A question about Truth

[bennyboy]

Er, no. The symbols of language have no intrinsic meaning whatsoever. And yet it is meaning that is a prerequisite for truth.

I think I just said that. Language is a system of organizing and communicating symbols, but it is the symbols themselves which are subject to evaluations of truth-- not the words. The next question is whether symbols can form without language. For example, could the sense of self be fully formed if one lacked a name?

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.

I don't know what "incorrigible knowledge" means.

[Coffee Jesus]

I think I just said that. Language is a system of organizing and communicating symbols, but it is the symbols themselves which are subject to evaluations of truth-- not the words. The next question is whether symbols can form without language. For example, could the sense of self be fully formed if one lacked a name?

The symbol is the representation, not what is represented.

[bennyboy]

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.

If the self is seen as a single agent, this may be so. However, if the self is seen as a canvas upon which multiple ideas act as individual actors, or as a collection of homunculi, or as a label for multiple processes, then the truth proposition is simply the bringing into one reference (i.e. the mind) of two or more symbols. If the self is really pluralistic, then there are uncountable truth propositions being considered all the time-- with or without languages, and with or without deliberate intent in forming them.

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I think I just said that. Language is a system of organizing and communicating symbols, but it is the symbols themselves which are subject to evaluations of truth-- not the words. The next question is whether symbols can form without language. For example, could the sense of self be fully formed if one lacked a name?

The symbol is the representation, not what is represented.

A symbol is a representation by definition. But that doesn't mean that other symbols cannot represent IT.