Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Saunders MacLane, Ori Simchen and James O. Young

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14 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 12. Rejecting Truthmakers
19079 For idealists reality is like a collection of beliefs, so truths and truthmakers are not distinct [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: Idealists do not believe that there is an ontological distinction between beliefs and what makes beliefs true. From their perspective, reality is something like a collection of beliefs.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §2.1)
     A reaction: This doesn't seem to me to wholly reject truthmakers, since beliefs can still be truthmakers for one another. This is something like Davidson's view, that only beliefs can justify other beliefs.
3. Truth / D. Coherence Truth / 1. Coherence Truth
19076 Coherence theories differ over the coherence relation, and over the set of proposition with which to cohere [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: Coherence theories of truth differ on their accounts of the coherence relation, and on their accounts of the set (or sets) of propositions with which true propositions occur (the 'specified set').
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §1)
     A reaction: Coherence is clearly more than consistency or mutual entailment, and I like to invoke explanation. The set has to be large, or the theory is absurd (as two absurdities can 'cohere'). So very large, or very very large, or maximally large?
19077 Two propositions could be consistent with your set, but inconsistent with one another [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: It is unsatisfactory for the coherence relation to be consistency, because two propositions could be consistent with a 'specified set', and yet be inconsistent with each other. That would imply they are both true, which is impossible.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §1)
     A reaction: I'm not convinced by this. You first accept P because it is consistent with the set; then Q turns up, which is consistent with everything in the set except P. So you have to choose between them, and might eject P. Your set was too small.
19078 Coherence with actual beliefs, or our best beliefs, or ultimate ideal beliefs? [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: One extreme for the specified set is the largest consistent set of propositions currently believed by actual people. A moderate position makes it the limit of people's enquiries. The other extreme is what would be believed by an omniscient being.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §1)
     A reaction: One not considered is the set of propositions believed by each individual person. Thoroughgoing relativists might well embrace that one. Peirce and Putnam liked the moderate one. I'm taken with the last one, since truth is an ideal, not a phenomenon.
19084 Coherent truth is not with an arbitrary set of beliefs, but with a set which people actually do believe [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: It must be remembered that coherentists do not believe that the truth of a proposition consists in coherence with an arbitrarily chosen set of propositions; the coherence is with a set of beliefs, or a set of propositions held to be true.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §3.1)
     A reaction: This is a very good response to critics who cite bizarre sets of beliefs which happen to have internal coherence. You have to ask why they are not actually believed, and the answer must be that the coherence is not extensive enough.
3. Truth / D. Coherence Truth / 2. Coherence Truth Critique
19083 How do you identify the best coherence set; and aren't there truths which don't cohere? [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: The two main objections to the coherence theory of truth are that there is no way to identify the 'specified set' of propositions without contradiction, ...and that some propositions are true which cohere with no set of beliefs.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §3.1/2)
     A reaction: The point of the first is that you need a prior knowledge of truth to say which of two sets is the better one. The second one is thinking of long-lost tiny details from the past, which seem to be true without evidence. A huge set might beat the first one.
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 2. Deflationary Truth
19075 Deflationary theories reject analysis of truth in terms of truth-conditions [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: Unlike deflationary theories, the coherence and correspondence theories both hold that truth is a property of propositions that can be analyzed in terms of the sorts of truth-conditions propositions have, and the relation propositions stand in to them.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], Intro)
     A reaction: This is presumably because deflationary theories reject the external relations of a proposition as a feature of its truth. This evidently leaves them in need of a theory of meaning, which may be fairly minimal. Horwich would be an example.
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 7. Barcan Formula
16186 The Barcan Formulas express how to combine modal operators with classical quantifiers [Simchen]
     Full Idea: The Barcan Formula and its converse gives expression to the most straightforward way of combining modal operators with classical quantification.
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1)
16187 The Barcan Formulas are orthodox, but clash with the attractive Actualist view [Simchen]
     Full Idea: The Barcan Formulas are a threat to 'actualism' in modal metaphysics, which seems regrettable since the Formulas are validated by standard modal logics, but clash with the plausible and attractive actualist view (that there are no merely possible things).
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1)
     A reaction: He notes that the Barcan Formulas 'appear to require quantification over possibilia'. So are you prepared to accept the 'possible elephant in your kitchen'? Conceptually yes, but actually no, I would have thought. So possibilia are conceptual.
16190 BF implies that if W possibly had a child, then something is possibly W's child [Simchen]
     Full Idea: In accordance with the Barcan Formula we assume that if it is possible that Wittgenstein should have had a child, then something or other is possibly Wittgentein's child.
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §5)
     A reaction: Put like this it sounds unpersuasive. What is the something or other? Someone else's child? A dustbin? A bare particular? Wittgenstein's child? If it was the last one, how could it be Wittgenstein's child while only possibly being that thing?
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / a. Axioms for sets
18189 ZFC could contain a contradiction, and it can never prove its own consistency [MacLane]
     Full Idea: We have at hand no proof that the axioms of ZFC for set theory will never yield a contradiction, while Gödel's second theorem tells us that such a consistency proof cannot be conducted within ZFC.
     From: Saunders MacLane (Mathematics: Form and Function [1986], p.406), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics
     A reaction: Maddy quotes this, while defending set theory as the foundation of mathematics, but it clearly isn't the most secure foundation that could be devised. She says the benefits of set theory do not need guaranteed consistency (p.30).
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / d. Possible worlds actualism
16188 Serious Actualism says there are no facts at all about something which doesn't exist [Simchen]
     Full Idea: Serious Actualism is the view that in possible circumstances in which something does not exist there are no facts about it of any kind, including its very non-existence
     From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1 n4)
     A reaction: He suggests that the Converse Barcan Formula implies this view. It sounds comparable to the view of Presentism about time, that no future or past truthmakers exist right now. If a new square table were to exist, it would have four corners.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
19074 Are truth-condtions other propositions (coherence) or features of the world (correspondence)? [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: For the coherence theory of truth, the truth conditions of propositions consist in other propositions. The correspondence theory, in contrast, states that the truth conditions of propositions are ... objective features of the world.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], Intro)
     A reaction: It is obviously rather important for your truth-conditions theory of meaning that you are clear about your theory of truth. A correspondence theory is evidently taken for granted, even in possible worlds versions.
19082 Coherence truth suggests truth-condtions are assertion-conditions, which need knowledge of justification [Young,JO]
     Full Idea: Coherence theorists can argue that the truth conditions of a proposition are those under which speakers tend to assert it, ...and that speakers can only make a practice of asserting a proposition under conditions they can recognise as justifying it.
     From: James O. Young (The Coherence Theory of Truth [2013], §2.2)
     A reaction: [compressed] This sounds rather verificationist, and hence wrong, since if you then asserted anything for which you didn't know the justification, that would remove its truth, and thus make it meaningless.