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Re: [ontolog-forum] Correspondence Theory Of Truth -- Discussion

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Inquiry <inquiry@xxxxxxxxxx>
From: Ingvar Johansson <ingvar.johansson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:11:31 +0200
Message-id: <46C5BAA3.60200@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Jon Awbrey schrieb:
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
> BS = Barry Smith
> HS = Henry Story
> IJ = Ingvar Johansson
> JA = Jon Awbrey
>
> Ingvar,
>
> I wanted to continue replying to one of your previous messages,
> but 2 or 3 tries at doing that led me to believe that I should
> review the way that "correspondence theories of truth" came up
> in our discussions here.
>       (01)

After having read everything you say below, I think I have a piece of 
information that might be enlightening. There are at least two very 
different ways of looking at truth - while adhering to the 
correspondence theory of truth. If they are not separated, then serious 
misunderstandings easily arise; I know from hard-won experience. Here 
comes the two views:    (02)

1. The Fregean view that when a statement is true it corresponds to the 
truthvalue Truth. Here, it becomes natural to say: 'the good for logic 
is truth'.    (03)

2. The view (mine) that when a statement is true it corresponds to an 
obtaining state of affairs (fact). Here, it becomes natural to say: 'the 
good for logic is valid inferences'.    (04)

best,
Ingvar    (05)

> Many of the participants in this forum make it their business
> to concern themselves with the relationship between realities --
> very often all too harsh realities -- and the representations
> that we form of the relevant piece of the world.  As a result,
> the question often arises, expressed many ways by many voices,
> as to how realities impact -- or ought to impact -- on formal
> theories and formal models, IF those theories and models are
> to allow of "continuous quality improvement" (CQI), as one
> recent buzzword expresses it.
>
> For my part, I've been focused for a couple of months now on
> the questions that arose in the train of trying to answer the
> question that Barry Smith raised back around the Ides of July:
>
> | If we have a sentence in a biology textbook,
> | say "blood cells are non-nucleated", then
> | is this about cells in reality (as I, and
> | I guess common sense, would assume) or
> | about cells in the biology model?
> |
> | Barry Smith, 
>http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2007-07/msg00077.html
>
> So we have (1) the "real world", the objective situations and things of
> our various concerns, and we have (2) a wide variety of representations
> on our "non-fiction shelves", so to speak, from the raw data of our own
> senses to the cleaned-up data in our lab archives to axiomatic theories
> and mathematical models, all of which "relate" to this world of reality.
>
> A very compelling question then arises:
> What is the nature of this relation?
> What is it?  What ought it to be?
>
> Those questions bring us to the heart of logic -- What's it all about?
>
> One of the ways that I addressed the question of logic was in this form:
>
> | Peirce continues a classical line of calling logic a normative science,
> | a science of how we ought to do things of we want to achieve a certain
> | class of objectives.  This makes logic, whose object is truth, akin to
> | aesthetics, whose object is beauty, pleasure, or experiential goodness,
> | and ethics, whose object is virtue, justice, or comportmental goodness.
> |
> | What is the good of logic?  The classical answer is "truth".
> |
> | What is truth?  It's a property of a sign, or a representation,
> | that makes it a good sign, a representation that is so natured
> | or so designed as to further the achievement its proper object.
> |
> | Jon Awbrey, 
>http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2007-08/msg00002.html
>
> One of the ways that another interlocutor addressed the question was this:
>
> | Now the other way of looking at truth is that there is a relation
> | between statements and reality.  That still holds.  If you accept
> | as true statements that are wrong, reality will soon remind you
> | of your mistake.
> |
> | Henry Story, 
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2007Aug/0025.html
>
> If we think of "truth" as a design objective of our representations,
> the quality that justifies calling them "knowledge representations",
> then we must attend to our concept of truth, and try to clarify it.
>
> That is where definitions of "truth" as "correspondence" came in.
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
> JA: In what "frame of reference" shall I evaluate your objection?
>     I tried to follow fashion by invoking analogies from physics.
>     Relative to that frame of reference, I can only iterate what
>     all my physics professors dinned into my skull, to wit, that
>     older common sense notions of magnitude had simply ceased to
>     make sense any more lacking reference to an observer's frame
>     and the specified operations commonly known as "measurements"
>     that are an absolute, er, relative "must" to pin operational
>     definitions to the given magnitudes.  That's how they taught,
>     but I will refrain from echoing all the ridicule they heaped
>     on former generations of deluded philosophers, prescientists,
>     and especially common sense normal folks who ever languished
>     in the dissociative styles of thought that dreamed otherwise.
>
> JA: Ingvar sought to evade the point of that analogy by shifting
>     the frame of reference to everyday epistemology and ordinary
>     language acceptability.  The very attempt to change the fact
>     by shifting the frame of reference has just proved the point.
>
> IJ: 1. I did not try to evade any lesson to be learnt from the
>        theory of special relativity.  I tried to point out the
>        following.  We learn (both as children and as adults)
>        many concepts (everyday as well as scientific) by means
>        of meeting protypical examples or performing prototypical
>        actions.  In case of understanding the concept of
>        'the correspondence theory of truth' there is a
>        prototypcial example available:  the correspondence
>        or non-correspondence between ordinary perceptions
>        on the one hand and statements in ordinary language
>        on the other.
>
> IJ: 2. I think it is fair to say that "older common sense"
>        implicitly had a Newtonian notion of absolute space
>        and time, and that the special theory of relativity (SR)
>        proved this notion to be obsolete.  But this does does mean
>        that SR proved either that *epistemological relativism* is true
>        or that *operationalism*  in the philosophy of science is true.
>        What SR does mean, among other things, is (i) that each inertial
>        frame of reference is just like the absolute space of Newtonian
>        mechanics, and (ii) that there is a special formula (the Lorentz
>        transformations) by means of which measurement values obtained in
>        one inertial frame of reference can be translated into the values
>        that would be obtained in another such frame.  This story is
>        neither a threat to a fallibilist epistemology nor to the
>        correspondence theory of truth.
>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
> inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
> ¢iare: http://www.centiare.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
> getwiki: http://www.getwiki.net/-UserTalk:Jon_Awbrey
> zhongwen wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
> ontolog: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?JonAwbrey
> http://www.altheim.com/ceryle/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=JonAwbrey
> wp review: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showuser=398
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
>  
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>       (06)


-- 
Ingvar Johansson
IFOMIS, Saarland University
     home site: http://ifomis.org/
     personal home site:
     http://hem.passagen.se/ijohansson/index.html      (07)



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