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StephenR comments on Astray with the Truth: Logic and Math - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: StephenR 16 August 2014 03:40PM

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Comment author: StephenR 20 August 2014 12:59:29AM *  0 points [-]

That was a wonderful comment. I hope you don't mind if I focus on the last part in particular. If you'd rather I addressed more I can accommodate that, although most of that will be signalling agreement.

To assert P is equivalent to asserting "P is true" (the deflationary theory in reverse). That is still true if P is of the form "so and so works". Pragmatism is not orthogonal to, or transcendent of, truth. Pragmatists need to be concerned about what truly works.

I'll note a few things in reply to this:

  • I'm fine with some conceptual overlap between my proposed epistemology and other epistemologies and vague memes.
  • You might want to analyse statements "P" as meaning/being equivalent to "P is true," but I am not going to include any explication of "true" in my epistemology for that analysis to anchor itself to.
  • Continuing the above, part of what I am doing is tabooing "truth," to see if we can formulate an epistemology-like framework without it.
  • What "truly works" is more of a feeling or a proclivity than a proposition, until of course an agent develops a model of what works and why.

What is right is contextual truth.

I agree with you here absolutely, modulo vocabulary. I would rather say that no single framework is universally appropriate (problem of induction) and that developing different tools for different contexts is shrewd. But what I just said is more of a model inspired by my epistemology than part of the epistemology itself.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 24 August 2014 04:32:26PM 0 points [-]

You might want to analyse statements "P" as meaning/being equivalent to "P is true," but I am not going to include any explication of "true" in my epistemology for that analysis to anchor itself to

Analysing P as "P is true" isn't some peculiarity of mine: in less formal terms, to assert something is to assert it as true. To put forward claims, and persuade others that they should believe them is to play a truth game...truth is what one should believe,

So your epistemology can't dispense with truth, but offers no analysis of truth, How useful is that?

Continuing the above, part of what I am doing is tabooing "truth," to see if we can formulate an epistemology-like framework without it.

Tabooing truth, or tabooing "truth"? It is almost always possible to stop using a word, but continue referring to the concept by synonymous words or phrases. Doing without the concept is harder....doing without the use, the employment us harder still.

What "truly works" is more of a feeling or a proclivity than a proposition, until of course an agent develops amodel of what works and why.

Nothing works just because someone feels it does. The truth of something truly working us given by the territory.

What is right is contextual truth.

I agree with you here absolutely, modulo vocabulary. I would rather say that no single framework is universally appropriate (problem of induction)

Contextual truth is compatible with no truth?

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