Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Necessity and Non-Existence' and 'Trees, Terms and Truth'

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3 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / a. What makes truths
Some sentences depend for their truth on worldly circumstances, and others do not [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: There is a distinction between worldly and unworldly sentences, between sentences that depend for their truth upon the worldly circumstances and those that do not.
     From: Kit Fine (Necessity and Non-Existence [2005], Intro)
     A reaction: Fine is fishing around in the area between the necessary, the a priori, truthmakers, and truth-conditions. He appears to be attempting a singlehanded reconstruction of the concepts of metaphysics. Is he major, or very marginal?
If facts are the truthmakers, they are not in the world [Engelbretsen]
     Full Idea: If there are such things as truthmakers (facts), they are not to be found in the world. As Strawson would say to Austin: there is the cat, there is the mat, but where in the world is the fact that the cat is on the mat?
     From: George Engelbretsen (Trees, Terms and Truth [2005], 4)
     A reaction: He cites Strawson, Quine and Davidson for this point.
There are no 'falsifying' facts, only an absence of truthmakers [Engelbretsen]
     Full Idea: A false proposition is not made false by anything like a 'falsifying' fact. A false proposition simply fails to be made true by any fact.
     From: George Engelbretsen (Trees, Terms and Truth [2005], 4)
     A reaction: Sounds good. In truthmaker theory, one truth-value (T) is 'made', but the other one is not, so there is no symmetry between the two. Better to talk of T and not-T? See ideas on Excluded Middle.