Category: Facts
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An Infinite Regress Argument Against Truth-Makers?
Edward, the proprietor of Beyond Necessity, presents an infinite regress argument against truth-makers. Here it is: . . . I reject the idea of a truthmaker altogether. If there is such a truthmaker, let it be A, it comes into existence when Socrates sits down, and ceases to exist when he stands up. If it were…
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Sentences as Names of Facts: An Aporetic Triad
There are good reasons to introduce facts as truth-makers for contingently true atomic sentences. (Some supporting reasoning here.) But if there are facts, and they make-true contingent atomic sentences, then what is the semantic relation between these declarative sentences and their truth-makers? It seems we should say that such sentences name facts. But some remarks…
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Are Facts Perceivable? An Aporetic Pentad
'The table is against the wall.' This is a true contingent sentence. How do I know that it is true except by seeing (or otherwise sense perceiving) that the table is against the wall? And what is this seeing if not the seeing of a fact, where a fact is not a true proposition but…
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Butchvarov Against Facts
In his essay, "Facts," (Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, Javier Cumpa, ed., Ontos Verlag, 2010, p. 83) Panayot Butchvarov generously cites me as a defender of realism and a proponent of facts. He credits me with doing something William P. Alston does not do in his theory of facts, namely, specifying their mode…
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Is the Difference Between a Fact and Its Constituents a Brute Difference?
Note to Steven Nemes: Tell me if you find this totally clear, and if not, point out what is unclear. Tell me whether you accept my overall argument. The day before yesterday in conversation Steven Nemes presented a challenge I am not sure I can meet. I have maintained (in my book, in published articles,…
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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…
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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…
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Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned
For Peter Lupu discussions with whom helped me clarify my thoughts on this topic. 0. What David Armstrong calls Truthmaker Maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker. Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every truth has a truthmaker. Thus I question Truthmaker…
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Troubles With Truthmaking: The Truthmaker and Veritas Sequitur Esse Principles
Some recent attempts (by G. Oppy, J. Brower, A. Pruss and perhaps others) at making sense of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) have invoked the truthmaker principle (TMP). I made heavy use of TMP in my A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002), though not in defense of DDS. Being a self-critical sort, I am…
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Divine Simplicity and Truthmakers: Notes on Brower
1. One of the entailments of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is that God is identical to: God's omniscience, God's omnipotence, and in general God's X-ness, where 'X' ranges over the divine attributes. And it is easy to see that if God = God's F-ness, and God = God's G-ness, then (by transitivity of…
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Three Senses of ‘Fact’
Ed Feser has a very useful post which clears up some unfortunately common confusions with respect to talk about facts and opinions. I agree with what he says but would like to add a nuance. Feser distinguishes two senses of 'fact,' one metaphysical (I prefer the term 'ontological') the other epistemological: Fact (1): an objective state…