[knightoffaith]

>Well, sort of

All that's fine---but I think you would agree that Fermat's last theorem isn't true by virtue of its utility for counting sheep or anything like that. Similarly, I don't think that the fact the physical world exists in the manner suggested by sense-data is true by virtue of its utility for preventing us from dying.

>The thing that encodes propositions doesn't have to be a human brain, of course. It could be an alien brain, or a computer, perhaps even a thermostat (that one is debatable). But it has to be something.

Are you saying that if there were no humans (or anything capable of encoding propositions) to conceive of it, the proposition "the earth is round" wouldn't be true---in other words, it would not be true that the earth is round? That seems to defy common sense.

[lisper]

> I think you would agree that Fermat's last theorem isn't true by virtue of its utility for counting sheep or anything like that. Similarly, I don't think that the fact the physical world exists in the manner suggested by sense-data is true by virtue of its utility for preventing us from dying.

I actually would not agree with either of those.

> Are you saying that if there were no humans (or anything capable of encoding propositions) to conceive of it, the proposition "the earth is round" wouldn't be true---in other words, it would not be true that the earth is round? That seems to defy common sense.

Yes, I get that. This is not an easy concept to wrap your brain around, and I totally understand if you think it sounds like I'm absolutely crazy. But nonetheless, it is the case that if there were no humans (or anything capable of encoding propositions) to conceive of it, the proposition "the earth is round" would not be true. The reason is that if there were nothing capable of encoding that proposition, that proposition could not exist. A non-existent thing cannot have any properties, and so a non-existent proposition cannot be true.

Two important things to note: first, the proposition "the earth is round" would not be true in a world where there is nothing capable of encoding propositions, but neither would it be false. It would simply be non-existent. And second, despite the fact that the proposition "the earth is round" would be neither true nor false, the earth would still be round. But we can only make that observation because we live in a world where there are things capable of encoding propositions. It's really hard to imagine a world where that is not the case because we would not exist in such a world.

Here is a thought experiment that might help: consider some proposition P that has never been conceived of and will never be conceived of by anything capable of encoding propositions. Such propositions must exist because there are an infinite number of propositions but we live in a finite universe, and so only a finite number of propositions can ever be encoded. In fact, there must be an infinite number of such propositions. Are those propositions true or are they false?

This might help too:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2023/01/an-intuitive-counterexam...

It's not directly on point, but it describes a similar concept in math.

[knightoffaith]

>It's "X is a faithful reflection of the actual state of affairs in objective reality." That's what the word "true" means.

As you've said earlier. This sounds like a reasonable construal of the word true. But I don't see anything about propositions needing to be encoded in this definition. "The earth is round" is a faithful reflection of the actual state of affairs in objective reality. It was a faithful reflection of the actual state of affairs in objective reality even before anyone was around to conceptualize this as a proposition. You don't think so?