First of all I really like this video, you really managed to explain something conplicated very clearly. I would just like to say something about the liars paradox leading to an inconsistent theory. That is only a problem, if you hold a view, that classical Logic for example assumes, namely that truth and falsehood are properties that no proposition can hold at the same time. You can however believe that some sentences like the liar paradox are just as the paradox says true and false. Graham Priest and J.C. Beall have written good stuff about this. So inconsistency might sometimes be exactable and just a part of our world.
That's a really good point, dialethism (things can be both true and false) has become a really popular response to the Liar paradox. There's a question about whether it really solves the problem: people argue about paradoxes like 'this sentence isn't *just* true'. They also worry about related paradoxes, like the Curry paradox ('If this sentence is true, then [whatever]'). Dialethism doesn't really help there. I discuss the Curry here: ruclips.net/video/wi5xHcNy_vA/видео.html
@@AtticPhilosophyThanks thats really interesting. I am kind of new to this area of Philosophy ....I guess I know what I am going to spent my weekend thinking and reading about :)
Thank you for making these kinds of videos! I think they are very important because this format is much more "laypeople-friendly" than pure text. Cheers!
You do have a talent for clarity in explanation. Am struggling with this dialetheism thing; my mind is having a hard time with the idea of a "true contradiction". Please make a video and save us all!! Looking forward to it.
There are some - they tend to be anti-realist theories which link truth to knowledge, or require that truths are knowable. For example, in Phil logic & maths, intuitionists link truth to proof, and in general, Verificationists link truth to verification. That in itself doesn’t solve skepticism. But there’s a further step: denying that there’s a difference between appearances and ‘external’ reality. Eg for someone like Berkeley, material objects just are our perceptions of them. So we can’t be wrong about the material objects we perceive, on that view. That ‘solves’ external world skepticism, in a way, but it seems like cheating to me! (Plus there’s lots of problems for views like this.)
I liked very much your video, thank you for sharing this content in a easily way. Now, I have a doubt regarding the circularity problem you mentioned for deflationism. I don't think that the property of propositions are t-schemas, rather propositions are the kind of contents being fixed by whatever is being asserted in the particular proposition. To me that way we can avoid circularity by making the identity fixation particular to each proposition. I would also guess that Quine would favor this kind of move as well by allowing propositions to be identified by particular sentences, but as you mentioned before, this creates a problem for more truths than sentences. I'd guess that Quine would resolve it by allowing mathematical truths to be only true insofar as they are used in science (the indispensability argument formulated by Quine and Putnam), but that is kind of a controversial position in philosophy of mathematics.
Not sure how that suggestion gets around the objection, but it might! Quine wasn’t big on propositions at all - he argued you could do everything with ‘eternal’ sentences.
I am stuck on one thing in particular, if the statement is “the wall behind me is painted blue”, what if the wall is a teal color that some argue is more blue, some argue is more green, what is then needed to make this statement true? What is the standard “definition” of blue. Where is the line between blue and green? And who decides this? If only the non problematic propositions are included in the theory, who is deciding what is problematic and what is not? Doesn’t that persons subjective reality come into play? I feel there is a grey area in so many “truths” and it’s irresponsible to ignore this or theorize around it. I am new to philosophy but I feel this is a problem I’ve always had concerning true subjectivity and if it’s even possible as humans to perceive or reach a true perspective on REALITY as we are all influenced by our personal experiences and cultural norms. Any recommendations to look further into this area of thought?
That's the philosophical problem of vagueness. On some views, vague statements are neither true nor false. But that doesn't make them subjective. It's not up to you what colour the wall is, and to say it's definitely blue, when it's indeterminate whether it's blue or green, isn't accurate. A good place to start some reading on this: plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/
Am I correct in my interpretation that in the "T-scheme: p is true iff p" the first p stands for an abstract proposition (say, p(a)) and the second p stands for that proposition embodied in some actual state of affairs/the world (say, p(w))? Example: It is true that the grass is green (p(a)) iff the grass is actually green (p(w)).
They have to be the same sentence/proposition 'p', else we wouldn't have a good way of saying 'all instances of the T-scheme'. But there is (on one common formulation) one difference between left and right-hand-sides: the 'p' on the left is a sentence being talked about (we're saying it's true), whereas the one on the right is being *used* to describe some state of affairs. So in full: The English sentence 'snow is white' is true iff snow is white.
@@AtticPhilosophy Thanks again, that's basically what I was thinking. I just can't get wrap my head around how that isn't EXACTLY what the correspondence theory of truth says. Perhaps you could do a video on whether the theories actually differ and how? It just seems like such an obvious criticism against deflationism, but I can't find any articles or other media addressing this directly.
My thought listening to this is that the argument could take a hint from epistemology in science. Falsehood exists and we can make the infinite lists of falsehoods. Possible Truth is everything not on that list, so a two value logic of False and Maybe and it is just a list of sentences of the chalkboard again. Paradoxes can go in the maybe column.
Thanks a lot for this video! I'm having a hard time understanding whether or not the correspondence and deflationary theories of truth really differ from one another in essence. Correspondence theory: A belief that grass is green is true if it corresponds with the actual colour of grass. A belief that grass is red is false if does not correspond with the actual colour of grass. Deflationary theory: The grass is green if the grass is actually green. -> True, because the grass is actually green. The grass is red if the grass is actually red. -> False, because the grass is actually green. Isn't the deflationary theory simply a reformulation of the correspondence theory? I grant that the deflationists have a point in that we basically don't need to use the notion of truth to arrive at answers. But does that suffice to claim that deflationism is a whole new theory compared to correspondence? Please, no debate here on how colours are perceived.
That's a really good question, and there's been a debate on whether and how they differ. I think they're different. Correspondence says: there's something it is to count as being true, and that something consists in correspondence with a fact. So there's big question to be answered: what are facts, what is correspondence, what is mis-correspondence, etc. Deflationism by contrast says: there's really nothing that constitutes truth. The word 'true' is simply a logical device, which works like this: p is true iff p. That's all there is to truth.
@@AtticPhilosophy Thanks for answering! I've come across this response before, but I must say I don't understand it. Is it the deflationist's argument that states of affairs cannot be described by languages at all? Ie. one cannot employ a language to have sentences describe states of affairs outside of the language? This seems like a sceptic argument to me and I'm not sure the deflationists intend to reduce the discussion in that way. To my mind, it seems obvious that a sentence is a piece of information that is a separate entity to states of affairs beyond the language. For example, the sentences "the grass is green" and "the grass is red" have equal value in themselves. It is only after we couple the sentence "the grass is green" with a state of affairs (observable green grass in this case) that we can say "it is true that the grass is green". If we said "it is true that the grass is red" we would be lying. Again, I grant that there is nothing fancy going on with truth here, but how can the deflationists avoid this correspondent nature of truth?
@@thomaslaine2118 I think deflationists can accept all that - there is independent reality beyond our thoughts & language, and even that independent states of affairs are what make true sentences true. But still, they say, we don't need any of this extra stuff to characterise what truth is (what the concept *truth* is, or what we mean by by 'is true'). All we need for that is the T-scheme: p is true iff p. (I don't agree, but that's what deflationists say.)
I suppose a non-truth theoretical account of meaning might be needed to break the deflationist circularity problem. But to do that would be to drive the philosophical debate on meaning by first assuming deflationism, without more reason, it seems, than "other theories of truth are just too problematic". I was lucky enough to attend some of Paul Horwich's lectures on meaning as use but I think Wittgenstein was more persuasive on that front (not necessarily right, but definitely persuasive). Leon Horsten briefly mentions an indirect support of bi-conditionals through an 'intuitive' understanding of the rule of inference. So could perhaps some innate understanding of deduction give us a 'rule following' account of, at least, meaning in classical logic? Very thin ground, I suspect, to base a theory of truth on - even without the liar paradox.
Yes, there's interesting connections between deflationist about truth & theories of meaning. Horwich has some really interesting ideas in this area - great that you got to see him!
The sentence "This sentence isn't true." is incomplete with regard to there being anything to evaluate insofar as I understand the sentence. What is there to be evaluated? It seems to be a category error of some sort. It seems like saying "The musical note C is lime green." The issue being that until there is a cross reference by which the concept truth (evaluation of a proposition) can be linked to the term sentence for evaluation of validity there is nothing to evaluate due to such not making any sense. If one points out that the person stating the sentence "The musical note C is lime green." has synesthesia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) then it could be considered possibly true within the context of what that individual is experiencing when the musical note C (sound vibration) is played. (ES) is true if and only if p (plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/) It would seem that I am an advocate for the deflationary theory of truth.
Thanks for the comment! This is a really tricky one. The sentence isn't grammatically incomplete. Compare: "that sentence isn't true" (said when pointing at a sentence) or "the first sentence I wrote today isn't true". Both are meaningful & can be true or false, depending. But now imaging the first sentence I wrote today was "the first sentence I wrote today isn't true"!
@@AtticPhilosophy I grant that the sentence is grammatically complete, but it lacks anything that I would recognize as being something to evaluate as true or false and is thus incomplete with regard to having a reference for an evaluation. This is my central issue with the example you put forth as an assault to the idea of Deflationism. Referencing this sentence with another sentence still boils down to the addressing the evaluation issue at least to me. If I am missing something please address that to the extent possible. What do you consider to be the proposition under review in the sentence "This sentence isn't true." wherein the concept true or false would be applicable? Or even better what would the term true or false denote to you with regard to the sentence assuming you could evaluate the sentence "This sentence isn't true." as either true or false? References are fine... Since, it may simply be the case that I don't understand the crux of the issue sufficiently. I am also open to an actual discussion via whatever medium that is convenient.
Doing a review of one of your works (to the extent that I can at the moment - must work to understand the symbolic details at some point, since, I am likely missing a lot by not understanding such at the moment): A short argument for truthmaker maximalism philpapers.org/go.pl?id=JAGASA&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FJAGASA.pdf It seems that my evaluation requirements correspond to the truthmaker concept in both a negative and positive fashion such that in the absence of components allowing an adjudication, the claim of a proposition being true or false cannot be established.
@@MyContext I think it's a meaningful sentence. Instead try 'that sentence isn't true', whilst pointing to a false sentence. That one's true, so meaningful; and the liar only swaps 'this' for 'that'. My take is that there's no proposition expressed by the liar, so I'd agree that there's nothing to evaluate as true or false. But I don't think deflationists can say that.
My definition of TRUTH is...a belief that survives all challenges to it. It is not limited to individuals. It accounts for many truths being subjective. It can also account for absolute truths(if there are any). It accounts for the passage of time and evidence changing. If a truth does not survive a challenge, it is no longer considered to be a truth. Within any statement of a truth, it will either survive in whole or part of it may survive or all of it could perish.
@@AtticPhilosophy I understand the subjectivity of it. However, for a person or group if they believe something is true(whether or not is supported or contested) is true for them(or that person). For example flat Earthers, for them that is the truth(or true). For the rest of us, not so much.
@@dennistucker1153 but that wouldn't really be the nature of truth. Truth by definition is exclusive. Truth survives challenges because it's nature is exclusive and doesn't depend on societial opinions when they change. The flat earthers are wrong because what they believe is false and doesn't correspond to reality.
@@Convexhull210 I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "exclusive". As for people that still believe the Earth is flat, for them the truth is that the world is flat. I do not know why this group of people believe their position on this in light of all the evidence. For everyone else, the truth is the world is spherical(not flat). This speaks to the subjective nature of truth. If you witness a crime with your own eyes and went to the police to report it but when they investigate, they find no evidence. Then what is the truth here? From your perspective, the truth is that you witnessed a crime. From the police perspective, the truth is no crime was committed and you were mistaken. ' 100 years ago, it was IMPOSSIBLE to travel to the moon. I think most people truly believed this. At that time, it was the truth. Then about 60 years ago(1960's), that statement of impossibility became no longer true when the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. The truth changes over time as new evidence is found.
I have been obsessed with truth for many years, and only talk , think, and care about truth, (my truth), and it has led to me being isolated and ostracised to a certain degree but also gained me respect from others, and conspiracy theorists have called me a sheep but don’t understand how conspiracy theories are masquerading as independent thinking and open mindedness and intelligence but it’s actually the opposite to all them , Great channel btw 👍✌️
Could the deflationist simply not use the word true and thereby the t proposition would be A iff A? Also I was in your lectures 😅 thanks for continuing to teach me!
They could, but then they’d no longer have a theory of what truth is! As a minimum, they need a definition of the word ‘true’, so you need to use ‘true’ in stating the definition.
@@AtticPhilosophy I'm going to define "is a subset of" in terms of the "S-schema," given as follows: S-Schema: X is a subset of Y iff every element of X is an element of Y The subset predicate is defined by the S-schema. Does the circularity argument apply to the S-schema just like it does to the T-schema? Does that indicate that the circularity argument proves too much, or can we fix the S-schema to avoid this problem? And if we *can* fix the S-schema in some way, why can't we fix the T-schema in the same way? (As for the liar paradox, I think you can formally show that it's unsolvable; see Tarski's undefinability theorem. But you could say, for example, that truth is a second-order predicate which can only "talk about" first order predicates, and then the liar becomes much harder to reconstruct.)
@@NYKevin100 Deflationists take 'truth' to be defined implicitly, by all instances of the T-scheme. It's hard to define 'subset' like that, since any set of S-schema instances will leave out some sets. What you've written isn't a schema, it's an explicit definition (with universal quantification over X, Y), so the problem doesn't arise. Tarski's theorem shows something quite specific: you can't define 'truth', with the usual rules, in a classical first-order language. But that doesn't rule out other options, eg non-classical logics, or not the usual rules. These are the approaches logicians interested in truth investigate. The 'higher order' approach is Tarski's attempt, but it doesn't work for English, which (plausibly) is its own meta-language.
Truth is not better or more precise than false (falsehood is not the same as false btw). True/false is conclusion of a comparison between an experience and a proposition (those statements that can be true or false)
In general, truth is better and preferable to falsity. We prefer having true beliefs to false ones; we prefer true scientific theories to false ones; we value honesty over dishonesty; We think lying and deceit are often morally reprehensible, and so on.
If you can't explain it well enough for lay-people to understand it, then you probably don't know it well enough. You can explain it well enough for lay-people to understand it.
It is, but (to me) the problem may be avoidable. For example, coherence or correspondence or whatever may allow exceptions to the t-scheme, whereas for deflationism, the t-scheme is built in to the definition of truth.
Good question! We can name a real number by writing a string of numerals, 235.73628 is one. Each string is finite, otherwise we can't write it. There's countably many such numerals (the name size of infinity as the natural numbers 1, 2, 3 ...). But there's more real numbers than that - a bigger infinity - and that's the problem!
@@markjago5125 is being able to write a necessary condition for a sentence? Because it seems fairly easy to conceptualize an infinite number X with the words "This is the number" before it. Not writing a sentence down doesn't seem to make it objectionable that I have one formed in other means.
If we're talking about a natural language like English, yes. There's more technical notions of 'language' that allow for infinitely long sentences, but even these usually require countably many terms (names) in the language. Otherwise, there's no algorithm for checking whether a string counts as a sentence of the language or not.
First of all I really like this video, you really managed to explain something conplicated very clearly. I would just like to say something about the liars paradox leading to an inconsistent theory. That is only a problem, if you hold a view, that classical Logic for example assumes, namely that truth and falsehood are properties that no proposition can hold at the same time. You can however believe that some sentences like the liar paradox are just as the paradox says true and false. Graham Priest and J.C. Beall have written good stuff about this. So inconsistency might sometimes be exactable and just a part of our world.
That's a really good point, dialethism (things can be both true and false) has become a really popular response to the Liar paradox. There's a question about whether it really solves the problem: people argue about paradoxes like 'this sentence isn't *just* true'. They also worry about related paradoxes, like the Curry paradox ('If this sentence is true, then [whatever]'). Dialethism doesn't really help there. I discuss the Curry here:
ruclips.net/video/wi5xHcNy_vA/видео.html
@@AtticPhilosophyThanks thats really interesting. I am kind of new to this area of Philosophy ....I guess I know what I am going to spent my weekend thinking and reading about :)
Thank you for making these kinds of videos! I think they are very important because this format is much more "laypeople-friendly" than pure text. Cheers!
You're so welcome!
You do have a talent for clarity in explanation. Am struggling with this dialetheism thing; my mind is having a hard time with the idea of a "true contradiction". Please make a video and save us all!! Looking forward to it.
Dialethism - true contradictions - is difficult! I remember having a really hard time with it. I'll add it to my to-do video list!
Is there a theory of truth that solves radical skepticism? If so, kindly mention and elaborate. Thank you!
There are some - they tend to be anti-realist theories which link truth to knowledge, or require that truths are knowable. For example, in Phil logic & maths, intuitionists link truth to proof, and in general, Verificationists link truth to verification. That in itself doesn’t solve skepticism. But there’s a further step: denying that there’s a difference between appearances and ‘external’ reality. Eg for someone like Berkeley, material objects just are our perceptions of them. So we can’t be wrong about the material objects we perceive, on that view. That ‘solves’ external world skepticism, in a way, but it seems like cheating to me! (Plus there’s lots of problems for views like this.)
I liked very much your video, thank you for sharing this content in a easily way.
Now, I have a doubt regarding the circularity problem you mentioned for deflationism. I don't think that the property of propositions are t-schemas, rather propositions are the kind of contents being fixed by whatever is being asserted in the particular proposition. To me that way we can avoid circularity by making the identity fixation particular to each proposition.
I would also guess that Quine would favor this kind of move as well by allowing propositions to be identified by particular sentences, but as you mentioned before, this creates a problem for more truths than sentences. I'd guess that Quine would resolve it by allowing mathematical truths to be only true insofar as they are used in science (the indispensability argument formulated by Quine and Putnam), but that is kind of a controversial position in philosophy of mathematics.
Not sure how that suggestion gets around the objection, but it might! Quine wasn’t big on propositions at all - he argued you could do everything with ‘eternal’ sentences.
I am stuck on one thing in particular, if the statement is “the wall behind me is painted blue”, what if the wall is a teal color that some argue is more blue, some argue is more green, what is then needed to make this statement true? What is the standard “definition” of blue. Where is the line between blue and green? And who decides this? If only the non problematic propositions are included in the theory, who is deciding what is problematic and what is not? Doesn’t that persons subjective reality come into play? I feel there is a grey area in so many “truths” and it’s irresponsible to ignore this or theorize around it. I am new to philosophy but I feel this is a problem I’ve always had concerning true subjectivity and if it’s even possible as humans to perceive or reach a true perspective on REALITY as we are all influenced by our personal experiences and cultural norms. Any recommendations to look further into this area of thought?
That's the philosophical problem of vagueness. On some views, vague statements are neither true nor false. But that doesn't make them subjective. It's not up to you what colour the wall is, and to say it's definitely blue, when it's indeterminate whether it's blue or green, isn't accurate.
A good place to start some reading on this: plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/
Am I correct in my interpretation that in the "T-scheme: p is true iff p" the first p stands for an abstract proposition (say, p(a)) and the second p stands for that proposition embodied in some actual state of affairs/the world (say, p(w))?
Example:
It is true that the grass is green (p(a)) iff the grass is actually green (p(w)).
They have to be the same sentence/proposition 'p', else we wouldn't have a good way of saying 'all instances of the T-scheme'. But there is (on one common formulation) one difference between left and right-hand-sides: the 'p' on the left is a sentence being talked about (we're saying it's true), whereas the one on the right is being *used* to describe some state of affairs. So in full:
The English sentence 'snow is white' is true iff snow is white.
@@AtticPhilosophy Thanks again, that's basically what I was thinking. I just can't get wrap my head around how that isn't EXACTLY what the correspondence theory of truth says. Perhaps you could do a video on whether the theories actually differ and how? It just seems like such an obvious criticism against deflationism, but I can't find any articles or other media addressing this directly.
My thought listening to this is that the argument could take a hint from epistemology in science. Falsehood exists and we can make the infinite lists of falsehoods. Possible Truth is everything not on that list, so a two value logic of False and Maybe and it is just a list of sentences of the chalkboard again. Paradoxes can go in the maybe column.
Maybe, but that won’t help with the liar paradox, now formulated as “this sentence is not maybe”.
Thanks a lot for this video! I'm having a hard time understanding whether or not the correspondence and deflationary theories of truth really differ from one another in essence.
Correspondence theory:
A belief that grass is green is true if it corresponds with the actual colour of grass.
A belief that grass is red is false if does not correspond with the actual colour of grass.
Deflationary theory:
The grass is green if the grass is actually green. -> True, because the grass is actually green.
The grass is red if the grass is actually red. -> False, because the grass is actually green.
Isn't the deflationary theory simply a reformulation of the correspondence theory? I grant that the deflationists have a point in that we basically don't need to use the notion of truth to arrive at answers. But does that suffice to claim that deflationism is a whole new theory compared to correspondence?
Please, no debate here on how colours are perceived.
That's a really good question, and there's been a debate on whether and how they differ. I think they're different. Correspondence says: there's something it is to count as being true, and that something consists in correspondence with a fact. So there's big question to be answered: what are facts, what is correspondence, what is mis-correspondence, etc. Deflationism by contrast says: there's really nothing that constitutes truth. The word 'true' is simply a logical device, which works like this: p is true iff p. That's all there is to truth.
@@AtticPhilosophy Thanks for answering!
I've come across this response before, but I must say I don't understand it. Is it the deflationist's argument that states of affairs cannot be described by languages at all? Ie. one cannot employ a language to have sentences describe states of affairs outside of the language? This seems like a sceptic argument to me and I'm not sure the deflationists intend to reduce the discussion in that way.
To my mind, it seems obvious that a sentence is a piece of information that is a separate entity to states of affairs beyond the language. For example, the sentences "the grass is green" and "the grass is red" have equal value in themselves. It is only after we couple the sentence "the grass is green" with a state of affairs (observable green grass in this case) that we can say "it is true that the grass is green". If we said "it is true that the grass is red" we would be lying.
Again, I grant that there is nothing fancy going on with truth here, but how can the deflationists avoid this correspondent nature of truth?
@@thomaslaine2118 I think deflationists can accept all that - there is independent reality beyond our thoughts & language, and even that independent states of affairs are what make true sentences true. But still, they say, we don't need any of this extra stuff to characterise what truth is (what the concept *truth* is, or what we mean by by 'is true'). All we need for that is the T-scheme: p is true iff p. (I don't agree, but that's what deflationists say.)
@@AtticPhilosophy Thanks, that's a great answer. Really appreciate you providing this content and such straight answers.
I suppose a non-truth theoretical account of meaning might be needed to break the deflationist circularity problem. But to do that would be to drive the philosophical debate on meaning by first assuming deflationism, without more reason, it seems, than "other theories of truth are just too problematic". I was lucky enough to attend some of Paul Horwich's lectures on meaning as use but I think Wittgenstein was more persuasive on that front (not necessarily right, but definitely persuasive). Leon Horsten briefly mentions an indirect support of bi-conditionals through an 'intuitive' understanding of the rule of inference. So could perhaps some innate understanding of deduction give us a 'rule following' account of, at least, meaning in classical logic? Very thin ground, I suspect, to base a theory of truth on - even without the liar paradox.
Yes, there's interesting connections between deflationist about truth & theories of meaning. Horwich has some really interesting ideas in this area - great that you got to see him!
The sentence "This sentence isn't true." is incomplete with regard to there being anything to evaluate insofar as I understand the sentence. What is there to be evaluated? It seems to be a category error of some sort. It seems like saying "The musical note C is lime green." The issue being that until there is a cross reference by which the concept truth (evaluation of a proposition) can be linked to the term sentence for evaluation of validity there is nothing to evaluate due to such not making any sense. If one points out that the person stating the sentence "The musical note C is lime green." has synesthesia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) then it could be considered possibly true within the context of what that individual is experiencing when the musical note C (sound vibration) is played.
(ES) is true if and only if p (plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/)
It would seem that I am an advocate for the deflationary theory of truth.
Thanks for the comment! This is a really tricky one. The sentence isn't grammatically incomplete. Compare: "that sentence isn't true" (said when pointing at a sentence) or "the first sentence I wrote today isn't true". Both are meaningful & can be true or false, depending. But now imaging the first sentence I wrote today was "the first sentence I wrote today isn't true"!
@@AtticPhilosophy I grant that the sentence is grammatically complete, but it lacks anything that I would recognize as being something to evaluate as true or false and is thus incomplete with regard to having a reference for an evaluation. This is my central issue with the example you put forth as an assault to the idea of Deflationism. Referencing this sentence with another sentence still boils down to the addressing the evaluation issue at least to me. If I am missing something please address that to the extent possible.
What do you consider to be the proposition under review in the sentence "This sentence isn't true." wherein the concept true or false would be applicable?
Or even better what would the term true or false denote to you with regard to the sentence assuming you could evaluate the sentence "This sentence isn't true." as either true or false?
References are fine... Since, it may simply be the case that I don't understand the crux of the issue sufficiently. I am also open to an actual discussion via whatever medium that is convenient.
Doing a review of one of your works (to the extent that I can at the moment - must work to understand the symbolic details at some point, since, I am likely missing a lot by not understanding such at the moment):
A short argument for truthmaker maximalism
philpapers.org/go.pl?id=JAGASA&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FJAGASA.pdf
It seems that my evaluation requirements correspond to the truthmaker concept in both a negative and positive fashion such that in the absence of components allowing an adjudication, the claim of a proposition being true or false cannot be established.
@@MyContext I think it's a meaningful sentence. Instead try 'that sentence isn't true', whilst pointing to a false sentence. That one's true, so meaningful; and the liar only swaps 'this' for 'that'. My take is that there's no proposition expressed by the liar, so I'd agree that there's nothing to evaluate as true or false. But I don't think deflationists can say that.
My definition of TRUTH is...a belief that survives all challenges to it. It is not limited to individuals. It accounts for many truths being subjective. It can also account for absolute truths(if there are any). It accounts for the passage of time and evidence changing. If a truth does not survive a challenge, it is no longer considered to be a truth. Within any statement of a truth, it will either survive in whole or part of it may survive or all of it could perish.
Nice idea. But what if a bad idea is never challenged, or the person is too stubborn to recognise a good challenge? It's a complex area!
@@AtticPhilosophy I understand the subjectivity of it. However, for a person or group if they believe something is true(whether or not is supported or contested) is true for them(or that person). For example flat Earthers, for them that is the truth(or true). For the rest of us, not so much.
@@dennistucker1153 but that wouldn't really be the nature of truth. Truth by definition is exclusive. Truth survives challenges because it's nature is exclusive and doesn't depend on societial opinions when they change.
The flat earthers are wrong because what they believe is false and doesn't correspond to reality.
@@Convexhull210 I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "exclusive". As for people that still believe the Earth is flat, for them the truth is that the world is flat. I do not know why this group of people believe their position on this in light of all the evidence. For everyone else, the truth is the world is spherical(not flat). This speaks to the subjective nature of truth. If you witness a crime with your own eyes and went to the police to report it but when they investigate, they find no evidence. Then what is the truth here? From your perspective, the truth is that you witnessed a crime. From the police perspective, the truth is no crime was committed and you were mistaken.
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100 years ago, it was IMPOSSIBLE to travel to the moon. I think most people truly believed this. At that time, it was the truth. Then about 60 years ago(1960's), that statement of impossibility became no longer true when the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. The truth changes over time as new evidence is found.
I have been obsessed with truth for many years, and only talk , think, and care about truth, (my truth), and it has led to me being isolated and ostracised to a certain degree but also gained me respect from others, and conspiracy theorists have called me a sheep but don’t understand how conspiracy theories are masquerading as independent thinking and open mindedness and intelligence but it’s actually the opposite to all them ,
Great channel btw 👍✌️
Wonderful sir
Thanks!
Could the deflationist simply not use the word true and thereby the t proposition would be A iff A?
Also I was in your lectures 😅 thanks for continuing to teach me!
They could, but then they’d no longer have a theory of what truth is! As a minimum, they need a definition of the word ‘true’, so you need to use ‘true’ in stating the definition.
@@AtticPhilosophy I'm going to define "is a subset of" in terms of the "S-schema," given as follows:
S-Schema: X is a subset of Y iff every element of X is an element of Y
The subset predicate is defined by the S-schema.
Does the circularity argument apply to the S-schema just like it does to the T-schema? Does that indicate that the circularity argument proves too much, or can we fix the S-schema to avoid this problem? And if we *can* fix the S-schema in some way, why can't we fix the T-schema in the same way?
(As for the liar paradox, I think you can formally show that it's unsolvable; see Tarski's undefinability theorem. But you could say, for example, that truth is a second-order predicate which can only "talk about" first order predicates, and then the liar becomes much harder to reconstruct.)
@@NYKevin100 Deflationists take 'truth' to be defined implicitly, by all instances of the T-scheme. It's hard to define 'subset' like that, since any set of S-schema instances will leave out some sets. What you've written isn't a schema, it's an explicit definition (with universal quantification over X, Y), so the problem doesn't arise.
Tarski's theorem shows something quite specific: you can't define 'truth', with the usual rules, in a classical first-order language. But that doesn't rule out other options, eg non-classical logics, or not the usual rules. These are the approaches logicians interested in truth investigate. The 'higher order' approach is Tarski's attempt, but it doesn't work for English, which (plausibly) is its own meta-language.
Truth is not better or more precise than false (falsehood is not the same as false btw). True/false is conclusion of a comparison between an experience and a proposition (those statements that can be true or false)
In general, truth is better and preferable to falsity. We prefer having true beliefs to false ones; we prefer true scientific theories to false ones; we value honesty over dishonesty; We think lying and deceit are often morally reprehensible, and so on.
@@AtticPhilosophy are you responding to my comment … then you have not got my point !
If you can't explain it well enough for lay-people to understand it, then you probably don't know it well enough.
You can explain it well enough for lay-people to understand it.
Thanks Jafar!
How is the Liar paradox not a problem for any of the other theories? Assuming all these theories abide by binary (true vs false) logic.
It is, but (to me) the problem may be avoidable. For example, coherence or correspondence or whatever may allow exceptions to the t-scheme, whereas for deflationism, the t-scheme is built in to the definition of truth.
nice video
Thanks!
How are there more real numbers than there are sentences? "This is the number X..." There are just as many sentences as there are real numbers.
Good question! We can name a real number by writing a string of numerals, 235.73628 is one. Each string is finite, otherwise we can't write it. There's countably many such numerals (the name size of infinity as the natural numbers 1, 2, 3 ...). But there's more real numbers than that - a bigger infinity - and that's the problem!
@@markjago5125 is being able to write a necessary condition for a sentence? Because it seems fairly easy to conceptualize an infinite number X with the words "This is the number" before it. Not writing a sentence down doesn't seem to make it objectionable that I have one formed in other means.
If we're talking about a natural language like English, yes. There's more technical notions of 'language' that allow for infinitely long sentences, but even these usually require countably many terms (names) in the language. Otherwise, there's no algorithm for checking whether a string counts as a sentence of the language or not.
@@AtticPhilosophy I don't believe you. To me it intuitively seems like there are just as many.
I've watched your video just to see if deflationists have resolved the liar's paradox lol disappointing indeed. Thank you though
No they haven’t!