34 ideas
| 18335 | There are five problems which the truth-maker theory might solve [Rami] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that truth-makers explain universals, or ontological commitment, or commitment to realism, or to the correspondence theory of truth, or to falsify behaviourism or phenomenalism. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 04) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This expands the view that truth-making is based on its explanatory power, rather than on its intuitive correctness. I take the theory to presuppose realism. I don't believe in universals. It marginalises correspondence. Commitment is good! |
| 18334 | The truth-maker idea is usually justified by its explanatory power, or intuitive appeal [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The two strategies for justifying the truth-maker principle are that it has an explanatory role (for certain philosophical problems and theses), or that it captures the best philosophical intuition of the situation. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 04) | |
| A reaction: I would go for 'intuitive', but not in the sense of a pure intuition, but with 'intuitive' as a shorthand for overall coherence. To me the appeal of truth-maker is its place in a naturalistic view of reality. I love explanation, but not here. |
| 18339 | The truth-making relation can be one-to-one, or many-to-many [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The truth-making relation can be one-to-one, or many-many. In the latter case, different truths may have the same truth-maker, and one truth may have different truth-makers. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: 'There is at least one cat' obviously has many possible truth-makers. Many statements will be made true by the mere existence of a particular cat (such as 'there is an animal in the room' and 'there is a cat in the room'). Many-many wins? |
| 18333 | Central idea: truths need truthmakers; and possibly all truths have them, and makers entail truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The main full-blooded truth-maker principle is that x is true iff there is a y that is its truth-maker. This implies the principles that if x is true x has a truth-maker, and the principle that if x has a truth-maker then x is true. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 03) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Rami calls the second principle 'maximalism' and the third principle 'purism'. To reject maximalism is to hold a more restricted version of truth-makers. That is, the claim is that lots of truths have truth-makers. |
| 18342 | Most theorists say that truth-makers necessitate their truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Most truth-maker theorists regard the necessitation of a truth by a truth-maker as a necessary condition of truth-making. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 07) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that reality is crammed full of potential truth-makers, but not crammed full of truths. If there is no thinking in the universe, then there are no truths. If that is false, then what sort of weird beast is a 'truth'? |
| 18340 | It seems best to assume different kinds of truth-maker, such as objects, facts, tropes, or events [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaker anti-monism holds the view that there are truth-makers of different kinds. For example, objects, facts, tropes or events can all be regarded as truthmakers. Objects seem right for existential truths but not others, so anti-monism seems best. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: Presumably we need to identify the different types of truth (analytic, synthetic, general, particular...), and only then ask what truth-makers there are for the different types. To presuppose one type of truthmaker would be crazy. |
| 18341 | Truth-makers seem to be states of affairs (plus optional individuals), or individuals and properties [Rami] |
| Full Idea: As truth-makers, some theorists only accept states of affairs, some only accept individuals and states of affairs, and some only accept individuals and particular properties. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 06) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me rash to opt for one of these. Truths come in wide-ranging and subtly different types, and the truth-makers probably have a similar range. Any one of these theories will almost certainly quickly succumb to a counterexample. |
| 18346 | 'Truth supervenes on being' only gives necessary (not sufficient) conditions for contingent truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that 'truth supervenes on being' (with or without possible worlds) offers only a necessary condition for the truth of contingent propositions, whereas the standard truth-maker theory offers necessary and sufficient conditions. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: The point, I suppose, is that the change in being might be irrelevant to the proposition in question, so any old change in being will not ensure a change in the truth of the proposition. Again we ask - but what is this truth about? |
| 18345 | 'Truth supervenes on being' avoids entities as truth-makers for negative truths [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The important advantage of 'truth supervenes on being' is that it can be applied to positive and negative contingent truths, without postulating any entities that are responsible for the truth of negative truths. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 09) | |
| A reaction: [For this reason, Lewis favours a possible worlds version of the theory] I fear that it solves that problem by making the truth-maker theory so broad-brush that it not longer says very much, apart from committing it to naturalism. |
| 18343 | Maybe a truth-maker also works for the entailments of the given truth [Rami] |
| Full Idea: The 'entailment principle' for truth-makers says that if x is a truth-maker for y, and y entails z, then x is a truth-maker for z. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: I think the correct locution is that 'x is a potential truth-maker for z' (should anyone every formulate z, which in most cases they never will, since the entailments of y are probably infinite). Merricks would ask 'but are y and z about the same thing?'. |
| 18338 | Truth-making is usually internalist, but the correspondence theory is externalist [Rami] |
| Full Idea: Most truth-maker theorists are internalists about the truth-maker relation. ...But the correspondence theory makes truth an external relation to some portion of reality. So a truth-maker internalist should not claim to be a narrow correspondence theorist. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [wording rearranged] Like many of Rami's distinctions in this article, this feels simplistic. Sharp distinctions can only be made using sharp vocabulary, and there isn't much of that around in philosophy! |
| 18337 | Correspondence theories assume that truth is a representation relation [Rami] |
| Full Idea: One guiding intuition concerning a correspondence theory of truth says that the relation that accounts for the truth of a truth-bearer is some kind of representation relation. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: I unfashionably cling on to some sort of correspondence theory. The paradigm case is of a non-linguistic animal which forms correct or incorrect views about its environment. Truth is a relation, not a property. I see the truth in a bad representation. |
| 18347 | Deflationist truth is an infinitely disjunctive property [Rami] |
| Full Idea: According to the moderate deflationist truth is an infinitely disjunctive property. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 10) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Horwich 1998] That is, I presume, that truth is embodied in an infinity of propositions of the form '"p" is true iff p'. |
| 18350 | Truth-maker theorists should probably reject the converse Barcan formula [Rami] |
| Full Idea: There are good reasons for the truth-maker theorist to reject the converse Barcan formula. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], note 16) | |
| A reaction: In the text (p.15) Rami cites the inference from 'necessarily everything exists' to 'everything exists necessarily'. [See Williamson 1999] |
| 9616 | A set is a collection into a whole of distinct objects of our intuition or thought [Cantor] |
| Full Idea: A set is any collection into a whole M of definite, distinct objects m ... of our intuition or thought. | |
| From: George Cantor (The Theory of Transfinite Numbers [1897], p.85), quoted by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the original conception of a set, which hit trouble with Russell's Paradox. Cantor's original definition immediately invites thoughts about the status of vague objects. |
| 15896 | Cantor needed Power Set for the reals, but then couldn't count the new collections [Cantor, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Cantor grafted the Power Set axiom onto his theory when he needed it to incorporate the real numbers, ...but his theory was supposed to be theory of collections that can be counted, but he didn't know how to count the new collections. | |
| From: report of George Cantor (The Theory of Transfinite Numbers [1897]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite I | |
| A reaction: I take this to refer to the countability of the sets, rather than the members of the sets. Lavine notes that counting was Cantor's key principle, but he now had to abandon it. Zermelo came to the rescue. |
| 16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Causality is a clue to what properties are real. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 9.3) | |
| A reaction: An interesting variant on the Shoemaker proposal that properties actually are causal. I'm not sure that there is anything more to causality that the expression in action of properties, which I take to be powers. Structures are not properties. |
| 18336 | Internal relations depend either on the existence of the relata, or on their properties [Rami] |
| Full Idea: An internal relation is 'existential' if x and y relate in that way whenever they both exist. An internal relation is 'qualitative' if x and y relate in that way whenever they have certain intrinsic properties. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making [2009], 05) | |
| A reaction: [compressed - Rami likes to write these things in fashionable quasi-algebra, but I have a strong prejudice in this database for expressing ideas in English; call me old-fashioned] The distinction strikes me as simplistic. I would involve dispositions. |
| 16182 | Two main types of explanation are by causes, or by citing a theoretical framework [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: In explaining a phenomenon one can cite the causes of that phenomenon; or one can set the phenomenon in a general theoretical framework. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: The thing is, you need to root an explanation in something taken as basic, and theoretical frameworks need further explanation, whereas causes seem to be basic. |
| 16184 | An explanation is a model that fits a theory and predicts the phenomenological laws [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: To explain a phenomenon is to find a model that fits it into the basic framework of the theory and that thus allows us to derive analogues for the messy and complicated phenomenological laws that are true of it. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: This summarises the core of her view in this book. She is after models rather than laws, and the models are based on causes. |
| 16167 | Laws get the facts wrong, and explanation rests on improvements and qualifications of laws [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: We explain by ceteris paribus laws, by composition of causes, and by approximations that improve on what the fundamental laws dictate. In all of these cases the fundamental laws patently do not get the facts right. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It is rather headline-grabbing to say in this case that laws do not get the facts right. If they were actually 'wrong' and 'lied', there wouldn't be much point in building explanations on them. |
| 16169 | Laws apply to separate domains, but real explanations apply to intersecting domains [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: When different kinds of causes compose, we want to explain what happens in the intersection of different domains. But the laws we use are designed only to tell truly what happens in each domain separately. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Since presumably the laws are discovered through experiments which try to separate out a single domain, in those circumstances they actually are true, so they don't 'lie'. |
| 16176 | Covering-law explanation lets us explain storms by falling barometers [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Much criticism of the original covering-law model objects that it lets in too much. It seems we can explain Henry's failure to get pregnant by his taking birth control pills, and we can explain the storm by the falling barometer. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.0) | |
| A reaction: I take these examples to show that true explanations must be largely causal in character. The physicality of causation is what matters, not 'laws'. I'd say the same of attempts to account for causation through counterfactuals. |
| 16177 | I disagree with the covering-law view that there is a law to cover every single case [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Covering-law theorists tend to think that nature is well-regulated; in the extreme, that there is a law to cover every case. I do not. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: The problem of coincidence is somewhere at the back of this thought. Innumerable events have their own explanations, but it is hard to explain their coincidence (see Aristotle's case of bumping into a friend in the market). |
| 16180 | You can't explain one quail's behaviour by just saying that all quails do it [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: 'Why does that quail in the garden bob its head up and down in that funny way whenever it walks?' …'Because they all do'. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: She cites this as an old complaint against the covering-law model of explanation. It captures beautifully the basic error of the approach. We want to know 'why', rather than just have a description of the pattern. 'They all do' is useful information. |
| 16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: The covering-law account supposes that there is, in principle, one 'right' explanation for each phenomenon. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the law is held to be 'right', but there must be a bit of flexibility in describing the initial conditions, and the explanandum itself. |
| 16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: There are a huge number of cases in the history of science where we now know our best explanations were false. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Laudan 1981 for this] The Ptolemaic system and aether are the standard example cited for this. I believe strongly in the importance of best explanation. Only a fool would just accept the best explanation available. Coherence is needed. |
| 16175 | A cause won't increase the effect frequency if other causes keep interfering [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: A cause ought to increase the frequency of the effect, but this fact may not show up in the probabilities if other causes are at work. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Patrick Suppes for this one] Presumably in experimental situations you can weed out the interference, but that threatens to eliminate mere 'probability' entirely. |
| 6781 | There are fundamental explanatory laws (false!), and phenomenological laws (regularities) [Cartwright,N, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Nancy Cartwright distinguishes between 'fundamental explanatory laws', which we should not believe, and 'phenomenological laws', which are regularities established on the basis of observation. | |
| From: report of Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: The distinction is helpful, so that we can be clearer about what everyone is claiming. We can probably all agree on the phenomenological laws, which are epistemological. Personally I claim truth for the best fundamental explanatory laws. |
| 16166 | Laws of appearances are 'phenomenological'; laws of reality are 'theoretical' [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers distinguish phenomenological from theoretical laws. Phenomenological laws are about appearances; theoretical ones are about the reality behind the appearances. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm suspecting that Humeans only really believe in the phenomenological kind. I'm only interested in the theoretical kind, and I take inference to the best explanation to be the bridge between the two. Cartwright rejects the theoretical laws. |
| 16179 | Good organisation may not be true, and the truth may not organise very much [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to think that the principles that best organise will be true, nor that the principles that are true will organise much. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis account of laws, as axiomatisations of the observed patterns in nature. |
| 16170 | To get from facts to equations, we need a prepared descriptions suited to mathematics [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: To get from a detailed factual knowledge of a situation to an equation, we must prepare the description of the situation to meet the mathematical needs of the theory. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: She is clearly on to something here, as Galileo is blatantly wrong in his claim that the book of nature is written in mathematics. Mathematics is the best we can manage in getting a grip on the chaos. |
| 16181 | Simple laws have quite different outcomes when they act in combinations [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: For explanation simple laws must have the same form when they act together as when they act singly. ..But then what the law states cannot literally be true, for the consequences that occur if it acts alone are not what occurs when they act in combination. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: This is Cartwright's basic thesis. Her point is that the laws 'lie', because they claim to predict a particular outcome which never ever actually occurs. She says we could know all the laws, and still not be able to explain anything. |
| 16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Where theories intersect, laws are usually hard to come by. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: There are attempts at so-called 'bridge laws', to get from complex theories to simple ones, but her point is well made about theories on the same 'level'. |