Thanks for the video, Josh. I love how accessible these discussions are. This will be good food for thought, very appreciated. If I might add: I have always found it interesting that if you ask philosophers to list some theories of truth, you might get two very different kinds of answers. If you're talking to a metaphysician, they might say things like correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, etc.; but, if you ask a logician, they might say things like classical, paraconsistent, 4-valued, fuzzy, etc., i.e. truth of languages modelling those logics. How do these two ways of classifying theories of truth interact? Is the same notion of a theory of truth at play in both cases? Are the classifications complimentary or in tension? Curious to hear your thoughts.
Great question! I would classify the question for the logician as about truth-values, not about the nature of truth itself. For example, you could think that the nature of truth is *correspondence with reality* while also thinking that propositions can have two different truth values (true, false), or that propositions can be neither true nor false, or that some proposition can be both true *and* not true. Logic is not so much about the nature of truth, but about what truth-values propositions can have. So I see these classifications as complimentary.
Loved the presentation. As a coherentist, I offer another critique for CTT: outside of our own experience, we rely on others observations, which pushes us into coherence theory of truth. Example: two friends tell an opposite account of an event you did not observe. Now you are weighing the character of the two to decide which one is true. You may never have access to that past event. Our most treasured (especially Christian) truths are subject to coherence theory truth, because things we observe require testimony and perspective of others to analyze.
48:58 You have such a beautiful mind. I wouldn’t be surprise if you also enjoy to read Marcus Aurelius in your free time. Im inspired to stay curious and humble by your example. Thank you for your effort, it’s not wasted.
Here is a short, non-exhaustive list of the various theories of truth I encountered in my philosophical journey : the correspondance theory of truth (CTOT) the coherent TOT the pragmatic TOT the consensus TOT the convergence TOT the deflationary TOT the inflationary TOT the semantic TOT the conceptual containment TOT the disquotational TOT the redundancy TOT the disappearance TOT the no-truth TOT the identity TOT Prosententialism Minimalism Perspectivism Expressivism Relativism Verificationism Primitivism Some of these overlap.
@@lerpracrer I don't see how truth could be an object or a subject. Objects and subjects aren't even the type of things that can be true... Let alone truth... There is one thing that is common among all the theories listed above : truth is a property. What kind of things can be true or false ? Sentences. All sentences ? No, questions can't be true or false, injunctions can't be true or false, not even nouns or groups of nouns like "the tree in my neighbor's garden" can be true or false. Assertions, claims, affirmations, or, in general, what is called "propositions" can be true or false. So truth is a property of propositions. At least that's what analytic philosophy claims. But I don't see how a person can be truth.
Does the view that "negative truths correspond to lacks of reality" entail some kind of realism with respect to those lacks? Thanks for this great overview! It has been very helpful to frame the discussion.
40:05 _"The reality of my subjective state"_ 43:52 _"Realities about how people are thinking and feeling"_ Isn't that an oxymoron ? Isn't reality what is independent of the subject ? How can a _"subjective state"_ be real ?
Thank you for this video. Your content here is a valuable resource for me, since I am trying to put together some stuff so I could do simillar things in my native language.
Thanks Josh, this is super helpful. Why not just consider truth an immanent property of things themselves--e.g. as "the way things are". So the truth of x denotes how x actually is.
6:21 _"Either nihilism is true or it's not true. If it's true then by definition it's not true, and if it's not true then it follows that it's not true, so either way nihilism is not true, and this just follows from the the nature of what it's saying. This is kind of a philosopher's weapon where you analyze the claim itself and see if it actually is consistent with itself, you could think of this as kind of defeating itself it's self-defeating"_ I'm a bit lost here. Maybe you could help me. Let's say the proposition P enunciates a theory of truth : P = "Truth is X" And let's say we want to evaluate the truth value of P. Which theory of truth do we use to evaluate the truth value of P ? It seems obvious to me that we can't use the theory of truth enunciated in P right... ? This is analogous to the diagonal lemma in logic : if you think you can use a truth predicate used in P to evaluate the truth value of P, then I can construct a Gödel sentence that would show that the system of language in which you think you can do that is inconsistant (see also : the "theorem of undefinability" from Tarski). This is analogous to the liar's paradox. So it seems to me, and correct me if I am wrong, that you cannot even meaningfully enunciate the first premise of your argument... _"Either nihilism is true or it's not true"_ ... from inside your system of language. Because theories of truth CANNOT be things that are true or false inside the system... And indeed, I thought you would agree with that, since, in your book _"Defending the correspondence theory of truth"_ on page 197 you write : _"Unfortunately, I fail to see a way to keep LEM unless (Containment)_ _is true or the framework for the correspondence theory is false. This_ _result may seem costly, but there is a bright side: we have a solution that_ _avoids contradictions. Moreover, the account of falsehood offered in_ _Section 5.10 implies that LEM is false if any propositions lack a truth value._ _And there are independent arguments for thinking that some_ _propositions, such as future-tense propositions about free actions, lack_ _a truth-value. Even if those arguments are unsound, their conclusion_ _isn’t obviously incoherent or absurd. Plus, I will argue next that some_ _Liar sentences express propositions that lack a truth-value, and if those_ _arguments are sound, then LEM is false."_ If I understood what you wrote correctly here, then your first premise... _"Either nihilism is true or it's not true"_ ...is using LEM, which is false... So... The disjunct is false ? Is it non exhaustive ? Is it neither true nor false ? Is it both ? Or something else ? In any case, it seems that your argument doesn't go through ! Would love to hear your feed back on that. 11:47 _"Is "coherentism is false" coherent ?"_ It looks like the same problem arises here. Theories of truth cannot be things that are true or false judged from within the framework... Can they ? In other words, and I feel this is an important consequence of Tarski's findings : there is no possible internal critique of theories of truth... Only an external critique is possible ? there is no such thing as a _"self defeating theory of truth"_ ... Contrary to what Josh is saying (6:21) ? PS : I wish you had covered the "Fitch's paradox of knowability". Maybe you already did it in another video ?
Read Chris Langans work! 🙏 You're referring to a super tautology, which is what truth must be to be truth, by definition. There is a incompleteness to language as we use it that unaccounts unknown unknown, Chris Langans meta language theory model solved this.
How can you write a book defending a theory and still be agnostic to it! Just philosopher things 😂 Question: how do we find that balance between being humble (ex. being open to the idea there is no truth) and being honest about how we really feel? (ex. I feel there is no chance the no-truth theory is true because it’s self-refuting) In the philosophy world it can seem you are given points for being humble and using guarding terms like ‘seems’, ‘maybe’, etc., while in the “real” world this is seen as a weakness. We should state things definitively with confidence. But non-philosophers tend to be overconfident, while philosophers tend to be overly meek, which devalues their work. How do we balance this? Thank you 🙏
Question: there are theories of truth and then there are theories OF theories of truth-meta truth. What are different meta theories of truth and how do we evaluate them? For example, I can imagine one meta theory going like this: ALL possible theories of truth are correspondence theories and _the_ correspondence theory really should be called a _fact_ theory of truth. Pragmatic / power theories have truth corresponding to what WORKS in the world, and then the concept of WORK must be unpacked. The concept of SURVIVAL will be part of that unpacking. Relativist theories have truth corresponding to subjective experiences And fact theories have truth corresponding to facts Thoughts? 🤔
Not sure what consistent theories would have truth correspond to. Maybe those theories say that the only relevant falsehood is certain falsehood and the only certain falsehood is contradiction and therefore for all intents and purposes truth corresponds to that which is not certainly false ie not contradictory? Thus, truth corresponds to propositions which don’t cause contradictions down the line? But that can’t be right because you can have an inconsistent set without knowing which proposition is the false one… How does one motivate a consistent theory again? Kane B just did a video on this…
I don’t want to seem rude, but I super don’t get how this isn’t just a massive waste of time. How could any attempt at a definition of being true be useful? No matter what definition we come up with, it seems that we run into a circularity problem. For example, if we decide that to be true is to correspond to reality (whatever that means) and then try to apply this definition to the case of some claim C, how do we imagine it working, exactly? Adam: C is true! Bob: How do you know? Adam: Because C corresponds to reality. Bob: So it is true that C corresponds to reality? Adam: Yes, it is true that C corresponds to reality. Bob: How do you know? Adam: Because the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality. Bob: So it is true that the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality? Adam: Yes, it is true that the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality. Bob: How do you know? Adam: Because the claim that the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality. How can this process end? Am I missing something here?
He's appealing to a sort of Buddhist view of truth being ineffable yet prescient throughout reality. But we still need to enunciate some understanding that is explicit enough to absorb edge cases. Thus is the pursuit of knowledge
Thanks for the video, Josh. I love how accessible these discussions are. This will be good food for thought, very appreciated.
If I might add: I have always found it interesting that if you ask philosophers to list some theories of truth, you might get two very different kinds of answers. If you're talking to a metaphysician, they might say things like correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, etc.; but, if you ask a logician, they might say things like classical, paraconsistent, 4-valued, fuzzy, etc., i.e. truth of languages modelling those logics.
How do these two ways of classifying theories of truth interact? Is the same notion of a theory of truth at play in both cases? Are the classifications complimentary or in tension? Curious to hear your thoughts.
Great question! I would classify the question for the logician as about truth-values, not about the nature of truth itself. For example, you could think that the nature of truth is *correspondence with reality* while also thinking that propositions can have two different truth values (true, false), or that propositions can be neither true nor false, or that some proposition can be both true *and* not true. Logic is not so much about the nature of truth, but about what truth-values propositions can have. So I see these classifications as complimentary.
Josh is one of the very few theists I can bear to listen to.
@@varpyr713correct.
Oppy is one of the very few atheists I can bear to listen to.
@@JW-xi4yualso correct :)
Love your content Josh! It would be awesome if you upload a video once a week or something.
Good to see you're making more videos. Important topics!
Loved the presentation. As a coherentist, I offer another critique for CTT: outside of our own experience, we rely on others observations, which pushes us into coherence theory of truth. Example: two friends tell an opposite account of an event you did not observe. Now you are weighing the character of the two to decide which one is true. You may never have access to that past event. Our most treasured (especially Christian) truths are subject to coherence theory truth, because things we observe require testimony and perspective of others to analyze.
48:58 You have such a beautiful mind. I wouldn’t be surprise if you also enjoy to read Marcus Aurelius in your free time.
Im inspired to stay curious and humble by your example. Thank you for your effort, it’s not wasted.
I'm satisfied with getting a close approximation of the truth & not omniscient.
Here is a short, non-exhaustive list of the various theories of truth I encountered in my philosophical journey :
the correspondance theory of truth (CTOT)
the coherent TOT
the pragmatic TOT
the consensus TOT
the convergence TOT
the deflationary TOT
the inflationary TOT
the semantic TOT
the conceptual containment TOT
the disquotational TOT
the redundancy TOT
the disappearance TOT
the no-truth TOT
the identity TOT
Prosententialism
Minimalism
Perspectivism
Expressivism
Relativism
Verificationism
Primitivism
Some of these overlap.
Jesus said: “I’m the truth”. About which theory He was NOT talking?
@@lerpracrer I don't see how truth could be an object or a subject. Objects and subjects aren't even the type of things that can be true... Let alone truth...
There is one thing that is common among all the theories listed above : truth is a property.
What kind of things can be true or false ?
Sentences.
All sentences ?
No, questions can't be true or false, injunctions can't be true or false,
not even nouns or groups of nouns like "the tree in my neighbor's garden" can be true or false.
Assertions, claims, affirmations, or, in general, what is called "propositions" can be true or false.
So truth is a property of propositions. At least that's what analytic philosophy claims.
But I don't see how a person can be truth.
Thank you Josh!!!
Does the view that "negative truths correspond to lacks of reality" entail some kind of realism with respect to those lacks?
Thanks for this great overview! It has been very helpful to frame the discussion.
What about the “Ontological Theory of Truth”?
Would it fit into one of these categories?
40:05 _"The reality of my subjective state"_
43:52 _"Realities about how people are thinking and feeling"_
Isn't that an oxymoron ? Isn't reality what is independent of the subject ? How can a _"subjective state"_ be real ?
As always Josh, amazing video. I wish I could sit down and talk with you some day but living on the other side of the pond makes it difficult!
Thank you for this video. Your content here is a valuable resource for me, since I am trying to put together some stuff so I could do simillar things in my native language.
Would have liked to hear your thoughts on deflationism. After reading Horwich I was convinced.
Thanks Josh, this is super helpful. Why not just consider truth an immanent property of things themselves--e.g. as "the way things are". So the truth of x denotes how x actually is.
6:21 _"Either nihilism is true or it's not true. If it's true then by definition it's not true, and if it's not true then it follows that it's not true, so either way nihilism is not true, and this just follows from the the nature of what it's saying. This is kind of a philosopher's weapon where you analyze the claim itself and see if it actually is consistent with itself, you could think of this as kind of defeating itself it's self-defeating"_
I'm a bit lost here. Maybe you could help me.
Let's say the proposition P enunciates a theory of truth :
P = "Truth is X"
And let's say we want to evaluate the truth value of P.
Which theory of truth do we use to evaluate the truth value of P ?
It seems obvious to me that we can't use the theory of truth enunciated in P right... ?
This is analogous to the diagonal lemma in logic : if you think you can use a truth predicate used in P to evaluate the truth value of P, then I can construct a Gödel sentence that would show that the system of language in which you think you can do that is inconsistant (see also : the "theorem of undefinability" from Tarski).
This is analogous to the liar's paradox.
So it seems to me, and correct me if I am wrong, that you cannot even meaningfully enunciate the first premise of your argument...
_"Either nihilism is true or it's not true"_
... from inside your system of language.
Because theories of truth CANNOT be things that are true or false inside the system...
And indeed, I thought you would agree with that, since, in your book
_"Defending the correspondence theory of truth"_ on page 197 you write :
_"Unfortunately, I fail to see a way to keep LEM unless (Containment)_
_is true or the framework for the correspondence theory is false. This_
_result may seem costly, but there is a bright side: we have a solution that_
_avoids contradictions. Moreover, the account of falsehood offered in_
_Section 5.10 implies that LEM is false if any propositions lack a truth value._
_And there are independent arguments for thinking that some_
_propositions, such as future-tense propositions about free actions, lack_
_a truth-value. Even if those arguments are unsound, their conclusion_
_isn’t obviously incoherent or absurd. Plus, I will argue next that some_
_Liar sentences express propositions that lack a truth-value, and if those_
_arguments are sound, then LEM is false."_
If I understood what you wrote correctly here, then your first premise...
_"Either nihilism is true or it's not true"_
...is using LEM, which is false... So... The disjunct is false ? Is it non exhaustive ? Is it neither true nor false ? Is it both ? Or something else ?
In any case, it seems that your argument doesn't go through !
Would love to hear your feed back on that.
11:47 _"Is "coherentism is false" coherent ?"_
It looks like the same problem arises here. Theories of truth cannot be things that are true or false judged from within the framework... Can they ?
In other words, and I feel this is an important consequence of Tarski's findings :
there is no possible internal critique of theories of truth... Only an external critique is possible ?
there is no such thing as a _"self defeating theory of truth"_ ... Contrary to what Josh is saying (6:21) ?
PS : I wish you had covered the "Fitch's paradox of knowability".
Maybe you already did it in another video ?
Read Chris Langans work! 🙏 You're referring to a super tautology, which is what truth must be to be truth, by definition. There is a incompleteness to language as we use it that unaccounts unknown unknown, Chris Langans meta language theory model solved this.
Wouldn't the correspondence theory need to presuppose a sort of internal coherence (of the senses, of the categories, etc.)?
How can you write a book defending a theory and still be agnostic to it! Just philosopher things 😂
Question: how do we find that balance between being humble (ex. being open to the idea there is no truth) and being honest about how we really feel? (ex. I feel there is no chance the no-truth theory is true because it’s self-refuting)
In the philosophy world it can seem you are given points for being humble and using guarding terms like ‘seems’, ‘maybe’, etc., while in the “real” world this is seen as a weakness. We should state things definitively with confidence. But non-philosophers tend to be overconfident, while philosophers tend to be overly meek, which devalues their work. How do we balance this?
Thank you 🙏
Let's go!
Excellent
Question: there are theories of truth and then there are theories OF theories of truth-meta truth. What are different meta theories of truth and how do we evaluate them?
For example, I can imagine one meta theory going like this: ALL possible theories of truth are correspondence theories and _the_ correspondence theory really should be called a _fact_ theory of truth.
Pragmatic / power theories have truth corresponding to what WORKS in the world, and then the concept of WORK must be unpacked. The concept of SURVIVAL will be part of that unpacking.
Relativist theories have truth corresponding to subjective experiences
And fact theories have truth corresponding to facts
Thoughts? 🤔
Not sure what consistent theories would have truth correspond to. Maybe those theories say that the only relevant falsehood is certain falsehood and the only certain falsehood is contradiction and therefore for all intents and purposes truth corresponds to that which is not certainly false ie not contradictory? Thus, truth corresponds to propositions which don’t cause contradictions down the line? But that can’t be right because you can have an inconsistent set without knowing which proposition is the false one…
How does one motivate a consistent theory again? Kane B just did a video on this…
Comment for traction.
I thought nihilism just meant there's no inherent meaning to anything, right? Why is your definition different?
I don’t want to seem rude, but I super don’t get how this isn’t just a massive waste of time.
How could any attempt at a definition of being true be useful?
No matter what definition we come up with, it seems that we run into a circularity problem.
For example, if we decide that to be true is to correspond to reality (whatever that means) and then try to apply this definition to the case of some claim C, how do we imagine it working, exactly?
Adam: C is true!
Bob: How do you know?
Adam: Because C corresponds to reality.
Bob: So it is true that C corresponds to reality?
Adam: Yes, it is true that C corresponds to reality.
Bob: How do you know?
Adam: Because the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality.
Bob: So it is true that the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality?
Adam: Yes, it is true that the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality.
Bob: How do you know?
Adam: Because the claim that the claim that C corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality itself corresponds to reality.
How can this process end? Am I missing something here?
Why do you ask? Do you not know how to use the word?
Aren't there edge cases where people disagree about how the word is properly used?
He's appealing to a sort of Buddhist view of truth being ineffable yet prescient throughout reality. But we still need to enunciate some understanding that is explicit enough to absorb edge cases. Thus is the pursuit of knowledge
@@vaclavmiller8032yes, and this sort of theorising isnt how people actually go on in those cases