Peter Holmes wrote: ↑July 18th, 2019, 3:10 amThese quotations from the literature are interesting, of course, but they merely make the 'correspondence' claim about truth-making and truth-bearing, and my point is that the claim has not been demonstrated to be true. Please - can you show what, for example, the claim 'snow is white' corresponds with? If we call this stuff snow, and that colour white, to say that 'snow is white' is true because it corresponds with the whiteness of snow is vacuous.
To repeat: an arrow does not correspond with its target; a name does not correspond with the thing it names.
This is true if "correspondence" means identity or similarity; but a representation can correspond to (or accord with) reality in the sense that reality is as the representation represents it to be.
I don't like the "Snow is white" example, because snow isn't always white, and whiteness isn't an objective property of physical stuffs or things. Okay, the sentence could be formulated as follows: "Pure snow looks white."
Anyway, the general point is that sentences can correspond to reality in the sense that
the way things are represented to be by them is the way things really are.
Nominal or sentential representations are
symbols in Charles Peirce's narrow sense of the term, in which it is not synonymous with "sign"; and
pictorial representations such as photographies are
icons. In the case of iconic representations, there can be a correspondence with what is represented in terms of similarity or resemblance.
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑July 18th, 2019, 3:10 amThe quotations about the indefinable or primitive nature of some (such as so-called 'ontological') concepts demonstrate the extraordinary depth and ubiquity of the confusion between the way things are and what we say about them.
But when you
say the truth, what you say about the way things are corresponds to the way they really are.
By the way, "correspondence" isn't the only relational term used in this context: "conformity", "congruence", "agreement", "accordance", "harmony".
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑July 18th, 2019, 3:10 amWhat and where are concepts? Is the concept of truth something different from the ways we use the word 'truth'?
For the ontology of concepts, see:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/
If concepts are abstract predicate-meanings/-senses that are part of abstract sentence-meanings/-senses (= propositions), then I think such concepts don't exist.
But if concepts are a kind of mental or intellectual ability, then we can draw a distinction between them and linguistic predicates:
"[H]aving concept X is having the ability to think about Xs (or better, that having concept X is being able to think about Xs 'as such')."
(Fodor, Jerry A.
Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. p. 3)
However, how can you think about Xs (as such) without having a
word for them? (Here, I don't subsume nonlinguistic imagination under
thought.) On the other hand, when you do so you needn't always use
the same word, since you can alternatively use synonyms in the same or some other language without thereby changing your corresponding concept, i.e. your way of thinking of Xs.
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑July 18th, 2019, 3:10 amA definition is either an explanation of the way we use a word, or a description of a thing - and those are radically different operations.
Williamson's distinction between
concepts and
conceptions seems relevant here:
"A distinction is sometimes drawn between concepts and conceptions. A concept is more like a dictionary definition. For example, a dictionary may define the word 'vixen' as 'female fox', so the concept <vixen> just is the concept <female fox> (my dictionary also gives another definition for 'vixen', as 'quarrelsome woman', which would be another concept). By contrast, your conception of a vixen includes all the beliefs you would express using that word (in a given sense). Unlike the concept <vixen>, my conception of a vixen includes my belief that a vixen lives under my garden shed. Dictionaries are for concepts, encyclopaedias for conceptions. If we distinguish concepts from conceptions like this, then conceptual questions are special, because they concern definitions. Clarifying one's concepts is defining one's terms.
One advantage of distinguishing concepts from conceptions is that it explains how knowledge can be communicated from one person to another and preserved over time. Conceptions are personal and fleeting, but definitions can be shared and stable. 'Vixen' has benn defined as 'female fox' for many centuries and many millions of speakers of English."
(Williamson, Timothy.
Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. pp. 45-5)
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑July 18th, 2019, 3:10 amWe agree that truth is not a thing of any kind - so there's no thing to describe - which means that a definition of truth can only be an explanation of how we use the word 'truth'. Davidson (1996) gets this muddled.
There is no foundation, for what we say, beneath our linguistic practices. So that there is no foundation beneath our use of the word 'truth' is trivially true and inconsequential. And none of this implies anti-realism.
That there is no property of truth doesn't mean that the predicate "true" is true of nothing. In fact, it is true of many (truth-apt) representations such as declarative sentences or statements. So there must be something objective about true representations in virtue of which they are true (the predicate "true" is true of them), such as their having truthmakers.