more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
The Truthmaker thesis (that 'for every truth there is a truthmaker, that is, something whose very existence entails the truth' - Fox 1987) spells trouble for the presentist about time.
Gist of Idea
The Truthmaker thesis spells trouble for presentists
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
The point is that presentists can no longer express truths about the past (never mind the future), because the truthmakers for them don't exist. This seems to neglect the power of tense - the truth of the claim that 'p was true'.
| 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] |