11 ideas
18928 | If maximalism is necessary, then that nothing exists has a truthmaker, which it can't have [Cameron] |
Full Idea: I think truthmaker theory is contingently true. [n24] If there could have been nothing, what makes that true? But if truthmaker maximalism is a necessary truth, there's necessarily something. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4 n24) | |
A reaction: Truthmaking is beginning to feel like Gödel's Theorems. You can 'make' lots and lots of truths ('prove' in Gödel), but there will be truths that elude the making. Truthmaker theory itself will be one example. So is Maximalism another one? |
18931 | Determinate truths don't need extra truthmakers, just truthmakers that are themselves determinate [Cameron] |
Full Idea: I reject saying there must be an additional truthmaker for 'Determinately, p': rather, I say that the truthmaker for p must simply be a determinate existent rather than a mere existent. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 6) | |
A reaction: As he puts it (quite persuasively), God doesn't need to add an extra truthmaker for a determinate truth. Cameron rejects Necessitarianism. He uses 'determinate' fairly uncritically. What makes the truth of the truthmaker's determinacy? |
18932 | The facts about the existence of truthmakers can't have a further explanation [Cameron] |
Full Idea: The orthodox truthmaker theorist thinks the facts concerning the existence of the truthmakers do not admit of further explanation. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 6) | |
A reaction: It is fairly obvious, I suppose, that not every truth can have a truthmaker, just as the verification principle could not be verified, and you can't perceive your perception in order to check it. Could God withdraw the power of truthmaking? |
18923 | The present property 'having been F' says nothing about a thing's intrinsic nature [Cameron] |
Full Idea: The property 'being such as to have been a child' is suspicious because it points beyond its instances in the sense that a thing's presently having that property tells us nothing about the present intrinsic nature of the thing. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 2) | |
A reaction: This is his objection to what he calls the 'Lucretian' strategy, which tries to make history into a property of present reality. That is implausible, I think, because there is no test for the property, apart from knowledge of the past. Reality is tensed? |
18926 | One temporal distibution property grounds our present and past truths [Cameron] |
Full Idea: Temporal distributional properties are fundamental - it is exactly the same property that is grounding the truth about how the bearer now is that is grounding truths about how the bearer was. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4) | |
A reaction: Some kind of slight of hand is going on here, though he does a nice job of confronting all possible objections. This is the sort of metaphysics you come up with when you stake everything on the dubious notion of a 'property'. |
18929 | We don't want present truthmakers for the past, if they are about to cease to exist! [Cameron] |
Full Idea: Whilst not logically inconsistent, it would be bad if it could now be true that ten years ago there was a sea battle, but that five years ago it wasn't true that five years before that there was a sea battle. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4) | |
A reaction: Nicely makes the point that you can't let the past rely on truthmakers in the present, if those truthmakers are about to go out of existence. So you need a sustained truthmaker, without giving up presentism. Enter 'temporally distributed properties'? |
18924 | Being polka-dotted is a 'spatial distribution' property [Cameron] |
Full Idea: Spatial distribution properties say how things are across a region of space, such as being polka-dotted. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 3) | |
A reaction: I think the routine fallacy of inferring properties from predicates is buried here. We truthfully describe it as 'polka-dotted', but that doesn't mean we must reify polka-dottedness, and see it as a feature of the world. What is a 'jumbled' space? |
18930 | Change is instantiation of a non-uniform distributional property, like 'being red-then-orange' [Cameron] |
Full Idea: What change is on the account being offered is to instantiate a non-uniform distributional property. Being red at one time and orange at a later time is to be analysed as instantiating the distributional property 'being red-then-orange'. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4) | |
A reaction: One of those moments when you begin to doubt whether 'being analysed' successfully actually adds much to our wisdom. His property sounds suspiciously 'gruesome' - i.e. subject to the vagaries of how we chose to describe the thing. |
490 | Everything happens by reason and necessity [Leucippus] |
Full Idea: Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason and by necessity. | |
From: Leucippus (fragments/reports [c.435 BCE], B002), quoted by (who?) - where? |
20957 | We don't choose our characters, yet we still claim credit for the actions our characters perform [Schelling] |
Full Idea: Nobody has chosen their character; and yet this does not stop anybody attributing the action which follows from his character to themself as a free action. | |
From: Friedrich Schelling (The Ages of the World [1810], I.93) | |
A reaction: This pinpoints a very nice ambivalence about our attitudes to our own characters. We all have some pride and shame about who we are, without having chosed who we are. At least when we are young. But we make the bed we lie in. |
18927 | Surely if things extend over time, then time itself must be extended? [Cameron] |
Full Idea: If there are temporally extended entities - and there are - then there must be extended regions of time for those entities to extend in. Hence presentism is false. | |
From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmaking for Presentists [2011], 4) | |
A reaction: [Cameron is playing devil's advocate] Something has to be weird here, and I take it to be the fact that the past no longer exists, and yet it is fixed and supports truths. Get over it. My childhood has gone. Totally. Irrevocably. |