I argued in my first critical installment that Edward Feser in his stimulating new book, Aristotle's Revenge, does not appreciate the force of the truth-maker objection to presentism in the philosophy of time. Ed's response to me is here. I thank Ed for his response. Herewith, my counter-response.
So, as I say, I don’t think the “truthmaker objection” is very impressive or interesting. Bill disagrees. He asks us to consider the following propositions:
(1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.
(2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.
(3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent truths need truth-makers.
(4) Presentism: Only (temporally) present items exist.
The problem, Bill says, is that “the limbs of this aporetic tetrad, although individually plausible, appear to be collectively inconsistent.”
But I would deny that there is any inconsistency. There is a presently existing fact that serves as the truthmaker for past-tensed truths such as the truth that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March – namely, the fact that Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March. To be sure, Caesar no longer exists and his assassination is no longer taking place. But the fact that he was assassinated on the Ides of March still exists.
I take it that Ed accepts all four of the above propositions as stated. So far, agreement. We also agree that 'Julius Caesar was assassinated' is past-tensed, true, presently true, contingently true, needs a truth-maker, and has a truth-maker. But whereas I take the fearsome foursome to be collectively logically inconsistent, in that any three of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining proposition, Ed finds no logical inconsistency whatsoever. Hence he finds the truth-maker objection to presentism to be neither impressive nor interesting.
The nub of the disagreement is precisely this: Ed thinks that the fact that Caesar was assassinated suffices as truth-maker for 'Caesar was assassinated' even if presentism is true. That is precisely what I deny. If by 'fact that,' Ed means 'true proposition that,' then I say that Ed is confusing a truth-bearer with a truth-maker. But I hesitate to tax him with such an elementary blunder. So I will take him to be saying that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact of Caesar's having been assassinated. This is a concrete state of affairs, the subject constituent of which is Caesar himself. This state of affairs cannot exist unless Caesar himself exists. Now Feser grants the obvious point that Caesar no longer exists. That is is a datum that no reasonable person can deny. It follows that the truth-making state of affairs no longer exists either.
On presentism, however, what no longer exists does not exist at all. Presentism is not the tautological thesis that only the present exists at present. Everybody agrees about that. So-called 'eternalists' in the philosophy of time will cheerfully admit that only present items exist at present. But they will go on to say that wholly past and wholly future items exist as well, and just as robustly as present items. It is just that they exist elsewhen, analogously as Los Angeles, although elsewhere relative to Phoenix, exists just as robustly (or as anemically) as Phoenix.
It is important to be clear about this. Presentism is a hard-core, substantive, metaphysical thesis, in the same metaphysical boat with the various anti-presentisms, e.g, the misnamed 'eternalism.' Presentism is not logically true or trivially true; it is not common sense, nor is it 'fallout' from ordinary language. Speaking with the vulgar I say things like, 'The Berlin Wall no longer exists.' I am using ordinary English to record a well-known historical fact. Saying this, however, I do not thereby commit myself to the controversial metaphysical claim that wholly past items are nothing at all and that present items alone exist, are real, or have being. The Berlin sentence and its innumerable colleagues are neutral with respect to the issues that divide presentists and eternalists.
Presentism is the controversial metaphysical claim that only the (temporally) present exists, period. Or at least that is the gist of it, pending various definitional refinements. On presentism, then, Caesar does not exist at all. If so, there is nothing to ground the truth that Caesar was assassinated. We don't even need to bring in truth-making facts or states of affairs. It suffices to observe that, on presentism, wholly past individuals such as Caesar do not exist. One should now be able to see that the grounding problem represented by (1)-(4) is up and running.
It is a datum that 'Caesar was assassinated' (or the proposition expressed by an assertive utterance of the sentence) is a contingent, past-tensed truth. It is also a datum that this truth is true now. Now my datum might be your theory. But since Feser will grant both of these datanic points, I need say nothing more here in their defense. Given the datanic points, and given that the problem is soluble, one must either accept the truth-maker principle and reject presentism, or accept presentism and reject the truth-maker principle. And this is what most philosophers of time do. Trenton Merricks, for example, does the latter. (Truth and Ontology, Oxford, 2007) Back to Feser:
To get an inconsistency, Bill would have to add to the list some further claim like:
(5) Only facts about what does exist (as opposed to facts about what used to exist) can serve as truthmakers.
But that would simply beg the question against the presentist. And of course the presentist would say: “There will be no inconsistency if you get rid of (5). ‘Problem’ solved!”
Not at all. There is no need to add a proposition to the tetrad to generate inconsistency. It is of course understood by almost all truth-maker theorists that only existing truth-makers can do the truth-making job. There are few if any Meinongian truth-maker theorists. Few if any will maintain, for example, that 'There are golden mountains' is made true by Meinong's nonexistent golden mountain. That being well-understood, it must also be understood that truth-maker theorists do not hold that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers. They don't build presentism into truth-maker theory. What they hold is that some, if not all, truths need (existing) truth makers. Truth-maker theory is neutral on the question that divides presentists from eternalists. Now the past-tensed 'Caesar existed' is true. It cannot just be true: there must be something 'in the world,' something external to the sentential representation, that grounds its truth. But what might that be on presentism? If only present items exist, then Caesar does not exist. And if Caesar does not exist, then there is nothing that could serve as the truth-maker of 'Caesar existed.'
One ought to conclude that the quartet of propositions supra is collectively inconsistent. If the tetrad is not a full-on aporia, an insolubilium, then either one must reject presentism or one must reject the truth-maker principle.
The Temporal Neutrality of Truth-Maker Theory and Whether I Beg the Question
I do not assume that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers. What I assume is that only existing items can serve as truth-makers. To appreciate this, consider timeless entities. God, classically conceived, is an example: he is not omnitemporal, but eternal. He doesn't exist in time at every time, but 'outside of' time. Now consider the proposition that God, so conceived, exists. What makes it true, if true? Well, God. It follows that a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to do its job. Or consider so-called 'abstract' objects such as the number 7. It is true that 7 exists. What makes this truth true? The number 7! So again a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to serve as a truth-maker. But it must exist.
Truth-maker theory, as such, takes no stand on either of the following two questions: Does everything that exists exist in time? Does everything that exists in time exist at the present time?
I therefore plead innocent to Ed's charge that I beg the question. Consider 'Caesar existed.' I don't assume that this past-tensed truth needs a presently existing truth-maker to be true. I assume merely that it needs an existing truth-maker to be true. It is not that I beg the question; it is rather that Feser fails to appreciate the consequences of his own theory. He fails to appreciate that, on presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all. It is because Caesar does not exist at all that I say that 'Caesar existed' lacks a truth-maker on presentism. It is not because he doesn't exist at present. Of course he doesn't exist at present!
Feser's Dilemma
It seems to me that Ed is uncomfortably perched on the horns of a dilemma. Either the truth-maker of a past-tensed truth is fact that or it is a fact of. But it cannot be a fact that, for such an item is just a true proposition, and no proposition can be its own truth-maker. For example, the fact that (the true proposition that) Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. On the other horn, the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' can be a fact of, i.e., a concrete state of affairs, but on presentism this fact does not exist. For on presentism, Caesar, who does not now exist, does not exist at all. Hence the fact of does not exist either, for its existence depends on the existence of its constituents, one of which is the roman emperor in question.
I suggests that Ed does not see the dilemma because he equivocates on 'fact.' That should be clear from his talk, above, of "facts about." He wants to say that "facts about" are truth-makers. but no truth-making fact is about it constituents. A "fact about" can only be a proposition. It is a fact about Caesar and Brutus that the latter stabbed the former (Et tu, Brute?), But that "fact about" is just a true proposition that needs a truth-maker. The gen-u-ine truth-maker, however, is not about anything. For example, the truth-maker of 'I am seated' is a concrete fact-of that has as one of its constituents the 200 lb sweating animal who wears my clothes. This truth-making fact is not about me; it contains me.
Michael Dummett sees the problem with presentism very clearly:
. . . the thesis that only the present is real denies any truth-value to statements about the past or the future; for, if it were correct, there would be nothing in virtue of which a statement of either type could be true or false, whereas a proposition can be true only if there is something in virtue of which it is true. We must attribute some form of reality either to the past, or to the future, or both. (Truth and the Past, Columbia UP, 2004, p. 74.)
Feser again:
The point I was trying to make, in any event, is that past objects and events were real (unlike fictional objects and events, which never were). That fact is what serves as the truthmaker for statements about past objects and events. Statements about present objects and events have as their truthmakers a different sort of fact, viz. facts about objects and events that are real.
Ed and I will agree that Caesar's assassination is an actual past event: it is not something that merely could have happened way back when but didn't, nor is it a fictional event of the sort that one finds in historical novels. Ed is committed to saying that this event was real. But if so, then it is true now that Caesar was assassinated. What makes it true? Feser's answer is that the fact that Caesar was assassinated is what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. But this is not a satisfactory answer since it merely repeats the datum. It is given that Caesar was assassinated. The problem is to explain what makes this true given the truth of presentism.
It is obvious that the true proposition that Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. That would be to confuse a truth-maker with a truth-bearer. The truth-maker cannot be an item in the 'representational order'; it must be something in the 'real order' of concrete spatiotemporal particulars. The truth-maker must be either Caesar himself, battle scars and all, or a concrete state of affairs that has him as a constituent. But if presentism is true, then there is no such man. And if Caesar does not exist, then no concrete state of affairs involving him exists. But now I am starting to repeat myself.
Bill also writes:
I conclude that Feser hasn't appreciated the depth of the grounding problem. 'Caesar was assassinated' needs an existing truth-maker. But on presentism, neither Caesar nor his being assassinated exists. It is not just that these two items don't exist now; on presentism, they don't exist at all. What then makes the past-tensed sentence true? This is the question that Feser hasn't satisfactorily answered.
End quote. In fact I have answered it. Yes, “Caesar was assassinated” needs an existing truthmaker. And that truthmaker is not Caesar or his assassination (neither of which exist anymore) but the fact that he was assassinated (which does still exist – after all, it is as much a fact now as it was yesterday, and will remain a fact tomorrow). To this Bill objects that “obviously this won't do [because] the past-tensed truth cannot serve as [its] own truth-maker.” But again, this conflates facts with propositions, and these should not be conflated.
Ed's response is a very strange one. I am suggesting that Ed might be conflating truth-makers with truth-bearers, truth-making facts with propositions. He says he is not. Fine. But since I explicitly made the distinction, he cannot reasonably accuse me of conflating truth-making facts with propositions. In any case, it definitely seems to me that Ed is succumbing to the conflation in question, as I have explained above.
Are My Objections Sound Only if I Have a Correct Alternative Theory?
This is a fascinating metaphilosophical question. Ed again:
One further point. Even if the defender of the “truthmaker objection” could get around the criticisms I have been raising, the objection nevertheless will succeed only if some alternative to presentism is correct. And as I argue in Aristotle’s Revenge, none of the alternatives is correct. So it will not suffice for the critic merely to try to raise problems for the presentist’s understanding of truth-making. He will also have to defend some non-presentist understanding of truth-making, which will require responding to the objections I’ve raised against the rivals to presentism.
In particular, the critic presupposes that we have a clear idea of what it would be for past objects and events and future objects and events to be no less real than the present is, and thus a clear idea of what it would be for such things to be truthmakers. But I claim that that is an illusion. The eternalist view is in fact not well-defined. It is a tissue of confusions that presupposes errors such as a tendency to characterize time in terms that intelligibly apply only to space, and to mistake mathematical abstractions for concrete realities. Indeed, on the Aristotelian view of time that I defend in the book, the approaches to the subject commonly taken by various contemporary writers are in several respects wrongheaded. Again, what I say about the truthmaker objection must be read in light of the larger discussion of time in Aristotle’s Revenge.
I deny what Feser asserts in the second sentence of the quotation immediately above. The assertion seems to trade on a confusion of possible theories and extant theories. Even if there is no tenable extant competitor to Feser's version of presentism — which is of course only one of several different versions — it does not follow that there is no possible tenable competitor theory. That is one concern. Another is more radical.
It may be that all of the extant theories in the philosophy of time are untenable and open to powerful objections. In particular, I am not an 'eternalist' and I am very sensitive to the problems it faces. To mention one, it seems that eternalism needs an understanding of tenseless existence and tenseless property-possession that I suspect is unintelligible. Could all the extant theories be false? Why not? They might all, on deep analysis, turn out be logical contraries of each other.
An even more radical thought: It may be that all possible theories (all theories that it is possible for us to formulate) in the philosophy of time are untenable and rationally insupportable in the end in such a way as definitively to give the palm to one of theories over all the others.
But even apart from the two radical proposals just bruited, it is not entirely clear why, if the objections I have raised are sound, I would have to consider Feser's (putative) refutations of the other theories. If my objections are in fact sound, then I can stop right there. In any case, I did in installment three of my ongoing critique consider Feser's notion that the truth-makers of past-tensed truths all exist at present. By the way, it is not clear to me how this notion (causal trace theory) is supposed to cohere with what Feser says elsewhere in his section on time. How does it cohere with what we discussed above? It is one thing to say that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact that C. was assassinated, and quite another to say that the truth-maker exists in the present in the form of present effects of C.'s past existence.
Time to punch the clock!
