Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood' and 'Truth-maker Realism: response to Gregory'

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2 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 2. Truthmaker Relation
Maybe truth-making is an unanalysable primitive, but we can specify principles for it [Smith,B]
     Full Idea: The signs are that truth-making is not analysable in terms of anything more primitive, but we need to be able to say more than just that. So we ought to consider it as specified by principles of truth-making.
     From: Barry Smith (Truth-maker Realism: response to Gregory [2000], p.20), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Truthmakers 1.5
     A reaction: This is the axiomatic approach to such problems - treat the target concept as an undefinable, unanalysable primitive, and then give rules for its connections. Maybe all metaphysics should work like that, with a small bunch of primitives.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth
For Russell, both propositions and facts are arrangements of objects, so obviously they correspond [Horwich on Russell]
     Full Idea: Given Russell's notion of a proposition, as an arrangement of objects and properties, it is hard to see how there could be any difference at all between such a proposition and the fact corresponding to it, since they each involve the same arrangement.
     From: comment on Bertrand Russell (On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood [1910]) by Paul Horwich - Truth (2nd edn) Ch.7.35
     A reaction: This seems a little unfair, given that Russell (in 1912) uses the notion now referred to as 'congruence', so that the correspondence is not in the objects and properties, but in how they are 'ordered', which may differ between proposition and fact.