Theories need to work for the difficult cases as well as the easy ones. The pebbles are an easy case because there is an intrinsic twoness to two pebbles and two sheep.
ETA
A harder case is when non iconic symbols are used. You can't tell that "sheep"corresponds to sheep by examining the shape of the letters. But there are right and wrong ways to use "sheep". It is tempting to say that a sentence is true then it corresponds, and corresponds when it is correct, and is correct when all the words in it are used correctly. But that is circular, because truth has been explained in terms of correctness.
Normativity is in general difficult to cash out reductionalistically, because to find norms you have to look outward to contexts, not inwards to implementation details.
Also, there is the problem of finding chunks of reality for thoughts and words to correspond to. Different languages slice and dice reality differently, so if reality really does contain pre-existing chunks corresponding to all known languages, it must be very complex, and suspiciously conveniently arranged for us humans. OTOH, if it doesn't , the naive picture of sentences and thoughts corresponding to pre existing chunks has to be abandoned. But if the slicing and dicing is done by language and thought, what is reality supplying as a truth maker?
And then there the problem of what true statements about abstractions (morality, maths, etc) are corresponding to...
Not that I have a better theory than correspondence...
Theories need to work for the difficult cases as well as the easy ones.
Show me some, and I will see what I have to say about them.
The pebbles are an easy case because there is an intrinsic twoness to two pebbles and two sheep.
What is "intrinsic twoness"? How does this make the pebbles an easy case? I don't need to know any numbers, to be able to match up pebbles and sheep, and to do it in my head, I only need a long enough, reproducible sequence of mental entities. A bard could just as easily use lines of epic poetry.
ErinFlight said:
Thinking about it, I realized that this might be a common concern. There are probably plenty of people who've looked at various more-or-less technical or jargony Less Wrong posts, tried understanding them, and then given up (without posting a comment explaining their confusion).
So I figured that it might be good to have a thread where you can ask for explanations for any Less Wrong post that you didn't understand and would like to, but don't want to directly comment on for any reason (e.g. because you're feeling embarassed, because the post is too old to attract much traffic, etc.). In the spirit of various Stupid Questions threads, you're explicitly encouraged to ask even for the kinds of explanations that you feel you "should" get even yourself, or where you feel like you could get it if you just put in the effort (but then never did).
You can ask to have some specific confusing term or analogy explained, or to get the main content of a post briefly summarized in plain English and without jargon, or anything else. (Of course, there are some posts that simply cannot be explained in non-technical terms, such as the ones in the Quantum Mechanics sequence.) And of course, you're encouraged to provide explanations to others!