hen comments on Explanations for Less Wrong articles that you didn't understand - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (118)
I do not understand the point of the essay http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/ . The preface says that it "is meant to restore a naive view of truth", but all I see is strawmanning everything Eliezer dislikes. What is that "naive view of truth"?
I really wanted to help, because you're helping me with the free will thing, but I could only manage to skim the essay. I take it that the naive view of truth is supposed to be the disquotational or deflationary view. This is to say that the assertion
is identical content-wise to the assertion
To say that something is true is just to assert that thing, and asserting it is sufficient to say that it's true. In other words, we can for most purposes just do without the word 'true' (though things are more complicated for 'false').
One useful distinction is between asserting a proposition and explaining its meaning. The meaning of "snow is white" can be discussed apart from the question of whether it's true, so saying that it's true serves to indicate that we are discussing its truth and not (just) its meaning.