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gjm comments on What are your contrarian views? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Multiplication: so this looks like you're again referring to meanings being context-dependent (in this case the meaning of "= 5332114"). So far as I can see, associativity has nothing whatever to do with the point at issue here and I don't understand why you bring it up; what am I missing?
Redness: yeah, again in some contexts "red" might be taken to mean some very specific colour; and yes, colour is a really complicated business, though most of that complexity seems to me to have as little to do with the point at issue as associativity has to do with the question of what 1234x4321 is.
So: It appears to me that what you mean by saying that statements' truth values are context-dependent is that (1) their meanings are context-dependent and (2) people are often less than perfectly precise and their statements apply to cases they hadn't considered. All of which is true, but none of which seems terribly controversial. So, sorry, no upvote for contrarianism from me on this occasion :-).
If you are in the object oriented paradigm 1234.times(4321) is something slightly different than 1234.times(4321)
In my map of the world I wouldn't formulate that statement, because you rate precision by an objective standard and I don't think that a single standard exists. Statements that people make are precisely the statements they make. My disagreement is about a fundamental issue and not simply about handling one example differently.
I guess you wanted one of those to be the other way around. In any case, that's commutativity not associativity, it has nothing to do with object orientation (you could equally say that times(1234,4321) and times(4321,1234) are different), and since it happens that multiplication of numbers is commutative it again seems like a total red herring.
I do? Please, tell me more about how I rate precision.
Which I think simply amounts to the fact that the same sentence may denote different propositions in different contexts, because meaning is context-dependent. Which I think is not at all controversial.
I may well be misinterpreting you, but in that case I think it's time for you to be clearer about what you mean. So far, all the examples we've had have been (so it seems to me) either (a) cases where meaning or reference is context-dependent but it's at least arguable that once the meaning is nailed down you have a proposition whose truth value is not context-dependent, or (b) just observations that life is complicated sometimes (September 1752, leap seconds, etc.) without any actual context-dependent proposition in sight.
As I remarked above, I'm not certain how precise one can make the distinction between context-dependent meaning and context-dependent truth value. But since (I think) intelligent thoughtful people are generally entirely unbothered by the idea of context-dependent meaning, any version of context-dependent truth value that can't be clearly distinguished from context-dependent meaning shouldn't be that controversial :-).
In python I can overwrite the times function of one element that means that different elements have slightly different times functions. As such it's important to know whether X times Y means that times is a function of the X or of the Y object.
But you might be right that associativity is not the right word.
When I see the word precision I see it has having a certain meaning that people at university taught me. You might mean something different with the term. What do you mean?
In the case of color my position lead to disagreement with other people on LW because I follow different heuristics about truth than other people.
There are many thoughtful people who put a lot of value in searching something like objective truth. Do you deny that proposition?
Nope. Because so far everything you've said seems perfectly compatible with "something like objective truth".
I appreciate that you consider yourself to be denying that any such thing is possible -- which is why I am interested in finding out exactly what it is you're claiming, and whether your disagreement with the seekers after objective truth is about more than terminology.
I certainly do make real life decision based on my views that I wouldn't make if I would seek objective truth. When making Anki cards, every one of my cards explicitly states the context in which a statement stands. Creating Anki cards forces you to think very hard about statements and how they can be true or false.
Barry Smith against Fantology might also be worth reading.
Again, perfectly consistent with holding that meaning rather than truth is context-dependent.
And, again, I appreciate that you would say (T) "Truth is context-dependent" rather than (M) "Meaning is context-dependent". What I'm trying to grasp is (1) whether you mean by (T) more than someone else might mean by (M) and (2) whether your reasons for holding (T) are good reasons for holding (T) rather than (M).
This doesn't seem to me to have much to do with whether there are objective truths; it's about what sort of things, and relationships between things, and qualities, and so forth, there are. Holding that some truths aren't well expressible in terms of first-order predicate calculus isn't the same thing as holding that there are no truths.
If you at most people's Anki cards they don't contain explicit references to context. There are reasons why that's the case. It comes from the way those people think about the nature of knowledge.
I haven't said that there are no truths but that truths are context dependent. On of the issues of first-order predicate calculus is that it doesn't contain information about context.