This from Grigory Aleksin:
I have been doing some reading and thinking, and there are a few things that I cannot quite get my head around. I was wondering whether you could help me, or point me in the direction of some work on the issue. My somewhat naive task has been to try and find the most foundational and basic pieces of knowledge that are required by any worldview.
It seems to me there are at least two things that are in some sense foundational:
(1) Something exists
(2) There are correct and incorrect inferences
(1) seems to follow from what is meant by a 'thing' and what is meant by 'exists'. However this is only the case, if there are correct and incorrect inferences. Therefore, (2) is in some sense prior to (1). Hopefully that makes sense.
BV: It does indeed make sense. But I would approach the quest for secure foundations more radically. How do I know (with objective certainty) that something exists? I know this because I know that I exist. 'Something exists' follows immediately from 'I exist.' To say that one proposition follows from another is to say that the inference from the other to the one is correct. The correctness of the inference preserves not only the truth of the premise but also its objective certainty. I agree that your (2) is in some sense prior to (1); it is a presupposition of the inferential move from
(0) I exist
to
(1) Something exists.
My problem arises when I consider that both (1) and (2) are not actually part of reality: both are sentences or linguistic expressions.
BV: Here you have to be careful. Surely a sentence token is a part of reality, even if you restrict reality to the spatio-temporal. The truth that something exists is not the same as its linguistic expression via the visible string, 'Something exists.' That same truth (true proposition, true thought) can also be expressed by a tokening of the German sentence 'Etwas existiert' and in numerous other ways. This suffices to show that the proposition expressed is not the same as the material vehicle of its expression. And already in Plato there is the insight that, while one can see or hear a sentence token, the eyes and the ears are not the organs whereby one grasps the thought expressed by marks on paper or sounds in the air.
So we need to make some distinctions: sentence type, sentence token, proposition/thought (what Frege calls der Gedanke). And this is just for starters.
And should we restrict reality to the spatio-temporal-causal? Are not ideal/abstract objects also real? The sign '7' is not the same as the number 7. A numeral is not a number. I can see the numeral, but not the number. I can see seven cats, but not the (mathematical) set having precisely those cats as members. I can see the inscription '7 is prime' but not the proposition expressed on an occasion of use by a person who produces a token of that linguistic type. The ideal/abstract objects just mentioned arguably belong to reality just as much as cats and rocks.
Thus I have come to consider the role of language. The issue is that language is just a way of mapping reality, and as such is disconnected from it. This raises the question of what 'truth' is, since on one hand we know that there are objective truths, yet truths are only expressed [only by] using language. My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions? I know that linguistic analysis plays a central role in analytic philosophy, but I cannot help by having [but have] doubts or suspicions that something is wrong. As you see, I cannot fully express what it is that causes me such a headache, but it stems from a suspicion with respect to the use and limits of language, and thus philosophical inquiry.
BV: We do distinguish between WORDS and WORLD, between language and reality. But this facile distinction, reflected upon, sires a number of puzzles. My cat Max is black. So I write, 'Max is black.' The proper name 'Max' maps onto Max. These are obviously distinct: 'Max' is monosyllabic, but no animal is monosyllabic. So far, so good. But what about the predicate 'black'? Does it have a referent in reality in the way that 'Max' has a referent in reality? It is not obvious that it does. And if it does, what is the nature of this referent? If it doesn't, what work does the predicate do? And then there is the little word 'is,' the copula in the sentence. Does it have a referent? Does it map onto something in reality the way 'Max' does? And what might that be? The transcendental unity of apperception? Being? If you say 'nothing,' then what work does the copula do?
One can see from this how questionable is the claim "that language is just a way of mapping reality . . . ." We don't want to say that for each discrete term there is a one-to-one mapping to an extralinguistic item. That would be a mad-dog realism. (What do 'and' and 'or' and 'not' refer to?) Nominalism is also problematic if you hold that only names refer extralinguistically. And you have really gone off the deep end if you hold that all reference is intralinguistic.
Here is another ancient puzzle. A sentence is not a list. 'Max is black' is not a mere list of its terms. There is such a list, but it cannot 'attract a truth-value.' That is a philosopher's way of saying that a list cannot be either true or false. But a sentence in the indicative mood is either true or false. Therefore, a sentence in the indicative mood is not a list. Such a sentence has a peculiar unity that makes it apt to be either true or false. But how are we to understand that unity without igniting Bradley's regress?
And then there is the question of the truth-bearer or truth-vehicle. You write above as if sentences qua linguistic expressions are truth-bearers. But that can't be right. How could physical marks on paper be either true or false?
My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions?
It is not clear what you are asking. You say that there are objective truths. That's right. Your problem seems to be that you do not see how this comports with the fact that truths are expressed only by using language. The source of your puzzlement may be your false assumption that sentence qua linguistic expressions are the primary vehicles of the truth-values.
Combox open.
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