42 ideas
| 18486 | We might define truth as arising from the truth-maker relation [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: We might define truth using the truth-maker relation, albeit in a roundabout way, according to the pattern of saying 'S is true' is equivalent to 'there is something which makes S true'. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: [MacBride gives it more algebraically, but I prefer English!] You would need to explain 'truth-making' without reference to truth. Horwich objects, reasonably, that ordinary people grasp 'truth' much more clearly than 'truth-making'. Bad idea, I think. |
| 18484 | Phenomenalists, behaviourists and presentists can't supply credible truth-makers [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: For Martin the fatal error of phenomenalists was their inability to supply credible truth-makers for truths about unobserved objects; the same error afflicted Ryle's behaviourism, ...and Prior's Presentism (for past-tensed and future-tensed truths). | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the original motivation for the modern rise of the truthmaker idea. Personally I find 'Napoleon won at Austerlitz' is a perfectly good past-tensed truthmaker which is compatible with presentism. Truth-making is an excellent challenge. |
| 18466 | If truthmaking is classical entailment, then anything whatsoever makes a necessary truth [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: If a truthmaker entails its truth, this threatens to over-generate truth-makers for necessary truths - at least if the entailment is classical. It's a feature of this notion that anything whatsoever entails a given necessary truth. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a good reason to think that the truth-making relation does not consist of logical entailment. |
| 18473 | 'Maximalism' says every truth has an actual truthmaker [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The principle of 'maximalism' is that for every truth, then there must be something in the world that makes it true. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: That seems to mean that no truths can be uttered about anything which is not in the world. If I say 'pigs might have flown', that isn't about the modal profile of actual pigs, it is about what might have resulted from that profile. |
| 18481 | Maximalism follows Russell, and optimalism (no negative or universal truthmakers) follows Wittgenstein [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: If maximalism is intellectual heir to Russell's logical atomism, then 'optimalism' (the denial that universal and negative statements need truth-makers) is heir to Wittgenstein's version, where only atomic propositions represent states of affairs. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein's idea is that you can use the logical connectives to construct all the other universal and negative facts. 'Optimalism' restricts truthmaking to atomic statements. |
| 18483 | The main idea of truth-making is that what a proposition is about is what matters [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: According the Lewis, the kernel of truth in truth-making is the idea that propositions have a subject matter. They are about things, so whether they are true or false depends on how those things stand. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.4.1) | |
| A reaction: [Lewis 'Things Qua Truth-makers' 2003] That sounds like the first step in the story, rather than the 'kernel' of the truth-making approach. |
| 18479 | There are different types of truthmakers for different types of negative truth [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: We recognise that what makes it true that there is no oil in this engine is different from what makes it true that there are no dodos left. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a local particular negation up against a universal negation. I'm not sure there is a big difference between 'my dodo's gone missing' (like my oil), and 'all the dodos have gone permanently missing'. |
| 18477 | There aren't enough positive states out there to support all the negative truths [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: It's not obvious that there are enough positive states out there to underwrite all the negative truths. Even though it may be true that this liquid is odourless this needn't be because there's something further about it that excludes its being odourless. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
| A reaction: What is the ontological status of all these hypothetical truths? What is the truthmaker for 'a trillion trillion negative truths exist'? What is the status of 'this is not not-red'? |
| 18482 | Optimalists say that negative and universal are true 'by default' from the positive truths [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Optimalists say that negative truths are 'true by default' (having the opposite truth value of p), and universal truths are too. Universal truths are equivalent to negative existential truths, which are true by default. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: The background idea is Wittgenstein's, that if p is false, then not-p is true by default, without anyone having to assert the negation. This strikes me as a very promising approach to truthmaking. See Simons 2008. |
| 18474 | Does 'this sentence has no truth-maker' have a truth-maker? Reductio suggests it can't have [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: If the sentence 'This sentence has no truth-maker' has a truth-maker, then it must be true. But then what it says must be the case, so it has no truth-maker. Hence by reductio the sentence has no truth-maker. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.1) | |
| A reaction: [Argument proposed by Peter Milne 2005] Rodriguez-Pereyra replies that the sentence is meaningless, so that it can't possibly be true. The Liar sentence is also said to be meaningless. The argument opposes Maximalism. |
| 18485 | Even idealists could accept truthmakers, as mind-dependent [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Even an idealist could accept that there are truth-makers whilst thinking of them as mind-dependent entities. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: This undercuts anyone (me, perhaps?) who was hoping to prop up their robust realism with an angry demand to be shown the truthmakers. |
| 18490 | Maybe 'makes true' is not an active verb, but just a formal connective like 'because'? [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the truth-maker panegyrists have misconstrued the logical form of 'makes true'. They have taken it to be a verb like 'x hits y', when really it is akin to the connective '→' or 'because'. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Melia 2005] This isn't any sort of refutation of truth-making, but an offer of how to think of the phenomenon if you reject the big principle. I like truth-making, but resist the 'makes' that brings unthought propositions into existence. |
| 18493 | Truthmaker talk of 'something' making sentences true, which presupposes objectual quantification [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: When supporters of truth-making talk of 'something' which makes a sentence true, they make the assumption that it is an objectual quantifier in name position. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: We might say, more concisely, that they are 'reifying' the something. This makes it sound as if Armstrong and Bigelow have made a mistake, but that are simply asserting that this particular quantification is indeed objectual. |
| 18489 | Connectives link sentences without linking their meanings [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The 'connectives' are expressions that link sentences but without expressing a relation that holds between the states of affairs, facts or tropes that these sentences denote. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: MacBride notes that these contrast with ordinary verbs, which do express meaningful relations. |
| 18476 | 'A is F' may not be positive ('is dead'), and 'A is not-F' may not be negative ('is not blind') [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Statements of the form 'a is F' aren't invariably positive ('a is dead'), and nor are statements of the form 'a isn't F' ('a isn't blind') always negative. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the negation may be implicit in the predicate. There are many ways to affirm or deny something, other than by use of the standard syntax. |
| 11115 | 'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116. |
| 18480 | Maybe it only exists if it is a truthmaker (rather than the value of a variable)? [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: 'To be is to be a truth-maker' has been proposed as a replacement the standard conception of ontological commitment, that to be is to be the value of a variable. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Ross Cameron 2008] Unconvincing. What does it mean to say that some remote unexperienced bit of the universe 'makes truths'? How many truths? Where do these truths reside when they aren't doing anything useful? |
| 18471 | Different types of 'grounding' seem to have no more than a family resemblance relation [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The concept of 'grounding' appears to cry out for treatment as a family resemblance concept, a concept whose instances have no more in common than different games do. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: I like the word 'determinations', though MacBride's point my also apply to that. I take causation to be one species of determination, and truth-making to be another. They form a real family, with no adoptees. |
| 18472 | Which has priority - 'grounding' or 'truth-making'? [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers define 'grounding' in terms of 'truth-making', rather than the other way around. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: [Cameron exemplifies the first, and Schaffer the second] I would have thought that grounding was in the world, but truth-making required the introduction of propositions about the world by minds, so grounding is prior. Schaffer is right. |
| 18475 | Russell allows some complex facts, but Wittgenstein only allows atomic facts [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The logical atomism of Russell admitted some logically complex facts but not others - in contrast to Wittgenstein's version which admitted only atomic facts. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.3) | |
| A reaction: For truthmakers, it looks as if the Wittgenstein version might do a better job (e.g. with negative truths). I quite like the Russell approach, where complex facts underwrite the logical connectives. Disjunctive, negative, conjunctive, hypothetical facts. |
| 11116 | Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it. |
| 11117 | Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence. |
| 18478 | Wittgenstein's plan to show there is only logical necessity failed, because of colours [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: It is almost universally acknowledged that Wittgenstein's plan to show all necessity is logical necessity ended in failure - indeed foundered upon the very problem of explaining colour incompatibilities. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether you can 'show' that colour incompatibility is some sort of necessity, though intuitively it seems so. I'm thinking that 'necessity' is a unitary concept, with a wide variety of sources generating it. |
| 11119 | De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5) |
| 11118 | Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff. |
| 11108 | Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds. |
| 11111 | Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic. |
| 11105 | We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11107 | If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11106 | If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11112 | Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11109 | If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one. |
| 11113 | Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien! |
| 11110 | We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 7357 | People who control others with fluent language often end up being hated [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: Of what use is eloquence? He who engages in fluency of words to control men often finds himself hated by them. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], V.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't recall Socrates making this very good point to any of the sophists (such as Gorgias). The idea that if you battle or connive your way to dominance over others then you are successful is false. Life is a much longer game than that. |
| 7358 | All men prefer outward appearance to true excellence [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: I have yet to meet a man as fond of excellence as he is of outward appearances. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], IX.18) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this cynical view of the love of virtue is put by Plato into the mouths of Glaucon and Adeimantus (in Bk II of 'Republic', e.g. Idea 12), and not into the mouth of Socrates, who goes on to defend the possibility of true virtue. |
| 7362 | Humans are similar, but social conventions drive us apart (sages and idiots being the exceptions) [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: In our natures we approximate one another; habits put us further and further apart. The only ones who do not change are sages and idiots. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], XVII.2) | |
| A reaction: I find most of Confucius rather uninteresting, but this is a splendid remark about the influence of social conventions on human nature. Sages can achieve universal morality if they rise above social convention, and seek the true virtues of human nature. |
| 7360 | Do not do to others what you would not desire yourself [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: Do not do to others what you would not desire yourself. Then you will have no enemies, either in the state or in your home. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], XII.2) | |
| A reaction: The Golden Rule, but note the second sentence. Logically, it leads to the absurdity of not giving someone an Elvis record for Christmas because you yourself don't like Elvis. Kant (Idea 3733) and Nietzsche (Idea 4560) offer good criticisms. |
| 7359 | Excess and deficiency are equally at fault [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: Excess and deficiency are equally at fault. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], XI.16) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of wisdom we admire in Aristotle (and in any sensible person), but it may also be the deepest motto of conservatism, and it is a long way from romantic philosophy, and the clarion call of Nietzsche to greater excitement in life. |
| 7363 | The virtues of the best people are humility, maganimity, sincerity, diligence, and graciousness [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: He who in this world can practise five things may indeed be considered Man-at-his-best: humility, maganimity, sincerity, diligence, and graciousness. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], XVII.5) | |
| A reaction: A very nice list. Who could resist working with a colleague who had such virtues? Who could go wrong if they married a person who had them? I can't think of anything important that is missing. |
| 7361 | Men of the highest calibre avoid political life completely [Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: Men of the highest calibre avoid political life completely. | |
| From: Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE], XIV.37) | |
| A reaction: Plato notes that such people tend to avoid political life (and a left sheltering, as if from a wild storm!), but he thinks they should be dragged into the political arena for the common good. Confucius seems to approve of the avoidance. Plato is right. |
| 23393 | Confucianism assumes that all good developments have happened, and there is only one Way [Norden on Kongzi (Confucius)] |
| Full Idea: The two major limitations of Confucianism are that it assumes that all worthwhile cultural, social and ethical innovation has already occurred, and that it does not recognise the plurality of worthwhile ways of life. | |
| From: comment on Kongzi (Confucius) (The Analects (Lunyu) [c.511 BCE]) by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 3.III | |
| A reaction: In modern liberal terms that is about as conservative as it is possible to get. We think of it as the state of mind of an old person who can only long for the way things were when they were young. But 'hold fast to that which is good'! |