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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula' and 'reports'

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6 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / b. Objects make truths
The truthmaker principle requires some specific named thing to make the difference [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems compelling, because if a proposition is true, something must be different from a world in which it is false. The principle makes this specific, by treating 'something' as a quantifier binding a variable in name position.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §2)
     A reaction: See Williamson for an examination of the logical implications of this. The point is that the principle seems to require some very specific 'thing', which may be asking too much. For a start, it might be the absence of a thing.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 7. Making Modal Truths
Truthmaker is incompatible with modal semantics of varying domains [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Friends of the truthmaker principle should reject the Kripke semantics of varying domains.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3)
     A reaction: See other ideas from this paper to get a sense of what that is about.
The converse Barcan formula will not allow contingent truths to have truthmakers [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The converse Barcan formula does not allow any contingent truths at all to have a truthmaker. Once cannot combine the converse Barcan formula with any truthmaker principle worth having.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula [1999], §3)
     A reaction: One might reply, so much the worse for the converse Barcan formula, but Williamson doesn't think that.
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.