display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
6 ideas
10847 | Truthmakers are about existential grounding, not about truth [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Instances of the truthmaker principle are equivalent to biconditionals not about truth but about the existential grounding of all manner of other things; the flying pigs, or what-have-you. | |
From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001]) | |
A reaction: The question then is what the difference is between 'existential grounding' and 'truth'. There wouldn't seem to be any difference at all if the proposition in question was a simple existential claim. |
15546 | Predications aren't true because of what exists, but of how it exists [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Predications seem, for the most part, to be true not because of whether things are, but because of how things are. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'The demand') | |
A reaction: This simple point shows that you get into a tangle if you insist that truthmakers just consist of what exists. Lewis says Armstrong offers states of affairs as truthmakers for predications. |
15548 | Say 'truth is supervenient on being', but construe 'being' broadly [Lewis] |
Full Idea: I want to say that 'truth is supervenient on being', but as an Ostrich about universals I want to construe 'being' broadly. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'Truth') | |
A reaction: [His slogan is borrowed from Bigelow 1988:132-,158-9] This seems much more promising that the more precise and restricted notion of truthmakers, as resting on the existence of particular things. Presentism is the big test case. |
15549 | If it were true that nothing at all existed, would that have a truthmaker? [Lewis] |
Full Idea: If there was absolutely nothing at all, then it would have been true that there was nothing. Would there have been a truthmaker for this truth? | |
From: David Lewis (A world of truthmakers? [1998], p.220) | |
A reaction: This is a problem for Lewis's own claim that 'truth supervenes on being', as well as the more restricted truthmakers invoked by Armstrong. |
14399 | Presentism says only the present exists, so there is nothing for tensed truths to supervene on [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Presentism says that although there is nothing outside the present, yet there are past-tensed and future-tensed truths that do not supervene on the present, and hence do not supervene on being. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], p.207) | |
A reaction: Since I rather like both presentism and truth supervening on being, this observation comes as rather a devastating blow. I thought philosophy would be quite easy, but it's turning out to be rather tricky. Could tensed truths supervene on the present? |
10846 | Truthmaker is correspondence, but without the requirement to be one-to-one [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems to be a version of the correspondence theory of truth, but differs mostly in denying that the correspondence of truths to facts must be one-to-one. | |
From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.277) | |
A reaction: In other words, several different sentences might have exactly the same truthmaker. |