I doubt that the definition of "convention" that you're using is "arbitrary." — Terrapin Station

It is arbitrary in the sense that there is no particular reason why that particular arrangement of those particular marks on a page (or pixels on a screen) represents what it does, other than that someone interprets it as doing so--or, in this case, lots of people thus interpret it. It does not resemble its object in any way, and there is no direct causal connection with its object.

Objective correspondence is an incoherent idea on my view. — Terrapin Station

Interesting ... any other notion of correspondence is an incoherent idea on my view.

What makes it a convention or not is simply whether it's the common/standard representation and/or way of representing. — Terrapin Station

No, what makes it a convention is that it is arbitrary--there is nothing about the moon itself that makes "moon" the proper term for it in English. The only difference with a private, idiosyncratic convention is that it is not very useful for communicating with others.

You seem to agree with Peirce the vast majority of the time ... — Terrapin Station

I have been reading a lot of his stuff lately, so I am trying it out in order to ascertain the extent to which I agree with it.

That doesn't mean, however, that possibilities occur (or whatever word we'd use) or that they're somehow "there" to have relationships with things when they're not actualized. — Terrapin Station

To a realist, it means that possibilities are real, even if they do not occur; i.e., are never actualized. In other words, there is more to reality than mere existence; possibility and necessity are just as real as actuality. Peirce wrote about this in terms of three categories: Firstness (possibility, quality, feeling), Secondness (actuality, fact, action), and Thirdness (necessity, law, thought).

In other words, the action or status of corresponding to facts is a judgment. — Terrapin Station

Whether a proposition corresponds to facts is itself an objective fact. The judgment does not determine such correspondence, it evaluates it, and can be mistaken in doing so.

There certainly are conventions, but representation works via individuals thinking about things in a particular way, even when we're talking about conventions. — Terrapin Station

If you are thinking about something concrete using words or other symbols, then you are representing it by conventions. The word "moon" represents the moon only by convention--that is what English-speakers typically call the very large spherical mass of rock that orbits the earth. Even if you are primarily using icons or indices, conventions are almost always also involved. You can draw a picture of the moon, but you will have to use certain artistic conventions in order to do so. You can simply point at the moon, but it is only by convention that this typically directs someone else's attention to it.

A proposition corresponding to facts is a judgment about the proposition's relationship to facts. — Terrapin Station

A proposition is not itself a judgment; rather, a judgment is an evaluation of a proposition as either true or false. If I judge a proposition to be true, then that judgment is correct if and only if the proposition really does represent the fact that it purports to represent.

By individuals thinking about the proposition in a representational way. That doesn't require any sort of convention or consensus. — Terrapin Station

We typically represent propositions in words, which only represent anything by convention. Another way of saying it is that a symbol represents its object only because it will be interpreted as doing so.

Well, first I don't agree that propositions are objective. — Terrapin Station

Would you mind clarifying what you mean by "subjective" vs. "objective"?

So truth is ... a property that obtains via making a judgment about the relation of a proposition to something else (like facts when we're talking about correspondence theory). — Terrapin Station

Are you saying that my judgment makes a proposition true or false, rather than its correspondence to the facts? If so, then it seems to me that I can never be wrong when I judge a particular proposition to be true, because that very judgment is what makes it true. Again, what am I missing?

So then you do not believe that facts and propositions are the same thing. Or, "No" is your answer to the question I asked. — Terrapin Station

Yes, no. :D

I disagree that "it represents its object by convention." I might also disagree that it's a sign, but it depends on just how you're defining sign. — Terrapin Station

A sign is anything that stands for something (its object) to something else (its interpretant). If a proposition does not represent its object--a purported fact--by convention, then how does it do so?

I'm pretty sure I explained this above, but at any rate, you judge it by assigning meaning to the terms in the declarative sentence (that's what a proposition is--the meaning of a statement) and then assessing (on correspondence theory, for example) whether that meaning matches the fact(s) you take the statement to pick out. — Terrapin Station

How does this differ significantly from my criterion that a proposition is true if, and only if, it represents a fact?

Yes, although there's some ambiguity there given that "real" has historically been used with so many different connotations. — Terrapin Station

Peirce's basic definition was that something is real if it has properties sufficient to identify it, regardless of whether anyone ever attributes them to it. He identified it with scholastic realism, and called his own position an "extreme" version thereof.

And yeah, I'd basically agree with Peirce in that, although since this would often be misunderstood, I'd hasten to add that I'm not a strong determinist. — Terrapin Station

Neither was Peirce; in fact, he was a strong opponent of what he called "necessitarianism." What I quoted before was his characterization of nominalism; hence my previous suggestion that you seem to be a nominalist, whereas MU appears to be a realist. I do not intend this as a pejorative, just hoping to clarify why the discussion has gone as it has.

Um, perhaps you've not been paying attention, but we know the other worlds exist because they interact with each other and with our world. — tom

I concede that I am not fully up to speed on QM, but it strikes me as a bit presumptuous to claim that we know the other worlds exist, and that they interact with our world. To be honest, I am not even sure what that would mean, or how one would demonstrate it.

In any case, the OP asked about distinguishing the world that we are actually experiencing from the "other" possible worlds. I was merely suggesting one terminological option for doing so.

So, taking QM seriously as a theory of reality solves many problems, and renders it testable. Parallel "worlds" are a prediction. — tom

In what sense is this particular prediction "testable"? What specific experiential consequences can we deductively explicate from it? How would we then go about inductively evaluating whether there really are parallel "worlds"?

Charles Sanders Peirce's careful distinction of existence from reality might be helpful here. "Real" means that something possesses properties sufficient to identify it, regardless of whether anyone ever attributes them to it, while "exists" means that something reacts with other things. Hence all possible worlds are real, but only our actual world exists. An interesting corollary of this usage of terminology is that Peirce argued for the reality of God, but not the existence of God.

Would it be fair to characterize your view as "holding that the potential, or possible, is nothing but what the actual makes it to be" (Peirce, CP 1.422)? In other words, do you consider it incorrect to claim that never-actualized possibilities can still be real?

When we do an inventory of the world, we do not find truth outside of minds making judgments about propositions. — Terrapin Station

Are you saying that truth is a property of judgments about propositions, and thus subjective, rather than a property of propositions themselves, and thus objective? I think of truth in the latter sense; our (subjective) judgments about propositions are then fallible assessments of whether they are (objectively) true.

I asked a simple yes or no question, however, and you didn't respond with a direct yes or no or an explanation why a direct yes or no didn't work for you. — Terrapin Station

I hoped that my answer would make it apparent why a direct yes or no did not work for me. Declarative statements express propositions, and propositions purport to represent facts. True propositions really do represent facts, but false propositions do not.

That's not something I agree with, so it's probably not "all that I'm really saying." — Terrapin Station

With what, exactly, do you disagree--that a proposition is a sign, or that it represents its object by convention?

I personally use correspondence theory ... — Terrapin Station

In that case--by what other criterion, besides describing a fact, would someone who subscribes to the correspondence theory judge a sentence--or rather, the proposition that a sentence expresses--to be true?

Whereas you use the word "true" to describe a sentence that's judged a certain way, I'm using the word "true" to describe a sentence that describes a fact. — Michael

We seem to be on the same page here. By what other criterion, besides describing a fact, would someone judge a sentence--or rather, the proposition that a sentence expresses--to be true?

No, of course not, since there is no such thing as objective truth. It is a fact, however. — Terrapin Station

Is "there is no such thing as objective truth" a true proposition? If not, then why should anyone believe it? And how can it nevertheless be a fact that there is no such thing as objective truth?

So, you're saying that in your ontology, facts are the meanings of (declarative) statements? — Terrapin Station

Every proposition purports to declare a fact. Every true proposition does declare a fact. If it is a fact that the moon is mind-independent, then "the moon is mind-independent" is a true proposition--i.e., an objective truth.

On my account, what you're missing is that (a) the proposition has no meaning aside from people thinking about it and assigning meaning to it (to the sentence), that (b) it has no relation to the states of affairs in question aside from people thinking about it and assigning meaning to the sentence, and (c) the property of corresponding (or whatever property we go with re truth theories) only obtains by judgment of an individual with respect to assigning meaning and thinking, in the context of that meaning, about the relation of the proposition with the facts in question. — Terrapin Station

All this is really saying is that every proposition is a symbol--a sign that represents its object by convention, rather than direct causal connection (index) or resemblance (icon). Words like "moon" and "mind-independent," as well as combinations thereof, only represent their objects because people interpret them as doing so; but the object of a true proposition, that which it represents, is still a fact--a state of affairs in the world.

As a hint: in my view, it's an objective fact that the moon is mind-independent. It is not an objective truth however, since no truths are objective. — Terrapin Station

Is it an objective truth that no truths are objective?

Truths and facts are not the same thing. Truth-value is a property of propositions ... Facts, on the other hand, are states of affairs in the world. — Terrapin Station

This distinction does not make any sense to me. All facts are propositions--ones that correspond to states of affairs in the world; i.e., true propositions. If it is an objective fact (state of affairs in the world) that the moon is mind-independent, then "the moon is mind-independent" is a true proposition. What am I missing?

With appropriate caveats about the limited usefulness of simplistic labels, it seems to me that Terrapin Station is a nominalist and Metaphysician Undercover is a realist, and this is why the two of you keep talking past each other. In other words, TS believes that only actualities have Being, such that existence and Being are equivalent; while MU believes that possibilities and habits/necessities also have Being, such that they can be real even though they do not (strictly speaking) exist.

My argument with MU was actually over his assertion that there is a general form which is temporally prior to the advent of any particular form. — John

What about logically prior? I would suggest that a general form is a continuum of potential forms, and a particular form is an actualization of one such possibility.

A vague representation cannot adequately express the general characteristics of a form, certainly not of a complex form. — John

It depends on what you mean by "adequately." In a sense, no particular representation can adequately express the general characteristics of any form, simple or complex.

That drawing is not a representation of any particular maple leaf but of the idealized general form of the maple leaf. — John

It is a particular representation of the idealized general form of the maple leaf; in other words, a token of a type.

The fact that the actual marks on the screen or paper have thickness or that the precise proportions of the general form are not shown is irrelevant. — John

Only because we understand it to be so, in light of the purpose of the representation. If that drawing was instead intended to show how a specified hue is rendered on a computer monitor, then the color of the line would be the only relevant aspect.

... such visual representations allow us to sharpen up those vague implicit understandings and make then more explicit. — John

True, and experimentation on such a diagram can reveal relations that were not evident from its initial construction. This is precisely what makes diagrammatic reasoning so powerful.

Who said anything about visualizing? There are other forms of representation, especially in the imagination. Probably the most accurate general representation of any shape--whether simple like a triangle or complex like a maple leaf--is going to be one that is vague; as soon as you make it more determinate, it loses its generality and becomes a particular triangle or maple leaf.

We have no better way to represent it physically, but--at least arguably--we can represent it more perfectly in the imagination, in accordance with the verbal description.

From a drawing of any triangle, I can see immediately that it has three straight sides and three angles; and that is precisely the definition of a triangle. — John

No actual drawing of a triangle has three perfectly straight sides and exactly three angles, as required by the definition. Every actual drawing of a triangle consists of irregular lines that have finite width and at least one distinct color, which are not part of the definition. We draw a triangle based on the definition, rather than extracting the definition from a drawing or group of drawings. Each drawing is a diagram--an existent (particular) representation that embodies the significant relations of a real (general) triangle, but is not itself a real (general) triangle. We have to distinguish and abstract the relevant aspects of the drawing from the irrelevant ones in order to recognize it as such.