19 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] |
| 16771 | A composite is a true unity if all of its parts fall under one essence [Scheibler] |
| Full Idea: A composite entity is a unum per se if the partial entities that are in it are contained under one common essence. …In water, all those parts are contained under one essence of water. | |
| From: Chistoph Scheibler (Metaphysics [1650], I.4.1 n9), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 | |
| A reaction: Water mixed with wine is said to be an 'ens per accidens'. This is an unusual but possible view, that all the water there is is a single thing, united by its compositional essence. When we talk about 'water', we include possible water, and past water. |
| 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. |
| 8793 | If observation is knowledge, it is not just an experience; it is a justification in the space of reasons [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: In characterizing an observational episode or state as 'knowing', we are not giving an empirical description of it; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Does Emp.Knowledge have Foundation? [1956], p.123) | |
| A reaction: McDowell has made the Kantian phrase 'the logical space of reasons' very popular. This is a very nice statement of the internalist view of justification, with which I sympathise more and more. It is a rationalist coherentist view. It needn't be mystical! |
| 8792 | Observations like 'this is green' presuppose truths about what is a reliable symptom of what [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: Observational knowledge of any particular fact, e.g. that this is green, presupposes that one knows general facts of the form 'X is a reliable symptom of Y'. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Does Emp.Knowledge have Foundation? [1956], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This is a nicely observed version of the regress problem with justification. I would guess that foundationalists would simply deny that this further knowledge is required; 'this is green' arises out of the experience, but it is not an inference. |
| 8791 | The concept of 'green' involves a battery of other concepts [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: One can only have the concept of green by having a whole battery of concepts of which it is one element. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Does Emp.Knowledge have Foundation? [1956], p.120) | |
| A reaction: This points in the direction of holism about language and thought, but need not imply it. It might be that concepts have to be learned in small families. It is not clear, though, what is absolutely essential to 'green', except that it indicates colour. |