Combining Philosophers

Ideas for John Rawls, Thomas M. Crisp and Sidney Morgenbesser

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3 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / d. Being makes truths
The weaker version of Truthmaker: 'truth supervenes on being' [Crisp,TM]
     Full Idea: The weaker version of Truthmaker is that 'truth supervenes on being'.
     From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
     A reaction: [He cites Lewis 2001 and Bigelow 1988] This still leaves the difficulty of truths about non-existent things, and truths about possibilities (esp. those that are possible, but are never actualised). What being do mathematical truths supervene on?
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 9. Making Past Truths
The Truthmaker thesis spells trouble for presentists [Crisp,TM]
     Full Idea: The Truthmaker thesis (that 'for every truth there is a truthmaker, that is, something whose very existence entails the truth' - Fox 1987) spells trouble for the presentist about time.
     From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
     A reaction: The point is that presentists can no longer express truths about the past (never mind the future), because the truthmakers for them don't exist. This seems to neglect the power of tense - the truth of the claim that 'p was true'.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 12. Rejecting Truthmakers
Truthmaker has problems with generalisation, non-existence claims, and property instantiations [Crisp,TM]
     Full Idea: Truthmaker is controversial: what of truths like 'all ravens are black', or 'there are no unicorns'. And 'John is tall' is not made true by John or the property of being tall, but by the fusion of the two, but what could this non-mereological fusion be?
     From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
     A reaction: A first move is to include modal facts (or possible worlds) among the truthmakers. The unicorns are tricky, and seem to need all of actuality as their truthmaker. I don't see the tallness difficulty. Predication is odd, but so what?