Facts are objective states of affairs James. It's a scientific term for Pete's sake. I talk of getting things right regarding several aspects of this discussion. One being how we set truth out. Another being whether or not we get it right when we call a positive asssertion a "true claim/conclusion". Sometimes we get that wrong. Therefore, we ought know better than to call a verified claim "truth". Verified claims can still be false, and truth cannot.

It is not a matter of getting truth right anywhere other than how we set it out. Truth is not subject to our thought/belief on matters. A claim either corresponds or it does not. It also does not matter if we check to see if a claim corresponds.

'The dog has fleas' IFF the dog has fleas.

It does not matter if we check. Verification does not effect/affect truth. It affects our own confidence/certainty in calling something "true", or at least it ought. The claim is true if, and only if the dog has fleas. We just would not know about it unless we do look. Sometimes we cannot know even when we do. There are limits to our ability to access reality. It does not follow that we have no access. It does not follow from the fact that it is highly unlikely that we can know everything about a state of affairs that we can know nothing about a state of affairs.

But what you are stating is trivial and utterly meaningless. It has no value.

All you are saying is this:

The state of affairs is the state of affairs IFF The state of affairs is the state of affairs

No kidding?

It's an utterly useless tautology.

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Besides that can't possibly be what we mean by 'truth'. Because if that's what we meant by 'truth' then everything would be TRUE and nothing would be FALSE.

Every state of affairs would be what it is.

The only way we can speak of something being TRUE or FALSE is if we are comparing something with the state of affairs. It is then this comparison that we give a "TRUTH" value to.

Why is that such a hard concept for you to grasp?

Is it the comparison between things that we give a "TRUTH" value to.

Not the state of affairs itself.

Therefore the thing that we are comparing with the state of affairs is every bit important to the definition of what we mean by "TRUTH" as is the state of affairs itself.

And in Analytical Truth, the thing that is being compared with the state of affairs is indeed a description of the state of affairs.

It is that description that we assign a "TRUTH" value to. We assign either a "TRUTH" value of "True" or a "TRUTH" value of 'False'.

And that is what we mean by our man-made concept of "TRUTH".

It's a really simple practical concept that is easy to use and apply.

Truth is a tree.



Nonsense.

It is not a tautology Abra, you just do not comprehend it. It lays out the only condition that makes a claim true.

'The dog has fleas' is a true claim if, and only if, the dog has fleas.

The antecedent(subject) is the claim about the way things are. The conditional sets out correspondence to the predicate, which is merely a meta-language placemark for the states of affairs. It does not say "the state of affairs is the state of affairs if and only if the state of affairs is the state of affairs.

You just do not understand the language tool being put to use. Read some Tarski.

Sure. That definition for 'truth' would be nonsense.

It is whatever we define it to be.

Fortunately we haven't defined truth to be a tree.

I didn't say that truth is whatever YOU personally define it to be.

I said that truth is whatever 'we' as humans have defined it to be.

It's a man-made concept.

Not a Michael-made concept.

I'm not saying that you can arbitrarily define it yourself personally however you personally choose.

I'd be interested in seeing you justify the claim that truth is a concept.

And what did you just do right there?

You compared a "description" with a "state of affairs".

Precisely what I have been saying ALL ALONG!

And you proclaim that "this description" is true if and only if it matches the state of affairs.

That's precisely how I have defined a "truth" value.

Here you are indeed assigning a value of 'truth' to a description.

Any esoteric objections you have to the way that I have defined and discussed the nature of what we mean by truth, can be nothing other than your own personal misunderstanding of what I have attempted to communicate to you.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way that I have defined truth.

In fact, this is precisely how the concept of truth is used in the science and mathematics everyday.

You are arguing just for the sake of arguing.

In the end, you have no choice but to come back to the very concepts that I have ultimately laid out.

You have no choice but to recognize that what we are defining 'truth' as a correspondence between a description and a state of affairs.

In fact, that's precisely what you just did above.



I understand perfectly. You just corresponded a description with a state of affairs and proclaimed the description to be a true IFF it matches the state of affairs.

That's what I've been stating all along.

More redundant and therefore self-defeating and meaningless use of perfectly good language. In proper correspondence terms, the above is to say...

'But your definition of truth, it's as close as we can get to possessing justified true belief about truth. To possessing justified true belief about truth to fact/reality.'

Gibberish.



Nope, you're just extremely consistent in wrongly setting truth out, consistently wrong when intepreting a perfectly simple definition. It comes as a result of grossly misunderstanding what truth is. It comes as a result of conflating a true claim with that which makes it so. It comes as a result of conflating descriptions and truth. It comes as a result of conflating verification and truth. It comes as a result of perpetuating the dogma of empiricism. It comes as a result of you're being sorely mistaken.



I don't know what else to say. If you haven't grasped the error of your ways by now... after a solid month of being shewn in every imaginable way. If there are any keen readers, the arguments ought be sufficient for clearly establishing that truth is not subjective, nor is it a man-made concept. To those who do not, or cannot, or will not allow themselves to understand. I've done what I can.



Aloha.

I may not be able to that if I am limited to your extremely narrow views on the semantics of the term 'concept'.

These kind of semantic arguments are your hallmark.

My thesaurus offers the following words as synonyms for the term 'concept'.

idea
notion
thought
perception
impression
conception
theory
model
hypothesis
view

Truth is a man-made notion, or model, or idea, or conception of corresponding descriptions with states of affairs.

We came up with this whole concept in our minds.

In fact, I would challenge you to justify that such an idea or concept could even exist outside of the human imagination.

If our notion of truth is the idea of correspondence between a description of a state of affairs and the actual state of affairs itself, then truth cannot have any existence independent of mankind's descriptions of states of affairs.

Therefore the whole notion, or idea, of 'truth' existing outside of mankind's imagination is meaningless.

All that could exist outside of our descriptions is the state of affairs itself.

But even you confess that we are not referring to the actual state of affairs itself as being 'truth'.

Truth is a correspondence to the state of affairs.

And what is being corresponded to the state of affairs?

Man-made descriptions.

Therefore, truth cannot even exist outside of the context of being a man-made idea.

Thus truth is indeed a man-made concept.

Q.E.D.

..

Not worth it

..

Bye bye.

I gotta question...

What, on you view, is the difference between calling a claim "true" and a claim being true?

What, on your view, is the difference between verification and truth?

I know that is what you believe truth is, however, that is the process of verification, not truth. That is checking to see if a claim is true.



Ideas and concepts cannot. Truth is not an idea, nor a concept.



This is wrong. Truth is correspondence to fact/reality. Descriptions are not the only things that can correspond or not.



Truth necessitates a thinking subject for it's being engaged. That does not make truth subject to the mind for anything other than it's being put to use.



Wrong again. Truth is not "a" correspondence. Correspondence is not an object. It is a matching up between thought/belief and reality.



Doesn't follow. Ideas are the product of thought/belief. Truth is necessarily presupposed within thought/belief formation. Therefore, truth presupposition pre-dates ideas.



What you're calling "truth" is verification, and it is a man-made concept, I agree.

What is the difference between calling a claim "true" and a claim being true?

Shewing the absurdity...





























































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We wake up and get busy going about our day. Doing this and doing that. Going here and going there. We prioritize our activities in an order of importance, based upon what we believe we need to do, based upon what we believe will come of it if we do or if we don't.

All of this necessarily presupposes truth/reality correspondence within our thought/belief about the way things are.

It is a universal engagement, if by that I mean that all humans engage the universe via truth/reality presupposition.