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Single Idea 18923

[filed under theme 3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 9. Making Past Truths ]

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?

The 31 ideas from Ross P. Cameron

15401 Essentialists say intrinsic properties arise from what the thing is, irrespective of surroundings [Cameron]
15393 An object's intrinsic properties are had in virtue of how it is, independently [Cameron]
15396 Most criteria for identity over time seem to leave two later objects identical to the earlier one [Cameron]
15394 Truthmaker requires a commitment to tropes or states of affairs, for contingent truths [Cameron]
15395 Give up objects necessitating truths, and say their natures cause the truths? [Cameron]
15102 S4 says there must be some necessary truths (the actual ones, of which there is at least one) [Cameron]
15103 Blackburn fails to show that the necessary cannot be grounded in the contingent [Cameron]
15104 The 'moving spotlight' theory makes one time privileged, while all times are on a par ontologically [Cameron]
18881 For realists it is analytic that truths are grounded in the world [Cameron]
18879 What the proposition says may not be its truthmaker [Cameron]
18880 Rather than what exists, some claim that the truthmakers are ways of existence, dispositions, modalities etc [Cameron]
18868 Surely if some propositions are grounded in existence, they all are? [Cameron]
18867 Orthodox Truthmaker applies to all propositions, and necessitates their truth [Cameron]
18873 God fixes all the truths of the world by fixing what exists [Cameron]
18871 I support the correspondence theory because I believe in truthmakers [Cameron]
18870 Maybe truthmaking and correspondence stand together, and are interdefinable [Cameron]
18869 Without truthmakers, negative truths must be ungrounded [Cameron]
18872 We should reject distinct but indiscernible worlds [Cameron]
18877 Moral realism doesn't seem to entail the existence of any things [Cameron]
18875 Realism says a discourse is true or false, and some of it is true [Cameron]
18878 Realism says truths rest on mind-independent reality; truthmaking theories are about which features [Cameron]
18874 Truthmaking doesn't require realism, because we can be anti-realist about truthmakers [Cameron]
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]
18932 The facts about the existence of truthmakers can't have a further explanation [Cameron]
18931 Determinate truths don't need extra truthmakers, just truthmakers that are themselves determinate [Cameron]