4 ideas
| 18470 | Maybe truth-making is an unanalysable primitive, but we can specify principles for it [Smith,B] |
| Full Idea: The signs are that truth-making is not analysable in terms of anything more primitive, but we need to be able to say more than just that. So we ought to consider it as specified by principles of truth-making. | |
| From: Barry Smith (Truth-maker Realism: response to Gregory [2000], p.20), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Truthmakers 1.5 | |
| A reaction: This is the axiomatic approach to such problems - treat the target concept as an undefinable, unanalysable primitive, and then give rules for its connections. Maybe all metaphysics should work like that, with a small bunch of primitives. |
| 18469 | God might necessitate that something happen, but He is not the truth-maker for it [Smith,B] |
| Full Idea: Suppose that God wills that John kiss Mary now. God's willing thereby necessitates the truth of 'John is kissing Mary'. But God's act is not a truth-maker for this judgement. | |
| From: Barry Smith (Truth-maker Realism [1999], p.6), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Truthmakers 1.2 | |
| A reaction: The point is that truth-making relates to the fact that it happened, not what necessitated it to happen. But Armstrong might reply that his truth-maker 'necessitation' primitive is not the kind of necessitation found in worldly relations. |
| 16519 | No one can conceive of a possible substance, apart from those which God has created [Arnauld] |
| Full Idea: I am much mistaken if there is anyone who dares to say that he can conceive of a purely possible substance, …for although one talks so much of them, one never conceives them except according to the notion of those which God has created. | |
| From: Antoine Arnauld (Letters to Leibniz [1686], 1686.05.13), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance 4.2 | |
| A reaction: This idea cashes out in the 'necessitism' of Tim Williamson, and views on the Barcan formulae in modal logic. |
| 3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing. | |
| From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1 |