yes! We agree. I think the "the duck is a duck" is a form of the duck counting as a duck. But it's a form of a duck counting as a duck which has very strict standards. This isn't to say that a duck is a social construction, even though counting as a duck is. I'd also want to stress that social constructions are real too - if you marry someone, you really are married to them.

I should admit that I don't really recognize your "counts as" idea: — Leontiskos

It's butchered from Sellars. He has a unique combination of nominalism and naturalism, which I really like.

This isn't to say that a duck is a social construction, even though counting as a duck is. — fdrake

Yep.

Sellars. He has a unique combination of nominalism and naturalism, which I really like. — fdrake

Which I think he also considered as falling somewhere within the pragmatist tradition, much as Quine thought of himself. And he was deeply engaged, as they say, with Kant. So everything @Leontiskos finds suspicious in one package.

"Counts as" is a pragmatist move. I think he revived James's talk of the "cash value" of an idea, for similar reasons. Though I might have the history wrong there.

But there is a little problem. Remember that Sellars argued in EPM that you can't reduce all talk of phenomena to talk of "looks" because it makes no sense to say that something looks green unless you know what it means for something to be green. That's his Kantian move. It's about conceptual priority.

Maybe this is different, but you have to wonder: does it make sense to talk about something counting as a duck, if you don't know what it means for something to be a duck?

It's conceptual priority again. It's not obvious that our concepts can be "counts as" all the way down. As a general matter, taking x as y requires that you know what y is, else the gesture is empty.

Unless of course all this talk of what "counts as" what is a suggestive way of talking about what is what.

One of my first lessons in philosophy to my children was the old joke: how many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? And the answer is: four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

The thing about "counts as" is that we always have to clarify whether we are distinguishing it from "is". When we pretend, assume, suppose, hypothesize, and so on, we agree to treat something as something knowing that it isn't. But sometimes we do it differently: a win by forfeit counts as a win; we all know it's not the same as winning by the usual process of defeating your opponent, but for the sake of competitive standings it's the same as winning.

So to make our understanding "counts as" all the way down, we first smuggle in our pre-theoretical understanding of "is", and then to recover the usefulness of things "counting as" something, we'll have to tack on some distinction in types of counting as anyway.

Yuck.

Maybe this is different, but you have to wonder: does it make sense to talk about something counting as a duck, if you don't know what it means for something to be a duck? — Srap Tasmaner

'Counts as..." doesn't change the words to match the world, but the world to match the words. So "That counts as a duck" makes that thing a duck, an act of intent on the part of the speaker.

Hence, there is not a something that it means to be a duck until the act is performed.

And the answer is: four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. — Srap Tasmaner

...that's not taking the "counts as" act seriously. If the tail counts as a leg, that's five.

One reason I haven’t posted much in this thread is because is saying the things I would say, but better. I’m perfectly happy with that, and his posts deserve priority.

It's butchered from Sellars. — fdrake

Sure, I understand that, even though I haven’t read Sellars. What I mean is that I don’t recognize it as cogent, “I don’t see anything mysterious or important in this [‘counts as’ idea].” Or as Srap said:

It's conceptual priority again. It's not obvious that our concepts can be "counts as" all the way down. — Srap Tasmaner

For me “counts as” is not even an epistemological issue. The epistemological issue has to do with what it is to be something, not what it is to count as something. I don’t find it interesting that my belt can count as a tourniquet. For Aristotle there is a fundamental difference between knowledge of artifacts like belts, and knowledge of natural realities like eating. Artifacts can count as whatever you like, for they have no telos qua artifact. But not natural realities. Fire is hot. It doesn’t merely count as hot.

-

This isn't to say that a duck is a social construction, even though counting as a duck is. — fdrake

Do you admit any knowledge which is not reducible to a social construction, custom, or convention? Or is it “counts as” all the way down?

Put slightly differently, if counting as a duck is a social construction, and a duck counts as a duck, then a duck is a social construction (contrary to what you say here).

-

Which I think he also considered as falling somewhere within the pragmatist tradition, much as Quine thought of himself. And he was deeply engaged, as they say, with Kant. So everything Leontiskos finds suspicious in one package. — Srap Tasmaner

In a broad-brush sort of way I see this as bound up in philosophical anthropology and the history of philosophy. Our current confluence of Darwinism, post-modernism, and (to a lesser extent) Kant’s reckoning with Hume seems to have minimized our belief in agency. And without agency there seems to be no possibility of really knowing/understanding reality in the classical sense. On this newer view the human capacity for speculative knowledge and truth seems to have been neutered.

So if a pragmatist wants to say that it’s just “counts as” all the way down, this is presumably because their philosophical anthropology precludes any other options. “All humans are doing is trying to survive,” or, “All humans are is a product of genetic-evolutionary factors,” or, “All humans are doing is aiming at different pragmatic goals.” If that’s “all humans are doing,” then they aren’t doing any truth stuff. At least not really or primarily. Hence while it is possible to separate mind from the world and create an unbridgeable gulf, there is also an opposite error where there is not a sufficient distinction between the mind and the world for knowledge and truth to even exist in their robust form.

<Earlier> I claimed that Michael and Banno are upholding something close to the classical view, but in much the same way that one upholds a branch that has been cut from the tree. So they say things like, “That’s just the way it is, and no further story needs to be told.” Whereas their forebears said, “That’s the way it is, and we have all sorts of stories for the underlying basis.” The older theological and metaphysical stories are done away with, and at the same time the opposition has picked up the newer stories—Darwinian, post-modern, and Kantian. Thus as I see it Michael and Banno’s view is not wrong in the main, but it is truncated to the point of being unpersuasive. And fdrake’s view—or what I know of it—is not out of step with contemporary thought, but it does have very serious logical problems (such as trying to make knowledge a matter of “counts as” all the way down).

Thomas Nagel is an example of someone who is with Michael and Banno, except that he is well aware of the metaphysical inadequacies of his view (given his naturalism), and it unsettles him.

The salient question I asked which you failed to address was 'if existence is mind-independent, is being prime likewise mind-independent?'. — Janus

I suppose that depends on whether or not numbers are mind-independent, which I discuss in a different topic.

But if we're discussing physical objects then I already stated several times over the past several weeks and pages that gold can exist in a world without minds.

My claim is only that a) truth and falsity are properties of truth-bearers, that b) truth-bearers are propositions, sentences, utterances, beliefs, etc., and that c) propositions, sentences, utterances, beliefs, etc. are not language-independent. This then entails that d) a world without language is a world without truth-bearers is a world without truths and falsehoods.

It's unclear to me which of a), b), c) , or d) you disagree with.

If you accept a), b), and c) but reject d) then you are clearly equivocating, introducing some new meaning to the terms "truth" and "falsehood" distinct from that referenced in a).

Repeating the same error does not correct it. — Banno

I haven't made an error. You have. I explained it quite clearly in my last post here which you opted not to address.

Firstly, you brought up chess as an analogy to propositions. My claim is that there is no chess in a barren world because there is nobody in that world playing chess and that there are no propositions in a barren world because there is nobody in that world using propositions.

Secondly, you conflate propositions about a world and propositions in a world. That we use propositions to talk about a world without language does not entail that there are propositions in a world without language.

Maybe this is different, but you have to wonder: does it make sense to talk about something counting as a duck, if you don't know what it means for something to be a duck? — Srap Tasmaner

That's his Kantian move. It's about conceptual priority. — Srap Tasmaner

I think it does make sense to talk like that. You need to learn what "is" means. Which doesn't mean that "counts as" is prior to "is" in all senses of priority. There are two senses of priority in Sellars I believe. And I think they are helpful. There's an order of being, which concerns what is, and an order of knowing, which concerns our learning. "counts as" is prior to "is" in the order of knowing, but "is" is prior to "counts as" in the order of being.

That's to say that recognising a duck requires there to be a duck and recognitions. The duck would've been there regardless. The process of recognition would've been there regardless. But you can't think about recognising a duck without there being recognition of ducks. Or ducks.

Having one sense of priority - equating between the order of being and the order of knowing - is in my opinion the engine of interminable debate in this thread. People fundamentally understand that in order for there to be recognition of ducks, there needs to be recognition, and ducks. And then ask which comes first. The answer is neither and both. Neither in the sense that ducks and recognition have anything to do with each other insofar as they exist, both in the sense that no one would recognise a duck if there were no ducks and no one would recognise a duck if there were no recognitions.

It's conceptual priority again. It's not obvious that our concepts can be "counts as" all the way down. As a general matter, taking x as y requires that you know what y is, else the gesture is empty. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. And we need to simultaneously grapple with the fact that we learn to tell what is from what isn't. I guess we should make a distinction between counting as as a concept and counting as as a practice, too. People count stuff as stuff all the time, and that's a practice. And kids do it before they learn what "is" means. But we adults are going to know that counting as as a concept depends upon what is in some sense. I think Brassier put it something like: "in order to know what "is" means, we need to know what "means" is".

So with regard to "all the way down" - that's an intuition based on there being one hierarchy of concepts. Some things are prior to other things. And "prior" in the former sentence means one thing. That thing is: X is unthinkable without Y. Such a hierarchy has an air of applying to everything, but that makes it very bloated. You end up needing to ask whether cheese is prior to geese. Which doesn't make much sense, as cheese has nothing to do with geese. So priority must be restricted.

I'd suggest that this conceptual hierarchy concerns what is thinkable, rather than what is. I'm not going to make an argument for why that is unless demanded to though - I'm just going to look at some examples and describe a pattern.

Cheese and geese have nothing to do with each other. So it seems odd for that reason. I think that can be relaxed a bit: "human settlements would not be thinkable without agriculture" - human settlements have rather a lot to do with agriculture, but we know that there were settlements without agriculture. "history would not be thinkable without time" - you could read that substantively or conceptually, there would've been no human history without time. But also you could read it as claiming the concept of history makes no sense without the concept of time. The last one seems to be closest to the domain where the question crops up.

"Cheese is unthinkable without geese" makes no sense because the two have nothing to do with each other - the two terms in unthinkability need to be relevant to each other, and not just independent entities or types of entities.

"human settlements would not be thinkable without agriculture" - this makes sense, but is false, as there is a substantive counterexample. People did think of one + once you "see" the example, you think of it.

"history would not be thinkable without time" - this makes sense, you can't {easily?} form a counterexample, and it concerns two very abstract flavours of thing which share lots of aspects.

The first two agree with you, the answers depend upon what is. They also agree with you that unthinkability as a concept piggybacks on "is" as a concept. The latter's a different flavour of question since you can't look for examples, even though it shares the same words.

Let's go through the claims again looking at how "counts as" works in them.

"Cheese is unthinkable without geese" - there's absolutely nothing about cheese which impacts what is recognisable as a goose. So the two have nothing to do with each other in terms of "counts as"

"human settelements would not be thinkable without agriculture" - this turned out to be false because there was a human settlement without agriculture. Notably, something counted as a human settlement without agriculture, so it was a counterexample.

"history would not be thinkable without time" - could something be counted as a concept of history without counting as a concept of time? Yeah, mathematised time doesn't count as narrative history. But maybe that's missing the thrust of the question. The idea would be something about... conceptual implication or conceptual involvement, that there could be nothing which counts as a history without implying some involvement of the concept of time in the counting act.

I want to suggest that because the thinkability question makes sense without needing to be able to find an example even in principle, but examples can be relevant, that "is" is involved conceptually in counting as. And isn't thus conceptually dependent upon counting as. And we even understand it as such.

But "is" as a concept does seem to be dependent upon counting as in terms of how it is assessed, learned etc. Learning to tell what is from what isn't. What is... is posited as, and behaves as, independent of the specifics of what we think, and even whether we think at all. And that's it working as intended.

One of my first lessons in philosophy to my children was the old joke: how many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? And the answer is: four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. — Srap Tasmaner

I like it.

So if a pragmatist wants to say that it’s just “counts as” all the way down, this is presumably because their philosophical anthropology precludes any other options. “All humans are doing is trying to survive,” or, “All humans are is a product of genetic-evolutionary factors,” or, “All humans are doing is aiming at different pragmatic goals.” If that’s “all humans are doing,” then they aren’t doing any truth stuff. At least not really or primarily. Hence while it is possible to separate mind from the world and create an unbridgeable gulf, there is also an opposite error where there is not a sufficient distinction between the mind and the world for knowledge and truth to even exist in their robust form. — Leontiskos

It might surprise you, but I agree with this and find it a bad trend. I see all of those as irritating reductionisms. I'm equally irritated by a reduction of our being to ideas/thoughts.

Though I imagine I fall into your condemnation bucket here, since I definitely don't see humans as doing "truth stuff" primarily, we do however do it. I'm of the opinion that a commitment to understanding stuff leads to seeing humans without prioritising our agency {as normally intuited} ontologically though.

Fire is hot. It doesn’t merely count as hot. — Leontiskos

Aye. I agree with that, in the sense you're meaning "count as" anyway.

Do you admit any knowledge which is not reducible to a social construction, custom, or convention? Or is it “counts as” all the way down? — Leontiskos

Put slightly differently, if counting as a duck is a social construction, and a duck counts as a duck, then a duck is a social construction (contrary to what you say here). — Leontiskos

I don't think that follows. Can you show me how it does? I'm suspicious because the premises are "if counting as a duck...", and "the duck counts as as a duck". I'm also thinking that you think of a social construction quite differently than what I do - I see it more as a verb than as a noun.

I appreciate the natural progression of the thread to a contemporary form of nominalism or pragmatism.

That's to say that recognising a duck requires there to be a duck and recognitions. — fdrake

I would not want to underestimate the difference between “counting as” and “recognizing.” A very significant shift has occurred here. Srap said:

When we pretend, assume, suppose, hypothesize, and so on, we agree to treat something as something knowing that it isn't. But sometimes we do it differently... — Srap Tasmaner

When fdrake talks about “counting as,” he is importing a theoretical apparatus into a bit of common language in a way that the common language has trouble supporting. For example, if I go to the Christmas party, point to the hearth, and say, “That counts as a fire,” everyone will have a good laugh. They will say, “Actually that really is a fire!” And:

People count stuff as stuff all the time, and that's a practice. And kids do it before they learn what "is" means. — fdrake

In my opinion this is a highly controversial claim. I’d say that when a child points to the fire and says, “Fire!,” she is not saying, “This counts as fire,” but rather, “This is fire.” Or rather, whatever she is doing is much closer to the latter than the former.

Now I know what you mean, and I am opening myself to the charge of quibbling here, but the point is worth observing. It is one thing to give ourselves license to use a bit of language in a loose and imprecise way, but when the imprecise language is meant to ground an entire theory of knowledge or language much more is at stake than we realize. So to use the metaphor “counts as” as a fundamental building block of an epistemological program is dangerous in the same way that Wittgenstein’s talk of language games is dangerous. As Aristotle says, a small error in the beginning makes for large errors later on.

It might surprise you, but I agree with this and find it a bad trend. I see all of those as irritating reductionisms. I'm equally irritated by a reduction of our being to ideas/thoughts. — fdrake

Okay, great. But I wonder if there is a more minor reductionism. I take it that “counts as” is an anthropocentric metaphor. The literal sense has to do with counting, which is a human mathematical act. In the metaphorical sense “counts as” is usually indexed to a subject or a community. “It counts, at least for her.” “He counts it as a victory.” “For the American people this counts as an act of terrorism.” This metaphor is usually used to create distance from ‘is’, and if all humans are doing is counting X’s as Y’s then it’s not clear that there is any fact of the matter.

Though I imagine I fall into your condemnation bucket here, since I definitely don't see humans as doing "truth stuff" primarily, we do however do it. — fdrake

Okay. As long as we do it we’re in agreement on this point. When I said “primarily” I only meant that not every act has the “truth stuff” as secondary and oblique. I certainly left myself open to that misunderstanding.

There's an order of being, which concerns what is, and an order of knowing, which concerns our learning. — fdrake

Aristotle definitely agrees with this, but the trouble is that the moderns seem to think that one must learn epistemology before they can know anything.

"counts as" is prior to "is" in the order of knowing, but "is" is prior to "counts as" in the order of being.

That's to say that recognising a duck requires there to be a duck and recognitions. — fdrake

Here’s how I read the thread at this point. Banno is challenged on whether truths can exist without minds; Michael is challenged on whether truths are merely properties of sentences; you appeal to a form of pragmatism; and then Srap offers some objections.

Now when you appeal to pragmatism with this notion of “counts as,” it looks as if you are trying to short-circuit the realism circuit, such that we only need to worry about whether it counts as a duck, not whether it truly is a duck. But had you talked about recognizing ducks, the short-circuit tack would not be a natural interpretation.

So with regard to "all the way down" - that's an intuition based on there being one hierarchy of concepts. Some things are prior to other things. And "prior" in the former sentence means one thing. That thing is: X is unthinkable without Y. — fdrake

For me the conceptual priority question is something like this. Suppose you are training a novice in the CIA to root out foreign spies. Are you going to teach them what counts as a spy? Or are you going to teach them how to identify a spy? I think they are quite different. And if—contrary to natural language use—all we mean by “counting as” is “correctly identifying,” then we are really talking about identifying spies.

For me the “all the way down” objection has to do with a form of “counting as” that is not reducible to a form of “correctly identifying” (“a suggestive way of talking about what is what” ). The objection is that this cannot be done “all the way down,” and I think Srap provided the arguments.

At this stage I’m primarily interested in whether you only mean “counting as” as “identifying” or “correctly identifying.”

(Given our discussion of triangles, what I think you mean by “counts as” is, “If we define a triangle as thus-and-such, then it counts as a triangle. If we define it in a different way then it may not.” And in that thread I’m not sure you ever answered my question about whether there are true and false definitions, especially once we get away from triangles.)

I don't think that follows. Can you show me how it does? I'm suspicious because the premises are "if counting as a duck...", and "the duck counts as as a duck". — fdrake

Let me try to put it a third way:

This isn't to say that a duck is a social construction, even though counting as a duck is. — fdrake

How do you know that a duck is not a social construction? If you can only say, “That counts as a duck,” and this act of yours is a social construction, then what license do you have to claim that ducks are not socially constructed? Or do you abstain from that claim?