Author: Bill Vallicella

Truthmaking and the Ontological Assay of Concrete Individuals

Could a concrete individual such as my man Peter function as the truthmaker of an accidental predication about him such as *Peter is hungry*?  Or must the truthmaker of such a truth be an entity with a proposition-like structure such as a concrete state of affairs or a trope?  Earlier posts have assumed and sometimes argued that Peter himself cannot make true any true accidental predications about him.  Alan Rhoda appears to disagree in a comment to an earlier post: "Unlike you, I don't find it 'obvious' that Peter cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry*. Or, rather, it's obvious if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular . . . ."

So we need to take a few more steps into the truthmaking  problematic.  Whether or not Peter can function as the truthmaker of accidental predications about him depends on our 'ontological assay' (as Gustav Bergmann might have put it) of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars such as Peter. 

1.  I begin on an irenic note by granting to Alan that if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular, then it is obvious that Peter cannot make true any accidental predications about him.  But 'Peter' in our sample sentence does not denote a bare or thin particular; it denotes  Peter 'clothed' in his intrinsic (nonrelational) properties, whether accidental or essential.

2.  I now argue that even if we take Peter together with his properties he cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry,* *Peter is sunburned,* etc.  It is widely agreed that if T makes true *p,* then *T exists* entails **p* is true.**  (As before, asterisks around an indicative sentence form a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.) Truthmaking is a form of broadly logical necessitation.  So if Peter by himself is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* then in every possible world in which Peter exists, the proposition will be true.  But surely this proposition is not true in every world in which Peter exists:  being sunburned is an accidental property of Peter.  Therefore, Peter by himself is not the truthmaker of such accidental propositions as *Peter is sunburned.*

3.  So even if we take Peter together with all his intrinsic properties, he still cannot function as truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* etc. He cannot, because there are possible worlds in which Peter exists, but *Peter is F* (where 'F' picks out an accidental property) is false.  But what if we 'assay' Peter as a concrete state of affairs (not to be confused with a Chisholmian-Plantingian abstract state of affairs) along the lines of a Bergmannian or Armstrongian ontology?  Take the conjunction of all of Peter's intrinsic properties and call that conjunction K.  What is left over is the individuating element in Peter, call it a.  We can then think of Peter as the state of affairs or fact of a's being K. Included within this maximal state of affairs are various submaximal states of affairs such as a's being F, where 'F' picks out an accidental property.  We can then say that Peter, as a concrete maximal state of affairs which includes the submaximal state of affairs of Peter's being sunburned, is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned.*

This, indeed, is my 'official' line, the line I took in my book on existence.  For reasons I can't go into now, I assayed ordinary particulars are concrete states of affairs.  But many philosophers will balk at this.  Barry Miller, for instance, if I rightly recall, told me that it is a category mistake to think of ordinary particulars as states of affairs.  I see his point, but it is hardly compelling.  Be that as it may, I have been assuming in these posts on truthmaking that ordinary particulars are not states of affairs.

And so I say to Alan Rhoda, if ordinary particulars are not concrete states of affairs, then such particulars, by themselves, cannot function as truthmakers for accidental predications about them.  The reason was given above in #2.  Only if an ordinary particular or concrete individual has a proposition-like structure, only if it is a concrete state of affairs or something like one, can it function as truthmaker of accidental predications about it.

4.  To sum up.  Rhoda and I agree that bare or thin particulars cannot serve as truthmakers for accidental predications.  And it may be that we are also in agreement if he goes along with the Bergmannian-Armstrongian ontological assay of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars as concrete states of affairs.  But I do disagree with him if he thinks that ordinary particulars, not so assayed, can function as truthmakers of accidental predications.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Johnny Cash

Personal Jesus.  Hurt.  The Mercy Seat.  I See a Darkness.  If you can relate to these powerful songs, then you can appreciate the superficiality and ignorance of the human heart of the New Atheism.  Only the spiritually moribund could put up a poster like this:

Busatheist

Ed Feser, yesterday, hit upon a brilliant and true insight: "The New Atheist is none other than Nietzsche’s Last Man in rationalist drag."

There may or may not be a God.  But "Stop worrying and enjoy life"  is exactly the sort of thing  Nietzsche's  Last Man would say.  I think Feser would agree that the poster to the left supports his insight.

The One Chess Book a Person Should Have

Joe from New York writes:

I have a question about chess. Would you be kind enough to tell me in your opinion what is the one chess book a person should have? What is your favorite? I am presently reading [Irving Chervev's]
Logical Chess Move by Move.

I am a patzer.

I think your blog is great.

Thanks for writing, Joe, and for the kind words. I too am a patzer, though on a really good day I am a GP, a Grandpatzer. Although there is no one book that one simply must have, for patzers I recommend Georges Renaud and Victor Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate. This is a delightful old book written by a couple of French masters. It first appeared in English translation in 1953 and was reprinted by Dover Press in 1962. I believe it was International Master Calvin Blocker who recommended it to me. I am very fond of Dover paperbacks, which are inexpensive and made to last a lifetime. This particular volume is in descriptive notation which fact should gladden the heart of Ed Yetman. It is also full of Romantic old games, wild and swashbuckling, of the sort from which assiduous patzers can learn tactics.

Tactic, tactic, tactics.  As important in chess as location, location, location in real estate.

The book is a study of the basic mating patterns. Since checkmate is the object of the game, a thorough study of the basic mates is a logical place to begin the systematic study of chess. That should be followed by work on tactics. The much-maligned Fred Reinfeld is useful here. After that, openings and endings. But the typical patzer — and I'm no exception to this rule — spends an inordinate amount of time swotting up openings. But what is the good of achieving a favorable middlegame position if one doesn't know what to do with it?  To turn a favorable position into a win you need to know the basic mates, tactics, and at least the rudiments of endgame technique.

There is a lot to learn, and one can and should ask whether it is worth the effort.  But patzers like us are unlikely to have our lives derailed by chess.  We can sport with Caissa and her charms without too much harm.  It is the very strong players, who yet fall short of the highest level, who run the greatest risk.  Chess sucks them in then leaves them high and dry.  The goddess Caissa becomes the bitch Impecunia.  IM Blocker is one example among many. 

 

Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75:

The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of  iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of  it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed  part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The  whole being is stricken in the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is not  more at least [at last?] than that of privation. This stage has to  be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron  is necessary.

'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There we have the real   proof that Christianity is something divine. (p. 79)

People Are What They Are . . .

 . . . and they don't change. No doubt there are exceptions. Few and far between, they prove the rule.  As a rule of thumb, one most useful  in the art of living, assume that Schopenhauer was right in his doctrine of the unalterability of character. Never enter into an important relationship with a person, marriage for example, with the thought that you will change the person to your liking. That is highly unlikely. What will happen is that you will induce a change in yourself, one in the direction of frustration and disappointment.

The Racism Charge: The Left’s Attempt to Shut Down Debate

In The Faith of a Liberal, Morris Raphael Cohen writes that "The touchstone that enables us to recognize liberalism is the question of toleration . . . ." Now if toleration is the touchstone of liberalism, there is nothing liberal about contemporary liberals.  They should therefore not be called 'liberals' but leftists.  There is nothing tolerant about them.  They show no interest in open discussion, free inquiry and the traditional values of classical liberalism.  And they are poor winners to boot.  With the passage of the health care bill they scored a victory.  So why all the querulous fulmination against the Tea Party patriots to whom the  lefties love to refer as 'teabaggers'?  Why, in particular, the routinely repeated charge of 'racism'?

This is now the party line of the Dems and toe it they will as witness the otherwise somewhat reasonable and mild-mannered Alan Colmes in this segment, Political Hatred in America, from The O'Reilly Factor. Colmes begins his rant around 6:07 with the claim that "what is driving this [the Tea Party protests] is racism."  It looks as if Colmes is under party discipline; otherwise, how could so intelligent and apparently decent a man say something so blatantly false and scurrilous?  That something so silly and vicious should emerge from the mouth of a twit like Janeane Garofalo is of course nothing to wonder at. What idiocies won't HollyWeird liberals spout?  But Alan Colmes?  If we remember that for the Left the end justifies the means, however, things begin to fall in place.  The Left will do anything to win. Slanders, smears, shout-downs . . . all's fair in love and war.  Leftists understand and apply what I call the Converse Clausewitz Principle: Politics is war conducted by other means.

When leftists hurl their 'racism' charge, just what are they alleging?  Two possibilities.

A.  One is that the arguments brought against Obama's policies are not arguments at all but mere expressions of racism and bigotry.  But this 'possibility' is beneath refutation.  Make a simple distinction.  There is Obama and there are his policies.  Obama is black, or rather half-black and half-white, but his policies are not members of any race.  White leftists advocate the same policies. Arguments against the policies are not attacks against the man.  Need I say more?

B.  The other interpretive possibility is that the conservative arguments are genuine arguments, not mere expressions of racism and bigotry, but that the can be refuted by claiming that the people who advance them are all, or most of them, racists.  But of course it is egregiously FALSE that all or most or even many of these people are racists.  Only some of them are.  But then there are 'bad apples' in every bunch, so this fact is not significant.

But even if we suppose, contrary to fact,  that every single conservative who argues against Obama's policies is a flaming racist, that has no bearing on the validity or invalidity of the conservative arguments.  To think otherwise is to commit the genetic fallacy.  Again, need I say more?

In Support of the Intuition That Truths Need an Ontological Ground

That truth has something to do with correspondence to extralinguistic and extramental fact is a deeply entrenched intuition. One could call it the classical intuition about truth inasmuch as one can find formulations of it in Plato and Aristotle. When suppressed, it has a way of reasserting itself. Sent packing through the front  door, it returns through the back. Herewith, two brief demonstrations that this is so.

A. Truth as Idealized Rational Acceptability

One way of suppressing the classical intuition is by offering an epistemic definition of 'true.' One attempts to explicate truth in terms of mental states. Thus someone might suggest that a proposition is true just in case it is believed or accepted by someone. But this won't do, since there are truths that are not accepted by anyone. So one proposes that a proposition is true just when it is acceptable. This proposal, too, is defective inasmuch as what is acceptable to one person will not be acceptable to another. This defect can perhaps be handled by identifying truth with rational acceptability. But what it is rational to accept at one time or in one place may be different from what it is rational to accept at another time or in another  place. Much of what we find rationally acceptable would not have been found rationally acceptable by the ancient Greeks. (For example, that the same physics holds both for terrestrial and for celestial bodies.) So one advances to the notion that truth is rational acceptability at the ideal limit of inquiry. One can trace this notion back to C. S. Peirce. In Reason, Truth, and History, Hilary Putnam presents a version of it. Let's consider the theory in the following form:

1. *P* is true =df *p* would be accepted in cognitively ideal conditions.

Now we know that

2. Cognitive conditions are not ideal.

From (2) it follows via the trivial equivalence principle *p* is true iff p that

3. *Cognitive conditions are not ideal* is true.

It follows from (3) via (1) that

4. *Cognitive conditions are not ideal* would be accepted in cognitively ideal conditions.

But (4) is self-contradictory, whence it follows that

5. The definition of truth in terms of acceptability in cognitively ideal conditions is incorrect.

What I take this argument to show is that the notion of truth as correspondence to the way things are is primary and irreducible. For surely (2) is true. But its being true cannot be explicated in terms of what anyone would accept or assert under ideal epistemic  conditions. Therefore, (2) is true in a sense more basic than the  sense spelled out in (1).

This supports the 'truthmaker intuition':  some if not all truths require truthmakers.  Truths do not 'hang in the air.'  What is actually true cannot depend on what some merely possible subject would accept at the ideal limit of inquiry.

 B. Truth as Coherence

 We get a similar result if we try to construe truth as coherence.   Suppose

 6. P is true =df p would be accepted by a person whose set of beliefs is maximally consistent and coherent.

 But we know that

 7. No one's set of beliefs is maximally consistent and coherent.

 From (7) it follows via the above equivalence principle that

 8. No one's set of beliefs is maximally consistent and coherent is
  true.

 It follows from (8) via (6) that

 9. No one's set of beliefs is maximally consistent and coherent would  be accepted by a person whose set of beliefs is maximally consistent  and coherent.

 But (9) is self-contradictory, so

 10. (6) is incorrect.

Could a Concrete Individual be a Truthmaker?

Could a concrete individual such as the man Peter function as a truthmaker?  Peter Lupu and I both find this idea highly counterintuitive.  And yet many contemporary writers on truth and truthmaking have no problem with it.  They have no problem with the notion that essential predications about x are made true by x itself, for any x.  Assume that the primary truthbearers are Fregean propositions and consider the Fregean proposition *Peter is human.*  (Asterisks around a declarative sentence form a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.)  Being human is an essential property of Peter: it is a property he has in every possible world in which he exists.  It follows that there is no world in which Peter exists and *Peter is human* is not true.  Hence Peter himself logically suffices for the truth of *Peter is human.*  Similarly for every essential  predication involving our man.  Why then balk at the notion that a concrete individual can serve as a truthmaker?

Here is an argument in support of balking:

1. Every asymmetric relation is irreflexive.  (Provable within first-order predicate logic.  Exercise for the reader: prove it!)

2. Truthmaking is an asymmetric relation.  If  T makes true *p*, then  *p* does not make true T.

3. Truthmaking is irreflexive. (From 1, 2)

4. Whatever makes true a proposition admitting of existential generalization also makes true the proposition which is its existential  generalization.  For example, if Peter makes true *Peter is human,* then Peter makes true the existential generalization *There are humans.* And if *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition,* then *Peter is human* makes true *There are propositions.*  (It is a universally accepted axiom of truthmaking that one and the same truthmaker can make true more than one truthbearer. Truthmaking is not a one-to-one relation.)

5.  If a concrete individual, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, can make a true an essential predication about it, then an entity of any ontological category can, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, make true an essential predication about it.  And conversely.  For example, if Peter makes true *Peter is human,* then *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition* and also **Peter is human* is an abstract object,* etc.  And conversely: if *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition,* then Peter makes true *Peter is human.*

6. *There are propositions* is essentially a proposition.

7. A concrete individual, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, can make true an essential predication about it.

8. *There are propositions* is made true by *Peter is human* and indeed by any proposition, including *There are propositions.*   (From 4, 5, 6, 7.  To spell it out:  Peter makes true *Peter is human* by 7; *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition* by 5 and 6.  *There are propositions* is the existential generalization of **Peter is human* is a proposition.* *Peter is human* makes true *There are propositions* by 4.  *Peter is human,*, however, can be replaced by any proposition in this reasoning.  Therefore, *There are propositions* is made true by any proposition including  *There are propositions.*

9. *There are propositions* has itself as one of its truthmakers. (From 8)

10. It is not the case that truthmaking is irreflexive.  (From 9.  Note that when we say of a relation that it has a property such as symmetry or irreflexivity, we mean that that has this property essentially.)

11. (10) contradicts (3).

12. One of the premises is false. (From 11)

13. The only premises that are even remotely controvertible are (2) and (7). 

14. (2), which affirms the asymmetry of truthmaking, cannot be reasonably denied.  Why not?  Well, the whole point of truthmaking is to provide a metohysical, not empirical, explanation of the truth of truthbearers.  Explanation, however, is asymmetric by its very nature: if x explains y, then y does not explain x. 

15. (7) is false: it it not the case that a concrete individual, by itself, can serve as a truthmaker. 

Credit where credit is due:  The above is my attempt to put into a rigorous form some remarks of Marian David which point up the tension between the asymmetry of truthmaking and the notion that concrete individuals, by themselves, can serve as the truthmakers for essential predications about them.  See his essay "Truth-making and Correspondence" in Truth and Truth-Making, eds. Lowe and Rami. McGill 2009, 137-157, esp. 152-154.

Scholastic Realism and Predication

This post continues our explorations in the philosophy of The School. What is a scholastic realist? John Peterson (Introduction to Scholastic Realism, Peter Lang, 1999, p. 6) defines a scholastic realist as follows:

S is a scholastic realist =df i) S is a moderate realist and ii) S believes that universals exist in some transcendent mind, i.e., the mind of God.

A moderate realist is defined like this:

S is a moderate realist =df i) S denies that universals exist transcendently and ii) S affirms that universals exist immanently both in matter and minds.

Peterson A universal exists transcendently just in case it exists "independently of matter and mind." One who holds that universals exist independently of matter and mind is a Platonic or extreme realist. A moderate realist who is not a scholastic realist Peterson describes as an Aristotelian realist. Such a philosopher is a moderate realist who "denies that universals exist in some transcendent mind."   In sum, and interpreting a bit:

Platonic or extreme  realist:  maintains that there are universals and that they can exist transcendently, i.e., unexemplified (uninstantiatied) and so apart from matter and mind.

Moderate realist:  denies that there are any transcendent universals and maintains that universals exist only immanently in minds and in matter.

Scholastic realist: moderate realist who believes that there is a transcendent mind in which universals exist.

Aristotelian realist:  moderate realist who denies that there is a transcendent mind in which universals exist.

Continue reading “Scholastic Realism and Predication”

On Reading Philosophers For the Beauty of Their Prose

To read a philosopher for the beauty of his prose alone is like ordering a delicacy in a world-class restaurant for its wonderful aroma and artful presentation — but then not eating it.

I had that thought one morning while re-reading for the fifth time William James' magisterial essay, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life. So rich in thought, and yet so distracting in its beauty the prose in which the thoughts are couched. James and a few other philosophers are great writers — Schopenhauer and Santayana come to mind — but the thought's the thing.