Re: BHA: truth

[Louis Irwin <lirwin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ruth,

>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?

Yes, that seems right to me.  Identifying what it means to assert that a
proposition is true with the assertion of the proposition merely rephrases
the terms of the problem.  However an atomistic view of the world offers an
(incorrect) answer in those rephrased terms - see below.

>(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)?

There are two related redundancy theories, one having to do with "It is true
that ..." and one with "The sentence '...' is true".  Both have their
problems.

>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.)

Well, the latter formulation of the redundancy theory would claim, for
example, that "The sentence 'the cat is black' is true" means the very same
as "The cat is black".  That claim would mean that an assertion of the first
sentence (which makes a truth claim about its embedded sentence) is
equivalent to the assertion of the second sentence (which is the embedded
sentence in the first).  You are certainly correct that the first sentence
is about a sentence while the second is about a cat.  The redundancy
theorist would have claim that despite the superficial distinction is
subject matter, there is at bottom no logical distinction.  So nothing is
being begged in this respect that was not already begged above.  The
redundancy theorist still has to explicate what it is for "the cat is
black", or an assertion of that sentence, to BE true.

Now I speculate that redundancy theorists are liable to have an
extensionalist view of language, so in their eyes the question of what it is
for something to be true comes down to what it is for atomic sentences to be
true.  The sentence "the cat is black" is true just in case the cat referred
to by "the cat" (given a context) has the property referred to by "black".
All other truth is just a matter of working out the truth of a logically
complex sentence in terms of the truth of its atomic components.  Such a
view makes the redundancy theory attractive.

What is wrong with that view?  What does it leave out?  The answer, it
seems to me, is that it has a wrong conception of the world and/or
language.  The theory would work fine if the world neatly divided into
isolated particulars, properties and facts.  Language would simply name
those things and form propositions whose truth would be straightforward.
This is the logical atomism of the early Wittgenstein and Russell.  Enter
critical realism: the world does not divide up that way, a correct causal
view of the world cannot be had that way, etc., etc.

Note that one can be a semantic extensionalist without being an ontological
extensionalist.  Names, properties and sentences could be viewed as atomic
without implying a corresponding atomic ontology of particulars and facts.
Language can use a primitive term to pick out all manner of complex things
for discussion.  But truth of complex sentences would still be extensional
functions of the truth of atomic sentences.  The problem with this view is
that insofar as one tries to use it for a redundancy theory, one has to
ignore all the complex and essential inter-relations that are necessary for
correct causal understanding of the world.

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

What about those who do it for fun?





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