Re: BHA: truth

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Thanks for the help with this -- I'm staying on-list as per Gary's request,
but feel free to fuss...

The thing is, I'm still confused.  Plus, I'm not having a very easy time
articulating what it is that's giving me trouble.  I'm usually a perfectly
good abstractor (abstractress?), too, which makes the whole thing the more
aggravating.

Anyway, it's something like this:  if, from the deflationary perspective,
the sentence "It is true that the cat is black" means the same thing as the
sentence "The cat is black", then isn't the real question "What in the world
am I doing when I claim that the cat is black?"  And isn't this question
being begged?

(Also, is that the right equivalence, or is what is being affirmed
(supposedly redundantly) by the term "truth" not something about a cat but
rather something about a sentence or proposition?  That is, should the first
term read, not "It is true that the cat is black," but instead "It is true
that `The cat is black'" -- by which one means "The sentence `The cat is
black' is a true sentence" (just to spell it out and make you all crazy)?

But if it *is* the latter formulation that's correct, then it seems as
though what you've got is a theory about what someone is doing when they,
rightly or wrongly, assert the truth of a sentence, but not a theory of what
it is for a sentence, or proposition, to actually *BE* true.  So in this
case, too, I don't understand how the question hasn't been begged.)

Help!  Man, I can't believe some people do this for a living.

Warmly,
R



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