Owen Griffiths and A.C. Paseau. — Implication vs Inference

Griffiths, Owen and A.C. Paseau. One True Logic: A Monist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

 

"As just hinted, we take capturing implication and capturing reasoning as distinct applications. The implications of some premises are their logical consequences; they follow from them, whether or not one can deduce them from the premises. In contrast, an inference is what an agent does when she deduces a conclusion from some premises. Reasoning or inference tries to respect implication, though is distinct from it. Thus we write ‘implicational’ rather than ‘inferential’ whenever we are interested in what follows from what—as we typically will be—rather than what can be deduced from what. All this applies even to idealized notions of reasoning (which for example prescind from human subjects’ errors in reasoning). [Fn6: So long as the sense of reasoning/inference is not so idealized that it means nothing other than the ability to accurately reflect implicational facts.]

     It follows in particular that there is no reason to suppose at the outset that the correct foundational logic is completable by a (sound and effective) deductive system . . . Perhaps no deductive system can capture all logical entailments. (Incidentally, we use the words ‘implication’, ‘consequence’, and ‘entailment’ interchangeably, with the epithet ‘logical’ understood when omitted.) [Fn7: With the usual act/outcome ambiguity, resolvable by context; e.g. ‘entailment’ can mean the relation that holds between some premises and a conclusion, or the conclusion itself.] Implication is modelled by model-theoretic consequence (⊨) and derivability by deductive consequence (⊢)." (Prologue xx-xxi.)

Reductio ad Absurdum is preserved on glut theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkMTC5TfpiE

One objection to dialetheism, or any kind of glut theory, is that by giving up the Law of Non-Contradiction* we give up the truth seeking tool of reductio ad absurdum. But this isn't true. In a reductio, we start with a conclusion, like God exists, and from there, combined with other necessary truths, conclude that God does not exist. If negativity and positivity cannot overlap, and thus all contradictions are strictly false, then showing that A leads to ~A shows that A is strictly false. Given glut theory, you lose the strictly part of the reductio. Showing that A leads to ~A, on glut theory, shows either that A is strictly false or that A is true and false.

 

But there never has been a case where someone has had orange juice in their fridge and also has not had orange juice in their fridge. There never has been a case where someone is both in Sidney, Australia and not in Sidney, Australia. There has never been a case where someone has both casted a ballot and not casted a ballot. Etc. It seems that for virtually any imaginable contradiction, there's no good reason to think that it's anything other than strictly false. If the only plausible candidates for true contradictions are found in self-reference, law, motion, mathematics, maybe quantum mechanics, and maybe ineffability, then that leaves nearly all imaginable contradictions strictly false. So showing something to be a contradiction is to show that it's a priori almost certainly false. The theist who wants to escape the above reductio's conclusion that God does not exist is forced to refute the reductio or argue that God's existence is a true contradiction – that it's true and false that God exists. But 1) the vast majority of theists would not feel comfortable with this conclusion (probably because their intuitions say that it's impossible for something to be true and false), and 2) this is quite the burden to bear for the theist, considering that God's existence is not found in the list of plausible dialetheias. 
 
So reductio ad absurdum is still a powerful tool on glut theories, and indeed it retains nearly all of its strength. In fact, reductio could be a key tool in discovering further plausible dialetheias. First, use reductio to establish a contradiction. Second, argue that this contradiction is a dialetheia. So while I don't subscribe to any glut theory, the "loss of reductio ad absurdum as a truth seeking tool" objection to glut theory is not a viable objection at all.
 
*Classical logic is typically associated with three laws: The Law of Non-contradiction, the Law of Excluded Middle, and the Law of Identity. You might also include the Law of Bivalence. But why can't we simply reduce all of that to the Law of Excluded Middle? 
 
LEM: All propositions are either true or false.  
 
This is equivalent to: For any proposition, either it is true or its negation is true.
 
∀x(Px⟶Tx∨Fx) "For all x, if x is a proposition then x is true or false."
 
But if something is true or false, then it's a proposition. So:
 
∀x(Tx∨Fx⟶Px)

 

So: ∀x(Px⟷Tx∨Fx)
 
But this means that something is a proposition if and only if it is true or false. But that's not right. A proposition is more than just being something that is true or false. A proposition will include other elements like bundling references to properties and relationships between properties (or whatever your favorite theory of propositions says).

 

Easy fix: ∀x(Px⟷Hx∧(Tx∨Fx))

Something is a proposition if and only if it has [insert preferred theory of propositions here] and is true or false. This assumes acceptance of LEM and separates out the LEM from the other parts of the theory of propositions.

 

On the theory I'm playing around with, a proposition is true when it is comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences.

 

So: ∀x(Rx⟷Tx) = If and only if when something is comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences, then it is true.

 

∀x(~Rx⟷~Tx) = If and only if when something is not comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences, then it is not true. 

 

∀x(Qx⟷Fx) = If and only if when something is comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we do not experience and that do not explain our experiences and cannot explain anyone's experiences, then it is false.

 

∀x(Fx⟶~Tx) = When something is false, it is not true.

 

∀x(Fx⟶~Rx) = When something is false, it is not comprised of references to properties or relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences.
 
A rock is not true, because rocks are not propositions and only propositions can be true, but a rock is not false, because only propositions can be false. So 'not true' and 'false' are not equivalent, but are mutually entailing when it comes to propositions.  
 
This by itself entails a) there are no gaps, as no propositions can be neither true nor false; b) there are no gluts, as no propositions can be both true and false; c) that A=A (because truth and falsity are assumed to be different things) and d) that there are only two truth values: true and false (otherwise, the law would read: Propositions are true or false or a secret third thing, with that third [or fourth, fifth, etc.] thing spelled out by a many-valued logic).

Goobye Darcy 😭

Our cat of almost 11 years, Mr. Darcy, disappeared two weeks ago. It has hit me pretty hard. Like a lot of cats he was pretty aloof, independent, and indifferent to the folks around him. He didn't like his personal space being invaded and would quickly lose his temper if picked up. But every now and then he would be very sweet, happy, and cuddly. He rarely purred but when he did it was special. About a year ago when I was sick and stuck in bed, his personality changed and he was suddenly very concerned about me and spent more time with me, only to return to his normal indifferent self once I got better (typical...).

 

Even though he was that way, he would act socially too in some ways. At night he would almost always spend the night on someone's bed at their feet. If I got out of bed, he would get out too and follow me, and if I got back in bed he would get back in with me. He was very curious and hated closed doors, often scratching and meowing at them so he could check out what's inside. He had a strong sense of object permanence; if nothing had changed from previous days, he would quickly change rooms. But if there was a change, he would be curious and check it out. He was very anxious. He would run away from strange objects, new people or animals, and anything that made loud noises like the vacuum. Normally he would never go under blankets, but during thunderstorms he would sheepishly sneak under them and start shivering. No amount of cuddling or reassurance from me seemed to do him any good; he would stay miserable during loud events. He did the same when we had large fans running to dry the carpet after it had been cleaned. 

 

He would often hunt and catch small birds, mice, rats, and baby bunnies. Once he caught a bat of all things. I felt tortured by this as I wanted to save the critters, and I did save a few small bunnies and birds. But at the same time there are a lot of bunnies in our neighborhood and it might be good to have a bit of population control... Often he would bring these animals inside which freaked me out. Though I admit how adorable it was how he would do his victory strut inside and his primordial pouch would swing back and forth. The worst was when I woke up to squeaking under my bed in the early morning – a baby bunny – and had to take it outside and shut out the cat. That inspired the following poem:

 

18 March 2024 - Baby Bunny Blood

 

i wake up to a squeak  

a little baby bleat

baby bunny blood

on the floor, on the sheets 

 

how the cat would howl

wanting out the back door
baby bunny disemboweled
on our back porch

with food in his dish he did it for sport

with nature like this, no God of course
i wanna blame the little thing for his murdering brain
but it’s not his fault, he was born this way

 

Often he would have accidents, regurgitating whatever he was getting into. I won't miss cleaning up those messes, or the blood off the carpet from innocent animals he dragged in. Usually it only takes maybe up to 5 minutes to clean a mess, but recently he ate a mouse or rat and I guess his stomach couldn't take it. It took me something like 30 to 45 minutes, and a whole lotta Spot Shot, to get the carpet back to new.

 

Despite these headaches, I still miss him.  

 

At the risk of sounding too nerdy, he inspired me to come up with a word just before he disappeared: philomeiony. Pronounced: fil-uh-MAY-uh-nee; or in IPA: /fɪləmeɪəni/, /fɪl.ə.meɪ.ə.ni/

 

From Greek phil meaning love, and meíōn meaning lesser (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B5%CE%AF%CF%89%CE%BD). "Love of the Lesser."

 

Darcy reminded me that even though something could be so small and "unachieving", like a cat, I could still feel this feeling of love and preciousness. It reminds me that something can be lesser and yet so valuable. Less valuable does not mean worthless. Something can be less-and-yet-great. So philomeiony means: The feeling that something is smaller or lesser and yet at the same time that it is precious and irreplaceable nonetheless, and feeling a great love for it.

 

I give credit to ChatGPT for helping me come up with this word. It's similar to the word 'pity', though usually 'pity' evokes ideas of sadness or looking down at something. Philomeiony is the opposite: it's a happiness – an admiring, loving, cherishing, and looking up at something despite its perceivably lesser features. You might also think that 'love' already builds into it this idea of loving something in spite of its shortcomings. Even still, 'philomeiony' sounds to me more specific and ambivalent than 'love', emphasizing both the feeling that something is lesser and yet feeling love all the same. Often with love you feel that what you love is greater, not lesser! Another close word is 'adorable' or 'adoration'.

 

You could also go for a word like 'elattophilia' from Greek elatton meaning lesser. But '-philia' has unsavory connotations given words like 'pedophilia' and 'necrophilia'. You could go for something like 'philelattony', but that's a bit of an ugly word. The modern Greek spelling is elasson – elassophila or philelassony. Still ugly. There may be a word out there that already captures what 'philomeiony' is going for, or there might be a better neologism to be made. Maybe 'love' is enough.

 

You could add a certain nuance to philomeiony, that it might not be you who views the object as lesser, but rather the object is viewed as lesser by others, and you understand why this is, and maybe you only partially accept it or withhold both acceptance and rejection.

 

Derivations:

 

Philomeioner = Someone that experiences philomeiony.

 

Philomeionizer = Someone or something that philomeionizes.

 

Philomeionize = To evoke philomeiony within someone.

 

Philomeionized = To have been struck with philomeiony by someone or something.  

 

Philomeionous = To be prone to experiencing philomeiony or to be experiencing philomeiony, or to relate to philomeiony.

 

Philomeionable = To be worthy of philomeiony or prone to philomeionizing.

 

Philomeioning = The act of viewing someone or something as lesser and yet loving it and appreciating it anyway.

 

Philomeionied = To be viewed as lesser and loved and appreciated anyway; to be the subject of someone's philomeiony. 

 

This doesn't seem all that clean to me, and maybe part of that is my own imperfect derivations, and maybe part of it is that English doesn't lend itself all that well to creating clean derivations.

 

At the risk of risk of sounding even more nerdy, here's another poem, inspired by 'philomeiony':

 

24 Sep 2025 - Philomeiony 

 

strike in me, in my heart, philomeiony

humanity
grant me philanthropy
despite how broken, it
works good enough
what else is there?
beggars can’t choose
despite your shortcomings i don’t want
to be short on you
please stop feeling insecure
you are nothing, and yet
it kills me to see you hurt
i am hungry, i don’t care if
the food is a tad burnt
i know i am broken and i know
you’re better off with me
than not

remove from me this heart of stone

let me radiate warmth like the hearthstone 

comparisons are never fair i don't

care i don't care i don't care 

you are you

and you are there

i can compartmentalize my criticism
and not take for granted how much better things are

that you are there

what else is there
to do?
beggars can’t choose, and yet
i would, in fact, choose you

 

Here's a blurry photo of when Darcy was a baby (late 2014):

 

 

He was a bit goofy looking, like a lot of kittens.

 

Momma with her four babies, with Darcy the second from the top (2015): 

 

Darcy on the far left with his three siblings (early 2015): 

 

 Fast forward two years, laying in a spiral (late 2016):

 

 

His eyes were once a golden color, or even yellow-orange (2015): 

 

 

But over time they turned green (2021):

 

He looks a little miffed in this photo. He was grumpy a good bit of the time.

 

Sleepy head (2021):  

 

He was a cutie. His primordial pouch made him extra cute (2024): 

 

 

The time he caught a bat (2024): 

 

Thankfully the bat was rescued and released outside.

 

A meme and a mood:

 

Straight out of a magazine (2024):

 

 

One of the last photos I took of him. Sometimes he would make prolonged eye contact, and seemed to be taking in the moment (2025): 

 

 

The white spray bottle of carpet cleaner very appropriately in the background. 

 

"Baby Blue Cat had a smiley worm doll.

 

The smiley worm doll was a funny-looking old thing, tattered and gray and falling apart.

 

But Baby Blue Cat didn't care.

 

Baby Blue Cat loved his smiley worm doll."

 

-The Baby Blue Cat and the Smiley Worm Doll, by Ainslie Pryor.

Non-overlap theory has greater explanatory power

Non-overlap: Truth and falsity are inverse operations that cancel each other out and do not and cannot overlap. You can no more have a proposition that is both true and false than you can have a number that is both positive and negative. This theory is in direct opposition to any glut theory, including dialetheism, which will say that truth and falsity can overlap and are not inverse operations that cancel each other out.

 

Support for Non-overlap: This theory explains, where gut theories fail to explain, the data of my intuitions (and I bet the intuitions of most people) surrounding the impossibility of everyday contradictions. If there is orange juice in my fridge, this is not merely strong evidence that it is not also the case that there is no orange juice in my fridge. Rather, this is proof that it cannot also be the case that there is no orange juice in my fridge. If a barber has shaved himself, this is proof that he has not also not shaved himself. If a person has casted a ballot, this is proof that they cannot also have not casted a ballot. And so on.

 

But why would the positive be a proof of an absence of a negative in these cases? Why do I feel so forced to believe that positivity entails an absence of negativity in these cases? Suggestion: Because Non-overlap is true and positivity and negativity are inverse operations and where truth picks out positivity, falsity picks out negativity.

 

Graham Priest says accounts of negation are contentious. (See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/#ArguNega.) Are they? Isn't Non-overlap the common account of negativity?

Intellectual Virtue #3: T. Ryan Byerly – Part II: Definition of Virtue

Terminology note: 'Intellectual virtue', 'philosophical virtue', and 'virtues of inquiry' all mean the same thing.

 

"When a person fails in these ways—not caring about the truth, not believing what is warranted, attending only selectively to relevant evidence—he fails in a particularly bad way. He fails as an inquirer." (151)

 

 "These virtues [intellectual virtues] are united in being conceived of as habits or dispositions of inquiry that orient us toward achieving good intellectual ends. They are, we might say, excellent ways of being good for intellectual goals—goals such as obtaining true beliefs, believing responsibly, and achieving knowledge and understanding. Intellectual virtues are traits that make persons and their communities good at accomplishing these valuable intellectual goals. They are stable features of our character that help us to carry out the task of inquiry with excellence.

    It is a basic assumption of part 2 that these intellectual virtues can be acquired and strengthened. Those who don't have them can gain them through practice, and those who have them to some degree can have them in greater measure." (152)

 

So it sounds like virtues are:

 

1) Stable features of our character;

 

2) Dispositions, which I take to be a specific kind of feature of a person's character (character being something you have but are not identical to). A disposition is a tendency to behave, react, or take on a certain attitude given a particular context.

 

(Thus, virtues are stable dispositions.) 

 

So an angry person is a person who tends to behave angrily, to react with anger, or to become angry given relevant contexts.

 

So 'disposition' is basically synonymous with 'habit' or 'tendency'. An angry person has a habit of behaving angrily, reacting with anger, or becoming angry. But 'habit' may not be the best word, as it evokes the idea of bad habits versus good habits, which are frequent behaviors built up through repeated action, like the habit of brushing your teeth after every meal or turning on the coffee machine every morning. But a person with a disposition might not have a habit in that sense of a frequent or common behavior. If someone has a habit of being generous, it sounds like they are often generous. But someone could be disposed toward generosity and yet never be generous because they lack the disposable funds. This of course can be clarified by: a habit or tendency given such and such circumstances. A generous person has a habit or tendency of being generous given that they have enough money.

 

'Habit' still doesn't sound quite right to me, as it evokes the idea of subconscious reflex, like muscle memory. But when a person decides to be generous, it may not be like muscle memory at all, but quite conscious and deliberate, but still evidence that this person has a disposition for being generous.

 

You might want to say that a generous person is disposed to give even when they don't have enough money. After all, when a poor person gives, isn't that much more meaningful, more indicative of their heart? (Jesus and the Widow's Offering comes to mind.)

 

I think common sense would say that it's not prudent to give when doing so places yourself in a position of needing aid, unless you have good reason for making that sacrifice. So giving when you cannot afford it is not necessarily virtuous.

It’s undeniable that there are many wealthy people who could easily afford to give a much larger percentage of their income or wealth and still live a highly comfortable life, but they refuse to do this, perhaps because a) they don't want to empower people they look down upon, b) they believe that "the poors" don't deserve the money and don't want to express, or be seen expressing, any sense of valuing someone they, or others, deem lesser, and c) they want to maximize the power differential between them and everyone else. So 'generous' to me evokes the idea of a person who refuses to be greedy and hateful in this way, and gives when they aren't forced to, giving out of a genuine love of others and desire to help them. So giving only to the degree that it doesn’t change your standard of living is not necessarily greedy, though it’s tricky trying to argue which standard of living is fair for which person.

Setting generosity aside and taking another example: it makes sense to say that someone would save people from a burning building had they the power to do so and were in the right place at the right time. ‘Disposed’ is like ‘poised’ in this way, and dispositions answer modal questions about what a person would do (or very likely would do) or how they would react or what attitude they would take under certain circumstances. (Could it be that dispositions are what ground modal facts about human behavior? What makes it true that I would fly around for fun were I granted the power to fly? Why, features of my character! My dispositions! Hypothetical truths can be grounded by current, non-hypothetical facts. So true modal claims about myself make reference to real properties about myself.)

Virtues are, after all, a matter of where the heart is at and not where the body is at.

It might be tempting to say that a person who is merely disposed to be brave and yet never gets the opportunity to be brave can’t be a brave person. A brave person is someone who in fact acts bravely. But the problem in that case is that there is no evidence that this person is a brave person. So when we describe someone as brave, we are describing them as evidently brave.

In short, dispositions are not the same as habits or tendencies.

So a person can be virtuous without opportunity. But there will be no evidence of said virtue without opportunity.

 

3) Virtues orient us toward achieving good goals.

So more specific kinds of virtues will specify that goal. Intellectual virtues orient us toward achieving good goals related to truth: the goal of maximizing one’s true beliefs, minimizing one’s false beliefs, and increasing one’s knowledge and understanding. 

So in a nutshell virtues are stable dispositions that orient us toward achieving good goals.

Five extra notes:

1) When I get to Aristotle I will discuss the relationship between virtue and emotion. While in this post I defined the disposition in terms of behavior, reaction, or attitude (which sounds fine to me), it may be more accurate to define the disposition purely in terms of emotion (which of course leads to corresponding action).

2) The language here (e.g. ‘orient us’) is consequentialist. So virtues result in good consequences; they enable us and indeed cause us to achieve good goals.

3) ‘Good goals’ refers to goals related to maximizing flourishing, maximizing eudaimonia, or more simply maximizing goodness.

4) Someone might be good at something, like robbing banks. But you might think that robbing banks is itself not good. In a similar way, someone could be good at maximizing true-but-irrelevant beliefs. Is this person intellectually virtuous? No, because it’s a part of being good at seeing the truth to see which truths are more important than others. And if virtues orient us toward achieving good goals, and only relevant truths do this, then only maximizing one’s relevantly true beliefs is virtuous.

So good intellectual goals are subordinate to the more fundamental goal of maximizing goodness, and are good because they are necessary for the more fundamental goal of maximizing goodness.

 

5) We might also want our definition of virtue to touch on the relationship between virtue and wisdom, vice, and the golden mean. Perhaps by this: 

Golden mean: a balance between two extremes. A virtue is a golden mean (read: ideal average) as it is a balance between two vices.

Wisdom: a particular mental power, the power to discern what is virtuous and what is vicious.

Virtues: stable dispositions that orient us toward achieving good goals. A virtuous person is disposed to have an emotional reaction that strikes a balance between two extremes—of lack or excess—which correspond to vices.

Vices: stable dispositions that fail to orient us toward achieving good goals. A vicious person is disposed to have an emotional reaction that is either too deficient or too extreme.

Intellectual Virtue #3: T. Ryan Byerly – Part I: Skills vs Virtues

Byerly, T. Ryan. Introducing logic and critical thinking: the skills of reasoning and the virtues of inquiry. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017.

 

Part I: Skills vs Virtues 

 

"There are various ways to distinguish between skills on the one hand and virtues on the other. But perhaps the most important difference between the two is the following: a person is not deficient as a person for lacking any particular skills, but a person is deficient as a person for lacking virtues, including intellectual ones." (1)

 

Because I reject free will, I reject the notion of someone being deficient as a person. Byerly goes on to give the example: Lacking in basketball skills makes you deficient as a basketball player, but not as a person. But I think this kind of specification must be carried through in all contexts. Being deficient "as a person" is too vague and doesn't make any sense to me. Being deficient as a reasoner or as a decision-maker or as a flourishing-maximizer or as an empathizer – that is more specific and makes more sense to me.

 

A person's ability to reason or to make decisions or to maximize flourishing is largely dependent on their intelligence, which is something beyond their control. And so one's reasoning abilities, decision-making abilities, empathy, and abilities with respect to maximizing flourishing are likewise beyond one's control, and so they do not reflect in any meaningful way the quality of the person, but rather the quality of what the person happens to have. In the same way that basketball skills are something a person has, but is not identical to, so too are virtues something a person has but is not identical to.

 

The idea of a "bad person", as in an evil person, is a simplified shorthand for a person who lacks empathy, lacks understanding of the badness of the pain of others, lacks the understanding needed to maximize flourishing and minimize suffering, and who disregards the well-being of others (this being still an oversimplification of what it means to be an evil person).

 

Many skills don't speak to a person's empathy or understanding of the goodness of the flourishing of others, while virtues do*, so in that sense there is a moral distinction between skill and virtue, but I see no reason to make a moral distinction between skill and virtue in the sense of what either says about the quality of the person per se rather than the quality of what the person has. 

 

*Some skills, like being a skilled parent or doctor, do indicate high empathy (I'm including empathy-based skills like bedside manner, care, and genuine listening), while a person's "virtues" of self-control and discipline with respect to diet and exercise might reflect their desire to take advantage of the halo effect and manipulate others. So what appears to be a mere skill may indicate serious virtue, and what may appear to be a virtue may ironically indicate vice, or a mix of virtue and vice.

 

If skills reflect a person's understanding, capacity, dispositions, and habits, and if virtues also reflect a person's understanding, capacity, dispositions, and habits, then skills and virtues are very similar. Except skills are generally value-neutral in that they can be used in virtuous or vicious ways.

 

I imagine I will return to the topic of skills vs virtues when I read Zagzebski's book on virtue. I also imagine that the conversation of skill vs virtue will be similar to the conversation of capacity (ability) vs virtue. E.g. Intelligence is usually not taken to be a skill or virtue, but a capacity / ability.

07 Sep 2025 - Objectivity vs Subjectivity

Daily Thoughts: Sharon Rawlette shares this quote from RM Hare in her book The Feeling of Value, pg 9:

"I really think the terms 'objective' and 'subjective' have introduced nothing but confusion into moral philosophy; that they have never been given a clear meaning, and have frustrated all serious discussion of the subject."

Rawlette goes on to make a distinction between mind-dependence and judgment-dependence. She says (pgs 14,15):

Quote:

I don't myself use the term 'mind-independence' because, given what I take to be the most plausible form of realism—a theory based on the intrinsic value and disvalue of certain forms of phenomenology—to define moral realism as a claim about the "mind-independence" of moral facts would be misleading. On my view, moral facts are not mind-independent. They are quite dependent on whether people are in the mental states of pleasure or pain. And indeed, most mainstream realist views do take moral facts to be at least in part dependent on facts about pleasure and pain. However, on my view and on these other realist views, facts about the goodness of pleasure and the badness of pain . . . are judgment-independent.

End quote.

Thoughts, which aim to clarify the situation: 

* We have experiences and we have judgments.

 
* For example, Bob has an experience of a certain image in Bob's mind. Bob judges this image to be a memory: Bob remembers having pancakes for breakfast today. Bob's experience cannot be "wrong"; it's just data. It's the judgment that can be wrong: the image in Bob's mind is a memory of him eating pancakes for breakfast, but it was yesterday, not today! Bob misremembered. Bob's interpretation of his experience is wrong.

 
* So we have experience facts and judgment facts—facts about what experiences have taken place, who had them, what caused them, etc., and facts about what judgments have taken place, who made them, what caused them, etc.

 
* Experience facts are phenomenal facts / qualia facts. E.g. the experience of tasting food that is too salty.

 
* Judgment facts are not phenomenal facts, though maybe there is always a quale / qualia that accompanies a judgment. And so for every judgment fact, there is a corresponding phenomenal fact or facts (the mental experience of making the judgment or having the judgment form in your mind).

 
* Some true propositions are made true by experience facts (experience-dependent truths) and some true propositions are made true by judgment facts (judgment-dependent truths).

 
* I guess both of these are subjective facts? And so 'subjective fact' is vague over experience-dependent truth and judgment-dependent truth.

 
* Some true propositions are made true by facts that do not depend on either experience or judgment. These are objective truths.

 
* Facts are states of affairs.

 
* States of affairs have an objectivity to them. So subjective facts are in some sense objective by virtue of being facts.

 
* That sense is this: There are objective facts about subjective facts. For any subjective fact, there is the state of affairs that includes the subjective fact. So for every subjective fact, there is an objective fact about that fact.

 
* This is why there can be mind-dependent truths, which sound subjective, that are objectively (judgment-independently) true.

 
* E.g. "Bob liked the movie." This is mind-dependently true (which is the same as saying experience-dependently true) as it depends on Bob's mind (i.e. Bob's experience), but it's judgment-independently true because people can be mistaken about this claim. E.g. Alice believes Bob liked the movie because Bob told her he did, but little does Alice know that Bob was lying. So Alice's judgment that "Bob liked the movie" is mistaken.

 
* (So are judgments the same as beliefs?)

 
* "This food is too salty." Is this a statement made true by an experience (experience-dependent claim) or is it made true by a judgment (judgment-dependent claim), or both?

 
* Bob has a certain experience (the experience fact) which causes Bob to form the belief that the food is 'too salty' (the judgment fact).

 
* Bob shares his food with Alice. She does not have the too salty experience and thus does not form the judgment that the food is too salty. So the judgment "This food is too salty" is true or false depending on the experience fact that grounds the judgment (i.e. the judgment is explained by the experience).

 
* But doesn't that mean the truth of "This food is too salty" is not exactly judgment-dependent, but experience-dependent? Because it's not the judgment that makes the claim true or false, but the experience behind the judgment. (You could say that if the judgment is sincere, then the judgment just is a report of the experience, so a proposition being made true by a judgment or experience is the same kind of proposition. So judgment-dependent truths and experience-dependent truths are the same, both made true by the experience. What would an example be of a proposition whose truth is judgment-dependent and yet not experience-dependent? That is, a statement that is made true by the belief or judgment itself, but not an experience? I can't think of any. Even the judgment "I am in pain" is a report of an experience, and it's the experience of pain, not the judgment, that makes it true that I am in pain.)

 
* If that's right, then we have experience-based truths (propositions made true by experience facts), which are subjective truths, and objective truths (propositions made true by non-experience facts).

 
* But where does that leave a proposition like "I liked the song"?

 
* On the one hand, it's a subjective fact because its truth depends on who you ask – on whose experience you are referring to. But on the other hand, if someone says "No you didn't!", then they have said something false about my experience (assuming I really did like the song). It's true that I liked the song regardless of what someone else says.

 
* I guess it depends on the referent: The statement "This song sounds great!" is true or false depending on who you ask (on whose experience you are referring to). There's no fixed referent. But "This song sounds great to Ben" is true or false depending on Ben's experience. Ben's experience is the fixed referent. So while "This song sounds great" is subjective (true or false depending on someone's experience), "This song sounds great to Ben" is objective (true or false regardless of anyone's experience, with exception to Ben's experience).

 
* So "This song sounds great" has no definite truth value, because its truth value depends on someone's experience, and so you need a referent (a person's experience) to determine the truth value.

 
* "This song sounds great to Ben" has a definite truth value, because it depends on Ben's experience, and so you have your referent.

 
* But that means both of these statements have their truth dependent on experience facts. So both are subjective. The difference is that the first has no definite truth value while the second does, which is why people can have mistaken judgments about the second.

 
* So does that mean the better distinction than 'objective vs subjective' is between propositions with definite vs indefinite truth values? Because "This song sounds great to Ben" has a definite truth value, a person can be wrong when making this claim. But "This song sounds great" has no definite truth value, so you cannot be wrong when making this claim until you clarify: to whom the song sounds good.

 
* (But there are still propositions whose truth does not depend on anyone's experience.)

 
* This is not necessarily to say that "This song sounds great" is a gappy sentence, i.e. a genuine proposition that is neither true nor false (because its truth is indefinite, lacking the referent needed to make it definite). Rather, "This song sounds great" is too vague to express a proposition until made precise.

 
Maybe we need to first answer the question of what it means to be mistaken?

 
* Correspondence / representational theory of truth: Propositional beliefs are sentences. Sentences represent propositions. Propositions represent facts. Representation is transitive, so sentences represent facts. Propositions, and thus sentences, are made out of properties bound together by grammatical rules which set out the exact properties and how they relate within a sentence.

 
* This means you have "inner" properties and "outer" properties. When there is an inner/outer property match, you have truth, and when there is a mismatch, a misrepresentation, then you have falsity.

 
* E.g. a map of the US has inner properties representing the outer properties of the US territory. If the map shows that there is a pond somewhere and you go there and the pond has since dried up, then the inner properties do not match the outer properties and the map is now misrepresenting the area.

 
* In some cases misrepresentation occurs at a higher level of representation. E.g. let's say a picture is taken of a mountain. By coincidence, the photo contains an optical illusion that causes humans to, at least initially, form a false belief about the area the photo is taken of. The representation of the mountain by the photo is fairly accurate (though only capturing a tiny portion of the whole thing), but because of the optical illusion our belief, an interpretation of what we are seeing, is not accurate.

 
* So the order of representation is:

 
* Mountain -> Photo -> Visual data -> Belief (judgment). The visual data is corrupted by the optical illusion, leading to a false belief (until the illusion is recognized and the belief corrected).

 
* So when I say "The moon is smaller than the sun", that should be an objective statement, i.e. a statement whose truth does not depend on anyone's experience. But if truth just is a match between inner and outer properties, and if the inner properties are the properties of my belief (and the outer properties are the properties of the moon and sun), then all truth claims depend on inner properties of beliefs. And all beliefs depend on consciousness, and thus experience, and so really all claims are experience-dependent in some sense.

 
* So I started off saying that all propositions are objective because propositions are made true by facts and the very notion of 'fact' is objective, and now I'm saying that all propositions are subjective because all propositions involve inner properties which are experience-dependent.

 
* Maybe all beliefs have inner properties which are experience-dependent, but the propositions represented by the beliefs have inner properties which are not experience-dependent. This is why propositions are discovered, and why we have necessary propositions which exist (okay, it's debatable whether propositions exist; substitute this with a paraphrase from your favored nominal theory if applicable) independently of any consciousness whatsoever. Beliefs represent the proposition, so propositions ground our beliefs.

 
* So the order of representation is:

 
* Beliefs (Sentences) -> Propositions -> Facts.

 
* Properties can play a dual-role; for example, the properties of propositions are inner with respect to facts (because they represent facts), but are outer with respect to beliefs (because beliefs represent propositions).

 
* This could relate to how fictions work: The claim "Sauron reunited with the One Ring" is false with respect to the outer properties of the Lord of the Rings canon, and the stories within the Lord of the Rings canon are false with respect to the outer properties of real life. (And the claim "Sauron reunited with the One Ring" could be true with respect to the outer properties of a fan fiction, which in turn are false with respect to the outer properties of the main canon.)

 
* An objective proposition is supposed to be a proposition made true by a non-experience fact, and a subjective proposition is made true by an experience fact. But being "made true" means there is a match between representation and represented, between inner and outer properties.

 
* So the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity was supposed to be what makes each claim true. But really what makes each claim true is property matching.

 
* So "The moon is smaller than the sun" is true because the inner properties of the proposition (as represented by the sentence) represent, i.e. match, the properties of the moon and sun and the relational properties between the two.

 
* "Ben liked the song" is true because the inner properties of the proposition match the properties of the fact, which happens to be an experience fact. If Ben did not like the song, then there would be a property mismatch and the statement would be false.

 
* "The song is great" – by itself this is too vague to express a proper proposition.

 
* Precisfy(1): "This song sounds great to Ben" – made true or false by an experience fact.

 
* Precisify(2): "The song sounds great to many people" – made true or false by a collection of experience facts.

 
* Precisify(3): "The song is 1) Not extremely short, like one second; 2) Not extremely long, like one thousand hours; 3) Takes advantage of music theory in a number of ways; 4) The song 'comes from the soul' of the composer, meaning that it expresses emotions and feelings that come from a place of deep feeling and imagination; 5) The song achieves a balance between simplicity and complexity – not so complex so as to alienate the audience but not so simple so as to be uninteresting; 6) Is original and not too similar to any song already composed, providing novelty, entertainment, excitement, and a kind of 'horizon-expanding' effect on those who hear it, showing a musical space hitherto unexplored, inspiring future musicians to further explore that space; 7) Contains virtuosity on the part of the performers; 8) Is recorded in high-fidelity by sophisticated equipment in an acoustically appropriate environment; 9) Is well-mastered and produced, ensuring perfect rhythm for the whole song and balanced volume for each track; 10) Contains mathematical, puzzle-like symmetries and patterns that appeal to the human brain in the form of motifs, phrases, novelty, variation, repetition, melody, harmony, etc.; 11) Contains a story-like structure of rising and falling, and climax and resolution, and it is because of these features of the song that explain why it sounds great to many people."

 
* Some of these, maybe all of them, are non-experience facts about the song itself. So in some combination of these senses, "The song is great" is not only meaningful (and thus a genuine proposition), but true without an experience fact making it true.

 
* But you might argue that what counts as "not too short", "not too long", "a story-like structure", etc., depends on how people experience the song. A song being "too short" just is a song producing the "Huh? That's it?" feeling when someone listens to it.

 
* But on the other hand, it seems objective to me whether a song has a story-like structure to it, and you can't fit that structure in a one second song. (And even if you could, it would not be a substantial story.) It's not a coincidence or an unexplained fact that a very short song produces the "Huh?" feeling it does. There's something true about the song itself (in combination with truths about our brains and psychology) that explains that experience. And so music has some objectivity to it. By denying that objectivity, you fail to fully explain why it is that songs have the effects they do on us.

 

Question 1: Are experiences representational? Surely we would at least say visual experiences are representational; my visual experience of a tree represents the tree. So my visual experience of the tree contains inner properties that can match or fail to match the tree. But then that means my experiences (at least visual ones) can be inaccurate.

 

Answer 1: Even if there is visual representation, it's still important to distinguish which representation is inaccurate: the visual representation itself or my interpretation of the visual data.

 

Let's say I see a photo of a Lego figure next to a human. The Lego figure is massive compared to the human. I interpret this visual experience as meaning there is a very large Lego figure next to a normal human. But really, the Lego figure is actually a normal Lego figure set very close to the camera lens, and the human is far away, and the background is neutralized so that context clues don't immediately give away what's happening. In this case it might be tempting to say that my visual image of a large Lego figure next to a human was inaccurate. But actually the visual image is a perfectly accurate representation of a Lego figure set very close to the camera, etc. It was my interpretation of the image that was inaccurate.

 

Answer 2: This reminds me of Kant's concept of noumenal vs phenomenal. A tree has noumenal properties, and my visual experience of the tree has phenomenal properties. There's no reason to think, says Kant, that there is any match at all between the two. We can be confident, even certain, in the phenomenal properties, but we can have no confidence that there is any match at all between the inner properties of the phenomenal data and the outer, noumenal properties.

 

I suppose I'm just not that skeptical. I suspect that what's happening is that we recognize that a tree has many, many properties that we can't see, and so our visual image fails to capture the tree in its totality. So the hidden properties are the "noumenal" properties. But even if that's true, it could still be that a tree truly has the shape, color, texture, etc., that it has as represented by our visual experience. It helps that we have multiple ways of perceiving the tree; we can touch the tree and "see" its shape that way, and the "touch shape" and the "sight shape" match each other, increasing our confidence that the tree really has that shape, texture, etc. Plus, other people report seeing and feeling the same thing we do, so we know it's not just a hallucination, but something real and external to us that affects others in the exact same way.

 

Just because our first person data fails to represent the entirety of an object (because we lack total data, not because the data we have is inaccurate), that doesn't mean it fails to represent some of the object. But again, that would be a misrepresentation at the level of interpretation, not experience. If I see a tree and conclude that that's all there is to the tree, then that's a false conclusion.

 

So my guess is that our first person data is always an accurate representation of something, and it's our interpretation that goes wrong.

 

Even if I hallucinate and see a pink rabbit dashing by, that first person data is not representing an actual pink rabbit dashing by. Rather, that first person data is coming from within my brain, representing a certain brain state, and my brain presents that experience to me as if it is genuine visual data when it's not. This is why the statement "I saw a pink rabbit!" is false but the statement "I hallucinated a pink rabbit!" is true. The inner pink rabbit properties of the experience do not match any outer pink rabbit properties, because there is no pink rabbit. But the inner properties of the proposition "I hallucinated a pink rabbit!" match the outer phenomenal properties of the hallucination.

 

Answer 3: Representations cannot misrepresent themselves. So in the case of representations themselves, such as first person data / qualia, there is a phenomenal / noumenal collapse; the phenomenon and the noumenon are one and the same. The phenomenal properties of qualia and the noumenal properties of qualia are identical. Or put another way, when you have properties that aren't in a representing / represented relationship, then there is no representation – no inner or outer properties, only properties.

 

This is why our experiences, our first person data, cannot be wrong. But our interpretations of that data involve representation, which entails a separation between inner and outer properties, allowing for a mismatch.

 

Question 2: The properties of a representation need not match the properties of what is represented, and indeed this cannot be the case. A mountain is large and heavy, while a photo of a mountain is small and light. A pipe can be smoked, while a painting of a pipe cannot be. Kansas is roughly 82,000 square miles; a map of Kansas is not. So how are the properties of a representation supposed to match the properties of what's being represented?

 

Answer: There need not be total property matching between representation and represented to have an accurate representation, and indeed there cannot be. The property 'representing' and the property 'being represented' are two different properties, so it's always trivially necessary that representing objects and represented objects are different. But 'representation' itself just is a concept about property matching.

 

While a painting of a pipe cannot be smoked, a painting of a pipe can create within us a visual image of something brown, curvy, etc., the same visual image that a pipe creates within us. A hallucination of a pink rabbit represents a pink rabbit in the sense that both hallucinating a pink rabbit and seeing an actual pink rabbit produce within us an experience of seeing a pink rabbit. So you have partial representation, and this partial representation explains why it is that a person who hallucinates a pink rabbit might incorrectly conclude that they really saw a pink rabbit. But the experience does not represent an actual pink rabbit anymore than an experience of imagining a unicorn represents a real unicorn. Instead, both represent something going on in the brain (or, in the case of identity theory, both are identical to a particular brain state caused by something other than an actual pink rabbit or unicorn).

 

Question 3: What about self-justifying beliefs / self-fulfilling prophecies? Example: Medical reports say that if I believe I will get better, then I am more likely to get better. So my belief that I will get better might make it true that I do get better. So this would be an example of a judgment-dependent truth; the judgment that I will get better makes it true that I will.

 

Stress can worsen your health. So illness can create a feedback loop: The illness causes you emotional stress, which worsens the illness, which causes more stress. Being convinced that you will get better lessens stress. If the stress caused by worrying is the tipping point for recovery, and believing you will get better prevents your stress from reaching that tipping point, thus allowing you to recover, then it seems as though believing you will get better truly did cause the absence of stress and thus caused your recovery. Assuming that future contingents can be meaningful and true (which may not be the case), and assuming that your recovery is a future contingent (which may not be the case, as it could be necessary), then "I will get better" in this case is a future contingent made true by the judgment itself, and thus is a judgment-dependent, but not experience-dependent, truth.

 

I doubt that future contingents can be meaningful, I doubt that they can be true, and I suspect that everything is necessary, so I doubt their possibility.

 

Second set of thoughts:

 

* What does it mean for something to be objectively versus subjectively true?

 

* What does it mean for something to be true?

 

* First, what does it mean for something to exist? It seems that any attempt to define existence leads to circularity:

 

Exist(1): To exist is to be (exist as) the value of a bound variable;

 

Exist(2): To exist is to instantiate (exist with) at least one property;

 

Exist(3): To exist is to be a property. 

 

And so on.

 

When a concept is phenomenally defined, trying to define it leads to circularity / tautology:

 

Red: A red color.

 

Pain: A painful feeling. 

 

What is that which is intrinsically good? Happiness. And what is happiness? That which is intrinsically good.

 

The reason we run into circular or tautologous definitions for phenomenal concepts like red and happiness is because these concepts cannot be defined semantically, but only phenomenally. So we can only gesture to the real definition, which is a phenomenal definition.

 

So one theory is that the reason why attempts to define 'exist' leads to circularity / tautology is because 'exist' must be, like red and happiness, phenomenally defined.

 

(Another theory is that 'exist' is a basic concept that cannot be analyzed. There's probably other competing theories, including one which says 'exist' can be reduced and need not result in circularity.)

 

What is the best way to gesture toward phenomenal definitions?

 

Red is an experience, a visual experience of a particular color that is different from other colors. There is an intrinsic redness to this experience.

 

Happiness is an experience, an experience with certain qualities to it: it is desirable for its own sake, it motivates us to pursue it, it has a worthiness to it, it makes life worth living, a complete lack of it would make life not worth living (at least, in the absence of any pains, no more worth living than not). There is an intrinsic happiness or goodness to this experience.

 

For something to exist is for it to have a certain kind of "ontological positivity to it", as opposed to not existing, which lacks that positivity. There is a somethingness to that which exists, and there is a nothingness to that which does not.

 

But how to capture this notion of positivity? Certainly our experiences have a self-evident somethingness to them. And a lack of experience lacks this somethingness.

 

So to exist is to be an experience, to be that which grounds / causes / explains experience, or to be that which is disposed to be an experience or disposed to ground / cause / explain an experience.

 

The undeniable positivity to experience transfers to that which grounds / causes / explains the experience. So that which causes experiences, either dispositionally or in practice, inherits that positivity.

 

So for a property to exist is for that property to be an experiential property, to ground / cause / explain experiential properties, or to be disposed to ground / cause / explain experiential properties.

 

Even if there were no experiencers in our universe, the stars and planets would still exist because 'star' and 'planet' denote bundles of properties disposed to ground / cause / explain experiential properties, which certainly exist and could not exist without those prior properties.

 

So for God to exist is for God to be an experiential property, to ground / cause / explain our experiential properties, or to be disposed to ground / cause / explain any experiential properties under possible circumstances. For God to fail to exist is for God to not be an experienced property, to fail to ground / cause / explain our experiential properties, and to fail to be disposed to ground / cause / explain any experiential properties under possible circumstances.

 

In short, to exist is to be a first-person property or to be a third-person property. To put in oversimplified terms, to exist is to be an experience or to be that which causes an experience. This is a circular definition because 'exist' must be phenomenally defined, just as definitions for red and intrinsic good are circular because they too must be phenomenally defined.

 

Note: The word 'red' can refer to phenomenal red – the first-person experience of redness – but it can also refer to non-phenomenal red – the third-person properties responsible for causing phenomenal redness. So if I say "That car is red", it may be vague whether I am making a phenomenal claim: "I am having a red-car experience right now" or a non-phenomenal claim: "There are non-phenomenal red-car properties out there disposed to generate phenomenal red-car properties." Plausibly, both claims entail each other, so there is no need, in our everyday language, to disambiguate the claim. Indeed, this is how existence works: To say there exists a red car is to say the same thing as "That car is red". To say of anything that it exists just is to comment on its status as an experience and/or its status as that which generates experiences.

 

* Propositions can be true or false.

 

* Non-problematic sentences (complete, grammatical, not too vague) refer to propositions. E.g. "Snow is white" and "La neige est blanche" are two different sentences that refer to the same proposition.

 

* Things that express (refer to? represent?) propositions, like sentences, take on the truth value of their corresponding proposition.

 

* Propositions are arrangements of properties (See: Josh Rasmussen, "About Aboutness", Metaphysica). ('Arrangement' being synonymous with 'combination' and 'bundle' as far as I can see.)

 

* For every property, and every combination of properties, there is a proposition (or propositions) about that property or combination of properties.

 

* This is because properties can be referred to and propositions are arrangements of references to properties. (Hmm... so propositions are bundles of references to properties, and not of the properties themselves. Of course propositions have properties of their own, like properties of reference.)

 

* Because propositions have properties of their own, every proposition has a proposition about it. E.g. "The proposition 'The moon is smaller than the sun' is true." Here is a proposition about the truth of another proposition.

 

* Propositions refer to facts (facts are states of affairs, and states of affairs are bundles of properties). So all propositions have a referring property, with the properties referred to taking on an additional referred property.

 

* A proposition is true when it refers to real properties, i.e. properties that are experienced, explain experiences, or dispositionally explain experiences. (Put another way: properties that are experienced, explain experiences in practice, or explain experiences in theory.)

 

* Does Sauron exist? Sauron is a fictional character, and as such is made up of a fictional bundle of properties. That means either one or more of the properties of Sauron are fictional (e.g. being magical) and/or the bundle of real properties of Sauron is itself fictional (e.g. being a golden mountain). Fictional properties themselves are fictional bundles of real properties (so the fictional property of being magical can be analyzed in terms of real properties combined in a non-real way). We can trace this fictional bundle of properties to the imagination of an author, JRR Tolkien. We experience reading sentences and thinking thoughts about the fictional bundle that is Sauron. Those experiences are explained by the real properties of the writings of JRR Tolkien, which are in turn explained by the real properties of the events of imagination of Tolkien. The real properties of Sauron do not explain our experiences of Sauron, because there are no such properties and there are no such experiences.

 

* We can use our imagination to abstract out properties and combine them in novel ways, allowing us to invent fictions. We can write sentences that refer to these fictional properties.

 

* When it comes to propositions about fictions like: "Sauron was defeated", these are true in one sense and false in another. They are true in the sense that they refer to the fictional properties of the events of the main canon. They are false in the sense that they don't refer to any real properties.

 

* While it's true that in some sense a mismatch between inner and outer properties means falsity – a mismatch between repraesentans (that which does the representing) and repraesentandum (that which is represented) – perhaps more fundamentally, in the case of representation, it's the representation failing to "refer" to real properties that drives that falsity. What makes something true is not property matching, but property reference.

 

I can't really make sense of this notion of inner and outer properties, because it's undeniable that the properties of a proposition are different from the properties of what the proposition is about. In the case of a photo of a mountain, the photo doesn't refer to the mountain but represents it. The concept of accurate representation may not make sense if it's always interpretations of representation that are true or false. Even if we allow for accurate vs inaccurate representation, the difference between a photo being an accurate representation of a mountain and a sentence about the mountain being true is that the photo has no words, and truth is a linguistic notion, and that's because language involves words which refer to properties, and so truth is fundamentally about property reference. When representation is linguistic, as in "He did not accurately represent my views", then you have a failed property reference, which is a falsehood.

 

* Objective properties are properties that do not depend on a subject. They are non-phenomenal, non-mental, non-experiential properties.

 

* Subjective properties are properties that do depend on a subject. They are phenomenal, mental, experiential properties.

 

* When a proposition accurately refers to a particular bundle of objective and/or subjective properties, then that proposition is true. Otherwise, the proposition is false.

 

* Adapted from Rasmussen's theory of aboutness: A proposition is about a bundle of properties when it refers to a bundle of unique properties. So if something fails to refer to unique properties, it's too vague to be a proposition.

 

* When someone says "Bach's music is objectively good!", the subjectivist can take this as false because this proposition is trying and failing to refer to properties about Bach's music that are independent of experience that make Bach's music good. But, so can the subjectivist say, such properties are not possible. Because goodness is itself phenomenal, any talk of good music, good movies, good art, good games, good anything (including good behavior and good actions) will itself be phenomenal. So all good-related properties are experience-dependent.

 

* The realist can say that while it's true that whether an experience is good or bad depends on the experiential property, it's nonetheless true that the experiential property has the quality it does; i.e., that it is in fact good or bad. So even if goodness and badness is subjective in the sense of being experience-dependent, it's objective in the sense that it's true that there are good and bad experiential properties.

 

* This means axiological realism is true. People can be wrong or right about value facts, facts about goodness and badness. For example, if I experience a pain and say "This pain is intrinsically bad", that's true, and its denial is false. If someone says "Ben's pain is not intrinsically bad", then this proposition is about unique properties – the properties of my pain – but refers to properties that don't exist (Ben's pain minus intrinsic badness).

 

* Hmm... this sounds like I'm saying that if a proposition fails to refer, then it's too vague to be a proposition, and yet if a proposition fails to refer, then it's false. Which is it? 

 

* One option: Trying and Failing: In the case of "Ben's pain gyres and gimbles", this is too vague and meaningless to be a proposition, and so is not true or false. But "Ben's pain is not intrinsically bad" is trying and failing to refer to Ben's pain and its relationship to intrinsic badness. It's the trying to refer and failing to refer that makes something false. The vague proposition fails to try to refer to anything (perhaps successfully referring to 'Ben's pain', but failing to try to refer to anything by 'gyres and gimbles', giving an overall failed attempt of reference, as there must be enough semantic content to all referring terms for there to be an attempt at reference).

 

* Option two: Matching: For every property or bundle of properties there are true propositions about those properties. They are made true by the fact that they successfully refer to real properties and real relationships about those properties. Our sentences are true when they match one of these true propositions in meaning. So "Ben's pain is not intrinsically bad" fails to match any proposition made true by referring to real properties, and thus is false. Our sentences are vague when they fail to match a true proposition by lacking meaning. So a sentence is false when it's meaningful enough to match a true proposition, but doesn't. A sentence is not true when it is either false or too vague to even potentially match a true proposition. True propositions are precise enough to refer to real, unique properties, and so cannot be vague.

 

* These options may be compatible with one another.

 

* If we allow for axiological realism, then other forms of realism might get their foot in the door. If there are truths about intrinsic goodness and badness such that people can be mistaken about them, then it seems to follow that there are truths about extrinsic goodness and badness such that people can be mistaken about them. "Bach's music is extrinsically good" is a true statement, and so is "The happiness caused by Bach's music is intrinsically good."

 

* Similar true statements can be made about aesthetics, gustatory goods, and morality. If there are truths about intrinsic goods, then there are truths about extrinsic goods. And if there are truths about extrinsic goods, then there are truths about the extrinsic goodness of actions, goals, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, habits, and so on. If "You should not kill for fun" means "Killing for fun is extrinsically bad" and/or "Killing for fun fails to bring about the most good compared to other actions available to you" then "You should not kill for fun" is true. And so a kind of moral realism is true.