Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Conjectures and Refutations' and 'Writing the Book of the World'

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5 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 3. Value of Truth
We don't care about plain truth, but truth in joint-carving terms [Sider]
     Full Idea: What we care about is truth in joint-carving terms, not just truth.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 04.5)
     A reaction: The thought is that it matters what conceptual scheme is used to express the truth (the 'ideology'). Truths can be true but uninformative or unexplanatory.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / b. Objects make truths
Orthodox truthmaker theories make entities fundamental, but that is poor for explanation [Sider]
     Full Idea: According to the entrenched truthmaker theorist, the fundamental facts consist just of facts citing the existence of entities. It's hard to see how all the complexity we experience could possibly be explained from that sparse basis.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.5)
     A reaction: This may be the 'entrenched' truthmaker view, but it is not clear why there could not be more complicated fundamental truthmakers, with structure as well as entities. And powers.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 10. Making Future Truths
The causes of future true events must exist now, so they will happen because of destiny [Chrysippus, by Cicero]
     Full Idea: True future events cannot be such as do not possess causes on account of which they will happen; therefore that which is true must possess causes: and so, when the [true future events] happen they will have happened as a result of destiny.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 9.23-8
     A reaction: [exact ref unclear] Presumably the current causes are the truthmakers for the future events, and so the past is the truthmaker of the future, if you are a determinist.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 2. Correspondence to Facts
Graspable presentations are criteria of facts, and are molded according to their objects [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Of presentations, some are graspable, some non-graspable. The graspable presentation, which they say is the criterion of facts [pragmata], is that which comes from an existing object and is stamped and molded in accordance wth the existing object itself.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46
     A reaction: [in lost Physics Bk 2] The big modern anguish over truth-as-correspondence is how you are supposed to verify the 'accordance'. This idea seems to blur the ideas of truth and justification (the 'criterion'), and you can't have both as accordance.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
How could you ever know that the presentation is similar to the object? [Sext.Empiricus on Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: One cannot say that the soul grasps the externally existing objects by means of the states of the senses on the basis of the similarity of these states to the externally existing objects. For on what basis will it know the similarity?
     From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.74
     A reaction: This exactly the main modern reason for rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. You are welcome to affirm a robust view of truth, but supporting it by claiming a correspondence or resemblance is dubious.