more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
The property 'being such as to have been a child' is suspicious because it points beyond its instances in the sense that a thing's presently having that property tells us nothing about the present intrinsic nature of the thing.
Gist of Idea
The present property 'having been F' says nothing about a thing's intrinsic nature
Source
Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 2)
Book Ref
'Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Vol.6', ed/tr. Zimmerman,D/Bennett,K [OUP 2011], p.59
A Reaction
This is his objection to what he calls the 'Lucretian' strategy, which tries to make history into a property of present reality. That is implausible, I think, because there is no test for the property, apart from knowledge of the past. Reality is tensed?
| 18923 | The present property 'having been F' says nothing about a thing's intrinsic nature [Cameron] |
| 18924 | Being polka-dotted is a 'spatial distribution' property [Cameron] |
| 18930 | Change is instantiation of a non-uniform distributional property, like 'being red-then-orange' [Cameron] |
| 18927 | Surely if things extend over time, then time itself must be extended? [Cameron] |
| 18926 | One temporal distibution property grounds our present and past truths [Cameron] |
| 18929 | We don't want present truthmakers for the past, if they are about to cease to exist! [Cameron] |
| 18928 | If maximalism is necessary, then that nothing exists has a truthmaker, which it can't have [Cameron] |
| 18931 | Determinate truths don't need extra truthmakers, just truthmakers that are themselves determinate [Cameron] |
| 18932 | The facts about the existence of truthmakers can't have a further explanation [Cameron] |