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I recently came across this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/15chen5/comment/jtwnkkw/
I think it has something to do with denying the truth predicate without denying the state of affairs or something.
However, I don't really understand what the truth predicate is and what does it significantly mean to deny something is true. Like what does it mean to accept that "snow is white" but not accept that "snow is white is true"?
The truth predicate refers to ascribing "truth" to statements or propositions. For example, saying "It is true that snow is white."
Alethic nihilism is the philosophical position that there is no coherent truth predicate - that "truth" does not meaningfully apply to statements.An alethic nihilist would argue:
The concept of "truth" is inherently paradoxical and leads to contradictions (e.g. the Liar's Paradox: "This statement is false").
Therefore, the notion of truth is logically incoherent and cannot be consistently defined.
We should eliminate the linguistic concept of "truth" altogether as meaningless.
However, the alethic nihilist does not deny that reality or states of affairs exist. For example, they would agree that in reality, snow is white.
But they would argue that saying "It is true that snow is white" adds no additional meaningful content over just saying "Snow is white." Adding "is true" is pointless according to the alethic nihilist.
So basically what we got?
An alethic nihilist accepts that snow is white as a statement about reality.
But they reject that "Snow is white is true" has any coherent meaning, because the notion of "truth" itself is inherently flawed.
So it denies the existence of truth, while still accepting that things like "snow is white" accurately describe reality. The paradoxes of truth just render "truth" itself meaningless.
Alright, let's break this down. First let's talk about this "truth predicate" business. It's basically a fancy way of saying something's true. Like, instead of "The Yankees are the best," you'd say "It's true that the Yankees are the best." Same thing, right?
But here's where alethic nihilism steps up to the plate. These folks, they're saying there ain't no such thing as a truth predicate. So, "It's true that the Yankees are the best" doesn't fly with them. It's not that they're saying the Yankees ain't the best, they just don't get on board with this whole "it's true" thing.
You're probably thinking, "Wait a minute, how does that even work?" We're always saying stuff's true. If I say "The Yankees are the best," and they really are the best (which they are, don't even start with me), it feels like a no-brainer to say my statement's true. But these alethic nihilist types? They're not having it. They'll tell you "The Yankees are the best," full stop. No need for this truth stuff.
Why would anyone think like this? Well, it helps them dodge some tricky philosophic traps, like this thing called the Liar Paradox ("This statement is false"). If there's no such thing as a truth predicate, bam, problem solved.
But let's be real, this ain't a popular view. A lot of philosophers think truth's a big deal, not something you can just toss out the window.
That a concept can be used to construct a paradox doesn't imply that the concept is useless. If that was the case, then the word "and" would need to be jettisoned because one can construct many paradoxes using it... 🤔
Rather, the concept of truth (or rather its opposite, falsehood) cannot be used reflexively. One cannot say: "I always say false things" and not fall in a paradox.
This is precisely why the proposition "Truth does not exist" is self-contradictory. One can always ask in return: "Is that true, though?"
It is not the concept of truth that is self-contradictory, but its negation by alethic nihlism.
I don't think anyone can dispose of the concept of truth. It's part of our basic operating system, as creatures capable of symbolic representation. You need a concept to describe the distance between a description of reality and reality itself (or phenomena thereof, for Kantiens including myself). So perhaps affirming "P is true" doesn't add much to affirming "P", but if you turn it to a negative, it does. "P is not true" adds a lot to "P". Even "P is not always true, or not entirely true" adds nuance. Saying "P is true in such and such conditions, but false in others" can be very powerful. So we need this "metric", this "dimension", this gradient going from wholly false to always true.
People can lie. What is the status of a frequent liar in alethic nihlism? Isn't all this gibberish pseudo-phylosophy a breeding ground for post-truthism à la Trump?
