common_law 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: common_law 04 October 2012 12:19:21AM *  10 points [-]

Two quibbles that could turn out to be more than quibbles.

  1. The concept of truth you intend to defend isn't a correspondence theory--rather it's a deflationary theory, one in which truth has a purely metalinguistic role. It doesn't provide any account of the nature of any correspondence relationship that might exist between beliefs and reality. A correspondence theory, properly termed, uses a strong notion of reference to provide a philosophical account of how language ties to reality.

  2. You write:

Some pundits have panicked over the point that any judgment of truth - any comparison of belief to reality - takes place inside some particular person's mind; and indeed seems to just compare someone else's belief to your belief.

I'm inclined to think this is a straw man. (And if they're mere "pundits" and not philosophers why the concern with their silly opinion?) I think you should cite to the most respectable of these pundits or reconsider whether any pundits worth speaking of said this. The notion that reality--not just belief--determines experiments, might be useful to mention, but it doesn't answer any known argument, whether by philosopher or pundit.