To start, I don’t want to pretend I don’t know what you and the others mean when you talk about truth. I keep making the point—what I’ve been describing is a difference of perspective about, another way of looking at, the relationship between what goes on inside our minds and what happens outside. It’s a difference of metaphysics, or epistemology, or methodology. When you come down to it, it’s a question of how I experience knowledge. What it feels like to me.
That being said, it’s true. I do think of truth as applying to propositions. I didn’t make it up. It’s something I’ve been told. When you say “What is proper for logic is not necessarily proper for metaphysics,” do you mean that logic says truth applies to propositions but metaphysics requires more nuance and flexibility? If so, I get that. There’s no question I could express a conceptual model in the form of propositions. It’s just that I don’t think it’s the way people normally know things or think about them. That’s a psychological statement, not a philosophical one.
As I noted in a previous post, my dislike for justified true belief and the Gettier problems is what set me on this conceptual path.
I don’t think it dissolves the problems you refer to at all, it ignores them. Or more accurately, denies they are as significant as they are usually seen by philosophers.
Which problems? The metaphysical issues are pretty key, because they are basic. I think they can be satisfactorily resolved, but this is no dissolving them. Whereas, the basic outlines of the Gettier Problem goes back to Plato, but was never the same sort of problem given different conceptions of knowledge. That’s what I’m referring to as “dissolved,” although “avoided” is more accurate. “Justified true belief,” is, AFAIK, not even a specific formulation until the 20th century.
Yes, and more technically, formal logic requires univocal predication. This is inadequate if truth is predicated analogously, e.g., if sentences are signs/symptoms of truth in the intellect of a speaker/knower.
So much we can agree on. But what does it mean? I think it means that our usual idea that truth is about how things (really) are is simplistic. I suspect it derives from the powerful simplicity of Aristotle’s decision that there are only two values here - true and false - and tertium non datur (there is no third possibility). I suggest that there are many cases when the way things are does not fit in to that schema, and the many terms like accurate, precise, roughly, exaggerate, minimize and so on are devices to enable us to identify and acknowledge them.
I think you are over-simplifying. It is true that you can hand over the map without saying anything and the project can be achieved. But that is only true on the assumption that the person you are handing the map to can read it and understands what is required. That takes training, which will very likely involve propositions; thought I grant you that it will not only involve passing on information, but involve teaching the skills required to interpret and apply that information.
You don’t seem to have paid much attention to the familiar point that information on its own cannot lead to any action. It needs to be applied in the context of the relevant desires and values. This is not just a matter of Hume’s fact/value distinction. Aristotle recognizes it in Nicomachaean Ethics Bk. VI (if I remember rightly). (Hume was likely channeling Aristotle at that point, IMO.)
I can understand that you want to emphasis practice and application of knowledge in this context. But experience alone is meaningless unless it impacts action - and that requires a context of desires and values.
It is good to see the over-simplified summary that is so popular being challenged. For those who want to check out the detail, the reference is Plato Theaetetus 201 - 208, or see the summary at SEP - Plato’s “Theaetetus” section 2
As I noted, my frustration with the metaphysical questions raised by JTB and similar perspectives is what inspired the understanding I described in the OP. I was shocked by how rigid and dogmatic it seemed. The idea that past knowledge could somehow suddenly disappear in retrospect seemed, seems, absurd. That’s what led me to think that epistemology might be better off without truth.
It strikes me that epistemological issues related to the accuracy of conceptual models are much more complex than those associated with the truth of propositions.
Seems to me that teaching and learning mostly deal with what I’ve called conceptual models as much as any other aspect of life. Sure, there are propositions—World War 2 in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. But when we start talking about calculus, we’re dealing with all-encompassing world views, not simple statements.
I didn’t pay much attention to the motivations for action because it is outside the scope of the issue I wanted to address. In the OP I did briefly discuss the broader remedial action process, which includes procedures for deciding what action needs to be taken to address environmental issues identified at the subject site.
This is reasonable. But perhaps ultimately we suggesting what should be done. I sketch how ( I believe) things are in order to persuade others to do this rather than that. This grounds knowledge claims in the soil that gives them value. Can I trust this assertion in the sense of acting on it ?
A thorny issue ! To me it makes sense to understand a model as a belief that does not entirely possess us, as a map that may not be trustworthy, that may lead us astray.
It seems to me that all we need is distance and certain amount of doubt, mixed with our belief, for a model to be a model. “The map is not the territory” can be read as our general expectation to be surprised in this or that (or in quite a few) particulars.
For context, I think of belief as largely unconscious. We manifest confidence as we walk around familiar furniture. We are only able to thematize a tiny questionable portion of our belief at any given time. Great philosophers often “drag up” presuppositions that we are not, until then, even able to doubt, to treat as optional models.