So I don’t see how people mean something different from this by truth and falsity, or at least significantly different.
Right, I don’t expect my position to make much of a difference to most people most of the time. Perhaps this is a matter of how I perceive the context of my readers, but I generally expect them to be more likely to make the mistake of even accidentally thinking of what I might call “true” and “false” for what we might call the “hard essentialist” version of truth (there are truth bits in the universe) when discussing topics that are sufficiently abstract.
what benefit would we get from using “truth” in the above way, compared to using it in other ways?
It seems mostly to matter when I want to give a precise accounting of my thoughts (or more precisely my experience of my thoughts).
I think most people will take the denial of truth to be a denial that the world is real. As I said earlier, if anything seems like a denial of realism, the denial of truth does. And most people, coming to the conclusion that there is no truth, will conclude that they should not bother to spend much time thinking about things. Obviously you haven’t drawn that conclusion or you wouldn’t be spending time on Less Wrong, but I think most people would draw that conclusion. So for someone who thinks that thinking is valuable, rejecting truth does not seem helpful.
This gets at why I feel “in-between” in many ways: rejecting truth the way nihilists and solipsists do is not where I mean to end up, but not rejecting truth in at least some form seems to me to deny the skepticism I think we must take given the intentional appearance of experience. Building from “no truth” to “some kind of truth” seems a better approach to me than backing down from “yes truth”.
This may be because I find myself in a society where idealism and dualism are common and rationalists and other folks who favor realism often express it in terms of strict materialism that often denies phenomenological intentionality (even if unintentionally). Maybe I am too far removed from general society these days, but I feel it more important to accentuate intentionality over the strict materialism I perceive my target readers are likely to hold if they don’t already get what I’m pointing at. You seem to be evidence, though, that this is misunderstanding, although I suspect you are an outlier given how much we agree.
That implies there will always be an “edge of understanding” where you are going to be confused.
Agreed. I expect us all to remain confused in a technical sense of having beliefs that do not fully predict reality. But I also believe it virtuous to minimize that confusion where possible and practical.
Right, I don’t expect my position to make much of a difference to most people most of the time. Perhaps this is a matter of how I perceive the context of my readers, but I generally expect them to be more likely to make the mistake of even accidentally thinking of what I might call “true” and “false” for what we might call the “hard essentialist” version of truth (there are truth bits in the universe) when discussing topics that are sufficiently abstract.
It seems mostly to matter when I want to give a precise accounting of my thoughts (or more precisely my experience of my thoughts).
This gets at why I feel “in-between” in many ways: rejecting truth the way nihilists and solipsists do is not where I mean to end up, but not rejecting truth in at least some form seems to me to deny the skepticism I think we must take given the intentional appearance of experience. Building from “no truth” to “some kind of truth” seems a better approach to me than backing down from “yes truth”.
This may be because I find myself in a society where idealism and dualism are common and rationalists and other folks who favor realism often express it in terms of strict materialism that often denies phenomenological intentionality (even if unintentionally). Maybe I am too far removed from general society these days, but I feel it more important to accentuate intentionality over the strict materialism I perceive my target readers are likely to hold if they don’t already get what I’m pointing at. You seem to be evidence, though, that this is misunderstanding, although I suspect you are an outlier given how much we agree.
Agreed. I expect us all to remain confused in a technical sense of having beliefs that do not fully predict reality. But I also believe it virtuous to minimize that confusion where possible and practical.