(December 11, 2013 at 8:34 am)Rational AKD Wrote: really, changing your mind again? you said in post #47 "your dictionary definition is correct" which was referring to the dictionary reference I made in post #46 "the body of real things, events, and facts" so are you really playing this inconsistency game with your words? perhaps your mind was forged imperfectly, which is why you constantly have to change it lol.
I actually thought that definition was for 'fact', not truth (you didn't really specify. The reason I assumed it was the MW definition of fact is the first one, 'the state of being the case'. Regardless, even MW gives the definition I was using:
MW on truth Wrote:the body of true statements and propositions 3 a : the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality
And what further tips the scales here is the fact that we're discussing philosophy. The MW definitions you posted were just examples of ordinary language, which in this case is imprecise. In philosophy, facts are the state of affairs themselves, while truth is reference to that (on correspondence theory). So truth isn't a body of facts, it's a proposition accurately reflecting them.
Quote:I don't know, I gave you a definition and you agreed to it but seemed to have forgotten what it actually said. it's still there in post #46 if you want to take a look.
There was a slight misunderstanding, but even then further Merriam Webster entries align with what I've been saying, i.e truth refers to facts.
[quote
yet words are equated with what they represent to avoid confusion. when I talk about rocks, i'm not referring to a word, but the thing itself. likewise when i'm talking about truth, i'm not referring to the label but reality itself.[/quote]
You're USING the words to communicate about that which ISN'T the word. Again, you're demonstrating your misunderstandings of language. When talking about truth, you're talking about propositions which accurately refer to reality.
Quote:the correspondence would disappear, but reality would not. as I said to genkaus but a moment ago, the sun is there whether we are here to say it or not. it is not there by the necessity of its own nature, but by a contingent factor, thus there are contingent natures of reality which can still be applied to this argument.
No no no, and this is what Gen (I presume) and I have been trying to get through to you. Firstly, in the underlined bit you AGAIN confuse things. Truth IS the correspondence. If all minds are gone, and thus the correspondence, all truth is gone. However, as you note reality is still there (assuming solipsism is false). But that's IRRELEVANT. Truth accurately refers to reality. If there are no more minds, truth is GONE. In other words, truth is itself contingent in some real sense on reality, facts that is.
Quote:nothing in that definition said it was correspondence, or was reflective of reality. it said 1. it is the state of being the case, which doesn't say anything about being correspondence of the case and 2. a body of real things, events, or facts; not body of statements that represent facts. you're putting your interpretation into the definition.
Well, not exactly. There is no theory of truth in philosophy that defines truth as such. Again, you're trying to hide behind the vagueries of ordinary language when we're discussing the philosophical aspect. And as I noted earlier in this post, even MW has the philosophical definitions of correspondence.
Quote:then that would make you an idealist or a solipsist. this argument would apply to those who believe our experiences are represented by what's actually there. if you think your experiences can't represent anything apart from your mind's projection, then obviously these truths would only be entailments of that mind... but then there's nothing else to claim "there is" apart from that.
Eh, no. The Kantian distinction between the perceived and the real is essentially acknowledged as undefeated by all philosophers, much to their chagrin. Nor am I a solipsist or any other kind of idealist.
Truth is an entailment of 'mind' to begin with, so that's just a non sequitur.
Quote:as I said, if that's the case then nothing we say or observe about reality can be real. you might as well claim solipsism.
Even if everything was just an illusion in my mind and solipsism were true, are you saying that the illusion doesn't exist? And you might want to read up on Kant, because otherwise you're just going to keep misunderstanding his place in this topic.
Quote:I covered that at the end of the post, but it seems you're too self absorbed to see it.
I Wrote:the statement is only wrong if you remove its reference and context, which also removes its meaning forcing you to impose your own reference and context.did you read that? it was certainly in the post from me that you quoted. do you know what that means? the statement itself is wrong not because the meaning changed, but because you falsely imposed your own meaning. in other words, you interpreted it incorrectly. as I've said, words represent meaning, so when you impose your own meaning you're not changing facts. learn the difference between a reference of a fact and a fact.
And here we go again. Is it a fact that Reagan is the president of the USA? NO. It WAS a fact, but it no longer is, because what is no true no longer refers to THAT fact.
Quote:the underlined parts aren't what I've disagreed with. what I have disagreed with is you stating the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, wouldn't be true without minds to say so. that would only be true if everything is derived from mind. taking a realist point of view, Jupiter would remain the largest planet in the solar system regardless of whether we are here to say so or not. unless you disagree with realism, you can't disagree with that.
You said this:
you Wrote:the correspondence would disappear, but reality would not
Which means you DID disagree with that (and thus me), even if you did so inadvertently.
And now you're misunderstanding realism and idealism. Assuming solipsism is false, the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet would remain, but the PROPOSITION would not be true, and it would not be false. There would be NO MORE truth, because such is a property of propositions issuing from minds. So again, please realize you are disagreeing with the distinction between truth and fact, even when you affirm you are not.
To say, as you admitted, that the correspondence would disappear if all minds were gone is an admittance that truth is a property of propositions formed by minds. You cannot hold that position while simultaneously not understanding that without minds, "Jupiter is the largest planet" would not be true in a possible world without minds. Those are entirely contradictory.
