Sentences are abstract objects. — frank

Are they mind-independent? Do sentences exist even if language doesn't?

How can a sound have the property of truth? — frank

How can an abstract object have the property of truth? How can a sound be "connected" to an abstract object?

Michael's argument talks about the existence of sentences. Hence it make use of quantification in a second-order language - a language about language. In a first-order language we can make the an inference by quantifying over a predication - from f(a) to ∃(x)f(x). In second order logic one might perform a similar operation over a group of predicates. If we have ϕ(f(a)), we can infer ∃Pϕ(P) - if f(a) is ϕ, then something (P, in this case) is ϕ. But at issue here is a choice in how this is to be understood. Is it about just the things (a,b,c...) that make up the domain of the logic, or does it bring something new, P, into the ontology? The first is the substitutional interpretation, the second is the quantificational interpretation. This second interpretation has Platonic overtones, since it seems to invoke the existence of a certain sort of abstract "thing". — Banno

I really don't understand the difficulty you're having with the English-language argument. You seem to understand what "if human minds do not exist then gold still exists" means, and so presumably you understand what "if languages do not exist then gold still exists" means, and so presumably you understand what "if sentences do not exist then gold still exists" means, and so presumably you understand what "if sentences do not exist then gold does not exist" means.

What I'm saying is what I've said above:

1. Truth is a property of truth-bearers, and
2. Truth-bearers are features of language, not mind-independent abstract objects à la Platonism

I'll reference the SEP article on truth again:

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.

I don't think I'm arguing for anything controversial.

And it's still not clear to me what you find objectionable about the above. At various points you seem to agree with me on both (1) and (2).

What also isn't clear to me is how you can agree with both (1) and (2) and yet also claim that there were truths when there wasn't a language. That seems to be a very obvious inconsistency. At the very least you're equivocating on the term "truth".

At the same time, he wants to be a realist. — frank

No I don't. But I don't think anything I'm arguing is inconsistent with realism. Realism doesn't require Platonism, does it?

Is there an unknown truth regarding Park? Or not? — frank

We don't know what happened to Yoon Park.
We don't know if "Yoon Park was kidnapped" is true.
We don't know if "Yoon Park ran away" is true.
We don't know if "Yoon Park drowned" is true.

It's very simple. I really don't understand what you find objectionable, or even what you think I'm saying, because I'm starting to suspect that you're reading something into my words that just isn't there.

So I'll try to be as clear as I can:

1. Truth and falsehood are properties of truth-bearers
2. Truth-bearers are features of language, not mind-independent abstract objects

Which of these do you disagree with?

Are you saying that an unknown sentence is true? — frank

No, I'm saying that it's possible to say something truthful that answers the question, even if we don't know that what we are saying is true.

How do you know it's possible for anyone to state the reason for Park's disappearance? We may never know. — frank

We don't need to know that a sentence is true for it to be true.

I mean what the word ordinarily means. It is possible to say something truthful that answers the question.

How is this not clear?

I see. So when you say the answer exists, you mean it exists in potential? — frank

I'm saying that it is possible to say something truthful that answers the question.

The answer exists? Where is it? — frank

No, when I say that there's an answer to the question I am saying that it is possible to answer the question with a truthful sentence.

They're talking about why Yoon Park disappeared. There's some truth regarding this, but we don't know what it is. Where's the truthbearer? — frank

There's an answer to the question "why did Yoon Park disappear?" and the sentence "Yoon Park disappeared because he was kidnapped" is either true or false.

So given that you accept that truth-bearers did not exist 65 million years ago, what about my position do you disagree with? Do you disagree with my claim that truth is (only) a property of truth-bearers? Are you claiming that truth can be a property of something else, or that truth isn't a property but an entity of some kind in its own right?

So this is my question: when someone says "The truth of the matter is unknown." What does that mean? Where is the truthbearer? — frank

That depends on what they're talking about. If they're talking about the existence of aliens then either they're saying that the truth of the sentence "aliens exist" is unknown or they're saying that the existence of aliens is unknown.

I agree. — frank

Truth is (only) a property of truth-bearers.
Truth-bearers did not exist 65 million years ago.
Therefore, truth was not a property of anything that existed 65 million years ago.

Ask any scientist. — frank

They will agree with me that feathered dinosaurs existed 65 million years ago.

So it is true now, but it wasn't true then? For real? — frank

Truth bearers didn't exist 65 million years ago. Do you agree or disagree?

I have the normal English language where it is true that some dinosaurs had feathers.

I was referring to this:

And it's also fine to say "I don't know nothing" when claiming ignorance, even though a literal interpretation of the sentence means the opposite.

So you're more than welcome to talk about there having been truth-bearers 10 million years ago, but that's just a case of fictionalism. The truth (pun intended) is that truth-bearers didn't exist 10 million years ago (but dinosaurs did), and it is only the sentences we use now (about the past) that are either true or false. — Michael

You're just repeating the same fictionalist account.

Truth-bearers didn't exist 10 million years ago, even if our everyday claims imply that they did.

See my previous comment.

You can say it however you like, but my language community agrees that it's fine to say

10 million years ago it was true that some dinosaurs had feathers. — frank

And it's also fine to say "I don't know nothing" when claiming ignorance, even though a literal interpretation of the sentence means the opposite.

So you're more than welcome to talk about there having been truth-bearers 10 million years ago, but that's just a case of fictionalism. The truth (pun intended) is that truth-bearers didn't exist 10 million years ago (but dinosaurs did), and it is only the sentences we use now (about the past) that are either true or false.

But to be pedantic dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.

10 million years ago, it was true that some dinosaurs had feathers. — frank

What does "it" refer to?

I would instead say:

1. "10 million years ago some dinosaurs had feathers" is true.

Or just:

2. 10 million years ago some dinosaurs had feathers

You seem to think that (1) and (2) are true only if some truth-bearer existed 10 million years ago. Why? I don't think it's necessary at all.

The existence of dinosaurs does not depend on the existence of a truth-bearer.

Right, so as you're looking for your sunglasses, you are, in a sense, looking for a truth (whatever your truthbearer is). — frank

No, I'm looking for my sunglasses.

You have expectations, hypotheses, speculations, etc. You don't know which, if any of them is true, but you believe there is some truth regarding the matter. — frank

I believe that some sentence is true, yes.

Likewise, if you're a realist, you have confidence that the pre-human world was full of events, all of which are describable in principle. Just as you have confidence that there is some true statement about some unknown detail of Pluto, you believe there are all sorts of true statements about worlds where humans do not exist. — frank

You're conflating Truth in a World and Truth at a World.

but knowable truths is essential to realism. — frank

That's anti-realism. Realists allow for unknowable truths. We had a long discussion about this when discussing Fitch's paradox:

Fitch’s paradox of knowability ... concerns any theory committed to the thesis that all truths are knowable. Historical examples of such theories arguably include Michael Dummett’s semantic antirealism ..., mathematical constructivism ..., Hilary Putnam’s internal realism ..., Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatic theory of truth ..., logical positivism ..., Kant’s transcendental idealism ..., and George Berkeley’s idealism.

...

The realist believes that it is possible for truth to be unknowable in principle.

But I don't know why you've brought up knowability here because I'm not discussing that anymore. I'm only saying that truth and falsity are properties of sentences, that sentences are features of language, and that language depends on language users.

Ok. This is truth skepticism. That's just what it's called. — frank

You're going to have to flesh this out. From here:

Five different forms of truth skepticism are examined and defused: (1) the view that truth is indefinable, (2) that it is unattainable and unknowable, (3) that it is inextricably metaphysical and hence not scientifically respectable, (4) that there is no such thing as truth, and (5) that truth is inherently paradoxical, and so must either be abandoned or revised.

I suppose that maybe a case can be made for (1), but I'm not arguing for any of the others.

Sentences are also abstract objects. — frank

Are they mind-independent abstract objects? I don’t believe in any such things.

Truth and falsity are properties of sentences, sentences are features of language, and language is a social (and psychological) activity performed by and between people.

So if there are no people there is nothing which has the property of being either true or false. But assuming that idealism/phenomenalism isn't the case, there is still gold and rain and so on.

So when a person says, "It's raining." they may mean that things have gotten worse.

You need a theory of meaning that covers this kind of speech. What do you propose? — frank

Then what they say is true if and only if things have gotten worse.

If all you mean to say is that Tarski’s T-schema is an impoverished account of natural language then I agree, and I’ve addressed some issues with it earlier.

But none of this is relevant to what I’m claiming, which is that being true and being false are properties of sentences, not properties of rain (and that there is no Platonic third thing that “sits” between the two).

And if it does, then the world (or region) satisfies the sentence in question. If not, not. — bongo fury

If by this you mean that the sentence “it is raining” is true if and only if the rain exists then that is exactly what I have been saying.

Is it satisfaction-apt? That was my point. — bongo fury

I don’t know what you mean.

Rain exists or it doesn’t.

When we say a sentence is true, we are talking about what the sentence is about, not the sentence itself as an object. — Apustimelogist

When we say that the sentence "it is raining" is true we are saying that the sentence is true, we're not saying that the rain is true, and when we say that the sentence "it is raining" is false we are saying that the sentence is false, we're not saying that the rain is false. Rain isn't truth-apt. Rain just exists or doesn't.

Again, that there is such a sentence in the domain of sentences is true, but not enough to carry your argument. The conclusion just becomes an example of "if P &~P then Q" - asserting that a sentence that is in the domain of sentences is not in the domain of sentences, implies anything. — Banno

I don't know what you're talking about here. You seem to understand what it means for gold to exist or to not exist, so why is it so difficult to understand what it means for a painting or a sentence to exist or to not exist?

If you want to make it simpler then let's assume that as a species we have no spoken or signed language, only a written language. If a sentence exists then a written sentence exists.

Does that painting of the reconstruction Jesus's face exist? No, it's not a painting, it's digital. — Banno

OK, well I'm talking about a painting. There's a canvas with paint on it. It's really not complicated.

But then when you were pressed on what a sentence or a linguistic entity is, metaphysically speaking, you threw up your hands as if there is nothing to talk about. — Leontiskos

There is no deeper metaphysics. We say things, we write things, we sign things. There's no need to overthink this.

So the argument treats accuracy as all-or-nothing. One could not have an otherwise accurate painting in which the hair was pink when it ought be black. "Accurate" is somewhat problematic in this regard. — Banno

Well so is truth.

As an example, "the painting is accurate" is true if and only if the painting is accurate.

I don't see as the change makes the argument clearer. — Banno

You don't understand P2? You don't know what it means for a painting to exist?

Why IFF? Why not "The painting is accurate if the woman has red hair"? — Banno

Because if the woman does not have red hair then the painting is inaccurate.

Why IFF when you say that "it is raining" is true iff it is raining?

My quibble with the argument you gave earlier is much the same. — Banno

Perhaps this makes it clearer:

P1. The painting of the woman with red hair is accurate if and only if the woman has red hair
C1. Therefore, the woman has red hair if and only if the painting of the woman is accurate
P2. If the painting of the woman with red hair is accurate then the painting of the woman with red hair exists
C2. Therefore, if the woman has red hair then the painting of the woman with red hair exists
C3. Therefore, if the painting of the woman with red hair does not exist then the woman does not have red hair

Like with the previous example I think the issue is with P1, not with P2. It should be:

P1. If the painting of the woman with red hair exists then it is accurate if and only if the woman has red hair

Then we no longer derive the bizarre C1 and C2.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/32/Donald_Davidson

Do you consider yourself a philosopher who works beyond the distinction of realism/anti-realism?

There isn’t one clear distinction. If by realism you mean the idea that entities, perhaps facts or states of affairs, make our sentences true, then I think nobody has ever succeeded in giving a clear account of how that should work. If that is realism, I’m not a realist. But what’s an anti-realist? One form of anti-realism is Dummett’s. For Dummett, one is an anti-realist in some area if one thinks some sentences in that area are neither true nor false. This may be right. It may well be that the most appropriate semantics will declare, say, that some sentences with non-referring names are neither true nor false. I don’t think of this as a deep metaphysical issue, but as a matter for semantic engineering. On the other hand if anti-realism means that a sentence, the truth value of which we have no way to determine, lacks a truth value, then I think anti-realism is false. There are lots of sentences we know for certain we’ll never know to be true or false, those about the distant past for example. There’s no way we can check up on these things. So I’m not an anti-realist but neither am I a realist in the only clear senses I understand.

It turns into this: If minds (or else truth-bearers) do not exist, does truth exist? The idea is that the state of affairs is left intact. The focus is on the mind or truth-bearer. You yourself hone in on this exact same thing: — Leontiskos

What I’ve been trying to explain is that it’s not at all clear what you mean by saying “truth exists” without minds given that truth is a property of sentences.

I would just say that if minds did not exist then stars and planets and gold would still exist. The existence of physical objects does not depend on the existence of a mind or a true sentence. Unless you’re an idealist this is not a controversial claim.

...you were literally presenting arguments about the existence of sentences, so it is not realistic for you to go on to deny that the metaphysical status of truth-bearers is irrelevant.

(And of course you were presenting this argument as a sort of dilemma for Banno, not for your own position, but the metaphysical status of truth-bearers is nevertheless central to the discussion.) — Leontiskos

I was presenting it as a peculiar consequence of the biconditional “‘X’ is true iff X”, and I resolved it myself by amending the premise to “if ‘X’ exists then it is true iff X”.

This whole discussion is directly related to the metaphysical status of truth bearers — Leontiskos

I think it’s directly related to the metaphysical status of truth makers.

Are the things that make a sentence true mind-independent or not? Are they verification-transcendent or not?

Clearly. It was a kind of placeholder "I don't know what to put here" word. But it is the natural word, in one sense, since you intend to attribute properties to these whatever-they-ares. So why are you backing away from it? — Srap Tasmaner

I’m not. There’s just nothing special going on when I say that the sentence “it is raining” is written in English, contains three words, is true, and is my preferred example case when doing philosophy.

There is no need to read into this some deeper metaphysics.

I think Wittgenstein has a point here. Some are being bewitched by language about language.

Would you prefer it if I said “truth bearers are features of language”?

I didn’t mean anything special by the term “entity”.

I'm curious whether you have anything to say about these entities. — Srap Tasmaner

We make sounds or draw symbols and these sounds and symbols mean something to us. I don't think there's much else to add, other than to reject any kind of Platonism.

But I don't think this has anything to do with metaphysics at all. Metaphysics concerns the nature of truth makers, not truth bearers. Is rain a mental phenomenon, à la idealism, or physical, à la materialism? Can an unknowable event occur, something Dummett's anti-realism rejects? Do counterfactual truth-makers exist?

I'm not saying that truth is vacuous.

1. "it is raining" is true
2. it is raining
3. it is the case that it is raining
4. it is true that it is raining

(1) describes a sentence using the adjective "true". This, I think, is the proper use of the word "true", and is meaningful.

(3) means the same thing as (2) and so the phrase "it is the case that" is superfluous, saying nothing that isn't said without it.

(4) either means (1), in which case it is describing a sentence using the adjective "true" but doing so without the use of quotation marks, or it means (2), in which case the phrase "it is true that" is superfluous, saying nothing that isn't said without it.

So we can reduce the above to simply these two sentences without losing anything:

1. "it is raining" is true
2. it is raining

Truth and falsehood are properties of the sentence. The sentence is true if it is raining, otherwise it is false.

I'll quote from the SEP article on truth:

One of the important themes in the literature on truth is its connection to meaning, or more generally, to language.

...

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.

My point is simple: truth-bearers are linguistic entities, and so if there is no language there are no truth-bearers and so nothing has the property of being either true or false.

I'm not saying that the existence of rain depends on language.

"Greater than" (>) is a relation. — Leontiskos

4 is greater than 3.
3 is smaller than 4.

The same relation is described even though "greater" does not mean the same thing as "smaller". Being greater than 3 is a property of 4 and being smaller than 4 is a property of 3.

If I said “It is the case that it is raining outside”, I do not mention anything about “truth” Would we need to say “what is the case” is a property of “It is raining outside.”? Or just say “what is the case” is neither a property of a sentence nor the rain? Like those who assert “existence” is not a predicate. — Richard B

Just say "it is raining".

Phrases like "it is the case that" and "it is true that" don't add anything to the above; they're vacuous, not actually referring to some entity ("it") having some property ("true"/"the case").

Truth is about what is the case. — Apustimelogist

Yes, a true sentence is about what is the case. But note that truth is a property of the sentence, not a property of the rain.