Sketch of an anti-solipsit "proof" of the self

[Aranfan]

As a frequenter of an Alternate History forum, I feel that I have enough experience with counterfactuals to say you are full of shit right here Formless. Counterfactuals are counter to fact (by definition), yet all the time people evaluate counterfactuals as "true". "If Hitler had died before WWII then Goring or a Junta would take control of Germany" and "If the Central Powers win WWI then France would be finished as a Great Power" are two counterfactuals that are widely ascribed a T value in the truth tables. This happening, in fact having at least one large community dedicated to it, shows that "a measure of correspondence to empirical reality" does not fully capture what is intuitively meant by "truth".

And if I were presented with such claims, I would ask for evidence. I seriously don't think you understand what a counterfactual statement is. If something is contrary to the facts, it means it is contrary to the evidence, and thus we cannot say that it follows. What you're arguing for is true, but its not actually a flaw in empirical epistemologies. Its an assumption of them.

One of the dudes on that site is a chemist, and he does it just as much as anyone else on the site. If the question is "what is knowledge" then if a definition doesn't jive with the intuitive understanding, then it's rejected. It should be similar with "what is truth". Truth as correspondence to reality captures part of it, but runs into problems with hypotheticals.

Just because some people say something is true doesn't mean it is.

So I can't necessarily trust what you say, or any of your citations? I would have to do all the experiments myself to trust them? Sure, people say that general relativity is true, but I've never performed the experiments, and I have only people's word that they were performed and got the results that they got.

[Formless]

And if I were presented with such claims, I would ask for evidence. I seriously don't think you understand what a counterfactual statement is. If something is contrary to the facts, it means it is contrary to the evidence, and thus we cannot say that it follows. What you're arguing for is true, but its not actually a flaw in empirical epistemologies. Its an assumption of them.

One of the dudes on that site is a chemist, and he does it just as much as anyone else on the site.

Appealing to Authority is a logic fallacy, not evidence that a statement is true.

If the question is "what is knowledge" then if a definition doesn't jive with the intuitive understanding, then it's rejected.

Appealing to Intuition is a logic fallacy, not proof that something is true.

It should be similar with "what is truth". Truth as correspondence to reality captures part of it, but runs into problems with hypotheticals.

No it doesn't you moron. In a hypothetical, as long as the entities in the hypothetical could exist, the statement can be said to have a positive or negative truth value. If the entities cannot exist, then it does not follow. For instance: Laplaces demon is an entity critical to the thought experiment of the same name that is supposed to demonstrate the essential principals of determinism. However, its an impossible entity due to (among other things) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Therefor, any statement derived from that thought experiment is demonstrably false. Anything else is simply a search for self consistency, which may be useful but not the same thing as assessing the truth value of something in the real world.

Now, these counterfactuals you are arguing about have to do with demonstrably real entities that not only can exist, but which we know did exist at one point in time to a very high degree of certainty. Therefor, we can make true or false statements about them in the form of predictions, which is pretty much what those statements you put up are. If we cannot make true predictions about the past, we cannot make true predictions about the future either, and all of science would be useless. Its obviously not useless, as the computers facilitating this conversation demonstrate (for those of us impressed by intuition).

The caveat to this, however, is that you need to have evidence in order to make a prediction, and that because we cannot do history over again we will never have the level of certainty about alt. history predictions than about predictions testable in a lab. Of course, we can't even have that kind of certainty about our own lives due to the fact that our memories are malleable and we forget things all the time, and historical knowledge can be erased or destroyed over time; so that is no test of empirical epistemology either.

Just because some people say something is true doesn't mean it is.

So I can't necessarily trust what you say, or any of your citations?

If I assert their truth on my own authority as you have done with these so called counterfactuals? Then no, you can't. You could, however, actually read the evidence yourself and assess it on its own merits and possibly decide I'm right or wrong, whatever the case may be. Next question.

I would have to do all the experiments myself to trust them? Sure, people say that general relativity is true, but I've never performed the experiments, and I have only people's word that they were performed and got the results that they got.

Go buy a GPS. Instant test of general relativity right there you can do without even having to take a course in arithmetic. Want to test the theory of electricity? Turn on the lights. Want to test the theory of quantum mechanics? Find any device that has an LED on it and turn it on. The fact that all these things work the way the experts who invented or developed them say they should is all a layman needs to see to say that these theories are, to a certain extent, true.

[Bottlestein]

@ Aranfan

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue in the OP, or elsewhere in your posts, really. There seems to be 2 distinct ideas:

1) You (or perhaps others who posted) are trying to formalize Philosophical Principle of Induction using the same techniques as Model Theory? - This is not possible: the whole point of the P. of Induction is that the spanning set for atomic sentences is strictly a subset of the spanning set of atomic sentences after the Principle has been applied. For example:
These plants are green.
P.of Induction
The next plant will be green.
The word "next" does not appear in the initial spanning set but does appear in the final. Automatically you can demonstrate that a satisfiable theory T for the first set of sentences will not be satisfiable for the second set.

2) You mentioned "brain in a vat". Is this Hilary Putnam's paper you are referencing, or some other idea? His paper does not prove or disprove whether or not we are brains in a vat - it simply demonstrates that if we did exist in a "vat", we would not have a word in our language that properly "means" the type of vat that we are contained in. However, his paper has very strong assumptions on "meaning", and I'm pretty sure that Formal Language Theory has disproved many of them. I'm not sure if the proof can be redone with weaker assumptions.

Is your underlying question epistemological or metaphysical? You had some stuff about moral philosophy, but I have not had any courses in that (only philosophy classes I've had are Epistemology, and an introductory course that had some of the pre- Russell Metaphysics, e.g. Spinoza and Descartes).

[Aranfan]

And if I were presented with such claims, I would ask for evidence. I seriously don't think you understand what a counterfactual statement is. If something is contrary to the facts, it means it is contrary to the evidence, and thus we cannot say that it follows. What you're arguing for is true, but its not actually a flaw in empirical epistemologies. Its an assumption of them.

One of the dudes on that site is a chemist, and he does it just as much as anyone else on the site.

Appealing to Authority is a logic fallacy, not evidence that a statement is true.

Appeal to Authority? I'm giving an example of someone, specifically a scientist, assigning a positive truth value to counterfactuals. How is that at all a fallacy?

If the question is "what is knowledge" then if a definition doesn't jive with the intuitive understanding, then it's rejected.

Appealing to Intuition is a logic fallacy, not proof that something is true.

The only way to have the Law of Non-Contradiction is to appeal to intuition, same with the law of identity. The only way to have Empiricism is to appeal to intuition that you can trust your senses.

It should be similar with "what is truth". Truth as correspondence to reality captures part of it, but runs into problems with hypotheticals.

No it doesn't you moron. In a hypothetical, as long as the entities in the hypothetical could exist, the statement can be said to have a positive or negative truth value. If the entities cannot exist, then it does not follow. For instance: Laplaces demon is an entity critical to the thought experiment of the same name that is supposed to demonstrate the essential principals of determinism. However, its an impossible entity due to (among other things) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Therefor, any statement derived from that thought experiment is demonstrably false. Anything else is simply a search for self consistency, which may be useful but not the same thing as assessing the truth value of something in the real world.

Yet the entities in the hypothetical don't really exist, they are unreal. They could exist, but either don't or we don't have evidence of them. Thats why it's a hypothetical.

Now, these counterfactuals you are arguing about have to do with demonstrably real entities that not only can exist, but which we know did exist at one point in time to a very high degree of certainty. Therefor, we can make true or false statements about them in the form of predictions, which is pretty much what those statements you put up are. If we cannot make true predictions about the past, we cannot make true predictions about the future either, and all of science would be useless. Its obviously not useless, as the computers facilitating this conversation demonstrate (for those of us impressed by intuition).

The "predictions" made about the past in alt history cannot be true under the correspondence definition because they are not what really happened.

The caveat to this, however, is that you need to have evidence in order to make a prediction, and that because we cannot do history over again we will never have the level of certainty about alt. history predictions than about predictions testable in a lab. Of course, we can't even have that kind of certainty about our own lives due to the fact that our memories are malleable and we forget things all the time, and historical knowledge can be erased or destroyed over time; so that is no test of empirical epistemology either.

What would be a test of empirical epistemology then? How could one falsify empiricism?

Just because some people say something is true doesn't mean it is.

So I can't necessarily trust what you say, or any of your citations?

If I assert their truth on my own authority as you have done with these so called counterfactuals? Then no, you can't. You could, however, actually read the evidence yourself and assess it on its own merits and possibly decide I'm right or wrong, whatever the case may be. Next question.

You are saying that I am wrong, implicitly that you know more about this than I do, that you are a greater authority than I am.

I would have to do all the experiments myself to trust them? Sure, people say that general relativity is true, but I've never performed the experiments, and I have only people's word that they were performed and got the results that they got.

Go buy a GPS. Instant test of general relativity right there you can do without even having to take a course in arithmetic. Want to test the theory of electricity? Turn on the lights. Want to test the theory of quantum mechanics? Find any device that has an LED on it and turn it on. The fact that all these things work the way the experts who invented or developed them say they should is all a layman needs to see to say that these theories are, to a certain extent, true.

So you say. Possibly others say so as well. Yet you said not to take people's word on stuff, that applies to how stuff works as well. I believe General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to be close approximations to the real world, yet I have performed no experiments and only have the word of others that my computer runs on QM principles.

@ Aranfan

The Brain In A Vat thing is more The Matrix than Putnam. I'm not sure what my underlying question is, all the philosophic areas overlap to a greater or lesser extent.

[Formless]

Appeal to Authority? I'm giving an example of someone, specifically a scientist, assigning a positive truth value to counterfactuals. How is that at all a fallacy?

For starters, he's a CHEMIST. History isn't even his specialty!

Second of all, if I'm an authority on a subject and you are an authority on the same subject, how are we supposed to decide who is right and who is wrong? We look at the evidence and make logical arguments and try to convince each other (like we are doing right now). If an authority talks to someone who isn't an authority, he must be willing to do the same if the person cites a differing opinion from another authority.

The only way to have the Law of Non-Contradiction is to appeal to intuition, same with the law of identity. The only way to have Empiricism is to appeal to intuition that you can trust your senses.

Bullshit.

The "predictions" made about the past in alt history cannot be true under the correspondence definition because they are not what really happened.

Stop with the wall of ignorance tactics, please. Both Surleth and myself have already explained what the correspondence theory of truth actually says about this: the correspondence is to the real entity that could have existed, as long as its existence is not impossible we can make true or false claims or predictions about them. Hence, we can assess the truth value of an alt. history hypothetical the same way we assess any other claim or prediction: by looking at the evidence i.e. the facts.

What would be a test of empirical epistemology then? How could one falsify empiricism?

If the predictions made using empirical evidence were no better than chance, produced results that were consistently inconsistent, or were otherwise utterly useless (in the sense that its useful to be able to find food with your senses, tell the difference between a working machine and a piece of junk, and avoid dangers to your life like fire and moving vehicles) then you might be able to falsify it and its use.

If I assert their truth on my own authority as you have done with these so called counterfactuals? Then no, you can't. You could, however, actually read the evidence yourself and assess it on its own merits and possibly decide I'm right or wrong, whatever the case may be. Next question.

You are saying that I am wrong, implicitly that you know more about this than I do, that you are a greater authority than I am.

I am explaining how I would tell if you were wrong, lying, or bullshitting. I would go to the source, the facts. Whether or not those counterfactual statements you made are in fact true isn't what is at stake here: its whether or not they represent a challenge for empirical epistemologies or the correspondence theory of truth. And yes, in that sense I do think you are wrong. You have no idea what those philosophies actually say, you just keep asserting that counterfactuals are a problem despite my repeated explanations to the contrary.

So you say. Possibly others say so as well. Yet you said not to take people's word on stuff, that applies to how stuff works as well.

No it doesn't. You can actually see that stuff in operation with your own eyes, despite never having been in the laboratories that created them. You don't have to take anyone's word for it. In the same way you can test the theory of gravitation by throwing yourself off a bridge (not that I am suggesting anyone try this, mind you!)

The point is that you are surrounded by the successes of empirical epistemology in your every day life and use it unconsciously all the time. The fact that you are still alive and talking to me over the internet is evidence enough that it works. Whereas Plato's Theory of Forms has produced nothing, and does nothing to help you live your life.

I believe General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to be close approximations to the real world, yet I have performed no experiments and only have the word of others that my computer runs on QM principles.

Actually, what's funny is that they are only close approximations. "Truth" in modern epistemology and science is like an asymptote. You can approach it but its impossible to ever have perfect certainty, even about the past. But by constantly refining your models you can come so close that the distinction doesn't really matter.

[Aranfan]

Leaving out the stuff I can't be arsed to respond to.

The only way to have the Law of Non-Contradiction is to appeal to intuition, same with the law of identity. The only way to have Empiricism is to appeal to intuition that you can trust your senses.

Bullshit.

Present the counterexample then, where's the proof of Empiricism that doesn't rely on appeal to intuition that the senses can be trusted?

The "predictions" made about the past in alt history cannot be true under the correspondence definition because they are not what really happened.

Stop with the wall of ignorance tactics, please. Both Surleth and myself have already explained what the correspondence theory of truth actually says about this: the correspondence is to the real entity that could have existed, as long as its existence is not impossible we can make true or false claims or predictions about them. Hence, we can assess the truth value of an alt. history hypothetical the same way we assess any other claim or prediction: by looking at the evidence i.e. the facts.

Impossible? As in "not possible"? Which is modally equivalent to "necessarily not"? If something did not happen (p=France lost WWI, -p that not having happened), then it is not possible for it not to have not happened (-<>--p). That is to say that it necessarily did not happen ([]-p), which means it's impossible (-<>p). If we start with p then we have left the real world (where -p) far behind.

[Formless]

The only way to have the Law of Non-Contradiction is to appeal to intuition, same with the law of identity. The only way to have Empiricism is to appeal to intuition that you can trust your senses.

Bullshit.

Present the counterexample then, where's the proof of Empiricism that doesn't rely on appeal to intuition that the senses can be trusted?

That's not how it works, fucktard. When I say "bullshit" that means the onus is on YOU to show ME how it DOES. You have not demonstrated this claim that empirical epistemology requires intuition-- in fact it contradicts intuition left and fucking right! It used to be "intuitive" that the earth is flat and is the center of the universe. It used to be "intuitive" that mankind was above the animals and that they were designed for our use. It used to be "intuitive" that the heart was the seat of the mind *. All of these things were demonstrated utterly utterly false by empirical observation.

Frankly, I've already said what its based on. Practicality. You can't live your life thinking you are a brain in a vat because sooner or later your stomach is going to remind you that it doesn't give a damn what Plato thought about reality. If you are so distrusting of your eyes, why not... no, that suggestion would be too cruel.

* Yes, really. That was a Greek idea, and where we get all those sayings like "have a heart!" when we know now that its just a muscle.

Impossible? As in "not possible"? Which is modally equivalent to "necessarily not"? If something did not happen (p=France lost WWI, -p that not having happened), then it is not possible for it not to have not happened (-<>--p). That is to say that it necessarily did not happen ([]-p), which means it's impossible (-<>p). If we start with p then we have left the real world (where -p) far behind.

Speak English, retard. Not everyone understands jargon like that, that's why Surlethe doesn't break out formal logic unless the person he's talking to has shown they understand it. Actually communicating your ideas is what you are supposed to do if you are going to debate them.

However, if I understand you correctly, you appear to be mistaking a statement of chronology with a predictive statement, which puts you in the category of "terminally stupid."

Chronology:

1) Event X happened

2) result Y was (important word there) caused.

Prediction:

1) IF (key word there) X occurs

2) Y will (again, notice this word) occur.

Do they look the same to you? Similar, sure. But Look at the tense. The former has to do with the past, the latter has to do with the future. They both have their place, but they are not the same!

In an alt. history hypothetical we are assuming that the past did not happen the way it actually did, which effectively places everything after the alteration to the timeline in the future. That means "if such and such happened differently this would have resulted" isn't a statement of chronology, its a prediction. Get that through your skull, and stop wasting my time.

[Aranfan]

Present the counterexample then, where's the proof of Empiricism that doesn't rely on appeal to intuition that the senses can be trusted?

That's not how it works, fucktard. When I say "bullshit" that means the onus is on YOU to show ME how it DOES. You have not demonstrated this claim that empirical epistemology requires intuition-- in fact it contradicts intuition left and fucking right! It used to be "intuitive" that the earth is flat and is the center of the universe. It used to be "intuitive" that mankind was above the animals and that they were designed for our use. It used to be "intuitive" that the heart was the seat of the mind *. All of these things were demonstrated utterly utterly false by empirical observation.

Frankly, I've already said what its based on. Practicality. You can't live your life thinking you are a brain in a vat because sooner or later your stomach is going to remind you that it doesn't give a damn what Plato thought about reality. If you are so distrusting of your eyes, why not... no, that suggestion would be too cruel.

* Yes, really. That was a Greek idea, and where we get all those sayings like "have a heart!" when we know now that its just a muscle.

According to General Relativity, I am the center of my observable universe. The Earth being flat is a strawman, everybody who had seen something move under the horizon knew that it was round, because they intuitively trusted their senses more than abstractions generated from only some of their sensory data.

Methodological Empiricism does not require Realism, it can work just as well on the dreamscape, or the illusions of the Cartesian daemon, or the virtual world being fed to your Brain (in a vat). It is a method of figuring out how our "seemings" work, it says nothing about their ontology.

Impossible? As in "not possible"? Which is modally equivalent to "necessarily not"? If something did not happen (p=France lost WWI, -p that not having happened), then it is not possible for it not to have not happened (-<>--p). That is to say that it necessarily did not happen ([]-p), which means it's impossible (-<>p). If we start with p then we have left the real world (where -p) far behind.

Speak English, retard. Not everyone understands jargon like that, that's why Surlethe doesn't break out formal logic unless the person he's talking to has shown they understand it. Actually communicating your ideas is what you are supposed to do if you are going to debate them.

However, if I understand you correctly, you appear to be mistaking a statement of chronology with a predictive statement, which puts you in the category of "terminally stupid."

Chronology:

1) Event X happened

2) result Y was (important word there) caused.

Prediction:

1) IF (key word there) X occurs

2) Y will (again, notice this word) occur.

Do they look the same to you? Similar, sure. But Look at the tense. The former has to do with the past, the latter has to do with the future. They both have their place, but they are not the same!

In an alt. history hypothetical we are assuming that the past did not happen the way it actually did, which effectively places everything after the alteration to the timeline in the future. That means "if such and such happened differently this would have resulted" isn't a statement of chronology, its a prediction. Get that through your skull, and stop wasting my time.

Since these apply to worlds not causally connected with ours, all such predictions describe a prioristic fantasy lands and are no better than the predictions made in Revalations. They might use assumptions that are a posteri to the real world, but to the "possible world" in question these assumptions are a priori.

[Formless]

According to General Relativity, I am the center of my observable universe.

For fucks sake, you don't know anything about anything, do you? According to General Relativity THERE IS NO CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. That was the whole goddamn point of General Relativity.

The Earth being flat is a strawman, everybody who had seen something move under the horizon knew that it was round, because they intuitively trusted their senses more than abstractions generated from only some of their sensory data.

So you are a complete ignoramus about history too. No surprise.

Methodological Empiricism does not require Realism, it can work just as well on the dreamscape, or the illusions of the Cartesian daemon, or the virtual world being fed to your Brain (in a vat). It is a method of figuring out how our "seemings" work, it says nothing about their ontology.

Because Ontology is a useless subject that has produced nothing of any value to anyone, and has no bearing on empirical epistemology (or epistemology in general, really) which defines reality as that which can be observed. If it were anything else, then tell me whats the ontological status of the invisible pink unicorn in my garage that breaths no air, emits no heat, makes no smells, moves away from you when you try to touch it, and yet somehow manages to stay perfectly still so you can't hear it? There is none. That's Falsification in a nutshell. After all, if it were any other way then we get back to the problem of infinite regress: we have no way of knowing what the true nature of "reality" is otherwise, and frankly we don't give a shit. If you were a brain in a vat, your virtual "stomach" is still going to tell you to shut the fuck up and use those eyes to do something useful like EAT. If "reality" is something that cannot be observed by definition, then its utterly meaningless as a concept. You are the only one here who can't seem to get it that none of Plato's (or Descarte's) ideas are considered modern philosophy by any standard for these very reasons.

Since these apply to worlds not causally connected with ours, all such predictions describe a prioristic fantasy lands and are no better than the predictions made in Revalations. They might use assumptions that are a posteri to the real world, but to the "possible world" in question these assumptions are a priori.

You know what? Surlethe was giving you far too much credit. You've no interest in learning anything. If you were, you would listen rather than spewing the same shit over and over ad nausium long after I'd addressed said shit. A prediction is a prediction, it exists in the future which by definition DOES NOT EXIST YET! That doesn't mean that it cannot have a truth value, because once again as long as the terms correspond to a POSSIBLE entity, it corresponds to reality. According to your argument there is no such thing as a "true" prediction. Even Plato would have thrown you out of his class for making such an idiotic, wall of ignorance argument. You and I are done. Have a nice day, sophist.

[Aranfan]

According to General Relativity, I am the center of my observable universe.

For fucks sake, you don't know anything about anything, do you? According to General Relativity THERE IS NO CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. That was the whole goddamn point of General Relativity.

You seem to have missed the "my observable" qualifier.

The Earth being flat is a strawman, everybody who had seen something move under the horizon knew that it was round, because they intuitively trusted their senses more than abstractions generated from only some of their sensory data.

So you are a complete ignoramus about history too. No surprise.

Thanks for not addressing my point.

Methodological Empiricism does not require Realism, it can work just as well on the dreamscape, or the illusions of the Cartesian daemon, or the virtual world being fed to your Brain (in a vat). It is a method of figuring out how our "seemings" work, it says nothing about their ontology.

Because Ontology is a useless subject that has produced nothing of any value to anyone, and has no bearing on empirical epistemology (or epistemology in general, really) which defines reality as that which can be observed. If it were anything else, then tell me whats the ontological status of the invisible pink unicorn in my garage that breaths no air, emits no heat, makes no smells, moves away from you when you try to touch it, and yet somehow manages to stay perfectly still so you can't hear it? There is none. That's Falsification in a nutshell. After all, if it were any other way then we get back to the problem of infinite regress: we have no way of knowing what the true nature of "reality" is otherwise, and frankly we don't give a shit. If you were a brain in a vat, your virtual "stomach" is still going to tell you to shut the fuck up and use those eyes to do something useful like EAT. If "reality" is something that cannot be observed by definition, then its utterly meaningless as a concept. You are the only one here who can't seem to get it that none of Plato's (or Descarte's) ideas are considered modern philosophy by any standard for these very reasons.

So you are agreeing with the rejection of ontology in my sketch?

Since these apply to worlds not causally connected with ours, all such predictions describe a prioristic fantasy lands and are no better than the predictions made in Revalations. They might use assumptions that are a posteri to the real world, but to the "possible world" in question these assumptions are a priori.

You know what? Surlethe was giving you far too much credit. You've no interest in learning anything. If you were, you would listen rather than spewing the same shit over and over ad nausium long after I'd addressed said shit. A prediction is a prediction, it exists in the future which by definition DOES NOT EXIST YET! That doesn't mean that it cannot have a truth value, because once again as long as the terms correspond to a POSSIBLE entity, it corresponds to reality. According to your argument there is no such thing as a "true" prediction. Even Plato would have thrown you out of his class for making such an idiotic, wall of ignorance argument. You and I are done. Have a nice day, sophist.

Under the Correspondence view there can be no true predictions. This is because until what is predicted happens, the prediction lacks correspondence. Predictions can be true under a deflationary view.

[Formless]

Thanks for not addressing my point.

Actually, this just shows you have no idea what "intuition" is.

So you are agreeing with the rejection of ontology in my sketch?

I'm saying that rejection of Ontology does not lead to any of your conclusions about empirical reality. In fact, Plato's Theory of Forms is ontology-- yet for some reason you use the Form of Truth as your starting point.

You know what? Surlethe was giving you far too much credit. You've no interest in learning anything. If you were, you would listen rather than spewing the same shit over and over ad nausium long after I'd addressed said shit. A prediction is a prediction, it exists in the future which by definition DOES NOT EXIST YET! That doesn't mean that it cannot have a truth value, because once again as long as the terms correspond to a POSSIBLE entity, it corresponds to reality. According to your argument there is no such thing as a "true" prediction. Even Plato would have thrown you out of his class for making such an idiotic, wall of ignorance argument. You and I are done. Have a nice day, sophist.

Under the Correspondence view there can be no true predictions. This is because until what is predicted happens, the prediction lacks correspondence. Predictions can be true under a deflationary view.

[Formless]

Ghetto edit: one example of a true prediction according to correspondence theory coming up:

1) if you hit a nitroglycerin soaked rag with a hammer

2) it will explode

3) we know this because we've studied the chemical properties of nitroglycerin and all the evidence suggests that it is as unstable a compound now as when it was invented.

At no point is it specified what nitroglycerin soaked rag is to be hit-- but we know that a nitroglycerin soaked rag is a possible entity due to empirical observations. It corresponds to reality.

[Aranfan]

So under your version of the Correspondence theory of truth, it doesn't have to correspond to anything actual, just something that could, maybe, possibly be?

I'm sorry, what was the motivation for the correspondence theory of truth again?

Edit: I also rejected the Platonic Form of Truth as useless to me, didn't I?

[Formless]

So under your version of the Correspondence theory of truth, it doesn't have to correspond to anything actual, just something that could, maybe, possibly be?

I'm sorry, what was the motivation for the correspondence theory of truth again?

I don't care what the motivation for the correspondence theory of truth is, all I care about is what it says. The correspondence theory of truth says that every [edit]word[/edit] noun in language corresponds to a possible entity in the real world (and if not, then that word is meaningless when assessing truth values). But only a certain category of words apply to specific entities (that is, proper nouns like "Hitler" or "Aranfan), while most words correspond to a category of things (like apples, dogs, planets, stars, cars, chemicals, etc.). So there is no problem with a prediction having to do with something that never actually happened, as long as the objects or entities the statement is about are part of a set of objects that are not impossible.

Edit: I also rejected the Platonic Form of Truth as useless to me, didn't I?

I must have missed that. Or maybe I forgot-- you revived this conversation after a week of inactivity and I have had other things on my mind since then. Could you point me to it?

[Aranfan]

So under your version of the Correspondence theory of truth, it doesn't have to correspond to anything actual, just something that could, maybe, possibly be?

I'm sorry, what was the motivation for the correspondence theory of truth again?

I don't care what the motivation for the correspondence theory of truth is, all I care about is what it says. The correspondence theory of truth says that every [edit]word[/edit] noun in language corresponds to a possible entity in the real world (and if not, then that word is meaningless when assessing truth values). But only a certain category of words apply to specific entities (that is, proper nouns like "Hitler" or "Aranfan), while most words correspond to a category of things (like apples, dogs, planets, stars, cars, chemicals, etc.). So there is no problem with a prediction having to do with something that never actually happened, as long as the objects or entities the statement is about are part of a set of objects that are not impossible.

So, to clarify, anything that is not impossible is true?

Edit: I also rejected the Platonic Form of Truth as useless to me, didn't I?

I must have missed that. Or maybe I forgot-- you revived this conversation after a week of inactivity and I have had other things on my mind since then. Could you point me to it?

I appear to have not actually done so. Note to self: include that in the next draft.

[Formless]

So, to clarify, anything that is not impossible is true?

NO, statements, claims, predictions, and premises are the only things that can have a truth value under any system of logic. Objects and entities just are.

I appear to have not actually done so. Note to self: include that in the next draft.

Thank you.

[Aranfan]

So, to clarify, anything that is not impossible is true?

NO, statements, claims, predictions, and premises are the only things that can have a truth value under any system of logic. Objects and entities just are.

Okay, I'm gong to try to sum up how things seem from my end.

I was saying, or attempting to say, that under the correspondence definition of truth, things which didn't correspond to the actual world are false. You then responded, or I interpreted you to respond, that correspondence with possible worlds would allow truth. My objection to this is that Modal Realism has the same problems with how we know about Possible Worlds, that Platonic Forms have.

I appear to have not actually done so. Note to self: include that in the next draft.

Thank you.

Since I'm a nominalist, rejecting Plato's bullshit is pretty important.

[Formless]

Okay, I'm gong to try to sum up how things seem from my end.

I was saying, or attempting to say, that under the correspondence definition of truth, things which didn't correspond to the actual world are false. You then responded, or I interpreted you to respond, that correspondence with possible worlds would allow truth. My objection to this is that Modal Realism has the same problems with how we know about Possible Worlds, that Platonic Forms have.

No, the problem with the Platonic Forms have is that they are a classic Reification Fallacy. In other words, they assert that for every word there must be a real, possibly physical, "thing" that they associate with, even if the word obviously connotes a concept rather than an object. There is also a problem that you can just invent words and try to assert they have a Platonic Form... even though its just made up gibberish. What's the Platonic Form of "Truthiness?" What's the Platonic Form of "Materia?" What's the Platonic Form of "Nanosquats?" None; that would be absurd. Basically, its the reverse of Correspondence theory.

Since I'm a nominalist, rejecting Plato's bullshit is pretty important.

I would suggest studying it before rejecting it. There may be some good stuff in his arguments, and knowing why he's wrong may be helpful. That same exercise helped me quite a bit when I did it with Descarte.

[Aranfan]

Okay, I'm gong to try to sum up how things seem from my end.

I was saying, or attempting to say, that under the correspondence definition of truth, things which didn't correspond to the actual world are false. You then responded, or I interpreted you to respond, that correspondence with possible worlds would allow truth. My objection to this is that Modal Realism has the same problems with how we know about Possible Worlds, that Platonic Forms have.

No, the problem with the Platonic Forms have is that they are a classic Reification Fallacy. In other words, they assert that for every word there must be a real, possibly physical, "thing" that they associate with, even if the word obviously connotes a concept rather than an object. There is also a problem that you can just invent words and try to assert they have a Platonic Form... even though its just made up gibberish. What's the Platonic Form of "Truthiness?" What's the Platonic Form of "Materia?" What's the Platonic Form of "Nanosquats?" None; that would be absurd. Basically, its the reverse of Correspondence theory.

Hmm. I had felt that the problem with Platonic Forms was that they're causally inert with respect to us. They, in their Heaven, are not effected by anything we do, and themselves effect and cause nothing. Since our knowledge of them would thus be utterly independent of them, you could get all the same use out of them by treating them as merely an occasionally useful fiction. Then apply Occam's razor to keep down the number of ontological entities. The same would hold with "possible worlds".

Since I'm a nominalist, rejecting Plato's bullshit is pretty important.

I would suggest studying it before rejecting it. There may be some good stuff in his arguments, and knowing why he's wrong may be helpful. That same exercise helped me quite a bit when I did it with Descarte.

Yeah, I'm going to look at his arguments and see what's salvageable.