I think… (correct me if I’m wrong, trying to check myself here as well as responding)
If you thought that “The snow is white” was true, but it turns out that the snow is, in fact, red, then your statement was false.
In the anticipation-prediction model, “The snow is white” (appears) to look more like “I will find ‘The snow is white’ true to my perceptions”, and it is therefore still true.
If you thought that “The snow is white” was true, but it turns out that the snow is, in fact, red, then your statement was false.
The issue is the meaning of a preposition. What does the meaning of the colors correspond to?
By asserting that the statement is wrong, you are going with a definition which relies on something...which colorblind people can’t see. In their ontology prior to finding out about colorblindness the distinction you are making isn’t on the map. Without a way to see the colors in question, then provided the difference is purely ‘no distinction between the two effected colors at all’, knowledge about which is which would have to be come from other people. (Though learning to pay attention to other distinguishing features may sometimes help.)
It’s not immediately obvious that being colorblind effects perceptions of snow. (Though it might—colors that otherwise seem similar and blend in with each other can stand out more to people with colorblindness.)
A common version is red-green. (From what I’ve heard, the light that means go in the U.S., looks exactly the same as the light that means stop—by color. But not by position, as long as everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be.)
Your perceptions have no relation to the truth (except where the proposition relates to your perceptions) in the correspondence theory of truth, AIUI. Colorblindness has no relation whatsoever to the truth value of “the snow is white”.
If you had meant to ask the truth value of “The snow looks white to me”, that’s an entirely different story (since the proposition is entirely different).
If we give up any assumption that there’s an external reality and try to reason purely from our experience, then in what sense can there be any difference between “the snow is white” and “the snow looks white to me”? This is, in part, what I’m trying to get at in the post: the map-territory metaphor creates this kind of confusing situation where it looks and awful lot like there’s something like a reality where it could independent of any observer have some meaning where snow is white, whereas part of the point of the post that this is nonsense, there must always be some observer, they decide what is white and not, and so the truth of snow being white is entirely contingent on the experience of this observer. Since everything we know is parsed through the lens of experience, we have no way to ground truth in anything else, so we cannot preclude the possibility that we only think snow is quite because of how our visual system works. In fact, it’s quite likely this is so, and we could easily construct aliens who would either disagree or would at least be unable to make sense of what “snow is white” would mean since they would lack something like a concept of “white” or “snow” and thus be unable to parse the proposition.
the map-territory metaphor creates this kind of confusing situation where it looks and awful lot like there’s something like a reality where it could independent of any observer have some meaning where snow is white
I think reality exists independently.
However, ‘senses’ may:
Be based on visual processing with a set of cones. (A smaller set of cones will, predictably, make different predictions than a larger set, that is the same, plus one.)
Be based on visual processing which can in some way be ‘wrong’ (first it looks one way. Without it changing, more processing occurs and it resolves properly)
Be somewhat subjective. (We look at a rock and see a face. Maybe ‘aliens’ don’t do that. Or maybe they do.)
Since everything we know is parsed through the lens of experience
My point was less about making a claim about an inability to see beyond that. More—we parse things. Actively. That is a part of how we give them meaning, and after giving them meaning, decide they are true. (The process is a bit more circular than that.)
For example: This sentence is false. (It’s nonsense.) This sentence is not non-sense. (It’s nonsense. It’s true! Yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything, there’s no correspondence to anything.)
we cannot preclude the possibility that we only think snow is quite because of how our visual system works.
Yes. Also maybe not.
Yes: it may seem like colors could be a construct to help with stuff like seeing predators, and if there are optical illusions that can fool us, what of it? If the predator in the tree isn’t able to catch and kill us, our visual system is doing spectacular, even if it’s showing us something that ‘isn’t real’.
Maybe not: Perhaps we can design cameras and measure light. Even if a spectrum of light isn’t captured well by our eyes, we can define a system based around measurements even if our eyes can’t perceive them.
We can sometimes bootstrap an ‘objective’ solution.
But that doesn’t mean we can always pull it off. If a philosopher asks us to define furniture, we may stumble at ‘chair’. You can sit on it. So couches are chairs?
And so philosophical solutions might be devised, by coming up with new categories defined by more straightforward properties: sitting-things (including couches chairs, and comfortable rocks that are good for sitting). But ‘what is a chair’ may prove elusive. ‘What is a game’ may have multiple answers, and people with different tastes may find some fun and others not, perhaps messing with the idea of the ‘objective game’. And yet, if certain kind of people do tend to enjoy it, perhaps there is still something there...
(Meant as a metaphor)
When someone asks for a chair, they may have expectations. If they are from far away, perhaps they will be surprised when they see your chairs. Perhaps there are different styles where they come from, or it’s the same styles, just used for different things.
You probably do well enough that, an implicit ‘this is a chair’ is never not true. But also, maybe you don’t have a chair, but still find a place they can sit that does just as well.
Maybe people care about purpose more than truth. And both may be context dependent. A sentence can have a different meaning in different contexts.
For a first point, I kind of thought the commenter was asking the question from within a normal theory. If they weren’t, I don’t know what they were asking really, but I guess hopefully someone else will.
For a second point, I’m not sure your theory is meaningfully true. Although there are issues with the fact that you could be a brain in a jar (or whatever), that doesn’t imply there must not be some objective reality somewhere.
Say I have the characters “Hlo elt!” and you have “el,raiy”. Also say that you are so far from me that we will never meet.
There is a meaningful message that can be made from interleaving the two sets (“Hello, reality!”). Despite this, we are so far away that no one can ever know this. Is the combination an objective fact? I would call it one, despite the fact that the system can never see it internally, and only a view from outside the system can.
Similarly to the truth, agents inside the system can find some properties of my message, like its length (within some margins). They might even be able to look through a dictionary and find some good guesses as to what it might be. I think this shows that an internal representation of an object is not required for an object to exist in a system.
I started replying to the aliens and the snow bit, but I honestly think I was going to stretch the metaphor too far.
I think… (correct me if I’m wrong, trying to check myself here as well as responding)
If you thought that “The snow is white” was true, but it turns out that the snow is, in fact, red, then your statement was false.
In the anticipation-prediction model, “The snow is white” (appears) to look more like “I will find ‘The snow is white’ true to my perceptions”, and it is therefore still true.
The issue is the meaning of a preposition. What does the meaning of the colors correspond to?
By asserting that the statement is wrong, you are going with a definition which relies on something...which colorblind people can’t see. In their ontology prior to finding out about colorblindness the distinction you are making isn’t on the map. Without a way to see the colors in question, then provided the difference is purely ‘no distinction between the two effected colors at all’, knowledge about which is which would have to be come from other people. (Though learning to pay attention to other distinguishing features may sometimes help.)
It’s not immediately obvious that being colorblind effects perceptions of snow. (Though it might—colors that otherwise seem similar and blend in with each other can stand out more to people with colorblindness.)
A common version is red-green. (From what I’ve heard, the light that means go in the U.S., looks exactly the same as the light that means stop—by color. But not by position, as long as everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be.)
Your perceptions have no relation to the truth (except where the proposition relates to your perceptions) in the correspondence theory of truth, AIUI. Colorblindness has no relation whatsoever to the truth value of “the snow is white”.
If you had meant to ask the truth value of “The snow looks white to me”, that’s an entirely different story (since the proposition is entirely different).
If we give up any assumption that there’s an external reality and try to reason purely from our experience, then in what sense can there be any difference between “the snow is white” and “the snow looks white to me”? This is, in part, what I’m trying to get at in the post: the map-territory metaphor creates this kind of confusing situation where it looks and awful lot like there’s something like a reality where it could independent of any observer have some meaning where snow is white, whereas part of the point of the post that this is nonsense, there must always be some observer, they decide what is white and not, and so the truth of snow being white is entirely contingent on the experience of this observer. Since everything we know is parsed through the lens of experience, we have no way to ground truth in anything else, so we cannot preclude the possibility that we only think snow is quite because of how our visual system works. In fact, it’s quite likely this is so, and we could easily construct aliens who would either disagree or would at least be unable to make sense of what “snow is white” would mean since they would lack something like a concept of “white” or “snow” and thus be unable to parse the proposition.
Status: overly long.
I think reality exists independently.
However, ‘senses’ may:
Be based on visual processing with a set of cones. (A smaller set of cones will, predictably, make different predictions than a larger set, that is the same, plus one.)
Be based on visual processing which can in some way be ‘wrong’ (first it looks one way. Without it changing, more processing occurs and it resolves properly)
Be somewhat subjective. (We look at a rock and see a face. Maybe ‘aliens’ don’t do that. Or maybe they do.)
My point was less about making a claim about an inability to see beyond that. More—we parse things. Actively. That is a part of how we give them meaning, and after giving them meaning, decide they are true. (The process is a bit more circular than that.)
For example: This sentence is false. (It’s nonsense.) This sentence is not non-sense. (It’s nonsense. It’s true! Yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything, there’s no correspondence to anything.)
Yes. Also maybe not.
Yes: it may seem like colors could be a construct to help with stuff like seeing predators, and if there are optical illusions that can fool us, what of it? If the predator in the tree isn’t able to catch and kill us, our visual system is doing spectacular, even if it’s showing us something that ‘isn’t real’.
Maybe not: Perhaps we can design cameras and measure light. Even if a spectrum of light isn’t captured well by our eyes, we can define a system based around measurements even if our eyes can’t perceive them.
We can sometimes bootstrap an ‘objective’ solution.
But that doesn’t mean we can always pull it off. If a philosopher asks us to define furniture, we may stumble at ‘chair’. You can sit on it. So couches are chairs?
And so philosophical solutions might be devised, by coming up with new categories defined by more straightforward properties: sitting-things (including couches chairs, and comfortable rocks that are good for sitting). But ‘what is a chair’ may prove elusive. ‘What is a game’ may have multiple answers, and people with different tastes may find some fun and others not, perhaps messing with the idea of the ‘objective game’. And yet, if certain kind of people do tend to enjoy it, perhaps there is still something there...
(Meant as a metaphor)
When someone asks for a chair, they may have expectations. If they are from far away, perhaps they will be surprised when they see your chairs. Perhaps there are different styles where they come from, or it’s the same styles, just used for different things.
You probably do well enough that, an implicit ‘this is a chair’ is never not true. But also, maybe you don’t have a chair, but still find a place they can sit that does just as well.
Maybe people care about purpose more than truth. And both may be context dependent. A sentence can have a different meaning in different contexts.
For a first point, I kind of thought the commenter was asking the question from within a normal theory. If they weren’t, I don’t know what they were asking really, but I guess hopefully someone else will.
For a second point, I’m not sure your theory is meaningfully true. Although there are issues with the fact that you could be a brain in a jar (or whatever), that doesn’t imply there must not be some objective reality somewhere.
Say I have the characters “Hlo elt!” and you have “el,raiy”. Also say that you are so far from me that we will never meet.
There is a meaningful message that can be made from interleaving the two sets (“Hello, reality!”). Despite this, we are so far away that no one can ever know this. Is the combination an objective fact? I would call it one, despite the fact that the system can never see it internally, and only a view from outside the system can.
Similarly to the truth, agents inside the system can find some properties of my message, like its length (within some margins). They might even be able to look through a dictionary and find some good guesses as to what it might be. I think this shows that an internal representation of an object is not required for an object to exist in a system.
I started replying to the aliens and the snow bit, but I honestly think I was going to stretch the metaphor too far.