For example, beliefs can be true or false, like the belief that "the sky is blue", and their truth value is dependent upon whether the content of the belief is an actual pattern in reality. — Jerry

For me, it's hard not to simplify this into : "the sky is blue" is true if and only if the sky is blue. The temptation is to say more, to explain truth, but it tends to come out as the same tune in another key.

I guess this is just a roundabout way of accepting the correspondence theory of truth, but I think the key idea is that truth isn't a fundamental "thing", like an abstract object that we discover. It simply describes whether our mental models correctly describe reality. — Jerry

I think the deflationary/redundancy view which I endorse is a leaner, cleaner version of correspondence.
Talk of mental models and representation in general seems to want to put two things together side by side, but it seems that only the thing on our side is intelligible. How does 'the sky is blue' match anything ? The language and the world are one, you might say. But it'd make sense to evolve a language like that. (I don't mean that letters or sounds are the same as the world but that meaning is something like the world-for-us, though it's probably safer to just endorse the redundancy theory of truth.)

Confidence does speed things up, though. If you're running through the jungle trying to escape a saber toothed tiger, you need to react quickly to the justifications you're receiving. — Tate

:up:

I don't know, you're probably right. If you're justified, you may be more likely to be right. — Tate

I lean that way, though it might be hard to formalize. Stats might be an exception. P-values roughly measure the probability of chance being responsible for what looks like non-chance.

I would expect you to be a knowledge externalist, though. — Tate

Still working it out, but I'm liking a normative approach to conceptuality. How are we responsible for our claims about objects in our world ? The object has a 'say' in this.

In my previous discussion with Joshs, the contention has been mostly determining what is in contention... — Banno

He's fun though.

Pie, I doubt that you disagree with this; rather, it seems obvious, no? — Banno

Indeed. Transformation is patently constant, but changes in the norms are governed by those same changing norms.

Our practice of language-use is not merely the application of concepts but simultaneously the institution of the conceptual norms governing the correct use of our linguistic expressions; it is our actual use of language itself that settles the meanings of our expressions.
...
A characteristic distinguishing feature of linguistic practices is their protean character, their plasticity and malleability, the way in which language constantly overflows itself, so that any established pattern of usage is immediately built on, developed, and transformed. The very act of using linguistic expressions or applying concepts transforms the content of those expressions or concepts. The way in which discursive norms incorporate and are transformed by novel contingencies arising from their usage is not itself a contingent, but a necessary feature of the practices in which they are implicit. It is easy to see why one would see the whole enterprise of semantic theorizing as wrong–headed if one thinks that, insofar as language has an essence, that essence consists in its restless self–transformation (not coincidentally reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “self–overcoming”). Any theoretical postulation of common meanings associated with expression types that has the goal of systematically deriving all the various proprieties of the use of those expressions according to uniform principles will be seen as itself inevitably doomed to immediate obsolescence as the elusive target practices overflow and evolve beyond those captured by what can only be a still, dead snapshot of a living, growing, moving process. It is an appreciation of this distinctive feature of discursive practice that should be seen as standing behind Wittgenstein’s pessimism about the feasibility and advisability of philosophers engaging in semantic theorizing…

…
[T]he idea that the most basic linguistic know–how is not mastery of proprieties of use that can be expressed once and for all in a fixed set of rules, but the capacity to stay afloat and find and make one’s way on the surface of the raging white–water river of discursive communal practice that we always find ourselves having been thrown into (Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit) is itself a pragmatist insight. It is one that Dewey endorses and applauds. And it is a pragmatist thought that owes more to Hegel than it does to Kant. For Hegel builds his metaphysics and logic around the notion of determinate negation because he takes the normative obligation to do something to resolve the conflict that occurs when the result of our properly applying the concepts we have to new situations is that we (he thinks, inevitably) find ourselves with materially incompatible commitments to be the motor that drives the unceasing further determination and evolution of our concepts and their contents. The process of applying conceptual norms in judgment and intentional action is the very same process that institutes, determines, and transforms those conceptual norms. — Brandom

And, well known, I think...

We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. — Neurath

But Google can translate the simple stuff very well, so it's hasty to exaggerate the velocity of change.

As Kojève puts it, man is [historical] time is the concept[-system] existing empirically.

There's may not be an external, material world, but that there is a world is certain. — Banno

I think the spatial metaphor 'external' is not so bad. The world encompasses little ol' me.

Or picturing it as happening inside individual minds when it happens in a public, and hence political, space that it, itself, creates. — Banno

:up:

My wanting to be right will also involve a re-articulation of the very sense of being right. What matters to both of us in this will never be more than partially shared, and thus always ahead of us to be achieved more fully. — Joshs

:up:

Well said !

What Rouse is trying to do is show that our participation within normative practices is not simply a matter of conformity ( or not) to pre-established norms, but a continual re-framing and re-configuration. — Joshs

The situation might be described as an intergenerational dialectic, with science advancing one funeral at a time (if the old dogs refuse to learn new tricks.) Along with reason's autonomy and self-criticism comes endless dynamism, an endless revolution in the memes of seduction.

Being-there as being-in-the-world is primarily governed by logos…Coming into the world, one grows into a determinate tradition of speaking, seeing, interpreting. Being-in-the-world is an already-having-the-world-thus-and-so. This peculiar fact, that the world into which I enter, in which I awaken, is there for me in a determinate interpretedness, I designate terminologically as fore-having.

Dasein is history.
...
Dasein, whiling away its own time in each case, is at the same time always a generation. So a specific interpretedness precedes every Dasein in the shape of the generation itself. What is preserved in the generation is itself the outcome of earlier views and disputes, earlier interpretations and past concerns.
...
The wellspring of such persistent elements lies in the past, but they continue to have such an impact in the present that their dominance is taken for granted and their development forgotten. Such a forgotten past is inherent in the prevailing interpretedness of being-together-with-one-another. To the extent that Dasein lives from (cares about) this past, it is this past itself.
...
The world with which we are concerned and being-in itself are both interpreted within the parameters of a particular framework of intelligibility.
...
One has a timeworn conceptuality at one's disposal. It provides the fore-concept for the interpretation. The interpretedness of a 'time' is strictly determined by these structural factors and the variable forms of their realization. And it is precisely the unobtrusiveness of these factors --the fact that one is not aware of them -- which gives public interpretedness its taken-for-granted character. However, the 'fore'-character in the structure of interpretedness shows us that it is none other than what has already been that jumps ahead, as it were, of a present time pervaded by interpretedness. Guided by its interpretedness, expectant concern lives its own past. — Heidegger

This part is key : the 'fore'-character in the structure of interpretedness shows us that it is none other than what has already been that jumps ahead, as it were, of a present time pervaded by interpretedness.

Or: I am my past in the mode of no longer being it.

(I still ride w/ my boy Sartre.)

One is governed by habits of interpretation so automatic that one takes such interpretations for the essence of the world. We are self-interpreting interpreters acting upon and thinking mostly from inconspicuously automatic and therefore unquestionable interpretations of ourselves and the world. One might say that, with especially automatic ('unconscious') interpretations, culture is mistaken for nature, the contingent for the necessary. Sellars likes 'second nature' for this. Perhaps only a little bit of our second nature is 'available' for criticism or adjustment. The tacit is 'necessary' until it becomes contingent and questionable (and possibly editable) when pointed out.

As Witt would argue ‘belief’ has a near infinity of potential senses, tied together not by an overarching categorical frame , but by family resemblance, which is not at all the same thing as a pre-existing rule or category. — Joshs

If you are referring to the concept of belief, you give me all I need, which is that it's essentially a public concept, however flexible. It's the clash of peanut butter and jelly. Speaking as peanut butter (you are what you eat), I say that jelly tends to emphasize how fuzzy and individual everything is semantically...and that this eventually (if pushed too far) lapses into self-subversion. Presumably you want this very point to be understood and to be right about something that applies or matters to both of us.

They are a way of making sense of people's actions using intentional language. John went to the fridge because he wanted a beer and believed that there was beer in the fridge. — Banno

:up:
And given the importance of 'know thyself,'...

To think that therefore the cat must have a thing in it's brain that somehow corresponds to the belief is a category error, confusing a brain state with an intentional description. — Banno

Another approach: it's we who are making sense of the cat, and we aren't going to do that in cat-speak. Let them attribute a sequence of meows to us, if they care enough. It's only fair.

What I invite you to take seriously is Rouse’s articulation of the relation between belief-justification and the space of reasons within which any such claims are intelligible. — Joshs

I like to think I take it quite seriously. I take it that the Enlightenment was the big event. This is when the space of reasons blossomed, when reason became autonomous. Philosophy 'is' (ideally) the flower of this space of reasons...and even its self-consciousness, as Brandom might put it. We evolve a metacognitive vocabulary so that we can not only endorse inferences, but explain why, in detail. We make explicit what we've always done, not only to do it even better, but just to know ourselves.

We invented words like 'premise' and 'conclusion,' long after there were premises and conclusions. An inferential semantics explains how claims are intelligible in terms of the inferences that are and are not allowed. "He closed his umbrella while it was raining, because he wanted to stay dry." This is confusion or nonsense without some extra context that rescues it. We can't know one concept without knowing many. To cash out the rational in the rational animal, we emphasize inferential.

You may be warranted to believe P, but that doesn't say anything about the probability of P being true. — Tate

Is this so clear ? Why then do we value warrant ?

Easier said than done. — Tom Storm

:up:

As it happens, Pilate's question was needlessly abstract and seems to construct 'truth' as a mystical property. — Tom Storm

Bacon writing it adds even more complexity, because it's plausible that Bacon identified with Pilate and understood Pilate to be mocking some grandiose reification. "Truths maybe, but Truth ? Nevermind."

the question for Pilate was, is Jesus starting an insurrection? This can be investigated. No need to calibrate the notion of truth. The best we can do is test everyday claims. Truth is not a property that all true propositions have in common. — Tom Storm

That seems right to me. Just as there is no it that rains when it's raining, ...

I imagine there are better and worse methods to go about doing this, right? Do you have any simple thoughts for a non-philosopher? — Tom Storm

I don't think I can tell you anything you don't know. If you happen to have not studied statistics, understanding controlled experiments, hypothesis testing, and fitting models to data seems as valuable to me as anything else.

the opening and sustaining of a “space of reasons” in which there could be conceptually articulated meaning and justification at all, including meaningful disagreement and conceptual difference. — Joshs

FWIW, this is precisely what my "our minimal epistemic commitment" thread is about.

I like your quote, but I don't see it taking those pesky assertions down a notch.

The familiar epistemological conception of us as believers, who might ideally share a common representation of the world in the scientific image, thus conflates particular moves within discursive prac­tice or the space of reasons with the space or practice itself. — Joshs

Do you actually....believe this ? Do you endorse this as a claim that I should take seriously ?

You know the meaning of P if you know when it's true. — Tate

If you mean if you know what would make it true, then that seems (tentatively) right.

Important for what? — Tate

It seems philosophers can only manage to make sure their beliefs are warranted, justified.

--How can I have true beliefs ?
--Well, I guess (?) make sure your beliefs are warranted and justified.
--So a warranted belief is more likely to be true ?
--I guess so. Yeah.

Thus, by investigating the logical form of propositions, we can legitimately claim to be investigating the structure of our whole language. — Joshs

Inferentialism makes a good case for building a theory on assertions. If irony is the trope of tropes, we get lots of mileage from a little spin on an assertion. We philosophers especially might want to consider how central inferences are in the lives of the 'rational' animal...and what are premises and conclusions ? How do we explain ourselves to one another ? To ourselves ? Inferences.

My point is that belief is only one of myriad ways of sense-making , and far from the most important. — Joshs

I agree there are lots of ways to make sense. That belief is far from the most important is so far a mere claim. I tend to think it's central for philosophy anyway. I take the 'big event' to have been escaping superstition, claiming human autonomy (which is that of reason which is gloriously one and universal). Since then, if I can half-joke, we see lots of rebellions by those educated enough to pull off seductive self-contradicting irrationalisms which aren't obviously so. Yet I can't deny the attraction of some free-for-all it's-all-just-conceptual-art vision of philosophy. In fact, I used to try to defend and perform that vision. In the end, I think we want (among other institutions no doubt) something 'anal' and sober and careful.

I think there's a clear difference here. And I think it's truth, not warranted belief, that is important in this case. — Michael

Well now, that's not what I had in mind, but I guess ?

Note that the second statement is easily rewritten as 'I will die, if I am decapitated.'

I note also that all I meant was that the best we can do is make sure our beliefs are warranted. We seem forced to find out whether they turn out to be true the hard way.

As I've said before, there's a difference between saying that I can be wrong about something and saying that something other than my mind exists. — Michael

Oh I know we see this issue differently. I think the concepts are loose enough here, unanchored as they are by any practical application, that it's pointless to talk of right or wrong, for we'd just be asserting our preference again.

For me the issue was always essentially about whether there was something other than the mind, which is how I took 'external.' The solipsist seems to contemplate the possibility that there is only appearance and nothing behind it, collapsing the appearance-reality distinction. I take this to also be a collapse of the the parallel or equivalent mind-world distinction.

Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality coordinated with it.” — Witt

If you want to say meaning is found in truth conditions, yes. — Tate

Go on.

The essay explores that theme, tries to give it its due. I'm still making up my mind.

I think maybe warranted beliefs are what's important. I'm not sure truth plays much of a role. But I'm willing to be corrected.

But leaving maths aside, even if the solipsist knows that only his mental phenomena exists he doesn't know what his mental phenomena will be tomorrow, and so he doesn't know everything. — Michael

To me, his not knowing about his own mind...gives him something external to that mind. If a man has a Freudian unconscious, he has an unexplored basement, an other to him as ego.

I prefer to join 'world' with 'something I can be wrong about.' Otherwise, the mind that knows is not the mind that is unknown...or at least things get messy.

What is the 'I' ?

I think that the truth of "God does not exist" is mind-independent. And I think that "God does not exist" is true. But I don't think that God's non-existence "exists" as some Platonic fact.

And the same with maths. — Michael

I can maybe relate, but I think we still have to resolve the ambiguity, because there are versions of God (fixed versions) that I might accept (and that traditional theists would not accept.) Mathematical facts might be like facts about norms...about a community. The irrationality of root 2 seems about equivalent to the fact that mathematician ought to endorse the claim. $\sqrt{2} \notin \mathbb{Q}$ is (approximately) "there is an acceptable proof for [ the irrationality of root 2 ]." And this is approximately a fact about what mathematicians do and/or ought to accept (as a function of the familiarity of the theorem.)

Someone coined the term "pi". He was quite capable of coining it without assistance. — Michael

So for you it preexisted us...and you are not a platonist ?

My take is that the 'I' is logically/semantically an appendage of the 'we.' The self that speaks and thinks is fundamentally tribal, social, other-directed, and self-transcending. But I don't expect to be believed without justification. I'm just abbreviating my position, for context.

I learned what $\pi$ was in the context of an axiomatic system, as intimately related to the first positive zero of a famous trigonometric function. Its existence is proven within a complex system, developed over centuries. Is math still math if I make it all up myself ?

I would say that pi is irrational even if I'm the last man alive and even if I believe otherwise. — Michael

I understand why one would. But if no one else had ever existed, it'd be hard to find a meaning for 'pi.'
Of course there'd be no language in the first place.

And I don't think mathematical realism (or a bunch of other mathematicians) is required for me to get maths wrong. — Michael

Nor I.

But I speculate that it doesn't make much sense to get math wrong if you are the only being.

I suppose we must allow the edge case of the sole survivor finding the zeros of polynomials, but this is just the guy in the woods writing poetry.

They don't exist, but books about them do. — Michael

That might explain some of our talking past one another. To me, electrons and marriages are just characters in a story too.

We call some stories true.

How do you feel about Hamlet ? Or Charlie Brown ?

I feel no loyalty to any definition of the real. I don't take a vision of elementary particles 'behind' things as the really real, for instance. Sidewalks and promises and electrons and Snoopy and even sensations and thoughts exist.

But could that-which-exists not be understood as including tendencies and relationships ? What of the conception of an entity as essentially relational ? An electron 'is' what it might do with what other entities might do and so on.

'Exists' seem to be quite an open concept.

Yes. No corresponding relations or properties. — bongo fury

:up:

However, John doesn't know that only his mental phenomena exist. 3 doesn't entail that John know 2. — Michael

OK. John doesn't know that he knows of everything that exists. I'll add that to my computations.

Yes if N is a totality of corresponding facts. — bongo fury

So maybe we agree (if we can find a congruent terminology) that there's just true claims ? We are both minimalist on this issue ? Prosentential perhaps ?

I think the coins are a different scenario. It's possible that the inference I actually challenged was not your considered position.

To me the issue looks like semantics, what we mean by our terms.

You can't get from "only my mind exists" to "I cannot be wrong". — Michael

If only your mind exists then you must know everything, therefore you cannot be wrong about anything. — Isaac

I prefer understanding 'mind' in a way that agrees with @Isaac. But this isn't math, we don't have a formal definition, and so we basically have to make a case for this or that understanding. In that spirit, I hope to at least shift gears from trying prove there is a Correct choice here to untangling our individual preferences and presuppositions.

We can imagine a person mistaking a dreamscape for public reality. The dreamself bangs on a door, sure that the princess needs rescuing on the other side. Can he be wrong ? If he can, we seem to be making the dreamscape an 'other' to the dreamself, about which he can be wrong. To me, this would make it a kind of world. But the dreamself has a mind that is 'in' this world as a mere part of it. Can the dreamself say 'this is all just my mind' ? It gets messy, because there are two minds here. The one that's basically what Wittgenstein calls the limit of the world and also the conventional one which does not know what's on the other side of the door.

If only your mind exists then you know of everything that exists. But it doesn't follow that you know that no other stuff exists. — Michael

I know I said I'd drop this issue, but this caught my eye.

(1) If it exists, I know of it.

Now assume that something I don't know of exists. Then I know of it, by (1), and yet don't know of it, by assumption, a contradiction. Hence I cannot fail to know of anything that exists, and I can be confident that there are no entities unknown to me.

Maybe I'm missing something.

No entities corresponding to whole sentences. No truth-value attaching to things or events that aren't sentences. — bongo fury

That sounds correct.

It's hard to disallow meanings of sentences in ordinary conversation, but this is perhaps more conflation of P with 'P'. The 'meaning' of 'P' just is P. Something like that maybe.

"Just"??? — bongo fury

You are cryptic. I like terse, but please give me a little more to decipher.

States, then? States of affairs? — bongo fury

I think $\mathbb{N}$ is the wrong way to go. I think we agree ?

All these statements are indissociable from the first person, and that's the whole thing the correspondence theory's formulation points to. — Almagro

We should perhaps allow that a community can jointly declare or endorse P. So the point may more about language than the first-person, though of course 'I claim P' or 'I think P' plays a central role epistemologically.