shminux comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong

77 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 October 2012 06:16PM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 02 October 2012 07:23:34PM 19 points [-]

There are some kinds of truths that don't seem to be covered by truth-as-correspondence-between-map-and-territory. (Note: This general objection is well know and is given as Objection 1 in SEP's entry on Correspondence Theory.) Consider:

  1. modal truths if one isn't a modal realist
  2. mathematical truths if one isn't a mathematical Platonist
  3. normative truths

Maybe the first two just argues for Platonism and modal realism (although I note that Eliezer explicitly disclaimed being a modal realist). The last one is most problematic to me, because some kinds of normative statements seem to be talking about what one should do given some assumed-to-be-accurate map, and not about the map itself. For example, "You should two-box in Newcomb's problem." If I say "Alice has a false belief that she should two-box in Newcomb's problem" it doesn't seem like I'm saying that her map doesn't correspond to the territory.

So, a couple of questions that seem open to me: Do we need other notions of truth, besides correspondence between map and territory? If so, is there a more general notion of truth that covers all of these as special cases?

Comment author: amcknight 02 October 2012 10:31:26PM 5 points [-]

I think a more general notion of truth could be defined as correspondence between a map and any structure. If you define a structure using axioms and are referencing that structure, then you can talk about the correspondence properties of that reference. This at least cover both mathematical structures and physical reality.