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True statements

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True statements

sensabile
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Posted 06/04/09 - 10:01 PM:	#371
Vague Abstraction wrote: A statement is true under two circumstances. 1): If it corresponds to a definition. For example, if mathematicians say that a number raised to an exponent with a value of zero equals 1, that is the truth. There is no way to disprove this statement. and 2): If it is an instantaneous statement regarding an appearance. For example, if I see a flower at a given moment, I have a right to say that I am perceiving what I know as a flower. If my statement is about the past or the future, I am no longer correct for certain, because I can't predict the future, and that past could be my imagination. However, if it is about the instant at hand, it is certain. Apparently, none of what you just said is true.
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Cheshire
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Posted 06/12/09 - 11:55 AM:	#372
A statement is true regardless of the agents believing, justifying, corressponding, observing, agreeing or otherwise determining. (Believing,Justifying...) a statements truth will not make a false statement true, nor will prevent a true statement from being true in its absence. Truth exist apart from an individual, so all of the above list reasonable ways to reduce the risk of error, but none of them really eliminate the chance of human error. I think these statements conflict with classical notions of justified true belief among others. We ascribe these descriptors to the statement to reflect our own perception of existence. However, like a tree falling in the woods, our perception doesn't create objective reality.
Or not.

Banno
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Posted 06/12/09 - 02:37 PM:	#373
Is this thread back from the dead?? Cheshire wrote: I think these statements conflict with classical notions of justified true belief among others. I disagree, although I think that you make a fair point. There is a tendency to combine the tripartite truth, belief and justification into bipartite systems. Especially, there is a tendency to confuse truth with justification. Much of this thread revolves around a refutation of this error.
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

Fenchurch
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Posted 06/18/09 - 12:01 PM:	#374
Now that this thread has been resurrected and Banno has seen the refutation of the slingshot argument, I'd like to return to the point I was trying to make previously (a point which was at least in part anticipated by Schlitz). The correspondence theory is a theory about statements, whereas the redundancy theory is a theory about predicates. The former offers us an account of when a statement is true, whereas the latter tells us something about the predicate "is true." Failure to keep this in mind, as well as the fact that truth is a property of statements, allows redundancy theorists to fool themselves into thinking they are offering a viable theory of what truth consists in, when really they're offering a theory of what (most) ascriptions of truth consist in. This helps us understand what is misleading about the superficial difference between the following two statements: (1) "S" is true iff "S" corresponds to a fact/state of affairs. (2) "S" is true iff S. What else could the unquoted S be in (2) but the very fact/state of affairs noted at the end of (1)? Otherwise, what does (2) say when we cash out the symbols in plain English? Statement (1), which represents the correspondence theory, becomes: (1') A statement is true iff it corresponds to a fact/state of affairs. But what is (2')? A statement is true if it is true? This is not very enlightening, and hardly an explanation of what truth is. Then again, going by example sentences such as "'the cat is on the mat' is true iff the cat is on the mat," it's more charitable to say that it's something like this: (2') A statement is true iff the state of affairs it describes obtains. But the obtaining of a state of affairs is precisely what's involved in (1'), or else the statement would fail to be true for lack of anything for the statement to correspond to. And that the description in the sentence is of the state of affairs that obtains is what underwrites the correspondence relationship (it's why that statement corresponds to that state of affairs -- because it is about -- i.e. is a description of -- that state of affairs). If the state of affairs failed to obtain, everyone agrees that the statement would fail to be true. So as I argued before, what the redundancy theory really tells us is something about truth ascriptions: "It is true that the dog is brown" and "the dog is brown" say the same thing because they have the same truth conditions. That is, they both correspond to the same fact (though this is not how a redundancy theorist would say it, of course ). This is because the predicate "is true" merely makes clear that something is to be understood as an assertion. In most cases, the predicate is redundant. In other cases, however, it is used to mark out statements whose truth deserves extra attention in the context. In this way, it is a sort of linguistic lubricant -- it may still be redundant in the strictest of senses, but is warranted by how it facilitates communication.
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Banno
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Posted 06/18/09 - 01:51 PM:	#375
Fenchurch, yep.
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

Cheshire
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Posted 06/20/09 - 07:27 AM:	#376
Banno wrote: Indeed, that is what I am asking... Well, knowledge has been general recognised as justified true belief for quite a while. Truth seems to be a way of describing some statements, but not others. Knowledge is produced and held by people. People will always make mistakes and ascribe "true" to a false statement. So, some knowledge is justified true belief and some knowledge is justified true belief that happens to be truth. Truth is the state of some statements, while "true" is an ascription. Thanks for your response Banno Edited by Cheshire on 06/20/09 - 02:19 PM
Or not.

Vague Abstraction
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Posted 06/21/09 - 01:58 PM:	#377
sensabile wrote: Apparently, none of what you just said is true. I do not follow you. Please explain.

Banno
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Posted 06/21/09 - 02:03 PM:	#378
Vague Abstraction wrote: I do not follow you. Please explain. Does it: 1) corresponds to a definition. or is it: 2) an instantaneous statement regarding an appearance. ? It appears to be neither, and so is presumably untrue.
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

Banno
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Posted 06/21/09 - 02:04 PM:	#379
Cheshire wrote: Knowledge is produced and held by people. People will always make mistakes and ascribe "true" to a false statement. So, some knowledge is justified true belief and some knowledge is justified true belief that happens to be truth. Truth is the state of some statements, while "true" is an ascription. Thanks for your response Banno are you saying folk can know things which are not true?
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

Vague Abstraction
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Posted 06/21/09 - 02:12 PM:	#380
Banno wrote: Does it: 1) corresponds to a definition. or is it: 2) an instantaneous statement regarding an appearance. ? It appears to be neither, and so is presumably untrue. Presumably is the correct word to use. I neglected to say that my own two criteria should be taken together as axioms. Obviously, I should have.

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