Re: Truthmaker Maximalism and undecidable decision problems --- the way truth really works

On 6/12/24 9:16 PM, olcott wrote:

On 6/12/2024 6:55 PM, Richard Damon wrote:

On 6/12/24 9:05 AM, olcott wrote:

On 6/12/2024 6:33 AM, Richard Damon wrote:

On 6/11/24 11:17 PM, olcott wrote:

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Which Mendelson would encode as: ⊢𝒞
A {cat} <is defined as a type of> {animal}.

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So, what is that statements truth-maker?
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And the truth-maker of that?
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You need a set of "first truth-makers" that do not themselves have something more fundamental at their truth-makers.

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I have always had that and told you about it dozens of times.
Some otherwise meaningless finite strings are stipulated to be
true thus providing these finite strings with meaning.
https://liarparadox.org/Meaning_Postulates_Rudolf_Carnap_1952.pdf
Bachelor(x) <entails> ~Married(x)

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But that doesn't fit your defintion of a Truth having a truth maker.
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 OK then you disagree that cats are animals.
As I have told you many hundreds of times DEFINITION
is the foundational basis of every expression that
is {true on the basis of its meaning.

But what MAKES cats animals?
And the problem with your definition, is every definition needs its words defined, so definition by words is not the fundamental basis for truth.
The fundamentals of a system must come from outside the system.

 

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If there really is nothing anywhere that makes expression
of language X true then X is untrue.
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This covers every truth that can possibly exist, true by
definition, true by entailment, true by observation, true
by an infinite sequence of truth preserving operations.
If nothing makes X true then X is untrue.

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So a "true by definition" or "stipulated truth" needs a truth maker.
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 DEFINITION is the foundational TRUTH-MAKER
for every expression that is
{true on the basis of its meaning.

And how do you determine the meaning of the definition within the system.

 

What makes that definition or stuplation "true", what is its truth-maker?
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 What is it about a cat that makes it not
a fifteen story officen building?

Nothing I know of, why do you think it is?

 

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When we ask the question: What is a truthmaker? The generic answer is
whatever makes an expression of language true <is> its truthmaker.
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But logic systems don't necessaily deal with "expressions of language" in the sense you seem to be thinking of it.
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Finite strings are the most generic form of "expressions of language"

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And not all things are finite strings.
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Every expression of language that is {true on the basis of its meaning}
is a finite string that is connected to the expressions of language that
express its meaning.

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And that just gets you into circles,

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A tree of knowledge has no cycles. Willard Van Orman Quine
was too stupid to see this.
https://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

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And then what is at is root? Show me a word that can be "defined" without using any other words.
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 The Cyc project has {thing} at its root.

And what can you define from just {thing}?

 

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as the expression of language that expresses its meaning needs a truth-maker too, and that need one for it, and so one.
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Some expressions of language are stipulated to be true
thus giving them meaning. Rudolf Carnap may have been
the first to formalize this with his meaning Postulates.

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But what gives the meaning to the stipulation?
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 How do you know that a cat is not a fifteen story office building?

How do you know it isn't?

 

A stipulation is just a piece of language, what gives it meaning other than the words it uses, which need definitions.
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 There are a set of relations that exist.

 From where?

Their encoding in the various human languages is arbitrary.
That is the stipulated part.

But what makes some relations "right" and some "wrong"?

 

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https://liarparadox.org/Meaning_Postulates_Rudolf_Carnap_1952.pdf
Bachelor(x) <entails> ~Married(x)
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You need a primative base that is accepted without proof, as there is nothing to prove it, and that base defines the logic system you are going to work in.
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This entails that if there is nothing in the universe that makes
expression X true then X lacks a truthmaker and is untrue.

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Unless it just is true because it is a truthmaker by definition.
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That is more than nothing in the universe.
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but what makes the definition "true"? What is its truth-maker?
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Not everything has a truth-maker, because it might be a truth-maker itself.

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Basic facts are stipulated to be true.
"A cat is an animal" is the same basic fact expressed
in every human language and their mathematically
formalized versions.
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So, basic facts do not have a truth-maker in their universe.

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True by definition is their truthmaker.

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Not by your definition.
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 When we ask the question: What is a truthmaker?
The generic answer is whatever makes an expression
of language true <is> its truthmaker.

Which doesn't always have an answer

 When I say ALL THINGS you and most people in truthmaker theory
misinterpret EVERYTHING to mean a few things of a certain type.

So, in the Cyc project what defines {thing}
For your truthmaker idea, what makes the truthmaker true? If ALL THINGS have a truthmaker, what is the truthmaker's truthmaker?

 

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But "A cat is an animal" is NOT a statement that is true in every system, as some systems might not HAVE a concept of "cat" in it at all, so that would be a non-sense expression, or might even define it to be something else.
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*That has already been covered by this*
When we ask the question: What is a truthmaker? The generic answer is
whatever makes an expression of language true <is> its truthmaker.

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This entails that if there is nothing in the universe that makes
expression X true then X lacks a truthmaker and is untrue.

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But what them makes the truthmaker true? You said there were no cycles.
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 It is like a consistent set of axioms.
{A cat is an animal} no matter what human language
that is encoded within.

And what defines which axioms are used?
These are basic questions which you don't seem to understand, because you can't think abstract enough,

 

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YOu still keep on running into the problem that youu mind clearly doesn't understand that expresability of logic, and you are stuck just not understanding how abstractions work.

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Not at all. The problem is that you have not yet paid
100% complete attention to ALL of my words.
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so, what makes the truthmakers true?
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 What makes {cats} not {fifteen story office buildings} ?
it is merely the conventions of language ?

So, what makes that true?

 

If they make themselves true, then you have a cycle, which you said you didn't.
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 There is no cycle. It is all one huge tree of knowledge.
I used to be able to link to the Cyc project's tree of
knowledge. I have an offline copy of it.
 

So what gives meaning to the root? and from 1 root (since you say it is one tree) how do you provide a description of the difference to move from the root to the next layer down?
Yes, I am being intentionally difficult to show you that you have over simplified what needs to be done to define such a system, because your mind just can't conceive of the issues.