display all the ideas for this combination of texts
21 ideas
| 10913 | Truth is a matter of asserting correct combinations and separations [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That which is as being true (and that which is not as being false) have to do with composition and division, ... (for truth involves assertion in the case of combination and denial in the case of a separation). | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1027b22) | |
| A reaction: This remark has the prospect of being spelled out precisely in terms of predication in modern logic |
| 10916 | Truth is either intuiting a way of being, or a putting together [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Truth is either a putting-together or, if the thing has being, it has it in a certain way. Truth for these things is intuiting them. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051b30) | |
| A reaction: This seems to confirm what Aristotle says in Idea 10914, that there are two aspects to truth - the immediate grasp of atomic facts, and the assembling of complex facts. This resembles Tarski's construction of truth for complex sentences. |
| 10914 | Simple and essential truth seems to be given, with further truth arising in thinking [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not in states of affairs that truth and falsity arise but in thinking. And for things that are simple and for essences, truth and falsity do not even arise in thinking. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1027b27) | |
| A reaction: This might be viewed in the light of Tarski's theory, and the distinction between atomic sentences, which are just accepted, with a recursive account of more complex statements. Aristotle seems to have two theories of truth here (Cf. Idea 10916). |
| 575 | If one error is worse than another, it must be because it is further from the truth [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The man who mistakes a tetrad for a pentad is not as erroneous as he who takes it for a chiliad. But then, if they are not equally erroneous, this can only mean that one has less, and so one more, of the truth. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1008b32) |
| 15775 | Truth-thinking does not make it so; it being so is what makes it true [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not on account of our truly thinking that you are white that you are white; rather it is on account of your being white that we who assert as much are telling the truth. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051b10) | |
| A reaction: Some philosophers say this makes truth a derivative property, and is central to truth-maker theories. Kit Fine claims the reverse - that things exist because of the truths - but I don't really understand that (or agree with it). |
| 18335 | There are five problems which the truth-maker theory might solve [Rami] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that truth-makers explain universals, or ontological commitment, or commitment to realism, or to the correspondence theory of truth, or to falsify behaviourism or phenomenalism. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 04) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This expands the view that truth-making is based on its explanatory power, rather than on its intuitive correctness. I take the theory to presuppose realism. I don't believe in universals. It marginalises correspondence. Commitment is good! |
| 18334 | The truth-maker idea is usually justified by its explanatory power, or intuitive appeal [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The two strategies for justifying the truth-maker principle are that it has an explanatory role (for certain philosophical problems and theses), or that it captures the best philosophical intuition of the situation. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 04) | |
| A reaction: I would go for 'intuitive', but not in the sense of a pure intuition, but with 'intuitive' as a shorthand for overall coherence. To me the appeal of truth-maker is its place in a naturalistic view of reality. I love explanation, but not here. |
| 18339 | The truth-making relation can be one-to-one, or many-to-many [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The truth-making relation can be one-to-one, or many-many. In the latter case, different truths may have the same truth-maker, and one truth may have different truth-makers. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: 'There is at least one cat' obviously has many possible truth-makers. Many statements will be made true by the mere existence of a particular cat (such as 'there is an animal in the room' and 'there is a cat in the room'). Many-many wins? |
| 18333 | Central idea: truths need truthmakers; and possibly all truths have them, and makers entail truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The main full-blooded truth-maker principle is that x is true iff there is a y that is its truth-maker. This implies the principles that if x is true x has a truth-maker, and the principle that if x has a truth-maker then x is true. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 03) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Rami calls the second principle 'maximalism' and the third principle 'purism'. To reject maximalism is to hold a more restricted version of truth-makers. That is, the claim is that lots of truths have truth-makers. |
| 18342 | Most theorists say that truth-makers necessitate their truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Most truth-maker theorists regard the necessitation of a truth by a truth-maker as a necessary condition of truth-making. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that reality is crammed full of potential truth-makers, but not crammed full of truths. If there is no thinking in the universe, then there are no truths. If that is false, then what sort of weird beast is a 'truth'? |
| 10915 | The truth or falsity of a belief will be in terms of something that is always this way not that [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The truth or falsity of a belief will be in terms of something that is always this way not that. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a12) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to take 'beliefs' to be the truth-bearers. |
| 18340 | It seems best to assume different kinds of truth-maker, such as objects, facts, tropes, or events [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaker anti-monism holds the view that there are truth-makers of different kinds. For example, objects, facts, tropes or events can all be regarded as truthmakers. Objects seem right for existential truths but not others, so anti-monism seems best. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: Presumably we need to identify the different types of truth (analytic, synthetic, general, particular...), and only then ask what truth-makers there are for the different types. To presuppose one type of truthmaker would be crazy. |
| 18341 | Truth-makers seem to be states of affairs (plus optional individuals), or individuals and properties [Rami] |
| Full Idea: As truth-makers, some theorists only accept states of affairs, some only accept individuals and states of affairs, and some only accept individuals and particular properties. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me rash to opt for one of these. Truths come in wide-ranging and subtly different types, and the truth-makers probably have a similar range. Any one of these theories will almost certainly quickly succumb to a counterexample. |
| 18345 | 'Truth supervenes on being' avoids entities as truth-makers for negative truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The important advantage of 'truth supervenes on being' is that it can be applied to positive and negative contingent truths, without postulating any entities that are responsible for the truth of negative truths. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: [For this reason, Lewis favours a possible worlds version of the theory] I fear that it solves that problem by making the truth-maker theory so broad-brush that it not longer says very much, apart from committing it to naturalism. |
| 18346 | 'Truth supervenes on being' only gives necessary (not sufficient) conditions for contingent truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that 'truth supervenes on being' (with or without possible worlds) offers only a necessary condition for the truth of contingent propositions, whereas the standard truth-maker theory offers necessary and sufficient conditions. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: The point, I suppose, is that the change in being might be irrelevant to the proposition in question, so any old change in being will not ensure a change in the truth of the proposition. Again we ask - but what is this truth about? |
| 18343 | Maybe a truth-maker also works for the entailments of the given truth [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The 'entailment principle' for truth-makers says that if x is a truth-maker for y, and y entails z, then x is a truth-maker for z. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: I think the correct locution is that 'x is a potential truth-maker for z' (should anyone every formulate z, which in most cases they never will, since the entailments of y are probably infinite). Merricks would ask 'but are y and z about the same thing?'. |
| 18338 | Truth-making is usually internalist, but the correspondence theory is externalist [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Most truth-maker theorists are internalists about the truth-maker relation. ...But the correspondence theory makes truth an external relation to some portion of reality. So a truth-maker internalist should not claim to be a narrow correspondence theorist. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [wording rearranged] Like many of Rami's distinctions in this article, this feels simplistic. Sharp distinctions can only be made using sharp vocabulary, and there isn't much of that around in philosophy! |
| 586 | Falsity says that which is isn't, and that which isn't is; truth says that which is is, and that which isn't isn't [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Falsity is the assertion that that which is is not or that that which is not is, and truth is the assertion that that which is is and that that which is not is not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b20) | |
| A reaction: It was very startling to discover Plato's Idea 13776, and realise that this famous and much-quoted idea of Aristotle's was not original to him. I find it very hard to disagree with any aspect of the idea. |
| 19165 | Aristotle's truth formulation concerns referring parts of sentences, not sentences as wholes [Aristotle, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's formulation postulates no entities like facts. The things of which we say that they are or that they are not are the entities adverted to by the referring parts of sentences, not by sentences as wholes. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b21) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to refer to the existences or non-existences of things. Presumably this would mean referring not to an apple, but to a red apple or a green apple, seen as two different things, even though they were the 'same' apple? |
| 18337 | Correspondence theories assume that truth is a representation relation [Rami] |
| Full Idea: One guiding intuition concerning a correspondence theory of truth says that the relation that accounts for the truth of a truth-bearer is some kind of representation relation. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: I unfashionably cling on to some sort of correspondence theory. The paradigm case is of a non-linguistic animal which forms correct or incorrect views about its environment. Truth is a relation, not a property. I see the truth in a bad representation. |
| 18347 | Deflationist truth is an infinitely disjunctive property [Rami] |
| Full Idea: According to the moderate deflationist truth is an infinitely disjunctive property. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 10) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Horwich 1998] That is, I presume, that truth is embodied in an infinity of propositions of the form '"p" is true iff p'. |