[lit-ideas] Re: Try a Logic Problem (or a Truth-Claim)

  • From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 19:43:47 -0230

Just one point - but a very fundamental one, very early on in your account.
Plse. see "W":


Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

> Thanks for this, and thanks again. (So good he posted it twice!)
> 
> The short point I raised seemed to me fairly intelligible (but not to you):
> namely:-
> 
> 1. Whether a statement is true or corresponds with facts depends on, and
> only
> depends on, whether the 'statement' corresponds with the 'facts'. Eg. 'Snow
> is white' is true if and only if [or 'iff.'] the snow is, in fact, white.

W: A statement cannot "correspond with facts," where "fact" is understood as
being external to and independent of the statement itself. Statements can
certainly express facts. And some statements actually do succeed in expressing
or stating facts. Those statements are statements that are true. "Facts" do not
exist "out there" in the world independent of the language-game or practice of
asserting and redeeming validity-claims. One requires an entire language or
vocabulary to be able to state or express a fact. This is why it takes children
a long time to learn how to express a truth-claim or a rightness-claim. The
latter takes even longer than the former. If one's mind is at the egocentric
stage, one can make neither truth-claims nor moral rightness claims. A
fundamental aim of education (in a democracy) is the development of skills and
dispositions of rational autonomy, i.e., learning what is an epistemically
relevant reason for what kind of conclusion. This requires hard, laborious work
on the self. Understanding of others and a world is hence always a form of
self-understanding. Here, frivolity, self-aggrandizement and power are only
impediments to the search for truth. 

Walter C. Okshevsky
Memorial University









> 1.1 This is an 'ontic' theory rather than an 'epistemic' theory of truth.
> 
> 1.1.1 It is an 'ontic' theory of truth because the theory asserts that the
> correspondence relation (such as makes a statement _true_) holds if the
> facts
> _exist_ that correspond to the theory (or, if this is not clear enough, it
> holds the theory is true if the theory corresponds to the facts _that
> exist_).
> 
> 1.1.2 It is not an 'epistemic' a theory of truth because it holds that the
> statement 'The snow in [location x] is white' _is true_ if the the snow in
> [location x] is white. It is true whether or not anyone _knows_ or
> _believes_
> it to be true.
> 
> 1.1.2.1 It is a theory of truth which is not based on how or whether we
> _know
> (or believe)_ a statement is true.
> 
> 1.1.2.2 It is a theory of truth which is based solely on the (logical)
> relation that must _exist_ between statement and facts if the statements are
> to be true (because they correspond to the facts). 
> 
> 1.1.2.3 Tarski's theory denies that a statement, even one we 'know' or
> 'believe' to be true, can ever be true (despite how much we feel we 'know'
> or
> 'believe' it) if it does not correspond to the existence of the facts that
> the statement posits as existing.   
> 
> More later but more below.
> 
> --- wokshevs@xxxxxx wrote:
> 
> > With reference to Donal's laments, 
> 
> 'Laments'? Ok. 'Laments'.
> 
> below, I can only say that I cannot
> > reply to
> > posts that I find so unintelligible that a reply would be worthless for
> all
> > concerned. 
> 
> Here we go - "so unintelligible". Let people who trust you dismiss my post
> herewith. But would a reply be "worthless"? Not necessarily, because, hey it
> might be worth it for me. And anyway what is so "unintelligible" you fail to
> explain or make intelligible - perhaps because being unintelligible you
> cannot it. But perhaps it is fairly intelligible and you think dismissing it
> as "so unintelligible" easier (after all, as Popper pointed out, dismissing
> a
> problem or point etc as "unintelligible" or "senseless" is always possible,
> especially if we adopt an overly narrow or self-serving sense of what is
> "intelligible" or "makes sense" - ending up in that philosophical equivalent
> of the adolescent 'He who doesn't agree with me doesn't understand me' [i.e.
> he who doesn't recognise the truth of what I say cannot actually have
> properly grasped the sense of what I say].
> 
> Given the relative lack of intelligibility in our so-called 'philosopher'
> class, it is perhaps amazing that you have the nerve to make such an
> allegation and then ramble on with the following:-
> 
> 
> >Philosophical analysis is a highly distinct form of discourse;
> > not
> > everything originating in one's subjectivity counts as a sensible
> response.
> > Philosophical commentary is neither political analysis, nor psychological
> > exhibitions of attempted individuation. See Richard Rorty on "private
> > individuation," 
> 
> I don't know where to start taking this apart as some kind of (pretend?) 
> argument. But for your information I might mention, without specifying
> further
> See 'Eat My Shorts' by Bart Simpson. 
> 
> I have offered a further clarification of a fairly clear point here. But no,
> it's all "obfuscatory" to Walter - the kind of term only terminal
> obfuscators
> tend to use btw.
> 
> It is clear to me that my contention has nothing obvious to do with your
> contention that I was somehow suggesting that we can have knowledge of the
> ontic (whatever that is) without this being (in some sense) dependent on the
> "epistemic". (Obviously _in some sense_ all knowledge is
> 'epistemic-dependent' - who's leading us into obfuscatory drivel by
> suggesting I suggested otherwise?)
> 
> Also: my other main point was:-
> 
> If 'The snow is white' is true if the snow is white, so 'My arm hurt today
> at
> four' is true if my arm did then hurt. 
> 
> That is, even if the second statement has subject-dependent 'epistemic'
> validity it may be absolutely true - because absolute truth is an ontic not
> and epistemic relationship. 
> 
> 
> Whether your comments are a product of my very bad and unclear writing or
> your very bad and "obfuscatory" reading, well - I'll get back on that.
> 
> Donal
> 
> Dashing
> 
> 
> 
>               
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