On The Deflationary Theory

[tagriffy]

Sounds to me like we need to understand each other to know what we mean by "lying" or "internal states". How about if we use the phrase "saying something that is not true" instead of the word "lying"? How would you be able to know if someone said something that was not true? My answer is still the same. By experiencing what they experienced so that you would know for yourself whether what they said was true or not. It all comes down to some kind of experience, and each experience we have is true and real otherwise it would not be a true or real experience.

 

 

In that case, it would only wind up being "true" or "false" to me. That would still say nothing about whether the other person was saying something that is not true, because I still wouldn't be able to read their inner state and see whether or not they actually had said experience.

 

 

I think the only statements we can verify are the ones that agree with our own experiences. Trusting someone doesn't count as verification to me. How would you know if an X-ray was taken on thw same day someone supposedly broke their arm? How would you know it wasn't broken on an earlier date? How would you even know if it was broken? An arm in a cast or sling doesn't prove the arm is broken. How would you even know what a broken arm is? What does that mean? Have you ever had one? Do you really truly know what it means to have a broken arm? Skeptics can come up with a lot of ideas that it might be good for you to at least consider.

How do you really know anything you know without having the experience that gave you that knowledge?

 

For the sake of argument, it should be assumed the questions have definitive answers. So the X-ray is dated on the same day, shows no sign of an earlier break, has been verified by a medical doctor, etc. And the question is not about whether they are wrong, but whether they are lying. mfbukowski admitted that even under the deflationary theory, truth is relevant and an important feature of the sentence when one is lying. So my question is directed at lying specifically.

[Ahab]

In that case, it would only wind up being "true" or "false" to me. That would still say nothing about whether the other person was saying something that is not true, because I still wouldn't be able to read their inner state and see whether or not they actually had said experience.

Sounding more and more to me like maybe we don't agree on what "lying" is. But I think you're being smart to wonder if some other person might be lying. How would you be able to know that? Is there any way at all, do you think? And how would you even know if someone was telling the truth? The flip side of the same issue. How do you know what anyone else thinks or says about anything, and whether what they think is true or false? Golly. Maybe there really is no way any of us can know anything about what is going on in another person's mind? And maybe we never should think that anyone is lying? What are your own thoughts on this, and please tell me whether you are lying or not, or maybe just joking.

For the sake of argument, it should be assumed the questions have definitive answers. So the X-ray is dated on the same day, shows no sign of an earlier break, has been verified by a medical doctor, etc. And the question is not about whether they are wrong, but whether they are lying. mfbukowski admitted that even under the deflationary theory, truth is relevant and an important feature of the sentence when one is lying. So my question is directed at lying specifically.

Maybe bukowski can respond in a way that makes more sense to you than what I am saying. What I'm thinking and saying seems clear enough to me, in my mind, and I still say that our own experiences are the only things that determine what we know and how we think about things. And I know at least a little bit about what lying is and is like.

[Mars]

fwiw all my comments in this thread have assumed moral integrity.  if someone is honest and sincere and says "i've never had God answer my prayers" then i accept that's true.

 

on the flipside, i expect the same courtesy extended to me.

[mfbukowski]

Question: So how do you tell when someone is lying if not by comparing the statement to something in the real world?

Let me give you the short answer and then the long one- I have a tendency to over explain and then eyes glaze over.  I totally get that.

 

The short answer is that we can NEVER even see what the "REAL WORLD" is.   All we have is our experience of the real world.  The problem is we can never describe raw experience adequately using words.   Describe the color red to a blind man. It is impossible.

 

So in a simple case like a taste being "sugar" or "salt" (words which name specific experiences we all have had- or red for that matter"  YES it appears we want to say that the words "correspond to the world" but they are REALLY putting into language- using the same terms- for experiences we all have had.

 

So I can say IF QUESTIONED and if the question is important, it makes sense to say that "words correspond to reality" in a sloppy way of speaking.  But usually saying "sugar is sweet is true"  is a totally off the wall thing to say.  It expresses something so commonplace that it is silly to say it.

 

But if we say "I know the church is true" THAT is entirely different.  That does not correspond to anything "in the real world"

 

What it does is express this kind of sentiment: "I know that I have had numerous experiences in my family, as spiritual experiences, in all parts of my being and my life that show me without a doubt that this church is the absolutely best path, and that God wants me here, and it has immeasurably improved my life".

 

So in saying "I know the church is true" one is affirming that one has had experiences which show that force in their lives, NOT that somehow the "church corresponds to reality"

 

OK it is becoming clear that I have a few very intelligent people here who after all this time are not getting this, and the only variable is my ability to explain it.  I had an opportunity to explain this to a philosophy student over the weekend, a student who had studied James and Dewey and he got it all in about 5 minutes. 

 

That proves to me that for very intelligent people without any philosophy backgrounds, I need to try a different approach.

 

Philosophy and psychology used to think of "faith" as being opposed to "reason".  We now know that that is not the case.  The correspondence theory creates a firm line between the "world" and "knowledge" which really just extends this false dichotomy not metaphysics.

 

The whole point in this exercise is to show that faith AND reason are inseparable.  Emotion and logic are inseparable in the human being.  We USE logic to seek what we want.

 

In other words, we are motivated by what we desire and we use logic to achieve what we desire.

 

The way we experience the world is using both "reason" and "logic".  We want to date the new girl at school so come up with plans to how we can meet her, or rehearse exactly the right words to ask her out.

 

Henry Ford wants to get across town faster and make lots of money, so he figures out how to make an internal combustion engine and put it on a carriage to make something that can move by itself- an auto-mobile.

 

We want to cure cancer so we experiment scientifically to see what works.  All of these are driven by human desire, not "reason".  We use reason to fulfill our emotional needs- our emotional needs are more important than anything else to us.

 

Why do we want to get a job?  So we can "make a living" which means a house, a car, someone to love and a belly full of beans, and little ones to bounce on our knee,   We are not driven by logic, we are driven by human need.  EACH OF US IS DRIVEN BY OUR PRIVATE INTERNAL NEEDS AND DESIRES.

 

Our sense of what is "real" INCLUDES what is important to us.

 

I will show my age and quote an old song here:

https://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=C111US739D20141015&p=song+on+the+street+where+you+live

"I have often walked down this street before

But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before

All at once am I several stories high

Knowing I'm on the street where you live"

"OH the towering feeling just to know somehow you are near!

The overpowering feeling that any second you may suddenly appear!"

 

The experience of being in love imbues every aspect of our being.  It changes our view of reality.  We are "high"

 

Depression makes everything look different.  Reality itself seems to have changed.  We do not see color the same way.

 

We look at menu and what does the word "steak" refer to in the "real world"?  A hunk of dead cow in the refrigerator!  What are we thinking when we order a steak?  Mushrooms, onions sizzle, the aroma, the texture, the flavor combined with the wonders of a baked potato with sour cream and chives, asparagus- YUM!

 

What of that experience is in the word "steak"?

 

Nothing!  What if anything does the word "correspond" to in the "real world"?  You probably don't want to know the entire history of that hunk of dead cow.

Wittgenstein spoke of it this way:

 

Another point that Wittgenstein makes against the possibility of a private language involves the beetle-in-a-box thought experiment.^[24] He asks the reader to imagine that each person has a box, inside of which is something that everyone intends to refer to with the word "beetle". Further, suppose that no one can look inside another's box, and each claims to know what a "beetle" is only by examining their own box. Wittgenstein suggests that, in such a situation, the word "beetle" could not be the name of a thing, because supposing that each person has something completely different in their boxes (or nothing at all) does not change the meaning of the word; the beetle as a private object "drops out of consideration as irrelevant".^[24] Thus, Wittgenstein argues, if we can talk about something, then it is not private, in the sense considered. And, contrapositively, if we consider something to be indeed private, it follows that we cannot talk about it.

To put something into language rips the heart out of the experience and objectifies it.  It is like turning marital love into pornography!

 

It brings everything down to the common experience and strips away all the personal importance.

 

Modern psychology shows us that that is not the way we operate as humans.  Reality is for each of us a rich blend of desire, faith, reason, anger and every emotion possible.

Reality is EXPERIENCE as Rorty tells us,

 

Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot.

 

AND in religious matters especially there can be no "world on its own, unaided by the describing activities of human beings"  THAT WE CAN TALK ABOUT.

 

Yes, we can postulate that "God is out there" in some reality we cannot now see "through the veil darkly"  But we cannot speak of it!   That is private experience- W's "beetle in the box"

 

Private religious experience is every bit as "real" as the sizzle in the steak and the aroma of the mushrooms but we can't talk about it because to do so strips out everything private- everything sacred, everything we KNOW is "true" and thereby makes the word "true" useless as a mode to say anything about it.

 

The minute I have said anything about my beetle in my box, I have destroyed it- I have made it into something for all to see.  I have given it a name, I have made it public, and thereby changed it.

 

Does that way of seeing it help?

[mfbukowski]

I wasn't talking simply about experiences. For the most part, you will never be certain whether a person is lying when it comes to experiences and emotions or whatnot. At most, you can only observe a person's behavior and see if it lines up with what they said. But since in the end, we are talking about internal states that can neither be verified nor disproved, we can't ultimately say they are telling the truth or lying with any certainty.

 

Other statements, however, are subject to verification. "I broke my arm on such-and-such a date" can be verified or disproved by looking at an X-ray taken on that date.

You are right and that is exactly it but you don't see the importance of that. 

 

The person has had the experience of breaking their arm.  They felt the fall, the snap, the pain.  The "reality" of the event was the experience of breaking the arm.  THAT was the "reality"!!

 

That reality of the experience is now inside the beetle box.  He knows it, but it has not been made public.

 

The trip to the ER makes the experience public, but none of the pain.

 

MAKING IT PUBLIC PUTS IT INTO LANGUAGE.  IT BECOMES COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PEOPLE.  IT MAKES IT "OBJECTIVE"

 

No language, no objectivity, no sentence to be true or false!!

 

It is only "true" because now a sentence has been uttered and the observers have had an INTERPERSONAL EXPERIENCE of seeing the x ray.

 

It is the EXPERIENCE of multiple people seeing the x ray and putting the experience into language that makes it "true"

 

No shared experience, no definition of the experience, no truth.

 

Imagine the experience of the kid's sister on seeing the broken bone- "That's yucky"!  Maybe even sickness in the stomach.  THAT part of the experience is not included in "yep- he  has a broken arm

 

The "full experience" has not been conveyed in the words- the full reality is not there, nor can it be because words strip it away.

 

Think about what the doc is actually "experiencing"-  a black and white image with lines.

His training turns that raw experience into an "arm" and then "bones" which them becomes a specific "sort of fracture of the xyz bone"

 

That is all in his mind!  He has constructed the image- experience - and what comes out is "yep he broke his arm".

 

That does not include the total communal experience of the fall, the pain, the snap, the sister thinking it was "yucky"  ALL of that is part of the "reality" of the experiences and yet none of that is conveyed!

 

All that is abstracted into "Spiral fracture left Ulna"  which supposedly "corresponds to reality".

 

It doesn't

 

You prove my point.  The word "true" only matters when a person is lying.

 

THAT is the deflationary theory really in a nutshell.

 

Saying "the snow is white is true" - the word "true" SAYS NOTHNING in that sentence.

 

The word "true" only talks about language and sentences when it makes a difference- when it makes a PRAGMATIC useful difference.

 

Bobby did you lie about taking the cookie?

Yes mom

 

Lesson hopefully learned.  Pragmatic goal achieved.

Edited July 22, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

More evidence I am not making this stuff up!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James

[mfbukowski]

In fact the more I read this the more I like it

I wasn't talking simply about experiences. For the most part, you will never be certain whether a person is lying when it comes to experiences and emotions or whatnot. At most, you can only observe a person's behavior and see if it lines up with what they said. But since in the end, we are talking about internal states that can neither be verified nor disproved, we can't ultimately say they are telling the truth or lying with any certainty.

 

Other statements, however, are subject to verification. "I broke my arm on such-and-such a date" can be verified or disproved by looking at an X-ray taken on that date.

The phrase "I wasn't talking about experiences" is exactly right and is the whole problem1

 

You cannot be CERTAIN of another person's experiences is exactly the point.  You don't know that salt tastes the same to them as us- but that becomes irrelevant because that is literally "unspeakable".

 

You cannot be sure if Joseph saw God unless God tells you "it is true"- that he really did.

 

There is no interpersonal experience - an experience verifiable by multiple people- to categorize that as "true".

 

Maybe this is it finally in a nutshell:

 If reality is only communal, it cannot be "true" that Joseph saw God.

 

If reality is a personal experience and we can also have that experience we can personally "verify" that Joseph did see God

 

We do not have to see God to verify it - God only has to verify to us that he wants us to believe that.

 

The next step is to define "God".

 

Is God "out there"?  What difference does it make?    He is my ideal Being to emulate. He gives my life purpose.

 

Believing that God is like me in important particulars makes my life worth living, and I believe that He has verified that to my total satisfaction.

 

You can't do much better than that.  Personally that is about all I need out of life except for a family that will be with me forever. 

[Ahab]

More, please. Give me more!

Oh, nevermind. I'll just go find some more words to read so I can learn some more about this.

Or better yet I'll just learn from my own experiences and not bother with trying to get it all out of other people's words.

[mfbukowski]

Realize that what we speak about is "interpersonal experience".  It is experiences which we all share and learn the words to "refer" to the experience.  I have experienced a salty taste and have learned that term, so when I speak about that, you think I am talking about "the same thing"

 

"Where" is the salty "taste"?   In the world?  "Taste" is a perception- a sensation.  It is how we PERCEIVE a given sensation we have learned to call "salt"

 

Is salt- the mineral science defines as NaCl- "salty" in the "real world"?  How can it be?  The sensation is not "out there" it is "in here".

 

All that we know about NaCl is sensations which are interpersonal- interpersonal experience.  It has "characteristics".  An "atomic number" defined by interpersonal experiences and verbalized.  Break it, and it "wants" to become a "cube"- all human concepts all defined by words. 

[Ahab]

fwiw all my comments in this thread have assumed moral integrity. if someone is honest and sincere and says "i've never had God answer my prayers" then i accept that's true.

on the flipside, i expect the same courtesy extended to me.

I'm sorry, but I can't accept what you're saying.

I happen to know that all of the good thoughts we get are coming to us from God, so the idea that any person doesn't get any good thoughts after directing their thoughts to God through prayer is just wrong. Plain and simple.

Maybe they just don't realize that God gave them some good thought(s) after praying to him, but I can guarantee that they got a good thought every time. And the thought that he didn't get it wasn't it. God didn't give them that thought.

You shouldn't just accept what people tell you. Sometimes they are wrong but don't know it.

[Mars]

I'm not going to presume to be in their head. I trust God has answered them, but I'm not going to tell them so. It's not my business. So I just accept their take and move on.

[Ahab]

I'm not going to presume to be in their head. I trust God has answered them, but I'm not going to tell them so. It's not my business. So I just accept their take and move on.

Sometimes I will tell them, sometimes I won't.

I don't intend to cause contention, just education.

[Mars]

if i feel i'm in a place to educate, i will.  usually people don't want instruction, they want to be understood.  when i say i accept their position, that doesn't mean i affirm or agree with it.  of course i believe there is a being such as God who is interested in our lives and who will interact with us when called upon.  some people in my personal life and even a few on this forum have told me they feel God has never been there and has never answered a single prayer.  while i believe God does answer prayers, if the person offering them doesn't feel they've gotten one, i'm not going to argue.  i just accept them as being generally honest people and that's that.

 

in some instances, i share what i feel to be how God communicates with me and offer hope that perhaps some events in the past could have been God responding, or that a renewed attempt will be successful.  rarely has this gone over well.  so i don't press my opinion on their personal interaction with God.

[tagriffy]

Sounding more and more to me like maybe we don't agree on what "lying" is. But I think you're being smart to wonder if some other person might be lying. How would you be able to know that? Is there any way at all, do you think? And how would you even know if someone was telling the truth? The flip side of the same issue. How do you know what anyone else thinks or says about anything, and whether what they think is true or false? Golly. Maybe there really is no way any of us can know anything about what is going on in another person's mind? And maybe we never should think that anyone is lying? What are your own thoughts on this, and please tell me whether you are lying or not, or maybe just joking.

 

 

As I keep saying, when it to subjective, internal matters, you'll never be able to know if a person is lying abut it. Short of the ability to read minds or to look into one's heart, the only thing we can possibly do is observe behavior (cf. Mark 7:20-23). And even then, we have a tendency to judge on what we think about how a person ought to behave if they were experiencing those internal states. Personally, I would only suspect the person is lying if their actions were radically contradictory to what they proclaim their internal state is. And even then, I'm going to avoid being too hasty in my judgment.

 

But in the end, when it comes to something subjective and internal, you either accept the statement or you don't.

[tagriffy]

Does that way of seeing it help?

 

No, not really. Here is the thing: I would make many of the same observations and many of the same statements. But then I would normally start talking about logos and mythos. How they are different and they interact. That's why I keep wondering if we are just using different tools to do the same job. Logos tells us how to go about finding a cure to cancer; mythos tells us why we search at all.

[tagriffy]

 

You prove my point.  The word "true" only matters when a person is lying.

 

THAT is the deflationary theory really in a nutshell.

 

Saying "the snow is white is true" - the word "true" SAYS NOTHNING in that sentence.

 

The word "true" only talks about language and sentences when it makes a difference- when it makes a PRAGMATIC useful difference.

 

Bobby did you lie about taking the cookie?

Yes mom

 

Lesson hopefully learned.  Pragmatic goal achieved.

 

No, actually, I think you missed my point. Let me try to restate this and hope it gets my point across a little better.

 

If the only time the word "true" matters is when a person is lying, we need some way of figuring out whether they are lying. This is a pragmatic, useful matter since any statement made by a person at least could be a lie. As far as a person who has never seen snow is concerned, the statement "Snow is white" could very well be a lie. Presumably we can't just rely on the words. And if not the words, and if not "reality," then what?

[mfbukowski]

No, actually, I think you missed my point. Let me try to restate this and hope it gets my point across a little better.

 

If the only time the word "true" matters is when a person is lying, we need some way of figuring out whether they are lying. This is a pragmatic, useful matter since any statement made by a person at least could be a lie. As far as a person who has never seen snow is concerned, the statement "Snow is white" could very well be a lie. Presumably we can't just rely on the words. And if not the words, and if not "reality," then what?

Our eyes and ears and gut. No words necessary.

[mfbukowski]

No, not really. Here is the thing: I would make many of the same observations and many of the same statements. But then I would normally start talking about logos and mythos. How they are different and they interact. That's why I keep wondering if we are just using different tools to do the same job. Logos tells us how to go about finding a cure to cancer; mythos tells us why we search at all.

Nice metaphysics. Words describing no-thing. If it makes you happy, go for it.

[tagriffy]

Our eyes and ears and gut. No words necessary.

 

That might be okay if all there is to be gained or lost is a personal relationship. Not so good when it comes to imposing the death penalty on a person for a crime they did not commit. And let's face it, our eyes and ears and guts are racist, sexist, classist. Full of both conscious and unconscious blinders and prejudices. Given a choice, I'm going to want something better than eyes and ears and guts to determine whether the person telling me snow is white is lying.

[Ahab]

That might be okay if all there is to be gained or lost is a personal relationship. Not so good when it comes to imposing the death penalty on a person for a crime they did not commit. And let's face it, our eyes and ears and guts are racist, sexist, classist. Full of both conscious and unconscious blinders and prejudices. Given a choice, I'm going to want something better than eyes and ears and guts to determine whether the person telling me snow is white is lying.

Think of someone who doesn't understand what you mean by the English words "snow" and "white", so that you have to teach him what those words mean.

You point to some snow and say it is snow. You repeat a few times to make sure he knows what you mean.

Then you do the same thing with white, pointing to many things that are white until he makes the mental connection. And to top it all off you end by pointing to some snow and saying the snow is white until he understands that the thing you are pointing to is 2 things in one. Snow, and white.

You'd also have to teach him what the word "is" means too. Hopefully not too hard for you.

Now suppose that somebody else comes along and tells the guy that you are lying to him. That what you are saying is snow is actually grass and that what you have called white is actually green.

Oh boy. What to do. How do you suppose he would be able to tell who is lying to him?

Edited July 23, 2015 by Ahab

[mfbukowski]

 

That might be okay if all there is to be gained or lost is a personal relationship. Not so good when it comes to imposing the death penalty on a person for a crime they did not commit. And let's face it, our eyes and ears and guts are racist, sexist, classist. Full of both conscious and unconscious blinders and prejudices. Given a choice, I'm going to want something better than eyes and ears and guts to determine whether the person telling me snow is white is lying.

Clearly we are talking past each other and there is no point in carrying this on.

 

I never said that scientific inquiry doesn't work to "prove" innocence or guilt, in fact if you actually read the posts, my point is that this is the only time pretty much when the word "truth" is relevant to anything practical.

 

My overall point is that Mormons do not realize that contemporary philosophy is largely on their side, saying that it is perfectly reasonable to believe that personal revelation is "real" in the way it affects our lives and gives us meaning and the will to get out of bed in the morning.

 

I have tried to explain it the best I could, if you believe your view is rational, then I would suggest you take some epistemology classes and find others who can explain it better than I do.

 

Truth is just a word.  Science works because it is practical, and we believe "truth or falsity" through our gut response to emotions.

 

If you really believe in objectivity I suggest you figure out how absolute reality can be discovered because no one else has done that so far.  The best we have are verbal paradigms- in other words, WORDS.  And while you are at it, figure out how to get past the nightly news to tell us "what really happened" because all we have are human reports of what they interpret probably happened.  Words.

 

There are no facts, just interpretations.  All we have are interpersonal, verbal models that seem to work until another one comes along.  In other words, humanly created descriptions of the aggregate of human experience.

 

That means that in the final analysis "reality" is the aggregate of human experience, as known personally ("I love you") and as tested intepersonally (Yep- i tried it- water actually boils at 212F)

 

If Joseph says he saw God, we cannot prove it or disprove any more than we can prove that snow is white independent of your experience of "snow" and "white".   Snow is white is a definition of properties of both snow and whiteness- nothing more nothing less.   Saying it is true is superfluous.

 

Yet we know what the word truth means when it is practically necessary to do so.   As Rorty says "We know what truth means, it's jsut that there isnt much to say about it- it is ineffable, kind of like talking about God"

 

Indeed it is exactly like talking about God.   God is, and we can know that by direct unmediated experience, just as we know what we call "red" by direct unmediated experience.  Nothing between us- no words between us and God, no words between us and the color red.  Simple, direct knowledge that works in our lives.

 

So go disprove Rorty's point and half of contemporary philosophy's point.   I hate arguments from authority, but I happen to believe this one.  No one has said it better than Rorty that I know of.

 

Fame and fortune await, go for it.

[mfbukowski]

Think of someone who doesn't understand what you mean by the English words "snow" and "white", so that you have to teach him what those words mean.

You point to some snow and say it is snow. You repeat a few times to make sure he knows what you mean.

Then you do the same thing with white, pointing to many things that are white until he makes the mental connection. And to top it all off you end by pointing to some snow and saying the snow is white until he understands that the thing you are pointing to is 2 things in one. Snow, and white.

You'd also have to teach him what the word "is" means too. Hopefully not too hard for you.

Now suppose that somebody else comes along and tells the guy that you are lying to him. That what you are saying is snow is actually grass and that what you have called white is actually green.

Oh boy. What to do. How do you suppose he would be able to tell who is lying to him?

Listen to the podcast.

[Ahab]

Listen to the podcast.

This is basic stuff, bukowski.

I know what words are.

I know what reality is.

I know the difference between truth and what isn't.

[tagriffy]

Clearly we are talking past each other and there is no point in carrying this on.

 

I never said that scientific inquiry doesn't work to "prove" innocence or guilt, in fact if you actually read the posts, my point is that this is the only time pretty much when the word "truth" is relevant to anything practical.

 

 

I don't quite think we're talking past each other; more likely I'm just asking the wrong question. Here, I am focusing on a practical matter where the word "truth" is relevant. Where "truth" is relevant, how does the deflationary theory allow us to distinguish "true" from "false"? Particularly if it is going to reject the correspondence intuition that makes scientific inquiry possible to begin with?

[mfbukowski]

It means roughly "I agree with that view"

No metaphysics about reality

12 folks on a jury agree that the guy is guilty based on the lawyer s definition of the word.

No metaphysics

Edited July 24, 2015 by mfbukowski