FOM: Butz on truth

[Vaughan Pratt]

From: Bill Tait 
>This is simply not reasonable. One might wish that Mayberry had not 
>picked up the habit of strong rhetoric that is all too common on the 
>list---e.g. `absolute nonesense' means false, but is more offensive. But 
>he is rejecting a claim that there is _no_ absolute truth in math and 
>surely his argument is right. The axioms of group theory are true of all 
>groups, the axioms of real closed fields are true of the ordered field of 
>real numbers, etc. Any such example suffices for Mayberry's point.

Unfortunately *every* example passes this test.  Your position if I
understand it is that axioms are true in those worlds that satisfy
those axioms.  With that notion of truth every sentence S would be an
absolute truth, because S would be true in every model of S.

Vaughan Pratt

(I agree it would be nice if people toned down the polemics a bit.)