Let me distill this and see if you follow:
We need to know what a claim is actually claiming—that can depend on context.
Given that you do know what a claim is claiming, its veracity does not depend on context, nor the belief structure of the person behind the claim.
is what I meant. To provide an example, (which can quite often help in these situations):
I claim that the earth is approximately round.
You don’t need to know how I came to that conclusion in order to evaluate my claim.
Had I claimed something a bit more complex, maybe related to the society that I currently live in, then you would probably need to know something about my society in order to see if my claim was correct. But you actually wouldn’t need to know how I came to the conclusion—you just need to know what I’m talking about.
I feel like this is circular: you state your claim, I state my rebuttal, you concede in qualification, and then you return to your original claim.
I need to know how you came to that conclusion, which is slightly ambiguous here, in the sense that I can’t understand the claim independently of the linguistic practice in terms of which your intended meaning is given.
In the case of basic and well-worn facts about the natural world, I think I understand their utterance—although I could be unaware of a particular convention or idiom—because I am already very aware of the linguistic practices which endow them which intersubjective force (if I was a peasant in the Holy Roman Empire, I would doubtlessly have no idea what you were attempting to convey or do).
Alright, since you could not verify the Earth being round without knowing my belief structure...
2+2 = 4
You don’t know my belief structure. Is it true?
I’m not asking you if you know that off the top of your head, I’m asking if you could go out and check to see if it’s actually true!
That’s what I mean by evaluating a claim—can you verify it? I’m sorry, but it’s asinine to say that you cannot verify it because you don’t know how I came to the conclusion. You seem to be arguing something about sharing my language as maintaining your point. I’m past that. If you understand the claim, you can test it.
I don’t really understand what your problem is; to evaluate a claim, you have to find it intelligible, for which you have to know contingent things about the empirical practice of the relevant language-game—which, yes, is pretty much equivalent to the ordinary language statement ‘if you understand the claim, you can test it’.
I agree. I’m glad we finally got there. I have been saying your equivalent of “you have to find it intelligible” this whole time. You have to understand the claim to test it.
But you don’t have to understand how they came to that conclusion. In case it’s not clear, that’s how I’ve been using the term “belief structure.”
By the way, it would greatly help the discussion along if you answered all non-rhetorical questions, because that would help me understand where things aren’t clicking.
*Edit: Upon rereading our discussion, it looks like you think the qualifier “you have to understand what the claim is claiming” contradicts the statement “you don’t need to know how they came to the conclusion.” The reason I keep repeating each is that they do not contradict; I want you to consider each statement carefully: “How they came to the conclusion” addresses the logic by which they arrived at a particular belief—such as A & B therefore C. “You don’t need to know how they came to the conclusion ” addresses whether C is correct. A & B are not involved in the evaluation; the only time context enters into it is understanding what C means.
I said ‘how they claim to that conclusion’ was extremely ambiguous (it can certainly mean more than the logic relations by which they deduced something in abstraction), and gave a particular sense. I have been saying the whole time, in my own words, which I translated ‘how they came to that conclusion’ into after admitting ambiguity, that finding an utterance intelligible is a condition of evaluating its truth-value, for which a posteriori knowledge of language conventions and the speaker in question, is necessary (which, depending on the complexity and/or normality of the utterance, might or might not require some knowledge of the logical relations which they drew, or the epistemic practices which they exercised—but this narrow issue isn’t what I have been talking about). If you cast ‘how I came to that conclusion’ wide enough, such as the entire belief structure of the speaker in question, then some knowledge of that doubtlessly is requisite to understanding their utterances (i.e. like what the language community in which they’re embedded means when they utter a certain combination of noises).
It would help if you stopped changing your claim, which is only confusing the matter, i.e. from not needing to ‘know how someone formed their belief’, to ‘the belief structure of the person’, to ‘how I came to that conclusion’.
Each reiteration of “how someone formed their belief” is an attempt on my part to clarify the meaning, since you yourself just said that it is “extremely ambiguous.” The concept I am attempting to convey remains the same, however.
I will bring in a quote by Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Language is the means by which we communicate information interpersonally. Language is important, as it is imperative that the sender and the receiver internalize the same concept. However, the rose and how it smells is independent of the language; when I say “evaluate a claim” I mean you go and smell the rose yourself, with the underlying qualifier being that you know they are talking about a rose in the first place.
Non-rhetorical questions:
Can you smell a rose if you speak modern French?
What if you speak 16th Century German?
Does it smell difference based on the language you speak?
Furthermore, your ability to smell the rose doesn’t depend on whether I claimed something about it based on empirical evidence (such as smelling it myself) or if I just heard it from someone else and believed it. These are very simple ways of coming to a conclusion, but it illustrates what I mean when I say it can be verified independent from the belief structure behind it.
Firstly, I never said that ‘how someone formed their belief’ was ambiguous, I said that ‘how someone arrived at a conclusion’ was; you replaced the former with the latter. You have already admit the qualification I urged several times. I am aghast as to why you persist in reverting to what you have already denied.
Secondly, evaluating a claim is not travelling to the object-of-understanding and accruing the percepts to independently verify its truth-value, something which—as you admit, and as is the whole force of my half of the discussion—is itself impossible without knowing “they are talking bout the rose in the first place”. That is to say, a condition of evaluation is finding intelligible the utterance given, for which speaker context and knowledge of the relevant language-game is relevant (the particular conventions of using language in particular subcultures for particular forms of activity).
The action of being physically proximate to a rose and allowing its scent wave over your smell receptors and trigger certain neural connections, is obviously possible for most humans. This does not undermine in the slightest, however, that utterances about roses and their perfume are only intelligible relative to linguistic community the speaker is party to. If I contrived a private language according to whose conventions ‘barkbark22’ was related to smelling roses, you would obviously have no idea—and couldn’t—what I was doing in making that utterance, and would not be able to, independently of understanding the utterance, judge its truth-value.
Note that we are talking about evaluating a CLAIM—a linguistic utterance. NOT the independent reality which that claim might refer or relate to.
I also disagree with your archaic conception of empirical verification independent of belief structure, but that is another argument which I certainly don’t want to enter.
I think I see where things aren’t matching, and aside from your last comment I think it’s a matter of definitions rather then concepts.
Firstly, when I say “evaluate a claim” I mean checking that it matches with objective reality—NOT understanding what the claim means in it’s linguistic context. If I managed to translate “barkbark22″ into something I understood, I could then evaluate it. If you want to say that my definition of the phrase “evaluate a claim” is faulty, fine, but you should now understand what I mean by it.
Secondly, I think that the statements “how someone arrived at a conclusion” and “how someone formed their belief” are equivalent, and at the very least I have been using them as such. Likewise, if you think this is wrong, you at least know what I’m saying now hopefully.
As for verification of a claim’s truth being empirical, I don’t see how someone’s belief structure could affect objective reality, unless the claim specifically relates to someone’s state of mind (such as “I am angry”).
You can’t check a claim independently of understanding it, for which contextual knowledge is necessary. It’s as simple as that.
I am also confused as to why your think all claims are empirically verifiable, i.e. if X is Y and Z is X then Y is Z. Most language is not world-referent.
You can’t check a claim independently of understanding it, for which contextual knowledge is necessary. It’s as simple as that.
I know you can’t check a claim without understanding it. I’ve said as much (the qualifier you keep mentioning). My point is that, given you do understand it, you can check it.
I am also confused as to why your think all claims are empirically verifiable, i.e. if X is Y and Z is X then Y is Z. Most language is not world-referent.
I don’t think that all claims are empirically verifiable—that was my mistake in writing. However you still haven’t explained how someone’s belief structure could affect objective reality (outside of their own state of mind).
Firstly, when I say “evaluate a claim” I mean checking that it matches with objective reality—NOT understanding what the claim means in it’s linguistic context
I responded:
You can’t check a claim independently of understanding it, for which contextual knowledge is necessary.
You responded to my response:
I know you can’t check a claim without understanding it. I’ve said as much (the qualifier you keep mentioning). My point is that, given you do understand it, you can check it.
You are flatly contradicting yourself. You keep doing this: stating the unqualified version, then upon my response, admitting the qualification, and the all of a sudden reverting back to the unqualified version.
My point was that you can’t, besides bare particles of sense experience, interpret the external world independent of a belief structure, but as stated—given the length and circularity of this debate—I don’t want to turn this into a second discussion.
You are misrepresenting the statement-response structure.
I simultaneously say two things:
1) You must understand a claim to check it, else you wouldn’t know what to check.
(we both agree here, I think)
2) Given that you can understand a claim, it can be checked
You say “Hold on, you can’t understand a claim without the context!” And I agree.
In the practical reality that we must face on a daily basis, you can’t really ever avoid the fact that we must communicate via language and we also often imply some additional details, such as time/location.
Let’s say I claim “Il pleut.” (in French it means “it’s raining”).
There are several things in the context that matter:
a) You need to either speak my language or have it translated into your own.
b) In context, the claim is really that “It’s raining in this area at this time” (this is important, as it might not be raining elsewhere or in the past/future here).
Even if you didn’t know what I said, it is in fact either raining at this place and this time or it is not. You need not understand my claim in order to see if it’s raining. However, you also wouldn’t check in the first place because you didn’t know it was claimed.
What I’ve been trying to do this whole time, which you seem not to have grasped yet, is that I am separating the truth of the claim (a statement about reality) and the baggage that we must actually deal with when we communicate such a claim to each other (hence my distinction between understanding a claim and checking a claim).
I have understood you the entire time. I think you have confused yourself.
I broadly agree with (1) and (2), and have never suggested otherwise (except that all claims aren’t susceptible to ‘checking’).
The entire point has been that you have consistently said that you can evaluate utterances independently of contingent features of the speaker and context. That is to say, you seem to be under the impression that ‘evaluating a claim’ does not require any knowledge about that claim. Which is obviously absurd, you can’t evaluate something you know nothing about. In reality, I don’t think you mean ‘evaluate a claim’ at all, you mean ‘evaluate some set of world-referent information which happens to be in the claim’.
Let me state this in rough propositions:
a. evaluation is a judgement of aspects of things relative to criteria
b. a claim is an utterance
c. utterances can contain information about things and their aspects
d. utterance intelligibility depends on knowing contingent things about the speaker and context of utterance
e. ergo, evaluation of a claim must follow these steps: to judge aspects of things related to a claim requires utterance information, which requires utterance intelligibility, which requires contingent knowledge about the speaker and context of utterance.
That is to say, evaluating a CLAIM requires that contingent knowledge.
You have consistently stated otherwise:
“I guess the main thing I am trying to say that directly ties into your post is that we shouldn’t really care how someone formed their beliefs when evaluating the veracity of a claim”
The reason I said “we shouldn’t really care how someone formed their beliefs” is because the words that followed are “when evaluating the veracity of a claim,” i.e. whether or not it is accurate. This is entirely independent of the person’s reasons for making the claim
You don’t need to know how I came to that conclusion in order to evaluate my claim.
2+2 = 4… You don’t know my belief structure. Is it true?
“How they came to the conclusion” addresses the logic by which they arrived at a particular belief—such as A & B therefore C. “You don’t need to know how they came to the conclusion ” addresses whether C is correct. A & B are not involved in the evaluation; the only time context enters into it is understanding what C means.
when I say “evaluate a claim” I mean you go and smell the rose yourself,
Firstly, when I say “evaluate a claim” I mean checking that it matches with objective reality—NOT understanding what the claim means in it’s linguistic context.
The entire point has been that you have consistently said that you can evaluate utterances independently of contingent features of the speaker and context.
You are putting words into my mouth. Note that I have never even used the term “utterance” to this point in my statements.
Also note that you don’t get to define the terms that I’m using—I do. I’m glad that you listed these propositions in several point, since it makes this easier to deconstruct:
Let me state this in rough propositions:
a. evaluation is a judgement of aspects of things relative to criteria
b. a claim is an utterance
c. utterances can contain information about things and their aspects
d. utterance intelligibility depends on knowing contingent things about the speaker and context of utterance
e. ergo, evaluation of a claim must follow these steps: to judge aspects of things related to a claim requires utterance information, which requires utterance intelligibility, which requires contingent knowledge about the speaker and context of utterance
Here are my responses/restatements to/of each point:
a) In this context, I use “evaluation” to mean comparing a statement about reality with reality itself.
b) In this context, I use “claim” to mean a statement about reality.
b’) Also critically important is that you understand that “a statement about reality” is a pure and independent concept, free of the burden of language. Perhaps a better phrasing would be “a concept of reality” or “a conceived state of reality” rather than a statement. A statement about reality is not to be confused with the utterance of a claim)
c) The utterance of a claim is an attempt to make a statement about reality.
d) The intended meaning of an utterance (i.e. the conceived state of reality in this case) often incorporates contextual and implied contextual information (e.g. when one says “It’s raining,” one also means that the statement pertains to here and now)
e) Ergo in order to evaluate an uttered claim one must: 1) fully understand the claim, incorporating all relevant contextual meaning, 2) evaluate the claim, i.e. compare the conceived state of reality with reality itself.
The second part of (e), comparing a conceived state of reality with reality itself, does not involve the context or the belief structure of the claimant; however, given that we are bound by language, you must necessarily go through step 1 to get to step 2.
For instance, take the claim
A = A
Now, if you aren’t familiar with mathematical notation, then you could not understand the claim and therefore could not proceed to step 2 because you were unsuccessful at completing step 1. However, the agreement between reality and the conceived state of reality (which cannot be purely expressed as such, since we are bound by language/notation when communicating interpersonally) can be evaluated regardless.*
-* I realize that for some claims we do not have the knowledge/resources/possibility to check their correspondence to objective reality. Ignore this during our discussion to minimize unnecessary qualification.
“a statement about reality” is a pure and independent concept, free of the burden of language”
This is a false premise. There is no such thing.
i.e. to claim something is to give motion for or against a given thought or action through utterances according with the relevant conventions of language. This is a linguistic practice perforce.
A conceived state of reality is something that happens in your head, not in writing or spoken aloud. The utterance of a claim is an attempt to convey this conceived state to someone else. You seem to be bordering on rejecting objective reality altogether; if there are no minds in the universe is a rock still a rock? In such a universe there would be no language, but you would agree that A still equals A, right? If you were alone and had no one to talk to, could you not still understand your surroundings via internal models of reality?
Edit: in short the fact that A=A, the concept that A=A, and the utterance A=A, are all unique things and to try to combine the latter two is unjustified.
I think this idle circularity flows from your non-ordinary use of ‘claim’ and ‘statement’, which you seem to be using in special ways.
The Google definitions of each given as the first return from the search-function:
Statement, “a definite or clear expression of something in speech or writing”.
Claim, “state or assert that something is the case, typically without providing evidence or proof”.
The object of our disagreement, ‘evaluating a claim’, if we follow ordinary language, means passing judgement over a linguistic statement, an obvious condition of which is finding that utterance properly intelligible.
When you say “A statement about reality is not to be confused with the utterance of a claim” [where confusingly, you define ‘statement about reality’ and ‘claim’ synonymously] you simply redefine the terms of the problem and discussion. As I have said all along, you are misusing words.
I don’t want to go into—because it’s a red herring—the possibility of pure and independent access to reality, suffice it to say that it’s philosophically absurd.
Also note that you don’t get to define the terms that I’m using—I do.
do you not understand?
I know I am using non-standard definitions in the context of this discussion in order to make my points more clear.
Your argument has boiled down to “MY definition of your words says that you are saying X, which is wrong” when I am in fact saying Y, which you have not responded to. I don’t care about what you (or Google) say evaluating a claim is supposed to mean, because what we are discussing is what I mean when I say it. The “idle circularity” flows from your failure to acknowledge different uses of words in the context of this discussion and respond to my actual points. If you want to get somewhere, perhaps you should reread my definitions and actually consider what I am saying.
If it is divergent, then this
is what I meant. To provide an example, (which can quite often help in these situations):
I claim that the earth is approximately round.
You don’t need to know how I came to that conclusion in order to evaluate my claim.
Had I claimed something a bit more complex, maybe related to the society that I currently live in, then you would probably need to know something about my society in order to see if my claim was correct. But you actually wouldn’t need to know how I came to the conclusion—you just need to know what I’m talking about.
I feel like this is circular: you state your claim, I state my rebuttal, you concede in qualification, and then you return to your original claim.
I need to know how you came to that conclusion, which is slightly ambiguous here, in the sense that I can’t understand the claim independently of the linguistic practice in terms of which your intended meaning is given.
In the case of basic and well-worn facts about the natural world, I think I understand their utterance—although I could be unaware of a particular convention or idiom—because I am already very aware of the linguistic practices which endow them which intersubjective force (if I was a peasant in the Holy Roman Empire, I would doubtlessly have no idea what you were attempting to convey or do).
Alright, since you could not verify the Earth being round without knowing my belief structure...
2+2 = 4
You don’t know my belief structure. Is it true?
I’m not asking you if you know that off the top of your head, I’m asking if you could go out and check to see if it’s actually true!
That’s what I mean by evaluating a claim—can you verify it? I’m sorry, but it’s asinine to say that you cannot verify it because you don’t know how I came to the conclusion. You seem to be arguing something about sharing my language as maintaining your point. I’m past that. If you understand the claim, you can test it.
I don’t really understand what your problem is; to evaluate a claim, you have to find it intelligible, for which you have to know contingent things about the empirical practice of the relevant language-game—which, yes, is pretty much equivalent to the ordinary language statement ‘if you understand the claim, you can test it’.
I agree. I’m glad we finally got there. I have been saying your equivalent of “you have to find it intelligible” this whole time. You have to understand the claim to test it.
But you don’t have to understand how they came to that conclusion. In case it’s not clear, that’s how I’ve been using the term “belief structure.”
By the way, it would greatly help the discussion along if you answered all non-rhetorical questions, because that would help me understand where things aren’t clicking.
*Edit: Upon rereading our discussion, it looks like you think the qualifier “you have to understand what the claim is claiming” contradicts the statement “you don’t need to know how they came to the conclusion.” The reason I keep repeating each is that they do not contradict; I want you to consider each statement carefully: “How they came to the conclusion” addresses the logic by which they arrived at a particular belief—such as A & B therefore C. “You don’t need to know how they came to the conclusion ” addresses whether C is correct. A & B are not involved in the evaluation; the only time context enters into it is understanding what C means.
I said ‘how they claim to that conclusion’ was extremely ambiguous (it can certainly mean more than the logic relations by which they deduced something in abstraction), and gave a particular sense. I have been saying the whole time, in my own words, which I translated ‘how they came to that conclusion’ into after admitting ambiguity, that finding an utterance intelligible is a condition of evaluating its truth-value, for which a posteriori knowledge of language conventions and the speaker in question, is necessary (which, depending on the complexity and/or normality of the utterance, might or might not require some knowledge of the logical relations which they drew, or the epistemic practices which they exercised—but this narrow issue isn’t what I have been talking about). If you cast ‘how I came to that conclusion’ wide enough, such as the entire belief structure of the speaker in question, then some knowledge of that doubtlessly is requisite to understanding their utterances (i.e. like what the language community in which they’re embedded means when they utter a certain combination of noises).
It would help if you stopped changing your claim, which is only confusing the matter, i.e. from not needing to ‘know how someone formed their belief’, to ‘the belief structure of the person’, to ‘how I came to that conclusion’.
Each reiteration of “how someone formed their belief” is an attempt on my part to clarify the meaning, since you yourself just said that it is “extremely ambiguous.” The concept I am attempting to convey remains the same, however.
I will bring in a quote by Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Language is the means by which we communicate information interpersonally. Language is important, as it is imperative that the sender and the receiver internalize the same concept. However, the rose and how it smells is independent of the language; when I say “evaluate a claim” I mean you go and smell the rose yourself, with the underlying qualifier being that you know they are talking about a rose in the first place.
Non-rhetorical questions: Can you smell a rose if you speak modern French? What if you speak 16th Century German? Does it smell difference based on the language you speak?
Furthermore, your ability to smell the rose doesn’t depend on whether I claimed something about it based on empirical evidence (such as smelling it myself) or if I just heard it from someone else and believed it. These are very simple ways of coming to a conclusion, but it illustrates what I mean when I say it can be verified independent from the belief structure behind it.
Firstly, I never said that ‘how someone formed their belief’ was ambiguous, I said that ‘how someone arrived at a conclusion’ was; you replaced the former with the latter. You have already admit the qualification I urged several times. I am aghast as to why you persist in reverting to what you have already denied.
Secondly, evaluating a claim is not travelling to the object-of-understanding and accruing the percepts to independently verify its truth-value, something which—as you admit, and as is the whole force of my half of the discussion—is itself impossible without knowing “they are talking bout the rose in the first place”. That is to say, a condition of evaluation is finding intelligible the utterance given, for which speaker context and knowledge of the relevant language-game is relevant (the particular conventions of using language in particular subcultures for particular forms of activity).
The action of being physically proximate to a rose and allowing its scent wave over your smell receptors and trigger certain neural connections, is obviously possible for most humans. This does not undermine in the slightest, however, that utterances about roses and their perfume are only intelligible relative to linguistic community the speaker is party to. If I contrived a private language according to whose conventions ‘barkbark22’ was related to smelling roses, you would obviously have no idea—and couldn’t—what I was doing in making that utterance, and would not be able to, independently of understanding the utterance, judge its truth-value.
Note that we are talking about evaluating a CLAIM—a linguistic utterance. NOT the independent reality which that claim might refer or relate to.
I also disagree with your archaic conception of empirical verification independent of belief structure, but that is another argument which I certainly don’t want to enter.
I think I see where things aren’t matching, and aside from your last comment I think it’s a matter of definitions rather then concepts.
Firstly, when I say “evaluate a claim” I mean checking that it matches with objective reality—NOT understanding what the claim means in it’s linguistic context. If I managed to translate “barkbark22″ into something I understood, I could then evaluate it. If you want to say that my definition of the phrase “evaluate a claim” is faulty, fine, but you should now understand what I mean by it.
Secondly, I think that the statements “how someone arrived at a conclusion” and “how someone formed their belief” are equivalent, and at the very least I have been using them as such. Likewise, if you think this is wrong, you at least know what I’m saying now hopefully.
As for verification of a claim’s truth being empirical, I don’t see how someone’s belief structure could affect objective reality, unless the claim specifically relates to someone’s state of mind (such as “I am angry”).
You can’t check a claim independently of understanding it, for which contextual knowledge is necessary. It’s as simple as that.
I am also confused as to why your think all claims are empirically verifiable, i.e. if X is Y and Z is X then Y is Z. Most language is not world-referent.
I know you can’t check a claim without understanding it. I’ve said as much (the qualifier you keep mentioning). My point is that, given you do understand it, you can check it.
I don’t think that all claims are empirically verifiable—that was my mistake in writing. However you still haven’t explained how someone’s belief structure could affect objective reality (outside of their own state of mind).
I’m sorry, but this is getting absurd.
You said:
I responded:
You responded to my response:
You are flatly contradicting yourself. You keep doing this: stating the unqualified version, then upon my response, admitting the qualification, and the all of a sudden reverting back to the unqualified version.
My point was that you can’t, besides bare particles of sense experience, interpret the external world independent of a belief structure, but as stated—given the length and circularity of this debate—I don’t want to turn this into a second discussion.
You are misrepresenting the statement-response structure.
I simultaneously say two things:
1) You must understand a claim to check it, else you wouldn’t know what to check. (we both agree here, I think)
2) Given that you can understand a claim, it can be checked
You say “Hold on, you can’t understand a claim without the context!” And I agree. In the practical reality that we must face on a daily basis, you can’t really ever avoid the fact that we must communicate via language and we also often imply some additional details, such as time/location.
Let’s say I claim “Il pleut.” (in French it means “it’s raining”).
There are several things in the context that matter: a) You need to either speak my language or have it translated into your own. b) In context, the claim is really that “It’s raining in this area at this time” (this is important, as it might not be raining elsewhere or in the past/future here).
Even if you didn’t know what I said, it is in fact either raining at this place and this time or it is not. You need not understand my claim in order to see if it’s raining. However, you also wouldn’t check in the first place because you didn’t know it was claimed.
What I’ve been trying to do this whole time, which you seem not to have grasped yet, is that I am separating the truth of the claim (a statement about reality) and the baggage that we must actually deal with when we communicate such a claim to each other (hence my distinction between understanding a claim and checking a claim).
Do you follow me?
I have understood you the entire time. I think you have confused yourself.
I broadly agree with (1) and (2), and have never suggested otherwise (except that all claims aren’t susceptible to ‘checking’).
The entire point has been that you have consistently said that you can evaluate utterances independently of contingent features of the speaker and context. That is to say, you seem to be under the impression that ‘evaluating a claim’ does not require any knowledge about that claim. Which is obviously absurd, you can’t evaluate something you know nothing about. In reality, I don’t think you mean ‘evaluate a claim’ at all, you mean ‘evaluate some set of world-referent information which happens to be in the claim’.
Let me state this in rough propositions:
a. evaluation is a judgement of aspects of things relative to criteria
b. a claim is an utterance
c. utterances can contain information about things and their aspects
d. utterance intelligibility depends on knowing contingent things about the speaker and context of utterance
e. ergo, evaluation of a claim must follow these steps: to judge aspects of things related to a claim requires utterance information, which requires utterance intelligibility, which requires contingent knowledge about the speaker and context of utterance.
That is to say, evaluating a CLAIM requires that contingent knowledge.
You have consistently stated otherwise:
You are putting words into my mouth. Note that I have never even used the term “utterance” to this point in my statements. Also note that you don’t get to define the terms that I’m using—I do. I’m glad that you listed these propositions in several point, since it makes this easier to deconstruct:
Here are my responses/restatements to/of each point:
a) In this context, I use “evaluation” to mean comparing a statement about reality with reality itself.
b) In this context, I use “claim” to mean a statement about reality.
b’) Also critically important is that you understand that “a statement about reality” is a pure and independent concept, free of the burden of language. Perhaps a better phrasing would be “a concept of reality” or “a conceived state of reality” rather than a statement. A statement about reality is not to be confused with the utterance of a claim)
c) The utterance of a claim is an attempt to make a statement about reality.
d) The intended meaning of an utterance (i.e. the conceived state of reality in this case) often incorporates contextual and implied contextual information (e.g. when one says “It’s raining,” one also means that the statement pertains to here and now)
e) Ergo in order to evaluate an uttered claim one must: 1) fully understand the claim, incorporating all relevant contextual meaning, 2) evaluate the claim, i.e. compare the conceived state of reality with reality itself.
The second part of (e), comparing a conceived state of reality with reality itself, does not involve the context or the belief structure of the claimant; however, given that we are bound by language, you must necessarily go through step 1 to get to step 2.
For instance, take the claim
A = A
Now, if you aren’t familiar with mathematical notation, then you could not understand the claim and therefore could not proceed to step 2 because you were unsuccessful at completing step 1. However, the agreement between reality and the conceived state of reality (which cannot be purely expressed as such, since we are bound by language/notation when communicating interpersonally) can be evaluated regardless.*
-* I realize that for some claims we do not have the knowledge/resources/possibility to check their correspondence to objective reality. Ignore this during our discussion to minimize unnecessary qualification.
This is a false premise. There is no such thing.
i.e. to claim something is to give motion for or against a given thought or action through utterances according with the relevant conventions of language. This is a linguistic practice perforce.
A conceived state of reality is something that happens in your head, not in writing or spoken aloud. The utterance of a claim is an attempt to convey this conceived state to someone else. You seem to be bordering on rejecting objective reality altogether; if there are no minds in the universe is a rock still a rock? In such a universe there would be no language, but you would agree that A still equals A, right? If you were alone and had no one to talk to, could you not still understand your surroundings via internal models of reality?
Edit: in short the fact that A=A, the concept that A=A, and the utterance A=A, are all unique things and to try to combine the latter two is unjustified.
I think this idle circularity flows from your non-ordinary use of ‘claim’ and ‘statement’, which you seem to be using in special ways.
The Google definitions of each given as the first return from the search-function:
Statement, “a definite or clear expression of something in speech or writing”.
Claim, “state or assert that something is the case, typically without providing evidence or proof”.
The object of our disagreement, ‘evaluating a claim’, if we follow ordinary language, means passing judgement over a linguistic statement, an obvious condition of which is finding that utterance properly intelligible.
When you say “A statement about reality is not to be confused with the utterance of a claim” [where confusingly, you define ‘statement about reality’ and ‘claim’ synonymously] you simply redefine the terms of the problem and discussion. As I have said all along, you are misusing words.
I don’t want to go into—because it’s a red herring—the possibility of pure and independent access to reality, suffice it to say that it’s philosophically absurd.
What part of
do you not understand?
I know I am using non-standard definitions in the context of this discussion in order to make my points more clear.
Your argument has boiled down to “MY definition of your words says that you are saying X, which is wrong” when I am in fact saying Y, which you have not responded to. I don’t care about what you (or Google) say evaluating a claim is supposed to mean, because what we are discussing is what I mean when I say it. The “idle circularity” flows from your failure to acknowledge different uses of words in the context of this discussion and respond to my actual points. If you want to get somewhere, perhaps you should reread my definitions and actually consider what I am saying.