Which is a perfectly good prior. What do you do next? — Srap Tasmaner

My first response was "No idea" :D -- but that's no fun:

To get back at truth, it seems to me that if there's no ur-Language, or at least rules for all languages which count as Language in general, then we'd have to put aside any semantic theory of truth (if we hoped that theory was universal, at least). There'd be nothing of truth as much as we're talking about the English predicate "...is true", which does have a history and all, but clearly we'd be picking out the "good cases" in that history and so we rely upon -- even if indistinct -- some notion of truth that is bigger than the English predicate "...is true"

But then you say here:

Linguistics is littered with failed theories, even failed research programs, like any other science, but not all of them. — Srap Tasmaner

And I have a great respect for the sciences (as well as philosophy, for that matter).

So I'll lay out my suspicions --

It seems to me that in order to generalize about language you'd have to have a representative sample. But no one person knows enough languages to even come close to that (think about how many languages have already perished up to now, and how the kinds of societies which don't prioritize capital and conquest might have very different dialects than us), so you kind of just have to assume that the languages you do know are at least related to this general picture of language -- that real language use instantiates the general features of language, and it does so so strongly that the specifics of any one language don't obscure it.

And when it comes to even the small number of languages I'm familiar with I'm having a hard time picking out much similarity when it comes to meaning such that we'd have a rule which translates the meaning of one language to another. Really you just have to know both languages in order to perform a translation. Knowledge of a particular language is about as "deep" as knowledge of language goes -- and translation is an art of understanding two languages, rather than a rule.

But that's all just based on my mere experience with language learning and such. I have a hard time conceptualizing what Language, in general, could possibly mean other than "whatever it is we mean when meaning with means" -- so my suspicions are likely just based on my small impression of things, and there's much more to the story that I'm unaware of.

Finished A Nice Derangment of Epitaphs today. I think I get along with its conclusion rather well -- I really do suspect there is no such thing as a language, in these terms of rules and such, and especially when spoken of in the abstract (rather than, say, English). I suppose I'm not as disturbed by that notion as others might be. Maybe I'm just ignorant of its implications. It sounds like one would conclude that we are simply animals barking, that language is meaningless, and we're all just acting out of the drives we happened to be driven by due to our evolutionary heritage.

But that would run counter to things like understanding the meaning of a poem, wouldn't it? Perhaps the whole approach of specifying rules of interpretation is what's wrongheaded? We get by without explicit reference to rules quite frequently. It's just not some kind of universal rule or something.

Logic can be mapped onto probability somewhat naturally...Formally, though, it does make some sense to think of logic as a special case of a more general calculus of probabilities. — Srap Tasmaner

That's interesting. New for me, at least ! :D --

Not sure what vocabulary we should use for this sort of thing, but “validity” feels really out of place. Once you’re doing probabilities, that’s what you’re doing. — Srap Tasmaner

This makes sense to me. The only conclusion that doesn't really make sense to me is that probability undermines validity -- how to work that out, I'm not sure, but that's really the only belief I'm holding onto here.

I was attempting to "make sense" of probability in some way with my knowledge of baby-logic -- I thought maybe if you separated out the steps, basically, you'd have something that works. But you're saying it can be mapped, but in so doing you're not really testing validity anymore. It's wholly different.

although the material is difficult and I was unable to garner much interest from anyone else. — Banno

It looked to me like it fell to the same problem as any other theory of truth, but with more interesting results. The "interesting results" were definitely beyond me, so no noise from me. But that you landed on "false" just meant it had the same problem as any theory of truth, as I understand the liars.

We had a probability for the whole conditional, plus a second premise giving a probability for its antecedent, but no probability for the consequent. If we already knew that pr(G) = 0.65, why we would we bother trying to calculate it? — Srap Tasmaner

As I read the OP, the scenario specified that premise 1 and premise 2 each have a 65% chance of being true, rather than the implication having a probability -- so my thought was to simply separate out probability from the truth-table to make the deduction work. For the argument to work we'd probably want to use "and" rather than material implication though, right?

P
Q
Therefore,
P ^ Q


Works out better for the OP's point, that the conclusion is less likely than each initial premise, due to two events being a part of it rather than 1 event, and the conjunct only holding true when both are true.

That is, I took the scenario to be demonstrating how validity becomes invalid when possibility probability is a part of a given proposition.

These issues and many others are too big for any one person to decide, do you not agree? — Judaka

Sure.

Can you clarify, could you be describing something more like doing someone a courtesy or giving the benefit of the doubt as I have here, as opposed to believing whatever you're told regardless of your own personal views? Because surely you do have your own personal views about how gender is determined and expressed and yada yada... right? — Judaka

I do, and I've been laying them out -- I haven't been saying "do not discuss" or "have no opinion" or something along those lines. Here we are discussing! :D And I'm not trying to say "Do not post again!" or something along those lines. We cannot help but to have an opinion, a lot of the times.

My belief is that these things aren't very clear cut, that there is no one definition for identifying as such-and-such, there are multiple ways to be a man or a woman or neither, and so the type of philosophy which lays out definitions and counter-examples in a dialectic simply will not come to an understanding of gender, at least as I understand these things. Who we are is softer than the tools of analysis which are meant for reaping and harvesting of intellectual products.

Metaphorically, we are flowers and turtles -- and the harvest kills both while it pursues maximizing wheat germ.

Does that make any kind of sense?

When I say prove, I don't mean by providing a logical argument and laying out the evidence. We do it without words, we demonstrate it. Gender identity is communicated in less than a second, and only in exceptional or rare circumstances will there ever be a conversation about it. — Judaka

Focusing here, because this is something I agree with.

I invoked the notion of asking because it's basically the golden standard for determining some one person's identity, in my view -- and talk of wanting standards for categories to determine identity runs counter to the notion of simply listening to a person talk about themself. I agree that we don't go about using the golden standard, however. We just glide along, barely without even a belief formed, accepting people's identity before it's even face-value, before its even named.

My thought is that who we are isn't really chosen by us. So "girding" that conversation isn't important. It's not something which needs to have intersubjective agreement, nor does it need to be an object of knowledge. The very reality of our identity takes care of itself, and so self-identification doesn't undermine identity. That is -- I take statements of one's identity to be truth-apt, I just think that the person whose best situated to make judgments about their truth is the person making the statement (EDIT: about themself, that is).

But then there's the other side of identity, how you interpret others. But this doesn't have to do with features or aspects of others, in my opinion. As you noted, we don't ask people for their identity. It happens before we're even really cognitively engaged. We glide along, accepting the identity we see and interacting with it before really judging whether the identity we perceive is right or wrong or whatever.

So given these two features -- that a person is better situated to judge whether something is true of themselves, and the lack of cognitive engagement in ascertaining others identities on a regular basis -- I'd say that a general conversation is exactly wrong headed. We don't need sets with specified traits to make judgments of others with. We just need to listen to what others have to say about themselves.

Yes, I read us as saying similar enough things too.

Isn't it clear why would be a problem? — Judaka

I don't think so. But, then, I don't think of personal identity like you do. I'm not looking to define these things in order to pass judgment on who counts as who. That's exactly what I'm advising against. So where you say

You're really vastly underestimating how many different kinds of identities there are, not all of them are clear cut and some are quite contentious or hotly debated. — Judaka

I'm saying we ought not debate personal identity. It's not up for debate because to debate someone's identity is dehumanizing. It puts someone in the position of proving their own existence. How could someone possibly do that?

So where you say:

There needs to be a general discussion to understand this so that we can decide how someone who isn't biologically male could assume a "male" identity, — Judaka

I'm saying that's exactly what doesn't need to happen. For the most part, we treat others with enough respect that they know things about themselves a little better than I know about them -- this is especially the case with sensitive things, like religion, political affiliation, or sexual orientation. That's respectful of the person as a person. And that's what is important.

what the rules are for that and how it might work etc — Judaka

The rules for determining someone's personal identity, usually, is to just ask them, and believe that they're in a better position than myself to ascertain such things. Further, even if I happen to believe otherwise, it's not my place to go about proving it -- After all, they're in a better position than myself to ascertain such things about themself, given they've always been around and I've only been around for however long but much less than always.

The rules, I suggest, is to treat others with enough respect that they need not prove themselves. Asking for proof of someone else's personal identity is belittling -- it says to someone they are so ignorant that you know them better than they know themselves.

Note that this doesn't mean that someone cannot be wrong about themself. It means that the rules we should concern ourselves with is how we actually treat people, and the best way to treat others, when it comes to them speaking on their personal identity, is to respect them. For a discussion to take place, respect first has to be in place. And if we're asking people to prove who they are, then respect isn't really in play. Then we're trying to prove things, or show how I was right or wrong when this is wholly other to how we actually build relationships.

But it'd be absurd for you to completely hand over the reins to me to allow me to dictate to you how you should view me. — Judaka

Why's that?

For gender identity, it's not about whether someone getting to decide what your "true" gender is, it's about the practical implications of being recognised and acknowledged as belonging to a particular gender. — Judaka

For practical purposes, I'd say that for almost every part of one's personal identity we don't have to go about proving it to others. Notice your list:

disabled status, class, appearance, ethnicity, language, hobbies, skills, occupations, culture, place of living, and way of living, — Judaka

These are aspects of one's social identity. I'd say that "identity" is not singular. When it comes to one's social designation, of course it matters what others say. When it comes to one's personal identity, no one owns that but the person whose identity it is. Necessarily, by the usage of language, our social nature is already imprinted upon our identifying ourself. But these social identities come from our personal identities. After all, disabled status wasn't a thing in the United States until the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. It's not like everyone who was disabled suddenly became disabled after having the social recognition. It's just that people in the world "caught up" to the real facts of disability (itself a social designation only necessary due to our economic model being privitized, and some people not counting as "good enough" for the machine of capital to use, but they certainly would still like to live).

There needs to be a general discussion to understand this so that we can decide how someone who isn't a male could assume a "male" identity, what the rules are for that and how it might work. — Judaka

Eh, I'd just say that you're the one whose mistaken on how these things work. After all, you say:

I have an expectation that others are going to treat me as a male because I identify as a male and look like a male, I've never encountered any situation where it's been an issue for me. — Judaka

Might it be the case that people who have had to deal with being accepted might know a little more than someone whose always been accepted for exactly who they are and who never has to worry about proving who they are to others?

If I identify as disabled but I'm not disabled in any way, you'll just accept that as part of my identity? If I tell you I identify as upper-class but I'm completely broke, you'll go forward thinking I'm part of the upper-class? — Judaka

A thing about hypotheticals -- they aren't real. And when discussing the reality of personal identity I think that hypotheticals of the form which compares facts with judgments are wholly inappropriate. We don't go down to the identity-clinic where the trained psychologist runs a brain scan and hands us a paper which tells us who we are. Identity is not an object of scientific knowledge.


A thing about identity -- even if I don't accept your identity, you can continue to identify in that manner. What I think is irrelevant to your personal identity because I don't "negotiate" your identity. Personal identity isn't some object of knowledge which a community of knowers debate which propositions are appropriate. Personal identity morphs and changes over time, and we frequently are saddled with parts of ourselves which other parts of ourselves would rather not were there.

I may have a hard time believing such and such about a person (for whatever reason), but that doesn't mean that my beliefs are determinant of their identity.

The way I'd put it is that the thing-in-itself is a noumenon, i.e. something that can be thought but cannot be empirically encountered, but noumena is the general category while thing-in-itself is one particular noumenon.

I believe it was mostly invented to make a distinction between transcendental idealism and the pure idealism that Kant is concerned with criticizing -- it's absurd to think that the moon stops existing when no one looks at it, but we'll never encounter the moon-in-itself either. So thing-in-itself is more like a place-holder concept to guard against treating metaphysical (non-empirical, and unbounded by the categories) judgments about objects as knowledge -- such as objects are material/ideal, which cannot be determined through collective empirical judgment.

This isn't to disagree with anything you've written, which I've agreed with, but to complement it.

Are you saying that identity is entirely free choice? — Judaka

No.

I'm saying that no one owns a person's identity other than the person whose identity it is. You nor I get to say who Susan or Ryan are. They get to say who they are. And they are the ones who get to say whether they were right, wrong, or somewhere in-between when it comes to their own identity.

The issue is whether others accept the identity you choose, and the question here is the legitimacy of a choice to determine one's own gende — Judaka

"Choice" isn't the right language, as I say in the above. Identity, including gender-identity, is not about epistemic access or moral choices. You simply are not the one I'll consult when it comes to someone else's identity, and I wouldn't consult myself to understand your identity -- I'd ask and listen to you.

And that is as it should be, whatever the point is.

Is it ever reasonable to concede the truth of each of the premises of a deductive argument and yet deny the conclusion — MichaelJYoo

If F(65%) then G(65%)
F(65%)
Therefore, G(65%)

So the unweighted possibility space would look like:

F| G| F->G
T| T| T
T| F| F
F| T| T
F| F| T

For any particular instance you'd have to input a randomized number, or perhaps this is a model of a real process (like flipping an unfair coin) and you'd just have to flip the coin to determine the truth value of each proposition.

That is, it seems that you'd just have to determine the individual truth-value of each proposition, then you could determine whether some connective holds or not in the old-fashioned truth-table way.


I wouldn't want to refuse the possibility a priori, but I do think that denying the conclusion of a deductive argument where its premises are true would depend upon the content of the example -- and probability doesn't seem to undermine validity because its at a different "level" of determination than what truth-tables are at: probability determines if such-and-such a proposition is true in a given instance, and then based upon the value of that event you can apply the normal calculus.

However, what does it mean to be a man or a woman? — Susu

I think that this is intentionally left up to whomever is identifying themself -- there is no one way to be a man or a woman, up to and including the body one is born with, and up to and including identifying as neither a man nor a woman. Our identities are ours, not based on conventional nomenclature or essential properties or duties.

You're going to have to spell out what you're thinking, because to me these just look like a handful of unrelated questions.

I took it as a symbol for the dawn of whatever it is that allows us to create and invent tools -- hence the shot shortly thereafter where the ape throws a bone in the sky, a clear indication of a tool separate from the ape, which cuts to a spaceship in the same position -- nothing has changed for the species since that moment of realization, the only difference between using the bone as a tool to accomplish things we want and a spaceship in the same manner is having enough generations to figure out the details of that same way of grasping the world (totally unlike prior to their cognizance of themselves and tools and desires -- sort of like a dawn of consciousness thing, but with a symbol that symbolizes the advent of technology)

I don't feel qualified to comment on the potential differences because I wouldn't claim to know very much about Kant's noumena. From a complete layman perspective though, Kant's noumena are often referred to as the thing-in-itself, yes? Taking that literally (perhaps erroneously, though) I think the difference would be in that hidden states do not posit any 'thing' at all, they are an informational construct, about data, not material composition. As such they can be an implication of a data model, whereas any thing-in-itself would be ontological? But as I say, I'm not sure as I don't have a deep understanding of noumena. — Isaac

Perhaps, with our powers combined, we could come up with something that works for us. Obviously to make these comparisons one has to have an interpretation of Kant, so there's going to be some controversy with respect to which interpretation we're favoring. But if we don't mind stirring that pot and wanting to have some kind of rough idea, I'd claim I have some knowledge of the noumena. (EDIT: heh, well... as a philosophical concept, at least! :D I'd be contradicting myself the other way...)


In my understanding of the distinction we have to step back and look at the philosophical landscape of the time to see what sorts of debates were being taken seriously by philosophers: Is space relative, or absolute? Are we free, or are we determined by the laws of physics? Does God exist? Is the soul immortal?

From the particular examples that Kant works through we can see that his target is metaphysical theories. Further, these metaphysical theories are demonstrated to be undecidable since the only way we settle whether some statement is true is by referring to what we collectively experience, and these particular theories and judgments attempt to get "outside" of our experience and assert the truth of things we have no connection to.

By "no connection", I always harp on the fact that one of the categories is "causation", and the noumena is outside of the categories, and so no we cannot make sense of the noumena by applying the category of causation to it -- it does not cause phenomena. With respect to our scientific knowledge, at least, it's a purely negative category (with respect to the other two powers of the mind, practical reason and aesthetic/teleological judgment, the noumena plays a different role -- but with respect to scientific knowledge, it's purely negative)

So given that, from your description of "hidden states" -- I'd say these things are absolutely not connected. First we don't even have concepts with your neural model, that's sort of just "assumed" to ride along with the firing of neurons. And then with all the causal language being used "noumena" seems wholly innappropriate as a boundary condition for this discussion. I'd say this falls under "empirical psychology", so the transcendental conditions of knowledge won't effect what we have to say here even if we are Kantians.

is that they're purposeful fictions. — Isaac

I like this notion of purposeful fictions.

I suppose the error theorist's task, then, is to lay out what discriminates a fantasy from a purposeful story -- "story" in the sense of our ability to parse the world into story form, ala "purposeful fiction". That might go some way to making this notion more appealing.

By "scientific", I meant according to the way biologists use the word. — Tate

I pulled a definition from this pdf claiming to be a post-secondary biology textbook: "mating system whereby one male and one female remain coupled for at least one mating season"

Given that human beings don't have a mating season, I'd say it's a hard sell on being useful to describe humans.

Nevertheless, it's held up as an ideal on a large portion of the earth. The question was: why? — Tate

I've supplied an answer, and answered your rebuttal: polygamy is an extension of monogamy, not a strike against monogamy as an ideal. The ideal is there because penis-havers make economic decisions over the household, and they don't want to be saddled with someone else's child.

If by scientific you just mean descriptive of human behavior, then human beings are simply not monogamous. There's nothing to explain because this is a false statement.

Historically patriarchs had multiple wives — Tate

I think you're starting from a false notion of patriarch here -- it's a picture of a man with his harem. While that is an example of patriarchy, it's not a definition. Patriarchy as I set it out: the social rule where the penis-haver of a household makes economic decisions for said household. So, "historically speaking", monogomous relationships count insofar that the penis-haver is the one who holds the power of the wallet within the household.

Some patriarchs have multiple wives -- but I'd say that even most do not. Polygamy is just an extension of the logic taken to an extreme: if I can own one wife, then if I'm rich enough I should be able to own multiple wives. While we of modern, sensible tastes don't put it in terms of ownership, it wasn't so long ago that a man could have his wife put away for being "hysterical" in our purportedly modern world.

I don't think patriarchy answers the question, though. Patriarchy doesn't entail monogamy — Tate

Patriarchy is the enforced social rule of men as the head of the household who makes decisions with respect to household economic arrangements, at least with respect to this topic (it's much more than just this rule, but this is a simple enough beginning).

This balance of power has changed in parts of the world, but that tradition is still alive and well -- and I'd say that even if we choose to re-interpret monogamy in some other way, that this is where the ideal "comes from", so to speak -- its cultural genealogy comes from the fact that children are expensive, that it's harder to track who the father is, and monogamy makes tracking that economic responsibility much easier.



Oh, yes -- we're recently enlightened, you see. ;)

But, yeah, I believe human beings are creatures, more or less. Flesh, blood, bone, and brain, and related to all the life that we see before us through the evolutionary story.

I hear you. The fact is, I care about all those questions but they still 'don't matter' in practical terms, as far as I can tell. I'm not saying I want to change anything but I find it interesting that a transformative idea - like truth or the nature of reality - may not actually transform how I conduct myself. — Tom Storm

Yeah, true. There's something queer about philosophical theories -- they seem as if they should have transformative implications, but also that people can change their beliefs on these matters and go on about their day like nothing changed.

Two ways to tackle this: 1) a given philosophy is deemed useless, or 2) a given philosophy is deemed bad.

1) Whatever philosophy happens to be, we regularly see examples of people changing philosophical positions -- so it is reasonable to conclude that, insofar as our day-to-day is concerned, philosophy is useless because we are free to change beliefs without changing anything else.

2) Whatever philosophy happens to be, these philosophies on offer are bad because they do not address the concerns of human beings -- if they did, then changing a belief would have consequences for our activities.

Why not just have harems like gorillas? — Tate

In societies that don't have harems, at least (since some societies do have harems, hence the word harem) -- the women will have to agree to patriarchy as well as the men, but when you frame it like that it's a lot harder to catch on. So, monogamy.

I'll voice disagreement, but -- it's irrelevant too because I'm describing an ideal and giving a material reason for said ideal. Since I don't think people follow the ideal it doesn't really counter the description and explanation to say that people don't follow the ideal.

Ahh, OK.

For that I'd say the explanation is patriarchy. Men wanted ways to ensure that the children they were responsible for were actually their children, so monogamy was invented as an ideal. You can always tell who the mother is, but it's not so easy to tell who the father is. So, if my house is responsible to raise a child, I want to ensure that it is my child, and not someone elses child -- in effect, monogamy controls female bodies such that men know whose children is whose.

why did it ever come up at all? Biologically speaking, it probably shouldn't have. Does this imply that we're more than our biology? — Tate

I don't think so. We are able to posit ideals that we're unable to live up to. That's a large part of what makes people unhappy, in my estimation -- they want to be what they are not, and feel anxiety for not living up to their ideal. (hence why Christianity has a forgiveness-mechanism built in, to sustain the Christian identity in spite of not living up to the ideal)

Is monogamy an ideal for our species?

In the sense that people say they believe in it, of course, but the people who follow through on that belief are few enough that I'd say it doesn't really count as a species trait. And if we look at our closest cousins, the bonobos and chimpanzees, it's not a trait of theirs either.

I disagree! I think we've come to a better understanding of the discussants' perspectives. Wouldn't've happened without you facilitating it. — fdrake

I second this! You were a great aid in spurring on thoughts which I hadn't had before this! And while I didn't reply to everything, I did actually read everything -- and really enjoyed picking through people's thoughts and references (Got to page 4 of A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs today -- it just takes me time to read things)

I keep coming back to the question how would a given idea (in philosophy) change how I live? — Tom Storm

Wouldn't it have to talk about something you care about? So, rather than a philosophy of physicalism, or induction or truth -- a philosophy of love, or sex, political theory, or ethics (to decide what to do next ;) ).

For it to change how you live, it'd have to first talk about something you care about, I'd say. (Though do we want to change the way we live? Is that desirable? If not, then it should be obvious that nothing will change the way you live -- you're doing good! :D )

When we point to another and say 'they are wise' are we not reporting about our own values, recognizing something of ourselves rather than the nature of the other? In other words, can those without wisdom identify the wise? — Tom Storm

Great question. I think I'd say no! At least to whether the unwise can identify the wise. To the former I think you're right to say that we use our own values to identify people who we consider wise, though I'd say that doesn't mean we'd be wrong in our belief about who's wise, per se -- only that wisdom is value-laden. And I think your colloquial definition is good. Having good judgment is value-laden: Meaning that one cannot have wisdom without also having a commitment to something normative. (EDIT: I should have also added, "And likewise for judgment")

Since we who are not wise cannot identify the wise, and here we are wondering what wisdom is that puts us in the curious position of the lover in the quote: we are asking after what wisdom is (desire to have wisdom, even if just out of curiosity -- a kind of desire), and we don't have it. We'd like to satisfy that curiosity.

I find philosophy endlessly interesting because of the question you opened up with: What does that quote really mean?

I think that I'd compare it with Socrates describing himself as a midwife in the Theaetetus :

Theaetetus: I have often set my myself to study that problem [about the nature of knowledge]...but I cannot persuade myself that I can give any satisfactory solution or that anyone has ever stated in my hearing the sort of answer you require. And yet I cannot get the question out of my mind.

Socrates: That is because your mind is not empty or barren. You are suffering the pains of childbirth...Have you never heard that I am the son of a midwife...and that I practice the same trade? It is not known that I possess this skill, so the ignorant world describes me in other terms: As an eccentric person who reduces people to hopeless perplexity...

The only difference [between my trade and that of midwives] is that my patients are men, not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the soul that is experiencing birth pangs. And the highest achievement of my art is the power to try by every test to decide whether the offspring of a young man's thought is a false phantom or is something imbued with life and truth.

(From here, but I wanted to link to the whole text above too just for accessibility -- but note they are different translations)


The position of the lover is like that of Theaetetus in the above -- in between knowing and ignorance.


So I'd say that you and I are in the same boat: I don't really understand philosophy, either. One of the reasons I find it so interesting. But then, I couldn't play midwife, according to what I exactly said -- since I couldn't identify the wise, either.

Also, as much as I would like to love wisdom, Im not sure if I really do. Its more that I seek wisdom as a practical matter to avoid ruin, than out of love for it. — Yohan

I like the following passage from The Symposium:

No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want." "But-who then, Diotima," I said, "are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?" "A child may answer that question," she replied; "they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher: or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant.

Now, these days I think we mean more than this by "philosopher" -- and given my usual way of looking at the world, I tend to think of these labels as social honorariums and titles: so one doesn't really claim the title of philosopher unless they are quite certain of themselves and their role or function within a group. But perhaps one would claim to be a philosopher in the above sense? One who is not wise, nor ignorant, but is seeking after wisdom in the way that Love does: And upon obtaining said wisdom, one ceases to be a philosopher.

@Srap Tasmaner -- I keep thinking it through-- since this is a thread on truth, it doesn't make sense to assume truth to explain meaning, thus denying (2) even though it's what makes the most sense. Which leaves me with (3) if I don't want to beg the question --

What does it really mean to "assume meaning"? In the broadest sense, a poem has meaning. And really I'd want to include that sort of thing in any understanding of meaning, which has nothing to do with truth. "assuming meaning" gives us more powers than truth-telling. Natural languages are absurdly powerful in terms of what they can do with meaning, to the point of creating new words wholesale, it can be tooled into scientific disciplines or epic poems or rarified philosophical thoughts or recipes or the fleeting thoughts of our everyday life.

But, really, that's just asking my conversation partner if they'd like to beg the question on truth with me without specifying that we're begging the question on truth to see if there's some other way to put the matter.

EDIT: More or less I think I'm starting to see my own dead-end, but I'm not sure which turn along the way got me here. The opposite of aporia -- constipated confusion :D

I lean toward (2), but I just don't know enough to say. — Srap Tasmaner

Eh, I'm just feeling around here too. One thing I'm leery of with (2) is that I've been saying I assume meaning -- so really I'm asking my interlocutor if they agree that we understand English sentences. Insofar that we agree upon that then the rest follows. But if you ask me to specify a semantics, then I can no longer specify truth. Here we'd be taking the tactic of assuming truth to spell out meaning.

But I think I'm still thinking (3) since I'm assuming meaning to spell out truth with English. (2) because of the actual history of semantics, though, has weight. And starting at something so specific as the English predicate ". . . is true" is much more at my level of being able to conceptualize. (L1? L2? What? :D)

I keep thinking there's something of interest there in truth as a sort of identity function. Have you noticed that it works for anything you might count as a truth-value? It works for "unknown," it works for "likely" or "probably," even for numerical probabilities. Whatever you plug in for the truth-value of p, that's the truth-value of p is true. If you think of logic as a sort of algebra, that makes the is-true operator (rather than predicate) kind of interesting.

Hah, no I had not noticed. I think what keeps what I've been trying to say from collapsing into an algebra, where is-true is an operator on propositions, is the actual history. I like the relationship that's spelled out by the T-sentence which shows how truth is embedded within used language. When using a statement -- that's what has a truth-value. That's what's truth-apt. When naming a statement, that's what we assign truth-value. It's a judgment. But the used statement is what counts as the truth-apt statement.

It seems to me that in the history of ". . .is true" truth conditions are a part of it. But "something else" is too. So 3 to circumvent 1 and allow for creative uses, however for the most part 2.

The T-schema states:

"p" is T iff p

Using English to provide an interpretation to the schema:

p is any statement in English
" " is the mention operator, where a statement is converted into a name for that same statement.
is T is "... is true", as understood by us as speakers of English.
iff is the familiar logical connective from baby logic.

In general, I'd accept any natural language though. I'm using English because we are. I imagine some natural languages which don't have this structure which this doesn't work for. Also, note, that there isn't some concept securing truth here -- it's really just the history of the predicate "... is true".

The dialogical game I posited with this, when it comes to natural languages, has basically already taken place. There's a few hundred years worth of English usage which gives "... is true" its sense.

This is all I meant by a natural language semantics -- the meaning one gets by understanding a language. If you grant that English sentences have meaning, at least.

If so not... eh... I guess it's just squeeks and squawks all the way down? I'm not really sure there. It's an intriguing notion, but one that doesn't make a lick of sense to me really.

Not if you include natural language semantics, as far as I can tell. You just also inherit the liars paradox with that.

The T-schema doesn’t say much and is compatible with more substantial theories of truth, — Michael

Sure. I mean, I said exactly that earlier in the thread :D

The problem is that they aren't universal. And, in order to evaluate "better fit" for any given theory of truth, you'd have to understand truth already. So the very act of being able to evaluate correspondence/coherence in particular circumstances means we must already have some understanding of truth that is neither correspondence or coherence, at least if by "better fit" we mean "seems to be about the right description"

Just to set out where my mind is headed at the moment, then:

Everything is text, even if in the beginning there was no word. I'm thinking this is more a transcendental condition of understanding rather than a metaphysical thesis -- language is how we come to understand the world. Before we were linguistically adept we had very little in the way of understanding. And as we develop our linguistic powers we're able to see more of the world than we were before. Even on an individual level, that can be experienced.

However, unlike Kant, I don't think I'd say this "cuts us off" from the really real -- rather, what's really real is just right there before us always-already changing. To understand is to grasp the world with language. But the world changes and we have to go back out into it, dip into the elementality constituted by my own desire to build again my edifice of understanding-grasping the world.

Language as a specific thing is English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, sign language . . . the natural languages each have their names, and they have specific traits as you say. And in the broad sense they all count as writing.

Language in the broad sense includes gesture as outside of even sign-language. Sign-language, after all, is just writing with a medium other than ink or sound, and the person speaking-writing in sign-language can also point and wave and jump for joy and clap and smile and so on. And we are even able to distinguish between sign-language and gesture when someone is signing to us!

BUT -- as you say:

Probably a bad idea — Srap Tasmaner

I'm just writing the above to get at where I was coming from. I'm fine with not using this way of talking, and keeping "language" for the narrow sense to keep things clear, especially as I am uncertain how to be super specific in the broad sense. It just seemed relevant to truth is all.

Ah, OK. I guess I'm just looking for something a little more universal from a theory of truth, and I see the T-sentence as setting out that universal relationship effectively for all sentences other than the liars -- including sentences like the kettle.

But I should add that I don’t think it’s a given that I’m talking about the correspondence theory. I’m not saying that some sentences correspond to material objects; I’m only saying that some sentences depend on material objects.

As a rough analogy to explain the difference, speech depends on a speaker, but it doesn’t correspond to a speaker. — Michael

I think that sentences depending on material objects is close enough to count for my purposes. For me I'm getting caught up in the notion that it's us who decide what counts as "material object" -- "us" historically, at least, since "Kettle" is a word with that kind of history. Yes, the material object matters to truth, but that's because we're using "truth" just like that.

Maybe this is just something we'd go back and forth on though :D -- maybe it's nothing.