I suppose he means something else than that people disagree, also something else than that truth is seldom certain.
b) … what's the most clear way to criticize R?
BV: (R) is a substantive and highly controversial thesis about the nature of truth. So it is not to be confused with the Moorean fact or datum that different people often have different beliefs about one and the same topic. Nor is it to be confused with any epistemological thesis about the knowledge of truth such as the thesis that nothing is known with certainty. For this latter thesis is consistent with truth being absolute. Fallibilism and absolutism are consistent. And of course, to hold as I do that truth is absolute (nonrelative) is not to hold that every truth is necessary. If a proposition is true, then it is absolutely true whether it is contingent or necessary. No matter how paltry the proposition — I had gyro meat with my eggs this morning — if true, then absolutely true.
Note that I would not speak, redundantly, of absolute truth were it not for the mischief caused by those who speak, incoherently, of relative truth. I would simply speak of truth. Truth is truth. There is no such animal as relative truth.
VV: Suppose the alethic relativist is fine acknowledging that, given R,(R1) R itself is a relative truth — as well as R1 (or any further meta-claim R2, R3, etc.). Once you provided an interesting retort: the alethic relativist "cannot say that … nonrelativism is only relatively true. If he said that, he would be assuming that relativism is nonrelatively true …" I don't follow this implication, so I would appreciate your further elaboration.
BV: If (R) is true, then it is either absolutely true or relatively true. If the former, then self-refererential inconsistency and self-refutation. So the relativist is forced to retreat, on pain of inconsistency, to (RR): It is relatively true that every truth is relative. But then I object that this cannot have any general or global application or relevance. "Fine, truth is relative for you and your pals, but this has nothing to do with me, and so I may reasonably ignore your quirky local view."
The point here is that the relative relativist cannot exclude the nonrelativist view: he must admit that it is possible that nonrelativism (NR) be nonrelatively true. But then the relative relativist seems to fall into contradiction inasmuch as he must embrace both limbs of the following inconsistent dyad:
It is possible that (NR) be true in every locality It is impossible that (NR) be true in every locality.
Our relative relativist must embrace the first limb since he cannot logically exclude the possibility of the truth of (NR). And he must embrace the second limb because (NR) and (RR) cannot both be true in the relative relativist's locality.
The relative relativist confuses truth with local understanding. The relative relativist is a slippery fellow. It is not clear what he is up to, though one senses that he is up to no good. Is he simply changing the subject by speaking of local understanding rather than truth? Is he making an eliminativist move by denying that there is truth? Is he trying to reduce truth to local understanding? These are all dead ends.
VV: Also, once you wrote: "The aletheic relativist either asserts his thesis (R) as absolutely true or as relatively true. If the former, his thesis is self-refuting. If the latter, then his thesis avoids self-contradiction only to face a dilemma: either relative-truth is the same as the property of being-believed, or it is not. If the former, then the relativity of truth boils down to an uninteresting triviality. If the latter, then it remains wholly unclear what could be meant by the property of relative-truth, and the thesis (R) perishes of semantic indeterminacy."
What I'm wondering here about is whether the alethic relativist really cannot specify R non-trivially yet consistently.
BV: The following is an uninteresting triviality: one and the same proposition can be believed by one person but not believed by another. Let the proposition be: Hillary lied about Benghazi. Speaking loosely, once could say that theproposition istrue-for Tom but not true-for Chelsea. This sloppy way of talking suggests that to be true = to be believed by someone. Now if the property of being true = the property of being believed by someone, then alethic relativism becomes trivially true.
But the thesis of althetic relativism is not trivially true. So what is truth for the alethic relativist if it is not the property of being believed by someone?
My challenge to the relativist: Tell us what you mean by 'truth' such that truth can be coherently conceived to be relative. If you cannot do this then you have no thesis.
As I often tell you, we all live in our own movies inside our heads. Humans did not evolve with the capability to understand their reality because it was not important to survival. Any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough.
Adams is telling us either directly or by implication that
a. The ability to understand reality is not important to survival.
b. We don't have this ability because we cannot transcend the "movies inside our heads."
c. Knowledge of truth (understanding of reality) is not necessary for procreation; illusions are good enough for procreation.
d. The foregoing propositions are all true.
I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to show that this is an inconsistent tetrad.
Hillary Clinton we now know to be a liar beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt. A liar is one who habitually makes false statements with the intention of deceiving her audience. This definition, however, presupposes the distinction between true and false statements. Aphoristically: no truth, no lies. Hillary cannot be a liar unless there is truth. But maybe there is no truth, only narratives. Here, perhaps, is a way to defend Hillary. Perhaps the outrageous things she says are merely parts of her narrative. So consider:
N. There is no truth; there are only narratives.
It follows that (N) itself is only a narrative, or part of one. For if there is no truth, then (N) cannot be true. Is this a problem? I should think so. Suppose you want to persuade me to accept (N). How will you proceed? You can't say I ought to accept (N) because it is true. Will you say that I ought to accept (N) because it is 'empowering'? But it cannot BE empowering unless it is TRUE that it is empowering. You cannot, however, invoke truth on pain of falling into inconsistency. No matter which predicate you substitute for 'empowering,' you will face the same difficulty. If you recommend (N) on the ground that it is F, then you must say that (N) IS F, which leads right back to truth.
Being and truth are systematically connected. The truth is the truth about what IS, and what IS is at least possibly such as to be the subject matter of truths. (A classical theist can go whole hog here and say: necessarily, whatever IS is the subject matter of truths, and every truth is about something that IS. But I am not assuming classical theism in this entry.)
So you can't say that (N) is empowering or conducive to winning the election or whatever; all you can say is that it is part of your narrative that (N) is empowering, or conducive . . . . In this way you box yourself in: there is nothing you say that can BE the case; everything is a narrative or part of a narrative. But you cannot even say that. You cannot say that everything you say IS a narrative, only that it is part of your narrative that everything you say is a narrative. You are sinking into some seriously deep crapola in your attempt to defend the indefensible, Hillary.
It follows from this that you cannot budge your sane opponent who holds that there is truth and that some narratives are true and others are false. I am one of these sane people. You cannot budge me because, according to MY narrative, there is truth and not all narratives are true. According to my narrative, my narrative is not just a narrative. It answers to a higher power, Truth. The only way you could budge me from my position is by appealing to truth transcendent of narrative. And that you cannot do.
So what is a poor leftist to do? Fall into inconsistency, which is in fact what they do. Everything is a mere narrative except when it suits them to appeal to what is the case.
It is of the essence of the contemporary Left to attempt the replacement of truth by narrative, a replacement they cannot pull off without inconsistency.
What if the lefty embraces inconsistency? Then, while resisting the temptation to release the safety on your 1911, you walk away, as from a block of wood. You can't argue with a block of wood or a shithead. While shit has form, it lacks form supportive of rational discourse.
Philosophy is magnificent in aspiration but miserable in execution.
Part of what makes philosophy a miserable subject is that none of its conclusions is conclusive. Herewith, a little example. But first some background.
A truthmaker maximalist is one who maintains that every truth has a truthmaker. So it doesn't matter whether a truth is necessary or contingent, universal or particular or singular, affirmative or negative, analytic or synthetic, etc.: it has a truth maker. There are no exceptions. The contrary of a truthmaker maximalist is a truthmaker nihilist: one who maintains that no truth has a truthmaker — not because no truth is true, but because no truth needs something in the world to 'make' it true. I incline toward truthmaker optimalism: some but not all truths need truthmakers. But our topic is truthmaker maximalism.
Don't confuse maximalism with the thesis that every truth has its own unique, bespoke, truthmaker. The maximalist is not committed to a 1-1 correspondence between truths and truthmakers. Example. On a factualist approach to truthmakers, they are facts. So on factualism, the truthmaker of 'Al is fat' is the fact of Al's being fat. But this fact also makes true other truths such as 'Someone is fat' and its logical entailments such as 'Someone is fat or Fred is dead.'
Now let's consider a counterexample to truthmaker maximalism. This is from the excellent SEP entry Truthmakers by Fraser MacBride.
2.1.2 Could there be nothing rather than something?
Here's another shot across the bows, this time from [David] Lewis. Take the most encompassing negative existential of all: absolutely nothing exists. Surely this statement is possibly true. But if it were true then something would have to exist to make it true if the principle that every truth has a truth-maker is to be upheld. But then there would have to be something rather than nothing. So combining maximalism with the conviction that there could have been nothing rather than something leads to contradiction (Lewis 1998: 220, 2001: 611). So unless we already have reason to think there must be something rather than nothing—as both Armstrong (1989b: 24–5) and Lewis (1986: 73–4) think they do—maximalism is already in trouble.
Setting up the problem as an inconsistent triad:
A.It is necessarily true that: Every truth has a truthmaker.
B. It is possibly true that: Nothing exists
C. It is not possibly true that: Nothing exists and something exists.
Since (C) is non-negotiable, either (A) or (B) must be rejected. MacBride thinks that (B) is "surely" true, and that therefore (A) is "in trouble." But MacBride's "surely" is surely bluster.
It is impossible that nothing exist. For if that had been the case, then it would have been the case, which is to say that it would have been true that nothing exists, whence it follows that there would have been something after all, namely, the truth that nothing exists.
Or think of it this way. Had nothing at all existed, that would have been the way things are, a most definite way things are that excludes infinitely many other ways things might have been. This way things are, had nothing existed, is something, not nothing. So it is impossible that there might have been nothing at all.
Parmenides vindicatus est.
Is the argument I just gave compelling? No. Philosophy is a miserable subject.
The misery of philosophy is rooted in the misery of man and the infirmity of his reason. But we know our misery. Therein lies an indication of our greatness. The knowledge of our ignorance and of our misery elevates us above every other sentient being.
A. Some sentences are true in virtue of their correspondence with extralinguistic reality.
B. If so, then reality must have a sentence-like structure.
C. Reality does not have a sentence-like structure.
London Ed solves it by rejecting (A). But let me first say why I accept (A).
Consider a true contingent sentence such as 'Tom is sad,' or the proposition expressed by an assertive utterance in appropriate circumstances of such a sentence. I maintain that the sentence or proposition cannot just be true: if true it is true in virtue of something external to the sentence. The external something cannot be another sentence, or, more generally, another truthbearer. Nor can it be someone's say-so. So the external something has to be something 'in the world,' i.e., in the realm of primary reference, as opposed to the realm of sense. The basic idea here is that some truths need ontological grounds: there is a deep connection between truth and being. There is more to a true sentence than the sentence that is true. There is that in the world which makes it true. Call it the truthmaker of the truth. Some truthbearers need truthmakers. As far as I am concerned, this is about as clear as it gets in philosophy. Which type of entity is best suited to play the truthmaker role, however, is a further question.
Please note three things. First, the direction of the truthmaking relation is from the world to language. More broadly: from external concrete reality to the realm of representations, where Fregean propositions count as representations, despite their not being tied to specific languages, and despite their independence of minds. Second, correspondence is an umbrella notion that covers two quite different relations, naming, and making-true. Naming is a word –> world relation, whereas truthmaking goes in the opposite direction. I am tempted to say that truthmaking is the converse of naming. Third, I unpack 'correspondence' as it occurs in (A) in terms of truthmaking, not naming.
Here is what Ed says in rejection of (A):
The exam question is my argument against (A), namely that some sentences are true in virtue of their correspondence with extralinguistic reality. I shall also be taking on why my reasons are properly nominalistic, given that your version of nominalism is not mine.
1. Starting with nominalism. Classic nominalism is formulated by Ockham in Summa Part I, 51. “the root [of the error of the Realists] is to multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms, and [to suppose] that to every term [or expression] whatsoever there corresponds a thing [quid rei].”
2. My target is a formulation of the correspondence theory that violates classic nominalism, as I have defined it. There may be other formulations of the theory that are OK.
3. My formulation of the correspondence theory is that an assertoric sentence is true in virtue of naming or referring to or signifying a fact. Let that naming relation be R. Then the correspondence theory says that a sentence S (e.g. ‘Socrates is sitting’) is true iff S stands in the relation R to some fact F (e.g. ‘that Socrates is sitting’).
4. Suppose ‘Socrates is sitting’ names the fact that Socrates is sitting, and assume that it always so names. Then that fact must always exist, assuming the name is always names the fact. So ‘Socrates is sitting’ must always be true, i.e. ‘Socrates is sitting’ always stands in the relation R to the fact that Socrates is sitting. But it is not always true, clearly.
5. We might get out of this in two ways. First, by supposing that ‘Socrates is sitting’ fails to be meaningful, namely when the fact it purports to names ceases to exist, such as when Socrates stands up, or runs. This is absurd, however. The purpose of a sentence is always to mean something.
6. The other way is to suppose that the sentence sometimes names a fact, and sometimes does not. I.e. it actually names something else – a proposition – and the proposition is a fact when the sentence is true, otherwise not a fact. However we have now failed to explain the ‘correspondence’. The sentence ‘Socrates is sitting’ always bears the naming relation R to the proposition that Socrates is sitting, even when Socrates is not sitting.
7. What we really need to name is not the proposition (which may be true or false), but the reality that corresponds when the proposition is a fact. Perhaps ‘the proposition that Socrates is sitting being a fact’ or ‘the actuality of Socrates’s sitting’ or something like that. But there we have the same problem. Either the name ceases to be meaningful when Socrates is not sitting, or it continues to name something. But the former we agreed was absurd, and the latter means that we have not fully captured the relation we want.
8. The problem in general is that if the object of the relation R is something we can talk about i.e. name at all, then we have to deal with the problem of the fixity of reference. The purpose of a name is always to name what it names. But reality is not thus fixed. Whatever supposedly corresponds to the truth of ‘Socrates is sitting’ comes into existence when Socrates sits and goes out of existence when he stands up. But if ‘Socrates is sitting’ is true in virtue of naming this thing, either the sentence becomes meaningless when Socrates stands up, which is absurd, or it names something that does not go out of existence, and so does not name what the correspondence theory purports to name.
9. Bringing this back to nominalism. The problem above arises from the supposition that ‘Socrates is sitting’ is the name of some fact, and thus from supposing that every expression (‘Socrates is sitting’) has a name or referent or whatever.
Ed does two things above. He confronts the truthmaker theorist with a certain (supposedly insoluble) problem, and then he explains how this problem arises by way of a false assumption. First, the problem. I will summarize it as I understand it.
Since Socrates is a past individual, but nothing in this discussion has to do with time, I will change the example to 'Tom is red.' Tom is a tomato of my present acquaintance. We assume that the sentence is true. And of course, if true, then contingently true. My type of TM-theorist holds that contingent true predications such as 'Tom is red' have worldly correspondents called facts. These concrete facts are the truthmakers of contingent predications. Note that the fact corresponds to the sentence as a whole. So not only does 'Tom' have a worldly correspondent, and presumably also the predicate 'red'; the sentence has a worldly correspondent as well.
Note also that the sentence is not about the fact; it is about Tom, or, if you insist, it is about Tom and the property of being red. Still, there is some relation R that connects the sentence and/or the proposition it expresses and the fact. Notice, I wrote 'and the fact,' not 'to the fact.' 'To the fact' suggests a direction from language to world, and not vice versa, whereas 'and the fact' leaves the directionality open. Is the truthmaking relation R naming? Ed thinks it is, but this is not clear. Indeed, I will argue in a moment that the truthmaking relation is not the naming relation. It is clear that 'Tom' names Tom. It is not clear that 'Tom is red' names anything. Suppose it doesn't. This doesn't exclude the possibility that the sentence has a truthmaker. Maybe it has a truthmaker, but that truthmakers cannot be named. Note also that what Ed says above is nothing like what any TM-theorist has ever said. Truthmaking is a relation that runs from the world to representations, whereas naming and referring and 'signifying' run from representations to the world. Truthmaking is more like the converse of the naming relation. We shall see.
But let us suppose arguendo that the truthmaking relation R is naming. On this supposition, Ed sets up a clever little dilemma. It is based on three plausible theses.
T1. If N is a name, then N cannot be vacuous: it must have a nominatum or referent.
T2. If N is a name, then it has an existing referent. That is, there is no naming of nonexistent objects, pace Meinong.
T3. If a name N names an object O, then at every time at which N names something, it names O. So the following is impossible: at some times at which 'Kripke' is in use as a name, it names Kripke, at other times Shkripke. I think this is what Ed means by "the fixity of reference."
The Dilemma. Either sentence S names fact F or it doesn't. On either alternative, trouble. Remember, Ed is assuming that the truthmaking relation is a naming relation and that declarative sentences name facts.
Horn One. If S names F, then, by the conjunction of the three plausible theses, F exists at every time at which S exists, which is plainly false. Clearly, 'Tom is red' both as type and as token can exist at times at which the fact of Tom's being red does not exist. (I might assertively utter 'Tom is red' while Tom is green, or after Tom has been dunked into molten chocolate.) If you say instead that S is meaningless when the fact does not exist, then truthmaking is not naming (by T1), which is all it can be on Ed's (mis)understanding of truthmaking.
Horn Two. If S does not name F, then there is no truthmaking. For truthmaking is a naming relation.
Critique
It is clear that Ed does not understand truthmaker theory. The key idea is not that sentences name facts, but that facts make sentences true. That truthmaking is different from naming is clear from the different directions of the relations, but also because truthmaking is a many-many relation whereas naming is a many-one relation. That truthmaking is many-many can be seen as follows. One and the same truth can have many different truthmakers. For example, 'Something is red' is made true by a's being red, b's being red, c's being red, etc. And one and the same truthmaker can make true many truths. For example, Tom's being red makes true 'Tom is red,' 'Tom is red or Shlomo is sad,' etc. (Cf. Armstrong 1997, pp. 129-130.)
Nominalism
Ed has an understanding of nominalism which contemporary analytic philosophers will find idiosyncratic and vacuous to boot. No philosopher today thinks that for every bit of language there is a corresponding bit of reality. So we are all nominalists in this vacuous sense. And no one is a realist if “the root [of the error of the Realists] is to multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms, and [to suppose] that to every term [or expression] whatsoever there corresponds a thing [quid rei].” And surely it is a bad joke to claim or suggest that TM-theorists straightaway infer the existence of facts from the existence of declarative sentences.
I would be interested to see how you respond to the following dilemma (from Peter Geach, "Truth and God," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, [1982]: 84).
Say proposition P1 is true because it corresponds to fact F. Does the proposition "Proposition P1 is true" (call it proposition P2) have a truthmaker? It seems that it should. Not only that, it seems that the truthmaker of P2 should be the same as P1 (i.e. F). But it's not obvious how F could make P2 true, since it is not obvious that F shares P2's "propositional" or "language-like structure," as you put it.
You've already said that some propositions do not have truthmakers, so perhaps you could just deny that P2 has a truthmaker. Or perhaps there is a way that F could do the job of truthmaking with respect to P2? Or perhaps P2 could be analyzed in a way that shows it is not really different from P1?
Thanks for your high-quality blogging!
You're very welcome! Interesting puzzle. It seems obvious that P2 has a truthmaker and that it has the same truthmaker as P1. Note also that if P1 is contingent, then P2 will also be contingent. For example,
Tom is sad
and
'Tom is sad' is true
are both contingently true and have the same truthmaker, namely, the contingent fact of
Tom's being sad.
And the same holds for all further iterations such as
"'Tom is sad' is true" is true.
Iteration of the truth predicate preserves the modal status of the base proposition. The regress here is infinite but benign. Whatever makes the base proposition true makes true every member of the infinite series of truth predications.
Now the problem you raise is that, while there is a clear isomorphism between 'Tom is sad' and Tom's being sad, there is not the same isomorphism between "'Tom is sad' is true" and Tom's being sad. The predicate in P2 is the predicate 'true', not the predicate 'sad.' P1 is about a man and says of him that he is sad; P2 is about a proposition and says of it that it is true. You are making an assumption, perhaps this:
A. If two or more propositions have the same truthmaker, then they must predicate the same properties of the same subjects.
The truthmaker theorist, however, is not committed to (A). The singular 'Tom is sad' and the existentially general 'Someone is sad' have the same truthmaker, namely, Tom's being sad, but the two propositions differ in logical form, and the second is not about what the first is about. The singular proposition is about Tom while the general proposition is not.
My point, then, is that the puzzle arises only if we assume (A). But (A) is no part of truthmaker theory. Truthmaking is not a 1-1 correspondence. 'Someone is sad' has many different truthmakers, and Tom's being sad makes true many different propositions, indeed, infinitely many.
Our problem may be formulated as an antilogism, or aporetic triad:
A. Some sentences are true in virtue of their correspondence with extralinguistic reality.
B. If so, then reality must have a sentence-like structure.
C. Reality does not have a sentence-like structure.
This trio of propositions is inconsistent. And yet one can make a plausible case for each member of the trio.
Ad (A). Consider a true contingent sentence such as 'Tom is sad,' or the proposition expressed by an assertive utterance in appropriate circumstances of such a sentence. Surely, or rather arguably, the sentence or proposition cannot just be true: if true it is true in virtue of something external to the sentence. I should say that I reject all deflationary theories of truth, including Ramsey's redundancy theory, Quine's disquotationalism, and Paul Horwich's minimalism. The external something cannot be another sentence, or, more generally, another truthbearer. Nor can it be someone's say-so: no truth by fiat unless your name is YHWH. So the external something has to be something 'in the world,' i.e., in the realm of primary reference, as opposed to the realm of sense, to invoke a Fregean distinction. The basic idea here is that some truths need ontological grounds: there is a deep connection between truth and being. There is more to a true sentence than the sentence that is true. There is that in the world which makes it true. Call it the truthmaker of the truth. Some truthbearers need truthmakers. As far as I am concerned, this is about as clear as it gets in philosophy. Which type of entity is best suited to play the truthmaker role, however, is a further question.
Ad (B). At a bare minimum, external reality must include Tom, the subject of our sentence. Part of what must exist for 'Tom is sad' to be true is Tom himself. But Tom alone does not suffice since the sentence says, and says truly, that Tom is sad. So it would seem that external reality must also include properties including the property of being sad. How could something be F if there is no F-ness in the world? There are of course extreme nominalists who deny that there are properties. I consign these extremists to the outer darkness where there is much wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Theirs is a lunatic position barely worth discussing. It is a datum that there are properties. One cannot reasonably ask whether they are; the only reasonable question is what they are. Moderate nominalism, however, is a respectable position. The moderate nominalist admits properties, but denies that they are universals. In contemporary jargon, the moderate nominalist holds that properties are tropes. A trope is a property assayed as a particular, as an unrepeatable item. Accordingly, the sadness in Tom is not repeated elsewhere: it is unique to him. Nor is it transferable: it cannot migrate to some other concrete particular. I'll 'turn' back to tropes in a 'moment.' (Get the double pun?)
For now suppose properties are immanent universals and that reality includes Tom and the property of being sad. Could the sum Tom + sadness suffice as the ontological ground of the truth of 'Tom is sad'? I will argue that it cannot. A universal is a repeatable entity. Universals are either transcendent or immanent. An immanent universal is one that cannot exist unless instantiated. A transcendent universal is one that can. Suppose sadness is an immanent universal instantiated by Shlomo. Then sadness exists and Tom exists. But the mere(ological) sum of the two does not suffice to make true 'Tom is sad.' For if the property and the particular each exist, it does not follow that the particular has the property. A tertium quid is required: something that ties the property to the particular, sadness to Tom.
What this suggests is that the truthmaker of a contingent predication of the form a is F must be something that corresponds to the sentence or proposition as a whole. It cannot be a by itself, or F-ness by itself; it must be a's being F. It is the BEING F of Tom that needs accounting. You could call this the problem of copulative Being.
Enter facts or states of affairs. (These are roughly the states of affairs of Armstrong's middle period.) We now have the concrete particular Tom, the property sadness, and the fact of Tom's being sad. This third thing brings together the concrete particular and the property to form a truthmaking fact. Now this fact, though not a proposition or a sentence, is obviously proposition-like or sentence-like. Although it is a truthmaker, not a truthbearer, it is isomorphic with the truthbearer it makes true. Its structure is mirrored in the proposition. It is a unity of constituents that is not a mere mereological sum of parts any more than a sentence-in-use or a proposition is a mere mereological sum of parts. Plato was already in possession of the insight that a declarative sentence is not a list of words. 'Tom is sad' is not the list: 'Tom,' 'sad,' or the list: 'Tom,' 'is,' 'sad.'
This argument to facts as worldly items in addition to their constituents requires the assumption that properties are universals. For this assumption is what makes it possible for the sum Tom + sadness to exist without Tom being sad. To resist this argument for the sentence-like structure of external reality, therefore, one might try insisting that properties are not universals. And here we come to Arianna Betti's proposal which I have discussed in painful detail in a draft the final version of which will soon appear in the journal METAPHYSICA. She suggests that properties are bearer-specific and that relations are relata-specific.
Well, suppose sadness is bearer-specific, or more precisely, bearer-individuated. This means that it cannot exist unless its bearer, Tom, exists. We can depict the property as follows: ____(tom)Sadness. Tom can exist without this property because it is contingent that Tom is sad. But the property cannot exist or be instantiated without Tom. On this scheme there cannot be a difference between the sum Tom + ___(tom)Sadness and the fact of Tom's being sad. Given the particular and the property, the fact 'automatically' exists. Betti takes this to show that some mereological sums can serve as truthmakers. But, as she notes, the bearer-specific property by itself can serve as truthmaker. For if ___(tom)Sadness exists, it follows that 'Tom is sad' is true. This is because it cannot exist without being insdtantiated, and because it is the "nature" (Betti's word) of this property to be of Tom and Tom alone. So if it exists, then it is instantiated by Tom, by Tom alone, and without the services of a tertium quid.
Now the point I want to make is that whether we take properties to be universals or tropes, it seems we have to grant that reality has a proposition-like structure. Either way it has a proposition-like structure. We saw how this works if properties are universals. The mereological sum Tom + the universal sadness does not suffice as truthmaker for 'Tom is sad.' So we need the fact of Tom's being sad. But this fact has a proposition-like structure. To avoid Armstrongian facts, Betti suggests that we construe properties as monadic tropes. But these too have a proposition-like structure. Even if Betti has shown a way to avoid Armstrong's middle period facts or states of affairs, she has not shown that the world is just a collection of things bare of proposition-like or sentence-like structure.
How so? Well, ___(tom)Sadness obviously in some sense involves Tom, if not as a constituent, then in some other way. There has to be something about this property that makes it such that if it is instantiated, it is instantiated by Tom and Tom alone. It is very much like a Fregean proposition about Tom. Such a proposition does not have Tom himself, with skin and hair, as a constituent, but some appropriately abstract representative of him, his individual essence, say, or his Plantingian haecceity.
Ad (C). According to the third limb of our triad reality does not have a sentence-like structure. This will strike many as obvious. Are worldly items syntactically related to one another? Do this make any sense at all? Arianna Betti, Against Facts, MIT Press, 2015, p. 26, italics in original:
Only linguistic entities . . . can strictly speaking have syntax. Facts are neither linguistic nor languagelike, because they are that of which the world is made, and the world is not made of linguistic or languagelike entities at the lowest level of reference. Thus the articulation of a fact cannot be logical in the sense of being syntactical. It is a categorical mismatch to say that there is a syntactical articulation between a lizard and light green or an alto sax and its price.
So how do we solve this bad boy? I say we reject (C).
In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God, and the Logos ex-pressed itself LOG-ically as the world.
“We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future.”
Barack Obama might like to have that one back this morning, to stick a pin in the moving finger that writes. But the finger done writ, and it won’t come back to cancel a single line of the president’s fatuous fib that the United States didn’t pay $400 million to ransom four hostages taken by the president’s friends in Tehran.
Perhaps the president can take some solace, thin as it is, in the fact that nobody believed him, anyway.
'Fatuous fib' is not quite the phrase. It is a brazen lie from a man who specializes in the brazen lie. And not just the lie, but every mode of mendacity.
A mere picture of the man would suffice to define homo mendax.
Vote for Hillary and you will get more of the same. The difference between her and Obama is that she is not a very good liar.
Why is this? Permit me a speculation. Hillary is much older than Obama. She grew up in a time when it was understood that there is such a thing as truth and that lying is wrong. So at some level she knows she is doing wrong when she lies. This dim awareness interferes with the efficacy of her lying. But Obama is the POMO-prez. Truth? What's that?
His brand of leftist replaces truth with narrative.
Comments appreciated if you are en rapport with the subject matter.
The Case Against Facts
Arianna Betti, Against Facts, The MIT Press, 2015, pp. 296 + xxvii
If Buridan's contribution to the bestiarum philosophorum was the ass, and David Armstrong's the ostrich, Arianna Betti's is the hedgehog bristling with spines. The hedgehog is an appropriate totemic animal inasmuch as her book too bristles with sharp distinctions and prickly arguments designed to inflict pain upon the friends of facts. In this penetrating and beautifully organized volume Professor Betti deploys her distinctions and arguments against two sorts of facts, compositional and propositional, as she calls them. The states of affairs of David Malet Armstrong's middle period (Armstrong 2007) are examples of the first kind of fact. These items are the main target of Betti's animadversions in the first part of her two-part book. She does not go so far as to claim that Armstrongian facts do not exist; her claim is the rather more modest one that we have no reason to posit them, since the work they do, if it needs doing at all, can be done just as well by a certain sort of mereological sum. (101) Betti ignores, however, Armstrong's very different later conception of states of affairs or facts. (Armstrong 2009; Armstrong 2010, 26-34; Vallicella 2016) This later conception also counts as compositional in her sense and ought to have been discussed for the sake of completeness, especially since it in some ways approximates to Betti's mereological position.
One might wonder how a fact could fail to be compositional. Facts are complex or composite items, after all, not simples. So they must all have some internal composition or other, whether they be truthmaking facts or facts of the Chisholmian-Plantingian sort. At a bare minimum, a's being F is composed of a and F-ness. Thus I find less than felicitous Betti's talk of propositional facts in contrast to compositional facts as “noncompositional objects at the level of reference.” (24) She makes it clear, however, that she is using 'compositional' in a narrow sense that implies that compositional facts and their constituents are “part[s] of the furniture of the world.” (37) We shall soon see that being in the world involves being real as opposed to being ideal. An example of a compositional fact is the fact of Guido's being hungry. This fact has Guido himself, all 200 lbs of him, as a constituent. An example of a propositional fact is the putative referent of the that-clause in a sentence like 'Guido sees that Francesca is serving spaghetti puttanesca.' This putative referent is the fact that Francesca is serving spaghetti puttanesca. This propositional fact is like a (Fregean) proposition, though it is not a proposition, in that it does not have Francesca herself as a constituent, but rather an abstract surrogate that represents her. (170) (This fact-of vs. fact-that terminology is mine, not Betti's. I got it from Milton Fisk.)
Betti describes in marvellous detail seven features of compositional facts (18) and five of propositional facts (170). I will speak of C-facts and P-facts. Here are some salient differences. C-facts are in the world, and thus suited to play the truthmaking role whereas P-facts are not in the world and hence not fit for truthmaking. To be in the world is to be real where to be real is to exist “through time and in time as causes or effects in a causal chain.” (22) So C-facts are real while P-facts are ideal. The ideality of P-facts, however, is not that of propositions since P-facts are not propositions. Betti is greatly and rightly exercised by the curious in-between status of these “ghostly critters” (114) that are neither truthbearers nor truthmakers and yet are championed by such distinguished philosophers as Roderick Chisholm, Alvin Plantinga, and Kit Fine. These “ghostly critters” are not truthbearers because they are neither true nor false. But while they are not bivalent in terms of truthvalue, they are 'bipolar' (my term): while all exist, some of them obtain while some do not. They are not truthmakers since truthmakers are real and 'monopolar': if they don't exist they are nothing. Thus the fact of Guido's being hungry does not exist at all if Guido is not hungry. Propositional facts are neither fish nor fowl. The conclusion Betti arrives at strikes me as correct: “Propositional facts collapse into true propositions.” (179) Propositional facts are thus not a distinctive category of entity. We need them, she thinks, as little as we need compositional facts. Actually, her position is far more radical than this since she denies that that-clauses are referential parts of speech. So her position is best expressed conditionally by the following quotation: “If there were nominal reference to facts, facts would be true propositions . . . . (113) Her view, if I understand it, is eliminativist not identitarian: she is not saying that there are propositional facts and that what they are are true propositions; she is saying that that there are no propositional facts.
Leaving propositional facts to languish in their ghostly realm, the rest of this article will take issue with Betti's critique of compositional facts, the ones dear to my heart, the facts involved in the flux and shove of the real order. On a personal note, I want to thank Professor Betti for her very close attention to my articles on the topic.
The Case Against Compositional Facts
A compositional fact, as opposed to a propositional fact, is an entity fit to play the role of truthmaker. The truthmaker role may be introduced as follows. Consider the assertive utterance of some such contingent sentence as 'Tom is sad.' If true, this assertively uttered sentence cannot just be true: if true, it is true because or in virtue of something external to it. This use of 'because' is not causal which is why philosophers reach for the weasel phrase 'in virtue of,' which, despite its slipperiness, may well be indispensable for metaphysics. I say it is indispensable. (Or do hedgehogs eat weasels?) Roughly, there has to be something that 'makes' the sentence true. This external something cannot be another declarative sentence, even if true. More generally, a truth is a true truthbearer (a Fregean proposition, say, or perhaps an Aristotelian proposition, see pp. 31-32 for Betti's helpful explanation of the difference) and no true truthbearer is made true by another such item in the specific sense of 'makes true' in play in truthmaker theory. Nor can someone's say-so be what makes true a true truthbearer. The truthmaker has to be something 'in the world,' something extralinguistic and mind-independent in the realm of reference as opposed to the realm of sense. The friends of truthmakers are realists about truth: they are convinced that at least some truths are in need of an ontological ground of their being true.1
Truthmaker maximalists hold that all truths need such grounds, but one needn't be a maximalist to be a truthmaker theorist. As for 'makes true,' this is neither entailment nor causation. Not entailment, because entailment is a relation between propositions, assuming that truthbearers are propositions, whereas truthmaking is a relation between extra-propositional reality and propositions. So if x makes true y, then y is a truthbearer, but x is not. If someone says that the proposition expressed by 'Snow is white' makes true the proposition expressed by 'Something is white,' then that person, while talking sense, is not using 'makes true' in the specific way in which the phrase is used in truthmaker theory. Truthmaking is not causation for a similar reason: causation does not connect the extra-propositional to the propositional whereas truthmaking does. As Armstrong says, truthmaking is “cross-categorial.” (Armstrong 2004b, 5) It links the extra-propositional to the propositional.
It is important to note, however, that while truthmakers cannot be Fregean or Aristotelian propositions, and thus must be extra-propositional, they must also be proposition-like on Armstrong's approach. This is a point I think Betti misses. Speaking of compositional facts, she tells us that “facts are neither linguistic nor languagelike entities at the lowest level of reference. (28, emphasis in original) But this is certainly not Armstrong's view, the view that is supposed to be the target of Betti's critique of compositional facts. His view is that the world is a world of states of affairs, a “totality of facts not of things” (Wittgenstein) and “sentence-like rather than list-like.” (Armstrong 2010, 34) If the world is sentence-like, then, pace Betti, it is language-like. Armstrong was profoundly influenced by his teacher in Sydney, the Scots philosopher John Anderson, who held that “reality, while independent of the mind that knows it, has a 'propositional' structure.” (Armstrong 1997, 3) Armstrong goes on to say that “the propositional view of reality which he [Anderson] championed is the facts or states of affairs view of reality.” (Armstrong 1997, 3-4) That Armstrongian facts are proposition-like and thus language-like is fairly obvious when we consider the truthmakers of contingent predications of the form 'a is F.' The truthmaker cannot be a by itself, or F-ness by itself, or the mereological sum a + F-ness. It must be a-instantiating F-ness, which has a proposition-like structure. Armstrongian facts have a logos-like and thus logical articulation contrary to what Betti says in opposition to Kit Fine. (28) But now I am getting ahead of myself.
Suppose you accept the legitimacy of the truthmaker role and the need for some type of entity to play it. It doesn't follow straightaway that the entities needed to play the role must be what Betti calls compositional facts or what David Armstrong calls states of affairs. This is so even if we confine ourselves to the really clear examples of truthbearers in need of truthmakers, namely, synthetic, contingent predications such as 'Guido is hungry' or the propositions expressed by assertive utterances of such sentences. Nevertheless, a powerful argument can be mounted for compositional facts as truthmakers. The argument Armstrong and I consider powerful, however, Betti calls “unsound.” (106) Surprise!
Although she is skeptical of the need for truthmakers, she is willing to grant the need arguendo, insisting only that if we need truthmakers, a certain type of mereological complex can do the job thus rendering Armstrong's facts, as unmereological complexes, unnecessary. (102) This is why she thinks the truthmaker argument for Armstrongian facts is unsound. As she sees it, compositional facts are not givens, but theoretical posits, and unnecessary ones at that. They were invented to solve a problem, the unity problem, that arises only because of certain optional assumptions about relations and properties that one is not bound to make. (94-95) Compositional facts are an ad hoc, indeed a “maximally ad hoc,” solution to a pseudo-problem. (64)
Now let me say something in exposition of Armstrong's argument for facts or states of affairs as truthmakers on the assumption that the truthmaker role is legitimate and needs to be filled by some category of entity or other. I will then consider Betti's counter-proposal.
If it is true that Tom is sad, could the truthmaker of this truth be the item that Betti calls (8) the sentence-subject of 'Tom is sad,' namely, Tom? No, since Tom needn't be sad. So Tom by himself cannot be what makes true 'Tom is sad.' The same goes for the property of being sad. By itself the property cannot be the truthmaker of the sentence in question. (I am assuming, with Armstrong, that properties are immanent universals. Immanent, in that they cannot exist uninstantiated; universal, in that they are repeatable.) Now if Tom exists and sadness exists, then so does the mereological sum Tom + sadness. But this sum cannot be the truthmaker either. For the sum exists whether or not Tom is sad. How so?
Suppose that Tom is not sad, but Shlomo is. If properties are immanent universals, then sadness cannot exist uninstantiated; suppose it exists in virtue of being instantiated by Shlomo. So Tom exists, sadness exists, and their sum exists. But this does not suffice for Tom's being sad. There is a missing ontological ingredient: something to connect sadness to Tom. You might think that the missing ingredient would have to be the worldly correlate of the 'is' of predication. But if you take this correlate to be an exemplification/instantiation relation then you ignite Bradley's relation regress which is unfortunately vicious. Other moves invoking Strawsonian nonrelational ties, Bergmannian nexus, Fregean unsaturated concepts, and benign fact-internal infinite regresses (see Vallicella 2010), are equally unavailing. The unifier of a fact's constituents cannot be a further constituent or anything internal to the fact. This leaves two possibilities: (i) the unifier is external to the fact, which Betti rejects, and (ii) Armstrong's middle-period suggestion that facts are entities in addition to their consituents and it is they who hold fact-appropriate constituents together so that they can exercise the truthmaking function. Betti has mastered the dialectic and considers the least bad solution to be Armstrong's: facts hold their constituents together. Although she doesn't say so, she considers my solution in terms of an external unifier to be the worst. The extant putative solutions to the unity problem of course presuppose that it is a genuine problem. Betti thinks it isn't.
Betti's Dissolution of the Unity Problem
After rejecting the extant putative solutions to the unity problem, Betti proposes to dissolve it by collapsing the distinction between “relations that relate relata and relations that do not: all relations relate relata and carry out their own unifying work.” (95) She means this to apply to properties as well. All properties qualify their bearers and carry out their own qualifying work. Thus there needn't be anything to hold the constituents of a relational or as monadic fact together: nothing internal to the fact, nothing external, and not the fact itself. Betti's point is that there is no need for Armstrongian facts, facts as entities in addition to their constituents. (Cf. Armstrong 1997, 117) Her point is not that there are no facts. There may well be facts; it is just that if there are, they are a special sort of mereological sum. Perhaps we can say that she is an identitarian about compositional facts, not an eliminativist, whereas she is an eliminativist about propositional facts, not an identitarian. More on this in a moment.
What Betti has to do is block a possibility like the following. In the actual world, call it Charley, Tim loves Tina. In a merely possible world w in which Tim and Tina both exist, Tim does not love Tina, but Tim loves Toni. In Charley we have both the relational fact of Tim's loving Tina and the mereological sum Tim + loves + Tina. In w, we have the sum Tim + loves + Tina but not the corresponding fact. This implies that there is more to the fact than the sum of its constituents: the sum can exist without constituting a fact. The something more is that which makes of the constituents a real truthmaking unity. Call it the unifier. Betti thinks that the least bad of the extant proposals as to what the unifier is is Armstrong's: facts hold their constituents together; facts are unmereological complexes over and above their constituents. In short, what Betti needs to do is counter the seductive thought that in an actual relational situation such as that of Tom's loving Tina, the constituents can exist without forming a real truthmaking unity. What she needs to maintain is that, necessarily, if all the constituents exist, then the relatedness exists. If the mere existence of the constituents ensures their connectedness, then there is no need for Armstrongian facts. You would then have real unity on the cheap, real truthmaking unity from mereology alone, or rather from mereology operating upon the right sorts of constituents. The mereological principle of the extensionality of parthood would hold for all complexes. Nice work if you can get it!
Betti can achieve her end if she holds that relations are relata-specific where “A relation is relata-specific if and only if it is in its nature to relate specific relata.” (89) Suppose that the relation loves as it figures in the sum Tom + loves + Tina is necessarily such that, if it exists, then it relates Tom and Tina. Then there would be no distinction in reality between loves as a relating relation and loves as an inert relation that is merely a constituent but not also a unifier of the complex into which it enters.
Betti's contention, then, is that all relations, just in virtue of existing, are relating relations, active ontological ingredients if you will, and none are inert ingredients. A relation cannot exist without actually relating its relata. If so, there cannot be a difference between the mereological sum a + R+ b and the fact of a's standing in R to b. Given the constituents, the fact is given: it is not an ontological extra, something over and above the constituents. There is no possibility of the constituents existing without the fact existing. It follows that there is no need for facts as unmereological compositions, facts as “additions to being,” in a phrase from Armstrong. If a fact just is a mereological complex, then it is an “ontological free lunch,” to employ yet another signature phrase of the late Australian. Of course, not just any old mereological sum is a fact; only those with the right constituents.
And the same goes for properties: all properties, just in virtue of existing, qualify their bearers. There is no need for a tertium quid such as an instantiation relation to tie a property to its bearer. Nor is there any need for monadic facts as entities in addition to their constituents to do this unifying work. There is no difference between the sum a + F-ness and the fact of a's being F. For this to work, all properties have to be “bearer-specific.” “A property is bearer-specific if and only if it is in its nature to be had by specific bearers.” (90) Suppose it is true that Hargle is happy, and that being happy is “bearer-specific.” We can display the property as follows: __(H) being happy. '__' indicates that the property is unsaturated or incomplete or gappy in something like Frege's sense: if it is had by an individual it is had directly without the need of a connector such as an instantiation relation or Strawsonian nonrelational tie or a Bergmannian nexus. '(H)' indicates that the property is bearer-specific or rather bearer-individuated: if the property is had, it is had by Hargle and nothing else. That the property is had follows from its existence: necessarily, if the property exists, then it is had, had by Hargle and nothing else, and had directly without the service of a tertium quid. What this all implies is that the mereological sum Hargle + __(H) being happy suffices as truthmaker of 'Hargle is happy.' There is no need for a fact over and above this sum. Indeed, as Betti points out, the property alone suffices as truthmaker since it cannot exist unless Hargle exists. (101)
Questions and Objections
1. Why is Betti's proposal superior to Armstrong's?
Betti presents us with an alternative way of thinking about truthmaking facts, namely, as mereological sums whose parts include relata-specific relations and bearer-specific properties. Betti's main point is that “mereological complexes are viable as truthmakers; facts are not needed for the role.” (101) When she says that facts are not needed, she means Armstrongian, middle-period facts. She is not denying that there are truthmakers. Nor is she is denying the existence of facts as long as they are assayed as mereological complexes. If a fact is a complex entity that functions as a truthmaker, then her mereological complexes containing relata-specific relations and bearer-dependent properties are facts, though not in Armstrong 's robust sense. She is denying, or rather refusing to countenance on grounds of theoretical economy, facts as unmereological complexes. Her claim is that there is no explanatory need for facts as the middle-period Armstrong conceives of them, namely, as “additions to being.” Betti may bristle at my use of 'facts' in describing her position but surely there is an innocuous and nearly datanic, as opposed to theoretical, use of 'fact' according to which an individual's having a property, or two or more things standing in a relation, is a fact. Indeed, she needs this use of 'fact' just to state her theory, according to which the fact aRb is identical to the sum a + R + b, when R is relata-specific. On her view facts are a proper subset of mereological sums. That is not a denial of facts, but an acceptance of them. Unfortunately, Betti sometimes expresses herself in a misleading way. She tells us, for example, that “the thought that the world is a world without facts – one in which there is no difference between facts and sums – is shown to be perfectly sensible.” (88) This formulation equivocates on 'fact.' What she wants to say is that the world is without Armstrongian facts, not that the world is without truthmaking facts. It is the latter that are no different from sums, namely those sums whose constituents include relata-specific relations and object-dependent properties.
Betti thinks her theory is preferable to Armstrong's. I question whether she is justified in this preference. We face a tough choice. Armstrong's theory violates the extensionality of parthood and countenances unmereological complexes. This is a strike against it. Betti's theory avoids unmereological complexes, thereby upholding the extensionality of parthood, but accepts relata-specific relations and bearer-dependent properties. How plausible is it that all relations are relata- specific and all properties bearer-dependent? Are these notions even coherent? Let's consider the coherence question.
2. Against Relata-Specific Relations and Bearer-Dependent Properties
Suppose Argle is two feet from Bargle. There is nothing in the nature of either relatum to necessitate their standing in this external relation. Each can exist apart from the relation. And as I see it, there cannot be anything in the nature of the relation itself to necessitate that it be precisely these two critters that the relation relates. So on my view a relational situation such as Argle's being two feet from Bargle involves a double externality: there is nothing in the nature of the terms to dictate their standing in the external relation in question, and there is nothing in the nature of the external relation to dictate the terms. But as Betti sees it, it is the nature of this relation to relate Argle and Bargle and nothing else: the relation cannot exist/be instantiated without relating precisely these two. This implies that “as soon as” (105) the relation exists, it relates Argle and Bargle. If this conception is coherent, it has the desired consequence of undercutting Bertrand Russell's distinction between actually relating relations and those same relations as inert, and with it the distinction between a fact as a real unity of fact-appropriate constituents and the 'mere' mereological sum of those very same constituents. If this works, it puts paid to Armstrong's commitment to unmereological complexes: mereology suffices for truthmakers provided the parts of the sums include relata-specific relations or bearer-dependent properties.
It seems to me, however, that the notion of relata-specificity reduces to absurdity by way of the following argument in which R is any relata-specific dyadic external relation, and a and b are its individual relata. (See also my critique of D. W. Mertz in Vallicella 2004.) Generalization beyond the dyadic case is straightforward but unnecessary. Betti's definition of 'external relation' is standard and perfectly serviceable: “A relation is external if and only if it is not grounded in corresponding properties of its relata, that is, is an entity over and above its relata.” (89) An internal relation is then one that is grounded in corresponding properties and is not an entity in addition to its relata. Now to the argument:
P1. R is entirely dependent for its existence on both a and b. (Betti's theory of relata-specificity)
This is because (i) R cannot exist without being instantiated and thus cannot exist without actually relating some pair of individuals or other, and (ii) R cannot, as relata-specific, relate any pair of individuals other than a, b. If dyadic R were an immanent universal, then it could not exist without relating some pair or other; but it would not necessarily have to relate the precise pair, a, b. R's existence would then not depend on its relating a and b. But as it is, R is a particular (an unrepeatable), not a universal (a repeatable); it is a non-transferable relational trope. It is as particular as the particulars it relates. Its being or existence is exhausted by its particular occurrence, unlike an immanent universal the being or existence of which is not exhausted by its instantiation in a particular case. So R, as a relational trope, is entirely dependent for its existence on the exact relata it has: its being or existence is exhausted by its relating of those exact relata, the individuals a and b. Therefore,
C1. R is not distinct in reality from the particular relatedness aRb: R = aRb.
Of course, R can be thought of in abstraction from aRb. But R in reality is identical to aRb. You cannot say that they are different because aRb has constituents a, b while R does not. For R exists when and only when it is relating a and b. Apart from them it is nothing at all.
P2. The particular relatedness or relational fact aRb is identical to the mereological sum a + R + b, given that R is relata-specific. (Betti's theory) Therefore,
C2. R is identical to the sum a + R + b. (from C1 and P2 by Transitivity of Identity)
P3. No proper part of a mereological sum having two or more members is identical to the sum of which it is a proper part. (Principle of mereology) Therefore,
C3. R is not identical to the sum a + R + b. (from P3) Therefore,
C4. R is and is not identical to the sum a + R + b. (from C2, C3) Contradiction! Therefore,
C5. Either P1 or P2 is false; either way, Betti's theory fails.
Betti will presumably reject (C1). But how? She tells us that it is the nature of R to relate exactly a and b. Now if it is the nature of R to relate exactly these relata, then it is intrinsic to R that it do so. But then R is intrinsically relational, relational in and of itself. If this is neither contradictory nor magical, then it involves importing mind (intentionality) into the bowels of R. For if it is intrinsic to R that it relate exactly a and b, then R, quite apart from actually relating a and b, 'pre-selects' a and b as its relata. But this is what mind in its intentional states does. Such states are intrinsically relational: it is their nature to be of or about items that need not exist for the states to be of or about them. But surely there is no intentionality within the non-transferable relational trope R!
But what is the alternative? Will we be told that a and b are constituents of R? But then R is identical to aRb, when it cannot be given that aRb is a + R + b.
Now let's consider bearer-dependent properties. Suppose we grant, along with Armstrong (2004, 49), that some mereological complexes are truthmakers. Is it not also the case that some are not? Suppose that Gargle is lachrymose but Hargle is not. Then the following sum exists: Hargle + __(G)being lachrymose. The sum exists because its two parts exist. But the parts are not connected to form a truthmaker. This implies that on Betti's account there are two sorts of mereological sum: those that are truthmakers and those that are not. It also implies that what makes a mereological sum a truthmaker is not its being a mereological sum. What makes a sum a truthmaker is the nature of its members. Thus what makes Hargle + __(H)being happy a truthmaking sum is its second member.
But this second member has a rather intricate and puzzling structure. It is a bearer-individuated property, a property that exists only if instantiated by Hargle. Hargle can exist without being happy, but the property in question cannot exist unless Hargle exists. It is in the nature of the property to qualify precisely Hargle “as soon as it exists,” (105) i.e., as soon as the property exists. But when does it exist? When Hargle instantiates it. So it is not as if the property has its individuated nature apart from its being instantiated; rather, it receives its individuated nature by being instantiated by Hargle. It is only the existing Hargle that can make the property individuative of precisely Hargle and nothing else. So Hargle supplies the nature that makes the property Hargle-specific, or rather Hargle-individuated.
Does this not smack of absurdity? The nature of an entity is intrinsic to it; it cannot consist in a relation to an item external to it. So it cannot be instantiation by Hargle that gives the property its nature. If, on the other hand, Hargle were a constituent of the property in question, namely, __(H)being happy, then it would make sense to say that it is the nature of the property to be instantiated by Hargle. But Hargle is not a constituent of the property; otherwise the property would not be a property but the fact of Hargle's being happy.
Betti seems to face a dilemma. Either Hargle is not a constituent of the property or he is. If Hargle is not a constituent of the property, then the property has no nature that makes it dependent on precisely Hargle and nothing else. But if Hargle is a constituent of the property, then the property is a fact.
If Betti's account is incoherent, as I have just argued that it is, then it cannot be superior to Armstrong's even if Armstrong's is also incoherent. I should make it clear that I am not defending Armstrong; I admit that his view of facts is problematic. In fact, I argue that it is incoherent in Vallicella 2016. My point is that Betti's theory is not an acceptable replacement for it. Even if her theory is not incoherent, it is problematic as I will now further demonstrate.
3. Digging Deeper: Further Questions about Betti's Theory of Relations
Betti faults me (92-93) for failing to distinguish between externality and relata-unspecificity. A relation is external just in case it is not “grounded in corresponding properties of its relata . . . .” (89) “A rela tion is relata-unspecific if and only if it is not in its nature to relate specific relata.” (90) I fail to distinguish externality from relata-unspecificity in that I hold that, in Betti's words, “A relation is external if and only if it could have related another pair (or triple, quadruple, etc.) of relata.” (93, citing Vallicella 2002, 14-15, 31; 2004, 164). As I see it, no external relation has a nature that dictates that it relate only a particular pair, triple, quadruple, etc. of relata. As against this, Betti envisages the following possibility: an external relation such as being two feet from that holds, if it holds at all, between Argle and Bargle but cannot hold between any other pair of relata. The relation is external in that there is nothing in the natures of the relata that dictates that they stand in the relation in question; the relation is relata-specific in that there is something in the nature of the relation to dictate that, if it holds, it holds only between Argle and Bargle.
Now if Betti's scenario is possible, then I have blundered by conflating externality and relata-unspecificity. But while I grant that Betti's 'possibility' is combinatorially possible given her definitions, it is not metaphysically possible. I gave an argument above. So my conflation of externality and relata-unspecificity strikes me as justified.
I found Betti's theory of relata-specific relations (which draws on the work of her student Jan Willem Wieland) obscure and in need of further development. One intriguing suggestion is that “relata-specific relations can still be universals.” (91) Now there is a wholly uncontroversial sense of 'relata-specific universal' which Betti does not intend. Consider the universal taller than. This is a dyadic relation that is instantiated by ordered pairs of objects, but not just by any old pair. The pairs must be pairs of things having height. Taller than is thus specific to all and only such pairs and not to pairs of numbers or pairs of sets or pairs of propositions or pairs of angels or pairs of acts of thinking. But Betti means something different. She is apparently envisaging the possibility of a relation that is universal but that, say, relates only Guido, Francesca, Giacomo, and Maria in respect of height. Unfortunately, she gives no exemples and I am not sure what she is driving at. She brings this up because she thinks that her solution to the unity problem works whether or not one assays properties as universals or as tropes. (91) But this is all very obscure and here is a lacuna that needs filling.
Conclusion
My interim verdict with respect to compositional facts is that Betti has not provided a viable mereological alternative to the admittedly untenable facts or states of affairs of Armstrong's middle period.
REFERENCES
Armstrong, D. M. 1978. Nominalism and Realism: Universals and Scientific Realism, vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, D. M. 1983. What is a Law of Nature? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, D. M. 1989a. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press.
Armstrong, D. M. 1989b. A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, D. M. 1993. “A World of States of Affairs”. Philosophical Perspectives, vol.7, 429-440.
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1It is an interesting question whether one could be an idealist and also a truthmaker theorist. Consider a Kantian who holds that phenomenal objects and events are “empirically real but transcendentally ideal” to employ a signature Kantian phrase. It seems to me that such a philosopher could maintain a need for truthmakers for some truthbearers, namely those synthetic aposteriori, and thus contingent, judgments about empirical objects and events. It seems one could combine realism about empirical truth with transcendental idealism.
As I said last Friday, the last time I read anything by John D. Caputo was at the end of the '70s. His articles and books struck me as worth reading at the time. His recent work, however, appears to be incompetent rubbish. One could say of the latter-day Caputo what Searle of Derrida: he gives bullshit a bad name. The following from a review by Alan Worsnip:
This confusion recurs again and again. For example, Caputo treats the question of whether there is one god or many (or none) as a version of the question of whether there is “one truth or many.” But it is not. If there were to be two mayors of London instead of one, that would require a political rethinking but not a rethinking of the theory of truth. Likewise, if there were to be two gods instead of one, that would require a religious rethinking but not a rethinking of the theory of truth. Sometimes it feels like Truth is just Caputo’s vehicle to discuss the subject that really animates him—religion, and his own expansive, almost nontheistic account of it.
Caputo also persistently runs together the questions of truth with questions of knowledge of truth. For example, he complains that absolutism—the view that there are absolute truths—“confuses us [i.e. human beings] with God,” a being that can know every truth. Yet the claim that there is an (absolute) truth about some matter is entirely compatible with the claim that we may often be deeply ignorant about it. Presumably there is a true fact of the matter as to whether the number of blades of grass in the UK was either odd or even at the moment of New Year in 1972. But we will never know which it is. Indeed, it is precisely the areas in which it is appropriate to speak of ignorance that it is least plausible to claim that truth is relative to us or our perspective: being ignorant of a truth involves the capacity to be wrong about it, which means that there is some fact about it independently of what one thinks.
If the Left would cease to exist without its double standards, contemporary Continental philosophy would cease to exist without its trademark confusion of the ontological with the epistemological. I am exaggerating, of course, but in the direction of a truth which I will leave my astute readers to reformulate in more temperate terms if they care to.
I have gone over this ground many times, but apparently one cannot say it too often. The claim that truth is absolute, and cannot be relative to individuals or groups or historical epochs or races, or anything else, is a claim about the nature of truth. It is a claim about what truth is. One who insists on this obvious point is not laying claim to any absolute or god-like knowledge. I can know that truth is absolute without knowing which propositions are true. It is not polite to say it, but say it we must: the failure to grasp such a simple point is a mark of stupidity in someone like Caputo who has had plenty of time and opportunity to learn something about philosophy. He's committing a rookie blunder, a sophomoric mistake.
What is the difference between analytic and Continental philosophy?
In the standard story about academic philosophy—a story which nearly everyone acknowledges to be overly reductive, yet nearly everyone continues to repeat—there are two kinds of philosophy. On one hand there is “analytic philosophy”—according to its opponents, a kind of pedantic bean-counting that alienates philosophy from its project of understanding the deep questions of life, existence and the human condition, replacing them with self-satisfied distinctions such as that between three different uses of the word “so.” On the other hand, there is “continental philosophy”—according to its opponents, a vague and pretentious approach, expressed in unclear prose which conceals a mixture of banalities and blatant falsehoods. Think of it this way: whilst continental philosophy gets better as you get drunker, analytic philosophy gets worse.
It is important not to confuse the question of the fallibility of our cognitive faculties, including reason in us, with the question whether there is truth. A fallibilist is not a truth-denier. One can be — it is logically consistent to be — both a fallibilist and an upholder of (objective) truth. What's more, one ought to be both a fallibilist about some (not all) classes of propositions, and an upholder of the existence of (objective) truth. Indeed, if one is a fallibilist, one who admits that we sometimes go wrong in matters of knowledge and belief, then then one must also admit that we sometimes go right, which is to say that fallibilism presupposes the objectivity of truth.
Just as a fallibilist is not a truth-denier, a truth-affirmer is not an infallibilist or 'dogmatist' in one sense of this word. To maintain that there is objective truth is not to maintain that one is in possession of it. One of the sources of the view that truth is subjective or relative is aversion to dogmatic people and dogmatic claims.
But if you reject the objectivity of truth on the basis of an aversion to dogmatic people and claims, then you are not thinking clearly.
John D. Caputo has recently made the fashionably outlandish claim that "what modern philosophers call 'pure' reason . . . is a white male Euro-Christian construction." Making this claim, Caputo purports to be saying something that is true. Moreover, his making of the claim in public is presumably for the purpose of convincing us that it is true. If so, he presupposes truth, in which case truth cannot be a social construct, as I said in my critique. A commenter responded:
To say that Caputo "presupposes truth" is not to say that he presupposes some sort of absolutist notion of truth. Why is the latter a necessary condition for the activity of "trying to convince"?
The short answer is that there is no notion of truth other than the absolutist notion. Truth is absolute by its very nature. The phrase 'relative truth' names a confusion. I won't go over this ground again, having trod it before. But there is a wrinkle, and that is what I want to explore in this entry. Is absolute truth the same as objective truth? Perhaps not. It might be like this. If there is truth, then it is the same for all cognizers: it is intersubjectively binding on all. It is in this sense objective. It does not vary from person to person, social class to social class, historical epoch to historical epoch, race to race, etc. But how can we be sure that truth in this objective sense is not a mere transcendental presupposition of intelligible discourse and rational debate? If truth is a mere transcendental presupposition, then it is not absolute. For what 'absolute' means is: not relative to or dependent on anything at all. Of course, if truth is absolute, it follows that it is objective in the sense of intersubjectively binding on all. But there is a logical gap in the converse. If truth is objective, it does not straightaway follow that it is absolute. For it might be transcendentally relative: relative to beings like us who cannot think or judge or speak intelligibly without presupposing truth. It might be transcendentally realtive while remaining the same for all in such a way as to exclude as meaningless such phrases as 'proletarian truth,' bourgeois truth,' 'Protestant truth,' 'Catholic truth,' 'White man's truth,' 'black female's truth,' and other similalry nonsensical constructions.
I will return to the objective-absolute distinction near the end of this entry.
While there may be a problem in showing that truth is more than a transcendental presupposition, and thus absolute, it is fairly easy to show that truth is objective. And so it is easy to show that Caputo presupposes objective truth when he makes his fashionably outlandish PoMo claims.
But what do I mean when I say that truth is objective? I mean that there is a total way things are, and that this total way things are does not depend on the beliefs, desires, wishes, hopes, etc. of finite rational beings like ourselves, whether human or extraterrestrial or angelic. So what I mean by 'Truth is objective' is close to what John Searle means by external realism.
According to John Searle, "external realism [ER] is the thesis that there is a way that things are that is independent of all representations of how things are." (The Construction of Social Reality, p. 182) Is it possible to prove this attractive thesis? And how would the proof go?
We will recall G. E. Moore's attempt to prove the external world by waving his hands. His idea was that it is a plain fact, as anyone can see, that his hands exist, and so it straightaway follows that external objects in space exist. This sounds more like a joke than a philosophical argument. Or if not a joke, then clear proof, not of the external world, but that Moore did not understand the issue. But let's leave Moore to one side for the space of this post. See my aptly entitled Moore category for more on Moore.
The realism issue really has nothing to do with spatially external objects. There unproblematically are such objects whatever their ultimate ontological status. Note also that ER can be true even if there are no spatially external objects. ER is simply the claim that there is a way things are independent of us: it says nothing specifically about spatial individuals.
As Searle interprets it, ER sets forth a condition on the intelligibility of discourse and thought rather than a truth condition of discourse and thought:
There are conditions on the intelligibility of discourse . . . that are not like paradigmatic cases of truth conditions. In the normal understanding of discourse we take these conditions for granted; and unless we took them for granted, we could not understand utterances the way we do . . . . (181)
Among these conditions on intelligibility is ER. It is a necessary presupposition of a large chunk of thought and discourse. What Searle is doing is giving a transcendental argument for ER. He takes it as given that a sentence like 'Mt Everest has ice and snow near the summit' is intelligible. He then inquires into what must be presupposed for it to be intelligible. For the sentence to be true, Mt. Everest must exist, and it must have ice and snow near the summit. But for the sentence to be intelligible, it is not necessary that Mt. Everest exist, or if it does exist that it have ice and snow near the summit. What is necessary is that ER be true: that there be a way things are independent of human representations. If the mountain exists, then that is (part of) the way things are, and if it does not exist, that too is (part of) the way things are. The way things are, then, is not a truth condition of any such statement as 'Mt Everest has ice and snow near the summit.' It is a condition of the intelligibility of such statements and their negations. So even if every statement asserting or implying the existence of a physical object is false, and there is no spatially external world, it is still the case that ER is true. For it is still the case that there is a way things are independent of human representations. The way things are would include the nonexistence of a spatially external world.
For Searle, then, external realism (ER) is a transcendental condition of the intelligibility of large portions of public discourse. He is aware that to have shown this is not to have shown that ER is true. (194) Speaking as we do, we are committed to its being true, but that is not to say that it is true. That there is a way things are independent of human representations is presupposed by the intelligibility of much of what we think or say, but it doesn't follow that it is true.
Why not? Because its truth is conditional upon the fact that our thought and speech is intelligible. If ER is true, then it is true whether or not human representations and their intelligibility exist. But if ER is argued to transcendentally as a condition of intelligibility, then ER's truth is conditional upon the existence of human beings and their representations. So we cannot say that ER is true, but only that we must presuppose it to be true. This is not to say that without us it would be false, but what without us it would be neither true nor false.
Is Searle's position satisfactory? I'm not sure. I want to be able to say that ER is true simpliciter, or true unconditionally (i.e., not conditional upon the fact of the intelligibility of our discourse.)
But does my desire to be able to say that ER is true unconditionally make sense? Maybe not. We cannot not presuppose that there is a way things are assuming that we continue to think and talk as before. But is there a way things are? Yes, it might be said, in the only sense in which it would make sense to assert it, namely, as a presupposition of our thought and talk. That is, what we as rational beings must presuppose as being the case IS the case. The 'possibility' that it not be the case is unmeaning. No sort of wedge can be driven between the presupposing and the being. But this seems to land us in a form of transcendental idealism.
A fascinating labyrinth, this. Collateral reading: Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, section 44 (c), Die Seinsart der Wahrheit und die Wahrheitsvoraussetzung.
The main thing, however, is that Caputo presupposes objective truth when he makes his ridiculous PeeCee assertions.
Here in The Chronicle of Higher Education. You know you are dealing with a lefty when he gets off the phrase, "climate-change denial." Memo to Peter Lupu: I would like to hear your opinion of this article. You might subject it to a Facebook fisking. It should turn your crank, especially the benighted comments. I read a few of them and they reinforce me in my view that, to put it with aphoristic exaggeration,
British (Catholic) historian Paul Johnson in his wonderful Modern Times attributes relativism's rise to Einstein! So does Einstein's latest biographer.
There are two questions that must be distinguished. The first is whether Einstein's Theory of Relativity entails either moral or cognitive (alethic) relativism. The second question is whether Einstein's revolutionary contributions to physics, via their misinterpretation by journalists and other shallow people (am I being unfair?), contributed to an atmosphere in which people would be more likely to embrace moral and cognitive relativism. The first question belongs to the philosophy of science, the second to the sociology of belief. The questions are plainly distinct.
The answer to the first question is a resounding No. Since physics has nothing to do with moral questions — which is not to say that moral questions do not arise in the technological application of physical knowledge or in its dissemination or in the construction of experiments, etc. — it is quite clear that neither STR nor GTR nor any physical theory has any logical consequences in respect of meta-ethical doctrines such as moral relativism. And as for cognitive or alethic relativism, far from its being entailed by the Theory of Relativity, I should think that the latter presupposes the absoluteness of truth.
Take the Galilean principle of the additivity of velocities. Suppose I'm on a train moving with velocity v1. I fire my gun in the direction of the train's travel. The projectile's muzzle velocity is v2. The projectile's total velocity is v1 + v2. But STR implies that the additivity of velocities breaks down at relativistic speeds, speeds approaching the speed of light. Now the proposition that the principle of the additivity of velocities fails at relativistic speeds is not merely true relative to STR, but true absolutely. And the same goes for any number of other propositions of STR and GTR such as the one bearing upon the conversion of mass and energy, E=mc^2, or that the speed of light remains a constant 186, 282 mi/sec. Or consider the proposition that motion and rest are relative to reference-frames. That proposition's truth is not relative to any reference-frame or to any conceptual framework either.
In short, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, far from entailing relativism about truth, presupposes, and thus entails the absoluteness of truth. But I don't need to make that strong a claim to refute the thesis that the Theory of Relativity entails the relativity of truth. It suffices to point out that the theory is logically consistent with the absoluteness of truth.
As for the sociological question, I suppose one would have to grant that misinterpretations and shallow expositions of the Theory of Relativity did contribute to the spread of moral and cognitive relativism. But of course that is not the responsibility of Einstein or modern physics but the responsibility of those shallow-pates we call journalists. (Am I being unfair a second time?)
Professor of Government Charles Kesler in the Spring 2015Claremont Review of Books laments that "The culture of free discussion and debate is declining, and with it liberty, on and off the campus." He is right to be offended by the new culture of 'trigger warnings' and 'microaggressions,' but I wonder if his analysis is quite right.
What’s behind the decline? There are many factors, but among the most influential is that dead-end of modern philosophy called postmodernism, which has had two baneful effects. By teaching that reason is impotent—that it can’t arrive at any objective knowledge of truth, beauty, and justice because there is nothing “out there” to be known—postmodernism turns the university into an arena for will to power. All values are relative, so there is no point in discussing whether the most powerful values are true, just, or good. The crucial thing is that they are the most powerful, and can be played as trumps: do not offend me, or you will be in trouble. If we say it’s racist, then it’s racist. Don’t waste our time trying to ask, But what is racism?
Second, postmodernism devotes itself to what Richard Rorty called “language games.” For professors, especially, this is the most exquisite form of will to power, “a royal road to social change,” as Todd Gitlin (the rare lefty professor at Columbia who defends free speech) observes. So freshman girls became “women,” slaves turned into “enslaved persons,” “marriage” had to be opened to “same-sex” spouses, and so forth. Naming or renaming bespeaks power, and for decades we have seen this power rippling through American society. Now even sexual assault and rape are whatever the dogmatic leftists on and off campus say they are.
No truth, then no way things are; power decides
Kesler's analysis is largely correct, but it could use a bit of nuancing and as I like to say exfoliation (unwrapping). First of all, if there is no truth, then there is nothing to be known. And if there is neither knowledge nor truth, then there is no one 'way things are.' There is no cosmos in the Greek sense. Nothing (e.g., marriage) has a nature or essence. That paves the way for the Nietzschean view that, at ontological bottom, "The world is the Will to Power and nothing besides!" We too, as parts of the world, are then nothing more than competing centers of power-acquisition and power-maintenance. Power rules!
This is incoherent of course, but it won't stop it from being believed by leftists. It should be obvious that logical consistency cannot be a value for someone for whom truth is not a value. This is because logical consistency is defined in terms of truth: a set of propositions is consistent if and only if its members can all be true, and inconsistent otherwise.
Don't confuse the epistemological and the ontological
To think clearly about this, however, one must not confuse the epistemological and the ontological. If Nietzsche is right in his ontological claim, and there is no determinate and knowable reality, then there is nothing for us, or anyone, to know. But if we are incapable of knowing anything, or limited in what we can know, it does not follow that there is no determinate and knowable reality. Of course, we are capable of knowing some things, and not just such 'Cartesian' deliverances as that I seem to see a coyote now; we know that there are coyotes and that we sometimes see them and that they will eat damn near anything, etc. (These are evident truths, albeit not self-evident in the manner of a 'Cartesian' deliverance.) Although we know some things, we are fallible and reason in us is weak and limited. We make mistakes, become confused, and to make it worse our cognitive faculties are regularly suborned by base desires, wishful thinking, and what-not.
Fallibilism and objectivism
It is important not to confuse the question of the fallibility of our cognitive faculties, including reason in us, with the question whether there is truth. A fallibilist is not a truth-denier. One can be — it is logically consistent to be — both a fallibilist and an upholder of (objective) truth. What's more, one ought to be both a fallibilist about some (not all) classes of propositions, and an upholder of the existence of (objective) truth. Indeed, if one is a fallibilist, one who admits that we sometimes go wrong in matters of knowledge and belief, then then one must also admit that we sometimes go right, which is to say that fallibilism presupposes the objectivity of truth.
Just as a fallibilist is not a truth-denier, a truth-affirmer is not an infallibilist or 'dogmatist' in one sense of this word. To maintain that there is objective truth is not to maintain that one is in possession of it. One of the sources of the view that truth is subjective or relative is aversion to dogmatic people and dogmatic claims.
One cannot be a liberal (in the good old sense!) without being tolerant, and thus a fallibilist, and if the latter, then an absolutist about truth, and hence not a PC-whipped leftist!
And now we notice a very interesting and important point. To be a liberal in the old sense (a paleo-liberal) is, first and foremost, to value toleration. Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism. (Morris Raphael Cohen) But why should we be tolerant of (some of) the beliefs and (some of) the behaviors of others? Because we cannot responsibly claim to know, with respect to certain topics, what is true and what ought to be done/left undone. Liberalism (in the good old sense!) requires toleration, and toleration requires fallibilism. But if we can go wrong, we can go right, and so fallibilism presupposes and thus entails the existence of objective truth. A good old liberal must be an absolutist about truth and hence cannot be a PC-whipped lefty.
Examples. Why tolerate atheists? Because we don't know that God exists. Why tolerate theists? Because we don't know that God does not exist. And so on through the entire range of Big Questions. But toleration has limits. Should we tolerate Muslim fanatics such as the Taliban or ISIS terrorists? Of course not. For they reject the very principle of toleration. That's an easy case. More difficult: should we tolerate public Holocaust denial via speeches and publications? Why should we? Why should we tolerate people who lie, blatantly, about matters of known fact and in so doing contribute to a climate in which Jews are more likely to be oppressed and murdered? Isn't the whole purpose of free speech to help us discover and disseminate the truth? How can the right to free speech be twisted into a right to lie? But there is a counter-argument to this, which is why this is not an easy case. I haven't the space to make the case.
Getting back to the radical Muslims who reject the very principle of toleration, they have a reason to reject it: they think they know the answers to the Big Questions that we in the West usually have the intellectual honesty to admit we do not know the answers to. Suppose Islam, or their interpretation thereof, really does provide all the correct answers to the Big Questions. They would then be justified in imposing their doctrine and way of life on us, and for our own eternal good. But they are epistemological primitives who are unaware of their own fallibility and the fallibility of their prophet and their Book and all the rest. The dogmatic and fanatical tendencies of religion in the West were chastened by the Greek philosophers and later by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. First Athens took Jerusalem to task, and then Koenigsberg did the same. Unfortunately, there has never been anything like an Enlightenment in the Islamic world; hence they know no check on their dogmatism and fanaticism.
Defending the university against leftists and Islamists
The university rests on two main pillars. One has inscribed on it these propositions: There is truth; we can know some of it; knowing truth contributes to human flourishing and is thus a value. The other pillar bears witness to the truth that we are fallible in our judgements. Two pillars, then: Absolute truth and Fallibilism. No liberal (good sense!) education without both.
The commitment to the existence of absolute truth is common to both pillars, and it is this common commitment that is attacked by both leftists and Islamists. It is clear how leftists attack it by trying to eliminate truth in favor of power. That this eliminativism is utterly incoherent and self-refuting doesn't bother these power freaks because they do not believe in or value truth, which is implied by any commitment to logical consistency, as argued above. (Of course, some are just unaware that they are inconsistent, and others are just evil.)
But how is it that Islamists attack objective truth? Aren't they theists? Don't they believe in an absolute source and ground of being and truth? Yes indeed. But their God is unlimited Power. Their God is all-powerful to the max: there are no truths of logic, nor any necessary truths, that limit his power. The Muslim God is pure, omnipotent will. (See Pope Benedict's Regensurg Speech and Muslim Oversensitivity.)
The subterranean link
Here is perhaps the deepest connection between the decidedly strange bedfellows, leftism and Islamism: both deny the absoluteness of truth and both make it subservient to power.
