Category: Truth
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Predicates and Properties
We are warming up to an examination of deflationary theories of truth according to which truth is either not a property or not a metaphysically substantive property. (I oppose deflationary theories of truth just as I oppose deflationary theories of existence.) But first some clarification of 'predicate' and 'property.' 1. I begin by resisting the traditional conflation…
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Deflationism: Ramsey and Redundancy
I am using 'deflationism' as an umbrella term subsuming several different deflationary theories of truth, among them Ramsey's redundancy theory, Quine's disquotationalism, Horwich's minimalist theory, and others. Deflationary theories contrast with what might be called 'robust' or substantive' theories of truth. It is not easy to focus the issue that divides these two types of…
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Five Grades of Self-Referential Inconsistency: Towards a Taxonomy
Some sentences, whether or not they are about other things, are about themselves. They refer to themselves. Hence we say they are 'self-referential.' The phenomenon of sentential self-referentiality is sometimes benign. One example is 'This sentence is true.' Another is 'Every proposition is either true or false.' Of interest here are the more or less…
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The Ambiguity of ‘Verify’
There are sentences the uttering of which falsifies them, and sentences the uttering of which verifies them. An example of the former is 'I am not talking now.' The act of uttering this sentence falsifies it. By contrast, the act of uttering 'I am talking now' verifies it. If to falsify is to make false,…
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The Truth Operator and the Truth Predicate
This is an addendum to our earlier discussion which I hope will advance it a step or two. We heard Alan Rhoda claim that the following sentence is false: 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists.' Let's think further about this. We first note that 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing…
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A Counterexample to P –> It is True that P?
Alan Rhoda e-mails: In a recent post you write: The objector is inviting us to consider the possible situation in which beings like us do not exist and no truths either. The claim that this situation is possible, however, is equivalent to the claim that it is true that this situation is possible. I think there's a…
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The Truthmaker Theory of Predication and Divine Simplicity
In this post I first try to get clear about the truthmaker theory of predication proposed by Michael Bergmann and Jeffrey E. Brower in their A Theistic Argument Against Platonism. I then try to understand how it solves a certain problem in the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). Finally, I raise a question about the authors'…
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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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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…
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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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Why not be a Nominalist?
0. This post is a sequel to Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned. 1. On one acceptation of the term, a nominalist is one who holds that everything that exists is a concrete individual. Nominalists accordingly eschew such categories of entity as: universals, whether transcendent or immanent, Fregean propositions, Castaneda's ontological operators, mathematical sets, tropes (abstract particulars, perfect particulars), and…
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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…