Sporkful #1

What Barry _wanted_ to maintain (Part 18 ) was: the sentence “Barry’s favourite flavour is not pistachio” is _false_.

But Hubbard’s theory of truth rules this option out. Truth and falsity are gone; all we have are truth-for-so-and-so and falsity-for-so-and-so. (Or if some more or less ordinary notion of truth remains in the language, it reduces to truth as relativized to persons.)

On Hubbard’s theory, the same sentence can be true for Barry but false for Spork. This unfortunately left Barry no ground on which to assert his favourite ice cream in a way which had any relevance to me.

Why did this occur? How was it even possible, assuming truth is person-relative?

The reason seems to be this. If the same sentence can simultaneously be true for one person and false for another, that sentence must _mean_ something different for each. This will emerge from the following.

Whatever we might think of Hubbard’s proposal to relativize truth to persons, one useful thing we can say about it is this: For any sentence S and person P,

S is true for P if and only if for P, S.

This principle gives the conditions under which a sentence S is true for P: namely just in case for P, S. (Quotation marks are omitted for simplicity.)

We’ve already seen this principle at work in Part 12. If Barry holds “The beer is warm” is true for him, he might as well have said that for him, the beer is warm. (He doesn’t like to say that, but that’s a problem for Hubbard’s idea that truth is person-relative, not for the principle above.)

(The significance of the principle is that it (or one like it) must lie at the heart of any theory which says that truth is person-relative. It specifies what it is for a sentence to be true for someone. Without some such principle there’s no theory of the person-relativity of truth. For people who want to believe that what’s true is what’s true for them, it isn’t really open to them to deny that something is true for them if and only if for them, the fact of that something obtains. Unless they want to deny that any facts obtain for them.)

So (to take a fresh example) if “It’s raining in Denver” is true for John, then for John, it’s raining in Denver. If “It’s raining in Denver” isn’t true for Mary, then for Mary, it isn’t raining in Denver.

Now suppose all this happens at the same time of the same day. There’s absolutely no provision in Hubbard’s theory to rule this out.

On such a day there’s only one conclusion to draw: John and Mary must each mean something different by “It’s raining in Denver.”

“It’s raining in Denver” has to mean something different in John’s world (or in his direct observation or personal reality or own special language) than it means in Mary’s, because in John’s world it’s true and in Mary’s it’s false.

On that day, if John and Mary engage in communication using the phrase “It’s raining in Denver”, they’re not likely to understand each other.

That’s apart from the question: What on earth is the weather like in Denver that day?

Ordinarily – before entertaining any thoughts of the person-relativity of truth – we might be inclined to assert this principle about meaning: where R names a sentence,

A sentence R means that R.

So ordinarily the sentence “It’s raining in Denver” means that it’s raining in Denver. (Again, in the above principle quotation marks are omitted for simplicity.) That’s not of course to say it _is_ raining in Denver. Rather, whether or not it’s actually raining in Denver, that’s all the sentence means.

However, if truth is person-relative, it’s natural to assert a corresponding principle about meaning:

A sentence R means for P that for P, R.

According to this, “It’s raining in Denver” means for John that for John, it’s raining in Denver. Whether or not it’s actually raining in Denver for John, that’s all it means.

To return to the example of Part 20. Supposing “It’s raining in Denver” is true for John and false for Mary:

What “It’s raining in Denver” means for John is something which is the case for John (namely that for him it’s raining in Denver).

Whatever “It’s raining in Denver” means for Mary is _nothing_ which is the case for Mary. (For her, it isn’t raining in Denver. For Mary, “It’s raining in Denver” means something which isn’t the case or it means nothing at all.)

Therefore what “It’s raining in Denver” means for John is something different than what “It’s raining in Denver” means for Mary.

If meaning is person-relative, John and Mary each mean something different by “It’s raining in Denver”.

How are these people ever going to understand each other? How are they going to communicate?

Now we come to a subtlety. (Skip it if you’re finding this boring.)

Taking the principle of the person-relativity of truth, that for any sentence S and person P,

S is true for P if and only if for P, S

we can substitute for S some instance of the _ordinary_ thesis about meaning that a sentence R means that R. This gives us

(A sentence R means that R) is true for P if and only if for P, a sentence R means that R.

That a sentence R means that R can easily be true for anyone.

By this, it holds that for John, “It’s raining in Denver” means that it’s raining in Denver.

It also holds that for Mary, “It’s raining in Denver” means that it’s raining in Denver.

Yet strangely, and consistently, “It’s raining in Denver” means for John something different than it means for Mary.

So there’s a fine distinction to be drawn here.

“For John, a sentence R means that R”

is different than

“A sentence R means, for John, that R”

I’m going to leave this subtlety hanging there in mid-air for the contemplation of anyone interested.

Let’s take the more usual sort of case where John and Mary happen to _agree_ that it’s raining (or not raining) in Denver on the same day.

_Still_ the condition under which “It’s raining in Denver” is true for John is totally different than the condition under “It’s raining in Denver” is true for Mary. The former essentially involves John and not Mary; the latter Mary and not John.

So even when John and Mary agree, it would seem they can each mean something totally different by the same sentence. The truth-for-them of their identical utterances can coincide but their meanings-for-them can diverge.

Here we start to see the fullness of the absurdity invoked by the Whatever Phrase.

On that theory, “It’s raining in Denver” can have some private and highly idiosyncratic significance for John partly in virtue of which it’s true for him. That significance “for John” need have nothing to do with meteorology or geography. It might just be some oddball feature of John’s observation, experience, inner life etc.

This peculiarity might be completely undetectable in practice.

For example, what “It’s raining in Denver” means for John might be what “It’s raining rather heavily on John’s mackintosh in Denver” means for Mary. John and Mary could endure decades of a difficult marriage without ever finding this out.

What’s worse, even if they did one day find out, they couldn’t settle their semantic differences in the easiest and most obvious way. (No, not divorce.) They couldn’t appeal directly to what for most of us is a fact: that “It’s raining in Denver” means it’s raining in Denver.

Truth and meaning, having become mere fancies of the speakers of the language, can no longer be counted on to underwrite successful communication between persons.

Communication is becoming more than a difficulty. It’s approaching an impossibility.

I’d like to emphasize that this outcome is absurd and intolerably so. As would be the practical consequences for anyone seriously embracing Hubbard’s theory of truth.

Obviously if the same sentence has a different meaning in the mouths of two different people, communication between those people using that sentence can be difficult.

Communication and mutual understanding are troublesome at best and inexplicable at worst on the supposition of the Whatever Phrase. A person who earnestly believes it would be utterly deceived about the public sense of his or her communications and own ability to grasp the meanings of others. Sometimes it might by chance seem to that person as though some understanding was reached. This appearance would be accidental and illusory.

The trouble goes beyond the concern about an individual being able to _know_ what someone else means-for-them – though that certainly is a problem. (How could anyone ever tell whether some sentence’s meaning-for-them has an otherwise identical counterpart meaning-for in anyone else’s understanding -- without referring to non-person-relative facts about meaning?)

The main worry is that in practice, meanings-for would generally diverge if left up to the individual.

It is even extremely probable that they would diverge, since the condition on which any sentence is true-for-someone essentially adverts to something highly personal to the individual (what holds specifically in that person’s experience, observation, inner life etc).

Now for the good news.

Actually of course meanings (and people’s understandings of meanings) don’t diverge that easily.

The conclusion to draw is _not_ that it’s a joyous miracle that this never happens -- some sublime testament to the powers of “thetans” to “intend” to communicate no matter what rational and theoretical obstacles stand in their way.

The correct conclusion, I submit, is that Hubbard’s theory of the person-relativity of truth is false.

It can be hard to talk to Scientologists.

Very often there’s just no getting through to them.

After twenty years of trying and failing, each time sooner or later being shrugged off with a “What’s true for you ... ,” I’m starting to think the Whatever Phrase itself is at least in part behind it all.

I wonder if the Scientologists I met as a youth, many of them confined to their org, were actually trying to implement the semantic theory stated in The Way to Happiness. Were they individually struggling to establish their own deviant linguistic practice such that truth was merely truth-for-them?

With the crude tool of the clay demo and the grand mystery of the “cognition” -- the “Behold!” moment of the subjective appearance of certainty -- were they labouring to give various terms a sense which (it would turn out) only a particular Scientologist could understand precisely for him or herself?

Did they on occasion succeed in giving select terms such a private sense-for-them -- so that it appeared to an individual Scientologist, self-sealingly, that they _could not_ be wrong – since anyone who disagreed would simply have meant something else?

“Scientology Works.”

In view of what we’ve examined so far, there’s a convenient explanation of how this sweeping generality could seem plausible even to a committed Scientologist who spends a great deal of time watching the “Tech” repeatedly fail to work. Namely a deviant, highly idiosyncratic understanding of what it is for something to “work”.

I’d better stop there. That topic might require a Sporkful of its own.