My notion of truth doesn’t fit with any of the theories you listed. Truth is a relationship between propositions and the world, e.g. the proposition “this comment contains 1 or more y’s” is true because this comment contains 1 or more y’s.
This doesn’t technically invalidate your point that truth is human-chosen. But specifically, the human-chosen element is the language we use. If we spoke a different language where the meanings of the words “more” and “fewer” were swapped, the statement would become false.
Though my counterargument here unfairly skews things to my advantage. AFAIK, there is a lot of shared structure between different human languages. Usually human languages can be translated near-losslessly into each other, but a combinatorial argument shows that this is not the case for the overwhelming majority of mathematically conceivable languages.
However, I think similar combinatorial arguments show that it is not possible to obtain information about the truth in the overwhelming majority of mathematically conceivable languages. Conceptually, if the truth of statements can depends mainly on things that you do not observe (which concepts will if they depend on random stuff, since there’s a lot of unseen stuff they could potentially depend on), then you cannot learn anything about the truth.
You’re saying that our languages are based on our motivations and preferences. But almost any motivations and preference would favor a language that can express concepts that are observable, as well as concepts linked to observables. I bet there’s an instrumental convergence argument that could be made here; do you disagree?
This doesn’t technically invalidate your point that truth is human-chosen.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue here. I give a bunch of examples of theories of truth, but there can of course be more, my list is not exhaustive. Your theory still has the property of depending on a criterion that distinguishes that which is true from what is not, so it doesn’t change the remainder of my arguments.
You’re saying that our languages are based on our motivations and preferences. But almost any motivations and preference would favor a language that can express concepts that are observable, as well as concepts linked to observables. I bet there’s an instrumental convergence argument that could be made here; do you disagree?
The sort of thing we find it useful to label “truth” reflects what’s useful to us, which includes saying things about what we observe. If you had a language where that wasn’t possible, you’d probably invent a way to do it. Because many humans care about the same things, we converge on finding the same sort of things useful, so they become fixed concepts we teach each other and build into our languages.
I’m not sure if we can truly make a case that this is instrumental convergence because I don’t think any of this is happening independently enough where that’s meaningful, but my point could be phrased that we care about truth for instrumental reasons, and many people have the same instrumental reasons for the same reasons.
Truth isn’t necessarily about what’s useful to us, though. There’s a truth to the matter about whether Russell’s teapot exists, but that doesn’t mean it is useful.
I think maybe you’re meaning something different by “care” than I am. You seem to mean something like “important”. I mean something like “care enough to even ever bother thinking about it”. That there are infinite statements no one cares about by my definition doesn’t seem a problem, but in fact an important thing to know.
My notion of truth doesn’t fit with any of the theories you listed. Truth is a relationship between propositions and the world, e.g. the proposition “this comment contains 1 or more y’s” is true because this comment contains 1 or more y’s.
This doesn’t technically invalidate your point that truth is human-chosen. But specifically, the human-chosen element is the language we use. If we spoke a different language where the meanings of the words “more” and “fewer” were swapped, the statement would become false.
Though my counterargument here unfairly skews things to my advantage. AFAIK, there is a lot of shared structure between different human languages. Usually human languages can be translated near-losslessly into each other, but a combinatorial argument shows that this is not the case for the overwhelming majority of mathematically conceivable languages.
However, I think similar combinatorial arguments show that it is not possible to obtain information about the truth in the overwhelming majority of mathematically conceivable languages. Conceptually, if the truth of statements can depends mainly on things that you do not observe (which concepts will if they depend on random stuff, since there’s a lot of unseen stuff they could potentially depend on), then you cannot learn anything about the truth.
You’re saying that our languages are based on our motivations and preferences. But almost any motivations and preference would favor a language that can express concepts that are observable, as well as concepts linked to observables. I bet there’s an instrumental convergence argument that could be made here; do you disagree?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue here. I give a bunch of examples of theories of truth, but there can of course be more, my list is not exhaustive. Your theory still has the property of depending on a criterion that distinguishes that which is true from what is not, so it doesn’t change the remainder of my arguments.
The sort of thing we find it useful to label “truth” reflects what’s useful to us, which includes saying things about what we observe. If you had a language where that wasn’t possible, you’d probably invent a way to do it. Because many humans care about the same things, we converge on finding the same sort of things useful, so they become fixed concepts we teach each other and build into our languages.
I’m not sure if we can truly make a case that this is instrumental convergence because I don’t think any of this is happening independently enough where that’s meaningful, but my point could be phrased that we care about truth for instrumental reasons, and many people have the same instrumental reasons for the same reasons.
Truth isn’t necessarily about what’s useful to us, though. There’s a truth to the matter about whether Russell’s teapot exists, but that doesn’t mean it is useful.
That someone cares what the answer is is a kind of usefulness.
I think there are lots of propositions that can be phrased in English and that nobody cares about.
I think maybe you’re meaning something different by “care” than I am. You seem to mean something like “important”. I mean something like “care enough to even ever bother thinking about it”. That there are infinite statements no one cares about by my definition doesn’t seem a problem, but in fact an important thing to know.