display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
22462 | We should speak the truth, but also preserve and pursue it [Foot] |
Full Idea: There belongs to truthfulness not only the avoidance of lying but also that other kind of attachment to truth which has to do with its preservation and pursuit. | |
From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.74) | |
A reaction: This is truth as a value, rather than as a mere phenomenon of accurate thought and speech. The importance of 'preserving' the truth is the less common part of this idea. |
21390 | Future events are true if one day we will say 'this event is happening now' [Carneades] |
Full Idea: We call those past events true of which at an earlier time this proposition was true: 'They are present now'; similarly, we shall call those future events true of which at some future time this proposition will be true: 'They are present now'. | |
From: Carneades (fragments/reports [c.174 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 9.23-8 | |
A reaction: This is a very nice way of paraphrasing statements about the necessity of true future contingent events. It still relies, of course, on the veracity of a tensed assertion |
21672 | We say future things are true that will possess actuality at some following time [Carneades, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: Just as we speak of past things as true that possessed true actuality at some former time, so we speak of future things as true that will possess true actuality at some following time. | |
From: report of Carneades (fragments/reports [c.174 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 11.27 | |
A reaction: This ducks the Aristotle problem of where it is true NOW when you say there will be a sea-fight tomorrow, and it turns out to be true. Carneades seems to be affirming a truth when it does not yet have a truthmaker. |