Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Issues of Pragmaticism', 'Truth-makers and dependence' and 'Aboutness'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


1 idea

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / e. Empty names
'Pegasus doesn't exist' is false without Pegasus, yet the absence of Pegasus is its truthmaker [Yablo]
     Full Idea: 'Pegasus does not exist' has a paradoxical, self-undermining flavour. On the one hand, the empty name makes it untrue. But now, why is the name empty? Because Pegasus does not exist. 'Pegasus does not exist' is untrue because Pegasus does not exist.
     From: Stephen Yablo (Aboutness [2014], 05.7 n20)
     A reaction: Beautiful! This is Yablo's reward for continuing to ask 'why?' after everyone else has stopped in bewilderment at the tricky phenomenon.