14 ideas
| 3745 | Must sentences make statements to qualify for truth? [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: Maybe a sentence is not a candidate for truth until it is used to make a statement. | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], Ch.6) |
| 15395 | Give up objects necessitating truths, and say their natures cause the truths? [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: We could abandon the view that truthmakers necessitate the truth of that which makes them true, and say that an object makes a truth when its intrinsic nature suffices for that truth. The object would have a different intrinsic nature if the truth failed. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties [2009], 'Truthmakers') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Josh Parsons 1999, 2005 for this] This approach seems closely related to Kit Fine's proposal that necessities arise from the natures of things. It sounds to me as if an object with that intrinsic nature would necessitate that truth. |
| 15394 | Truthmaker requires a commitment to tropes or states of affairs, for contingent truths [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: The most popular view is that an object is a truthmaker if the object couldn't exist and the truth be false. But contingent predications are also held to need truthmakers. Socrates is not necessarily snub-nosed, so a trope or state of affairs is needed. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties [2009], 'Truthmakers') | |
| A reaction: Cameron calls this 'some heavy ontological commitments'. If snub-nosedness is necessitated by the trope of 'being snub-nosed', what is the truthmaker for Socrates having that trope? |
| 3742 | Beliefs must match facts, but also words must match beliefs [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: Our beliefs must claim a correspondence with facts, and then the verbal expression of the belief must correspond to the belief itself. | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], Ch.4) |
| 3744 | The semantic theory requires sentences as truth-bearers, not propositions [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: The Semantic Theory of truth requires that sentences are truth-bearers (rather than statements, or propositions). | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], Ch.6) |
| 3749 | What does 'true in English' mean? [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: We do not seem to have any use in ordinary discourse for phrases like 'true in English', 'false in German'. | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], II.1) |
| 3746 | Logic seems to work for unasserted sentences [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: If sentences can have truth-values only when they occur as asserted, it would be impossible to have a truth-functional basis to logic. | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], Ch.6) |
| 3747 | Events are fast changes which are of interest to us [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: The standard cases of events are physical changes which happen sufficiently fast to be observed as changes, and which are of sufficient interest to us to be noticed or commented on. | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], Ch.7) |
| 15401 | Essentialists say intrinsic properties arise from what the thing is, irrespective of surroundings [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: The essentialist approach would be to say that an intrinsic property is one such that it is no part of what it is to instantiate that property that the bearer stands in some relation to its surroundings. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties [2009], 'Analysis') | |
| A reaction: This is offered as an alternative to the David Lewis account in terms of duplicates across possible worlds. You will have gathered by now, if you have spent days poring over my stuff, that I favour the essentialist approach. |
| 15393 | An object's intrinsic properties are had in virtue of how it is, independently [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Intrinsic properties are those that an object has solely in virtue of how it is, independently of its surroundings. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties [2009], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Better not mention quantum mechanics and fields if you want to talk of objects being independent of their surroundings. Am I 'independent' of gravity, or is gravity 'independent' of me? |
| 15396 | Most criteria for identity over time seem to leave two later objects identical to the earlier one [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Criteria for identity across times have proven hard to give. Whatever criteria we lay down, it seems that there are possible situations in which two later objects bear the relevant relation to one earlier object, though only one of them can be identical. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties [2009], 'Personal') | |
| A reaction: We only have to think of twins, amoebae that fission, and the Ship of Theseus. We seem to end up inventing a dubious criterion in order to break the tie. |
| 3743 | We can't contemplate our beliefs until we have expressed them [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: It is only when beliefs are given some symbolic expression that they acquire the precision and stability that enables us to entertain them. | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], Ch.5) |
| 3748 | Without language our beliefs are particular and present [O'Connor] |
| Full Idea: Without language we would be restricted to particular beliefs about the here and now. | |
| From: D.J. O'Connor (The Correspondence Theory of Truth [1975], Ch.8) |
| 6017 | Nomos is king [Pindar] |
| Full Idea: Nomos is king. | |
| From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed. |