A question about Truth

[Coffee Jesus]

That made no sense at all. Experiences aren't the bearers of truth, propositions in language are.

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.

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.

I like this. Many propositions are subjective. For example, "It is here." has a different meaning depending on who is saying it. However, I'm supposed to translate the subjective into objective, which is why I don't respond to "It is here" with "No, it's not here. It's over there, by you." "Here" said by you translates into "over by you" for me.

If a truth proposition represents a consistency between symbols, and if we are now all aware of two levels of reality-- the mundane perception of things, and the knowledge of particles-- then the truth is paradoxical: things are real as we perceive them, and they are not real as we perceive them.

A truth proposition expresses the likeness or unlikeness of some state of affairs to other states of affairs. If it didn't, then we would have no common understandings by which to know what the truth proposition expressed.

You cannot find "flat" anywhere in the universe. You can only find particles that are aligned in space, and refer to this relationship as "flatness."

Direct Response:
"Flat" is not an entity, but an expression of likeness between objects. The word "flat" still expresses something about reality that can be true or false.

Inferential:
I think you are separating materiality from its principles. Materiality is nothing without the principles by which it influences our mental perceptions, thus we cannot think of materiality as separate from those principles. We are only capable of talking about principles and instantiations of principles. Matter involves instantiations of the principles by which some places operate differently than other places, and the principles by which these operations move from place to place.

You cannot find "flat" anywhere in the universe. You can only find particles that are aligned in space, and refer to this relationship as "flatness." To me, that's a symbolic relationship. But since this is how we actually experience the universe, flatness is only untrue when we try to make it coexist with ideas about particles.

Direct Response:
It does coexist with ideas about particles. It expresses a pattern formed by the particles.

Reductio Argument:
If the word "flat" does not express some truth about the particles' relative positions, then no particular alignment of particles should necessitate that the surface is flat. Certain alignments of particles do necessitate that the surface is flat, thus the word "flat" expresses a truth about the particles' relative positions.