The book is very much an exploration into the nature of truth and so I don't want to get too far ahead of things. Truth isn't strictly speaking defined in the book, but there is an explanation of why it can't be defined (in the sense of genus/species). The next post will be the introduction which explains a bit more about what the book covers. Donald Davidson is philosopher most closely aligned with the ideas in T&G, but the book isn't meant to expound DD's ideas; it's an original philosophical work. Hope that helps!
Thanks! I know philosophers love to expound on technical aspects of truth, invoking complicated structures and math. I hate that stuff : ) I like simple, vocabulary-based reasoning. Look forward to more Tina Lee ❤️
I know exactly what you mean, and I hate that stuff too! I don't want to have to read symbolic logic (which looks like math to me too, from which I run away screaming). As I was editing the book I did my best to get rid of technical language, although there might be things I overlooked simply because I knew what the word meant. It happens. Let me know if you find anything like that and we'll do our best to clarify!
Ha ha what a clever book trailer! I like the way you took over the narration to, I'm guessing, paper over some production issues? : ) I look forward to digging into the issues with you and Neal over the posts ahead!
Great! I got a bit more than halfway through T&G, got distracted, and never got back to it. A series of discussion posts from you about it should encourage me to get back to it. (And to your thesis, which I also put down and never got back to. I'm apparently very easily distracted these days.) I'd be especially interested in drilling down on what Neal means by 'truth'. For instance, if you say to me, "I put the pig in the pen in the backyard," I would easily disambiguate your meaning but understand you to be representing a fiction. (Or, under the circumstances, a gag.) Which left me a little hung on the horns of a 'truthful fiction.' But there is an older meaning of 'true' -- 'straight' or 'accurate', as in a 'true saw cut'.
The meaning of truth was a more immediate problem for me in your poll above. I was forced into "Not sure / none of the above" (which seem two different categories) because I think truth is foremost subjective. So, I'm sure my answer is "None of the above!" :)
Haha...well I'll say this, Neal doesn't talk about truth so much in the second sense as being "straight". Fair warning: he won't define truth, but he'll explain why he thinks it can't be defined.
I'm curious about what you mean when you say, "truth is subjective". I don't imagine you mean "relative to the individual" (which I thought about including in the poll, but I ran out of choices).
I do mean relative to the individual. To me it's true that Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream is the best ice cream and Bentley is the best dog ever. But most people probably don't share personal truths like that (although, really, they should).
Physical facts, which we do share, also have a truth sense, but one that to me seems either trivial or deep, depending on how I think about it.
Hi, Tina. I've just responded to this post indirectly, with some thoughts that happen to have been brewing for a few days:
https://staggeringimplications.wordpress.com/2024/05/03/perspectival-realism-and-metamodernism/.
I'm heading over right now!
How are you defining truth? Or which philosopher's definition do you endorse? Thanks!
Hi Richard, thanks for asking!
The book is very much an exploration into the nature of truth and so I don't want to get too far ahead of things. Truth isn't strictly speaking defined in the book, but there is an explanation of why it can't be defined (in the sense of genus/species). The next post will be the introduction which explains a bit more about what the book covers. Donald Davidson is philosopher most closely aligned with the ideas in T&G, but the book isn't meant to expound DD's ideas; it's an original philosophical work. Hope that helps!
Thanks! I know philosophers love to expound on technical aspects of truth, invoking complicated structures and math. I hate that stuff : ) I like simple, vocabulary-based reasoning. Look forward to more Tina Lee ❤️
I know exactly what you mean, and I hate that stuff too! I don't want to have to read symbolic logic (which looks like math to me too, from which I run away screaming). As I was editing the book I did my best to get rid of technical language, although there might be things I overlooked simply because I knew what the word meant. It happens. Let me know if you find anything like that and we'll do our best to clarify!
Ha ha what a clever book trailer! I like the way you took over the narration to, I'm guessing, paper over some production issues? : ) I look forward to digging into the issues with you and Neal over the posts ahead!
Thanks! I enjoy video editing and I spend way too much time doing it just because. Looking forward to talking with you about the book!
Great! I got a bit more than halfway through T&G, got distracted, and never got back to it. A series of discussion posts from you about it should encourage me to get back to it. (And to your thesis, which I also put down and never got back to. I'm apparently very easily distracted these days.) I'd be especially interested in drilling down on what Neal means by 'truth'. For instance, if you say to me, "I put the pig in the pen in the backyard," I would easily disambiguate your meaning but understand you to be representing a fiction. (Or, under the circumstances, a gag.) Which left me a little hung on the horns of a 'truthful fiction.' But there is an older meaning of 'true' -- 'straight' or 'accurate', as in a 'true saw cut'.
The meaning of truth was a more immediate problem for me in your poll above. I was forced into "Not sure / none of the above" (which seem two different categories) because I think truth is foremost subjective. So, I'm sure my answer is "None of the above!" :)
Haha...well I'll say this, Neal doesn't talk about truth so much in the second sense as being "straight". Fair warning: he won't define truth, but he'll explain why he thinks it can't be defined.
I'm curious about what you mean when you say, "truth is subjective". I don't imagine you mean "relative to the individual" (which I thought about including in the poll, but I ran out of choices).
I do mean relative to the individual. To me it's true that Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream is the best ice cream and Bentley is the best dog ever. But most people probably don't share personal truths like that (although, really, they should).
Physical facts, which we do share, also have a truth sense, but one that to me seems either trivial or deep, depending on how I think about it.