[knightoffaith]

>Did you read it? Do you accept it?

Accept what specifically?

Here's what I understand you to be saying, and you're free to reframe this.

1. Propositions are ideas. 2. Ideas can only exist if they are conceived. 3. "The earth is round" is a proposition. 4. Therefore, "the earth is round" can only exist if it is conceived. 5. Truth and falsity are properties of propositions. 6. If something does not exist, it cannot have any properties. 6. If it is not conceived, "the earth is round" cannot exist. 7. "The earth is round" cannot have any properties. 8. Truth and falsity are not properties of "the earth is round".

Sounds reasonable. But how do we square this with:

1. "The earth is round" reflects a state of affairs about objective reality. 2. If something reflects a state of affairs about objective reality, it is true. 3. "The earth is round" is true.

There's nothing here about "the earth is round" needing to be conceived by someone.

One issue I would raise is the first argument's 1 and 2. Propositions don't just exist insofar as they are conceived. Representations of propositions, sure, but not propositions themselves.

[lisper]

> Sounds reasonable.

Cool.

> There's nothing here about "the earth is round" needing to be conceived by someone.

Yes, there is. You can't talk about a proposition without conceiving of it. The instant you wrote “"The earth is round"” (note the nested quotes) you conceived of the proposition "the earth is round" and brought it into being. This is impossible to avoid. So this:

> There's nothing here about "the earth is round" needing to be conceived by someone.

is false.

> Propositions don't just exist insofar as they are conceived. Representations of propositions, sure, but not propositions themselves.

I already gave you the answer to this in the parent comment but you ignored it.

"Ideas are not made of atoms, they are made of information. Just like material objects, ideas do not come into existence until some information that encodes that idea arranges itself in a particular way, i.e. until they are thought of."

etc.

So that is (still) my answer: you are simply mistaken when you say that "Propositions don't just exist insofar as they are conceived."

(You're in good company. Plato got this wrong too, and he was no dummy. But he didn't have Alan Turing's shoulders to stand on.)

BTW, note that the converse is not true. You can conceive of an idea without rendering it into a representation. Indeed, you can conceive of an idea without even being able to render it into a representation. (This is actually quite common!) But what you can't do is produce a rendering of an idea into a representation without conceiving of the idea being represented. (BTW, that is not quite true. There is a tiny loophole, but I'm going to leave it as an exercise for you to figure out what it is.)

[knightoffaith]

>So this is false

In the second argument, could you tell me which of (1) and (2) are incorrect, and why?

If it's the quotes that are problematic, I'm fine to drop those.

The earth is round, regardless of whether people have this idea in their heads or not. You deny this?

>I already gave you the answer to this in the parent comment but you ignored it.

But I didn't disagree that ideas are not made of atoms. What I disagreed with is that propositions only exist insofar as they are conceived.

>(You're in good company. Plato got this wrong too, and he was no dummy. But he didn't have Alan Turing's shoulders to stand on.)

What did Turing do that proved that propositions only exist insofar as they are conceived? Or are you just talking about scientific progress in general?