more on this theme | more from this text
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?
Gist of Idea
Truthmaker has problems with generalisation, non-existence claims, and property instantiations
Source
Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], 3.4)
Book Ref
'The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics', ed/tr. Loux,M /Zimmerman,D [OUP 2005], p.237
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?
| 14020 | 'Eternalism' is the thesis that reality includes past, present and future entities [Crisp,TM] |
| 14021 | Worm Perdurantism has a fusion of all the parts; Stage Perdurantism has one part at a time [Crisp,TM] |
| 14022 | The only three theories are Presentism, Dynamic (A-series) Eternalism and Static (B-series) Eternalism [Crisp,TM] |
| 14026 | Presentists can talk of 'times', with no more commitment than modalists have to possible worlds [Crisp,TM] |
| 14025 | The weaker version of Truthmaker: 'truth supervenes on being' [Crisp,TM] |
| 14023 | The Truthmaker thesis spells trouble for presentists [Crisp,TM] |
| 14024 | Truthmaker has problems with generalisation, non-existence claims, and property instantiations [Crisp,TM] |