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). — Michael
How do you know that a duck is not a social construction? — Leontiskos
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. — Leontiskos
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. — Leontiskos
At this stage I’m primarily interested in whether you only mean “counting as” as “identifying” or “correctly identifying.” — Leontiskos
“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.” — Leontiskos
is that counting as a duck is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a duck — fdrake
You could reason that I've dodged the question, and substituted a particular case of counting as for the general case - but I don't know why this wouldn't be an available move to me? — fdrake
It's a giant hall of mirrors. Every time someone is going to say "true", I'm going to replace it with a behavioural concept that's jury rigged to fit just how we use the word. And then I'm going to argue that the jury rigging is also in the territory. Irritatingly for everyone involved, self included, the jury rigging will actually tend to be there, and that can restart our conflict. — fdrake
The moral of the story, I think, is that counting as a duck is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a duck. Being a duck is also not a necessary or sufficient condition for counting as a duck. But if something quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, smells like a duck... it probably is a duck. And I imagine it counts as one too. — fdrake
I realise this could have been unclear earlier. Ordinarily the conditions under which someone correctly identifies X as a duck immediately count X as a duck too. I see that {and I think Sellars sees that} as a behavioural connection rather than a logical one. If something is identified as X, it counts as X. — fdrake
The tension which I think you're picking up on is the weirdness that comes with treating counting-as as distinct from identity, even though identifying correctly is norm and theory ladened, involving standards of correctness for counting-as. I agree that this is weird. — fdrake
Okay, but then it looks like being a duck (or being identified as a duck) is a sufficient condition for counting as a duck. — Leontiskos
Further, I don’t see any significant difference between, “This is a duck,” and, “It is true that this is a duck.” So when <I asked> whether you recognized the difference between, “The duck is a duck,” and, “The duck counts as a duck,” I was comparing the truth claim to the behavioral-concept claim. I don’t see how we can have behavioral concept claims “all the way down.” — Leontiskos
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