(May 5, 2014 at 4:35 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I think this represents a shallow understanding of what language is. Language is the organized presentation of symbols for communication. But it is not the words that are subject to a truth value-- it is the symbols themselves.
Er, no. The symbols of language have no intrinsic meaning whatsoever. And yet it is meaning that is a prerequisite for truth. Hence, truth is something we create as a pragmatic means of conveying things about the world.
Quote:So where does the symbolic representation of fact begin? I'd argue it begins right with the awareness of the relationship between subject (self) and object (others). This is surely the first layer of interpretation of raw sense data. In other words, "cogito ergo sum" is the first truth that any person can be aware of, and it is not dependent on communication with others.
Not sure about that. I do think that the differentiation between the "self" and that which is not the self is most probably where we start, but it's certainly not by means Descartes' cogito, which is a circular argument.
It's by recognition of the incorrigible knowledge that there are phenomena called thoughts. Yes, I'm nitpicking here. 
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