display all the ideas for this combination of texts
9 ideas
| 18928 | If maximalism is necessary, then that nothing exists has a truthmaker, which it can't have [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: I think truthmaker theory is contingently true. [n24] If there could have been nothing, what makes that true? But if truthmaker maximalism is a necessary truth, there's necessarily something. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4 n24) | |
| A reaction: Truthmaking is beginning to feel like Gödel's Theorems. You can 'make' lots and lots of truths ('prove' in Gödel), but there will be truths that elude the making. Truthmaker theory itself will be one example. So is Maximalism another one? |
| 18931 | Determinate truths don't need extra truthmakers, just truthmakers that are themselves determinate [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: I reject saying there must be an additional truthmaker for 'Determinately, p': rather, I say that the truthmaker for p must simply be a determinate existent rather than a mere existent. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 6) | |
| A reaction: As he puts it (quite persuasively), God doesn't need to add an extra truthmaker for a determinate truth. Cameron rejects Necessitarianism. He uses 'determinate' fairly uncritically. What makes the truth of the truthmaker's determinacy? |
| 18932 | The facts about the existence of truthmakers can't have a further explanation [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: The orthodox truthmaker theorist thinks the facts concerning the existence of the truthmakers do not admit of further explanation. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 6) | |
| A reaction: It is fairly obvious, I suppose, that not every truth can have a truthmaker, just as the verification principle could not be verified, and you can't perceive your perception in order to check it. Could God withdraw the power of truthmaking? |
| 18923 | The present property 'having been F' says nothing about a thing's intrinsic nature [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: The property 'being such as to have been a child' is suspicious because it points beyond its instances in the sense that a thing's presently having that property tells us nothing about the present intrinsic nature of the thing. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is his objection to what he calls the 'Lucretian' strategy, which tries to make history into a property of present reality. That is implausible, I think, because there is no test for the property, apart from knowledge of the past. Reality is tensed? |
| 18926 | One temporal distibution property grounds our present and past truths [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Temporal distributional properties are fundamental - it is exactly the same property that is grounding the truth about how the bearer now is that is grounding truths about how the bearer was. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4) | |
| A reaction: Some kind of slight of hand is going on here, though he does a nice job of confronting all possible objections. This is the sort of metaphysics you come up with when you stake everything on the dubious notion of a 'property'. |
| 18929 | We don't want present truthmakers for the past, if they are about to cease to exist! [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Whilst not logically inconsistent, it would be bad if it could now be true that ten years ago there was a sea battle, but that five years ago it wasn't true that five years before that there was a sea battle. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4) | |
| A reaction: Nicely makes the point that you can't let the past rely on truthmakers in the present, if those truthmakers are about to go out of existence. So you need a sustained truthmaker, without giving up presentism. Enter 'temporally distributed properties'? |
| 21388 | 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. |
| 20780 | 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. |
| 20793 | 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. |