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True statements

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True statements

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Posted 04/25/09 - 11:40 AM:	#311
ragus wrote: Banno wrote You claim not to know that your foot is in pain and yet you can say that it's your foot that hurts? Do we have a problem with know? My analysis of the experience of pain as only something that seems to be solves that problem.

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Posted 04/25/09 - 11:51 AM:	#312
Random wrote Sure, dreams exist for me, fever-induced hallucinations exist for me, LSD drug trips exist for me and so on. If you think pain is as real as those things then we have no disagreement. Dreams, hallucinations, acid trips are altered states of consciousness. Is a painful experience an ASC? It's certainly a focussing of consciousness. The color red exists for me, the taste of bread exists for me. the feeling of excitement exists for me. If you think pain is as real as those things then we have no disagreement. And if you agree then in what way do you think they exist. Clearly, they have some sort of existance otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them.
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

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Posted 04/25/09 - 12:04 PM:	#313
ragus wrote: Dreams, hallucinations, acid trips are altered states of consciousness. Is a painful experience an ASC? It's certainly a focussing of consciousness. What is a "state of consciousness" and what is it being altered from? Doesn't any form of perception count as altering our state of consciousness? ragus wrote: Clearly, they have some sort of existance otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them. Experiences exist only in the changing of one brain state to another.

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Posted 04/25/09 - 01:57 PM:	#314
Random wrote Experiences exist only in the changing of one brain state to another. In that case experiences exist. Now we're into Chalmer's hard problem.
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

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Posted 04/25/09 - 02:10 PM:	#315
ragus wrote: Random wrote In that case experiences exist. Now we're into Chalmer's hard problem. If you say so. Are you going to bother answering my questions?

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Posted 04/25/09 - 02:50 PM:	#316
ragus wrote: My focus has been on the outcome of the statement - when and how we check and what we find. Your focus (I think) is on the type of statement. It's a question about definition (or maybe construction). I Oh, yeah - Humdinger's chickens. Shouldn't post too late at night. I'm looking at truth, you are stuck on knowledge. Truth does not require justification. Knowledge does. Simple.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

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Posted 04/25/09 - 03:27 PM:	#317
ragus wrote: You claim not to know that your foot is in pain and yet you can say that it's your foot that hurts? Do we have a problem with know? No.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

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Posted 04/25/09 - 04:47 PM:	#318
An unusually long post for me, but I want to have a go at summarising my position. Let's look at the difference between knowledge and truth. Remember truth? This is a thread about truth. We can divide the set of statements up into those that are true and those that are false. By the law of exclude middle, there ought be no other options. But we can consider that option, if anyone wants to. For now, let's not. So either the cat is on the mat, or the cat is not on the mat. This will be so regardless of whether we, or anyone, knows that the cat is on the mat, or even believes that the cat is on the mat. We can also divide the set of statements into those we believe, and those we do not. The issue here is a bit more complex, though, since there are beliefs that are not explicit, things we believe not to be true, and true things of which we are unaware, and so do not believe. But perhaps we can focus on true beliefs here, and look at the others as needed... So our true beliefs form a sub-set of the set of true statements. But I might believe that the cat is on the mat, or I might not; my belief in the main makes no difference to the location of the cat. The truth of a statement is, in the main, independent of our belief. (again, there are as always exceptions, which we can come back to if you like...) In amongst the set of true beliefs is another set, the set of things we know. Everything we know is true, since we can't know things that are not true. And everything we know, we also believe. In addition, it is usually taken that we are able in some way to justify the things we know. That is, the statements we know are supported by something. Coherentists say that the support is just other statements. Supporters of correspondence say that it is "facts". And there are other options... So the things we know form a subset of out true beliefs. It follows that there are true beliefs that we don't know - and going on what I just described, these are true beliefs which are not justified. Like "I like eggs", perhaps; or "I have two hands", or "I have a pain in my foot". These are things for which it seems unreasonable to ask for a justification.... But notice that correspondence and coherence come in a the stage of justification. They are not theories of truth, but theories of knowledge. Neither provide the meaning of truth; the best they can do it tell us how we decide if a statement is true or not. Knowledge stands on the three legs of justified true belief. But theories of truth undermine this. If, for instance, to be true is to be coherent, and to be justified is to be coherent, then instead of three legs we would have only two: knowledge is coherent belief. And in the case of correspondence, we would have beliefs that correspond to the facts - whatever that means. But if truth is seen as independent of justification, as it should be, then we maintain the three legs. To this end, a better analysis of truth is in terms of the pragmatics, rather than the semantics, of it's use. This makes sense, since the semantics of truth is extremely simple, and is captured by T-sentences: "P" is true IFF P The pragmatics are the important part. To say P is true is to explicitly assert P; to us P as an assertion. Of course, most uses of statements are implicitly assertions. But there are exceptions...
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

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Posted 04/25/09 - 04:54 PM:	#319
THE obvious reply is "how do you know a statement is true?". But this begs the question, since knowledge requires justification, and we have established that there are unjustified true beliefs.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

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Posted 04/25/09 - 05:35 PM:	#320
The question is not "how do we know x is true" but rather "what makes x true". I would say it's the facts together with the meaning of our words.

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