Truth – Page 9 – Maverick Philosopher

The Difference Between a Truth-Bearer and a Truth-Maker

Frege makes the point that the being of a proposition cannot be identical to its being true. This I find obvious. There are true propositions and there are false propositions. Therefore, for propositions (the senses of context-free declarative sentences) it cannot be the case that to be = to be true. Furthermore, a given proposition that is contingently true is possibly such as not to be true, whence it follows that its being and its being true cannot be identical. (Whether Frege does or would give the second argument, I don't know; but I think it is correct.)

As Frege puts its, "The being of a thought [Gedanke, proposition] thus does not consist in its being true." (Near the beginning of his essay, "Negation.") One can grasp a proposition without knowing whether or not it is true. To grasp a proposition is not to accept it as true, to reject it as false, or to suspend judgment as to its truth-value. To grasp a proposition is merely to have it before one's mind, to understand it. A Fregean proposition is a sense, and no such propositional sense has as part of its sense its being true. That's Frege's point and it strikes me as rock-solid.

Our London sparring-partner Ed now demonstrates that he still does not understand what a truth-maker is:

I wonder if a ‘truthmaker’ as understood by the advocates of truthmaking is the same sort of thing as Frege’s marvelous but impossible thought. Something that if we perceived it for what it was, would simultaneously communicate to us the truth of what it includes.

Ed is obviously confusing truth-bearers such as Fregean propositions with truth-makers. Truth-bearers are representations; truth-makers are not. That's one difference. Truth-bearers are either true or false; truth-makers are not since, not being representations, they cannot be said to be true, nor can they be said to be false. That's a second difference. Truth-bearers are 'bipolar,' either true or false; truth-makers are 'unipolar': all of them obtain. That's a third difference. Truth-bearers are such that their being or existence does not entail their being true; truth-makers are such that their being or existence does entail their obtaining. I am assuming that truth-makers are facts. If a fact obtains then it exists; there are no non-obtaining facts. That's a fourth difference.

There is no point in criticizing a doctrine one misrepresents. First represent it fairly, then lodge objections. And as I have said, there are reasonable objections one can bring.

So far Ed has not lodged one clear objection.

Butchvarov on Semi-Realism about Facts

This post takes up where Butchvarov Against Facts left off. See the latter post for bibliographical data concerning the essay "Facts" which I presently have under my logical microscope. And if you are a fan of Butch's work, all of my Butchvarov posts are collected in the aptly entitled Butchvarov category.

(The following is also highly relevant to the discussion currently in progress with the Londonistas, David Brightly and Edward the Ockhamist in the combox to this post.)

Butch's position is a nuanced one as one would expect. He appreciates the strengths and weaknesses of both realism and anti-realism. For the realist, there are facts. For the anti-realist, there are no facts. Let us briefly review why both positions are both attractive yet problematic. We will then turn to semi-realism as to a via media between Scylla and Charybdis.

1. Take some such contingently true affirmative singular sentence as 'Al is fat.' Surely with respect to such sentences there is more to truth than the sentences that are true. There must be something external to the sentence that contributes to its being true, and this external something is not plausibly taken to be another sentence or the say-so of some person, or anything like that. 'Al is fat' is true because there is something in extralinguistic and extramental reality that 'makes' it true. There is this short slacker dude, Al, and the guy weighs 250 lbs. There is nothing linguistic or mental about that. Here is the sound core of correspondence theories of truth. Our sample sentence is not just true; it is true because of the way the world outside the mind and outside the sentence is configured. The 'because' is not a causal 'because.' The question is not the empirical-causal one as to why Al is fat. He is fat because he eats too much. The question concerns the ontological ground of the truth of the sentential representation, 'Al is fat.' Since it is obvious that the sentence cannot just be true — given that it is not true in virtue of its logical form or ex vi terminorum — we must posit something external to the sentence that 'makes' it true. I don't see how this can be avoided even though I admit that 'makes true' is not perfectly clear.

2. Now what is the nature of this external truth-maker? It can't be Al by himself, and it can't be fatness by itself. Nor can it be the pair of the two. For it could be that Al exists and fatness exists, but the first does not instantiate the second. What's needed, apparently, is the fact of Al's being fat. So it seems we must add the category of fact to our ontology, to our categorial inventory. Veritas sequitur esse is not enough. It is not enough that 'Al' and 'Fat' have worldly referents; the sentence as a whole needs a worldly referent. Truth-makers cannot be 'things' or collections of same, but must be entities of a different categorial sort. (Or at least this is so for the simple predications we are now considering.)

3. The argument I have just sketched, the truth-maker argument for facts, is very powerful, but it gives rises to puzzles and protests. There is the Strawsonian protest that facts are merely hypostatized sentences, shadows genuine sentences cast upon the world. Butchvarov quotes Strawson's seminal 1950 discussion: "If you prise the sentences off the world, you prise the facts off it too. . . ." ("Facts," 73-74) Strawson again: "The only plausible candidate for what (in the world) makes a sentence true is the fact it states; but the fact it states is not something in the world."

Why aren't facts in the world? Consider the putative fact of my table's being two inches from the wall. Obviously, this fact is not itself two inches from the wall or in any spatial position. The table and the wall are in space; the fact is not. One can drive a nail into the table or into the wall, but not into the fact, etc. Considerations such as these suggest to the anti-realist that facts are not in the world and that they are but sentences reified. After all, to distinguish a fact from a non-fact (whether a particular or a universal) we must have recourse to a sentence: a fact is introduced as the worldly correlate of a true sentence. If there is no access to facts except via sentences, as the correlates of true sentences, then this will suggest to those of an anti-realist bent that facts are hypostatizations of true declarative sentences.

One might also cite the unperceivability of facts as a reason to deny their existence. I see the table, and I see the wall. It may also be granted that I see that the desk is about two inches from the wall. But does it follow that I see a relational fact? Not obviously. If I see a relational fact, then presumably I see the relation two inches from. But I don't see this relation. And so, Butchvarov argues (84-85), one does not see the relational fact either. Their invisibility is a strike against them. A careful examination of this argument would make a nice separate post. And indeed it did.

Another of the puzzles about facts concerns how a fact is related to its constituents. Obviously a fact is not identical to its constituents. This is because the constituents can exist without the fact existing. Nor can a fact be an entity in addition to its constituents, something over and above them, for the simple reason that it is composed of them. We can put this by saying that no fact is wholly distinct from its constituents. The fact is more than its constituents, but apart from them it is nothing. A third possibility is that a fact is the togetherness of its constituents, where this togetherness is grounded in a a special unifying constituent. Thus the fact of a's being F consists of a, F-ness, and a nexus of exemplification. But this leads to Bradley's regress.

A fact is not something over and above its constituents but their contingent unity. This unity, however, cannot be explained by positing a special unifying constituent, on pain of Bradley's regress. which is, pace Richard Gaskin, vicious. So if a fact has a unifier, that unifier must be external to the fact. But what could that be? It would have to be something like Kant's transcendental unity of apperception. I push this notion in an onto-theological direction in my book, A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated. But by taking this line, I move away from the realism that the positing of facts was supposed to secure. Facts are supposed to be ontological grounds, extramental and extralinguistic. If mind or Mind is brought in in any form to secure the unity of a truth-making fact, then we end up with some form of idealism, whether transcendental or onto-theological, or what have you.

4. So we are in an aporetic pickle. We have good reason to be realists and we have good reason to be anti-realists. (The arguments above on both sides were mere sketches; they are stronger than they might appear. ) Since we cannot be both realists and anti-realists, we might try to mediate the positions and achieve a synthesis. My book was one attempt at a synthesis. Butchvarov's semi-realism is another. I am having a hard time, though, understanding what exactly Butchvarov's semi-realism is supposed to be.

If the realist says that there are facts, and that anti-realist says that there aren't, the semi-realist maintains that 'There are facts' is an "Improper proposition" (87) so that both asserting it and denying it are improper.

Butchvarov relies crucially on Wittgenstein's distinction between formal and material concepts and his related distinction between saying and showing. Object is an example of a formal concept, while book is an example of a material concept. That there are books can be said. That there are objects cannot be said. Instead, it is shown by the use of names.

'This is an object,' unlike 'This is white,' is a pseudo-proposition. This is because it attempts to say what can only be shown. 'This is an object' does not say anything. "It shows the logical category to which the item belongs." (75)

Fact, like object, is a formal concept. It follows that 'There are facts' and 'A sentence expresses a fact' are pseudo-propositions. They are pseudo because they attempt to say what can only be shown. But why , exactly, does 'A sentence expresses a fact' not say or state anything? Presumably because ". . . it presupposes what it purports to say because 'fact' is the philosophical term for what sentences express." (76)

The following cannot be said: 'This page is white is a fact.' It cannot be said because it is ill-formed. (88) We can of course say, 'That this page is white is a fact.' But 'that this page is white' is not a sentence, but a noun phrase. We cannot use this noun phrase to refer to the fact because what we end up referring to is an object, not a fact. Though a fact is not a sentence or a proposition, it is proposition-like: it has astructure that mirrors the structure of a proposition. No object, however, is proposition-like. To express the fact we must use the sentence. Using the sentence, we show what cannot be said.

Butchvarov's discussion from p. 88 to the end of his article is extremely murky and unsatisfactory. His semi-realism is not a clear alternative to realism and anti-realism. Butch sees the problem with crystal clarity, but I cannot see what exactly his solution is.

He tells us that semi-realism with respect to facts differs from anti-realism by acknowledging that there is more to the truth of true sentences than the sentences that are true. (88) Excellent! This is a non-negotiable 'datanic' point. If it is true that Jack loves Jill, then there must be something in the world that makes this true, and it cannot be Jack, or Jill, or loves, or the set or sum of all three. If these three items are what the sentence 'Jack loves Jill' are about, then the truth-maker has to be distinct from each and from the set or sum of all. (88)

But Butch also tells us that semi-realism about facts differs from realism by refusing to countenance a special category of entity, the category of fact, the members of which are the referents of declarative sentences. What bothers Butchvarov is that "facts cannot be referred to or described independently of the sentences expressing them" (88) a consideration which renders antirealim about facts plausible and the correspondence theory of truth implausible. (88)

So what is Butch's third way? How does he get between realism and anti-realism. He seems to be saying that there are facts but that they cannot be said, only shown. But of course this cannot be what he is saying if one cannot say that there are facts!

If there is something that cannot be said but only shown, and what is shown are the referents of sentences, then he is saying that there are the referents of sentences in which case he is saying that there is what he says can only be shown.

This is highly unsatisfactory and barely coherent if coherent at all. I am tempted to say to Butch, "Look, either there are facts or there aren't. Which is it? Bringing in Wittgenstein's saying v. showing distinction only muddies already troubled waters."

So I don't see that semi-realism about facts is a viable position. I suggest we admit that we are stuck with a genuine aporia.

An Infinite Regress Argument Against Truth-Makers? Round Two

The truth-maker of 'Tom sits' cannot be Tom. Otherwise it would also be the truth-maker of 'Tom stands' which is the logical contrary of the first sentence. And that won't do, as London Ed appreciates. But now what about 'Tom exists'? This too is a contingent sentence, and so it too needs a truth-maker. I say the truth-maker is Tom. The truth-maker of 'Tom sits' is a fact, the fact of Tom's being seated. This fact is a complex having Tom himself and the property of being seated as constitutents. (Let's not worry about what holds these constituents together!) The truth-maker of 'Tom exists,' however, is not a fact having Tom and the property of existence as constituents.

Why the asymmetry? Because existence is not a property in the same sense of 'property' in which being-seated is a property. I won't repeat the many arguments I have given on this blog and in my articles and book.

But suppose you, like Ed, see symmetry where I see asymmetry. You think that the truth-maker of 'Tom exists' is the fact of Tom's existence, or the fact of Tom's existing. Call this truth-making fact T. Since T exists, and exists contingently, 'T exists' needs a truth-maker. I am willing to concede that a vicious infinite regress then arises, though the matter is not entirely clear.

But what does this show? I say it shows that the assumption that existence is a property is mistaken.

The dialectical situation is this. There are plenty of arguments why existence cannot be a property. And we have good reason to admit truth-makers for contingent truths. So in the case of contingent existential truths like 'Tom exists' we should say that it is the referent of the subject term itself that is the truth-maker.

Frege’s Regress

Some of us of a realist persuasion hold that at least some truths have need of worldly correlates that 'make them true.' This notion that (some) truths need truthmakers is a variation on the ancient theme that truth implies a correspondence of what-is said or what-is-thought with what-is. You all know the passages in Aristotle where this theme is sounded.

Example. Having just finished my drink, the thought expressed by an assertive utterance of 'My glass is empty' is true. But the thought is not just true; it is true because of the way things are 'outside' my mind. The glass (in reality) is (in reality) empty. So the realist says something like this: the thought (proposition, judgmental content, etc.) is true in virtue of the obtaining of a truthmaking state of affairs or fact. The thought is true because the fact obtains or exists, where 'because' does not have a causal sense but expresses the asymmetrical relation of truthmaking. The fact is the ontological ground (not the cause) of the thought's being true.

One might wonder whether this realist theory of truth leads to an infinite regress, and if it does, whether the regress is vicious. Some cryptic remarks in Gottlob Frege's seminal article, "The Thought: A Logical Inquiry," suggest a regress argument against the correspondence theory of truth.

For Frege, a thought (Gedanke) or proposition is the sense (Sinn) of a context-free declarative sentence. 'Snow is white' and its German translation Schnee ist weiss are examples of context-free declarative sentences. 'Context-free' means that all indexical elements have been extruded including verb tenses. When we say that a sentence such as 'Snow is white' is true, what we are really saying is that the sense of this sentence is true. The primary truth-vehicles are propositions, sentences being truth-bearers only insofar as they express true propositions.

Now could the being-true of a sentential sense consist in its correspondence to something else? Frege rejects this notion: "In any case, being true does not consist in the correspondence of this sense with something else, for otherwise the question of truth would reiterate itself to infinity." (Philosophical Logic, ed. Strawson, p. 19) A little earlier, Frege writes,

For what would we then have to do to decide whether something were true? We should have to enquire whether it were true that an idea and a reality, perhaps, corresponded in the laid-down respect. And then we should be confronted by a question of the same kind and the game could begin again. So the attempt to explain truth as correspondence collapses. And every other attempt to define truth collapses too. (Ibid.)

What exactly is Frege's argument here? We begin by noting that

1. Necessarily, for any proposition p, it is true that p iff p.

This equivalence, which I hope nobody will deny, gives rise to an infinite regress, call it the truth regress. For from (1) we can infer that if snow is white, then it is true that snow is white, and
iterating the operation, if it is true that snow is white, then it is true that it is true that snow is white, and so on without end. This is an infinite regress all right, but it is obviously benign. For if
we establish the base proposition, Snow is white, then we ipso facto establish all the iterations. Our establishing that snow is white does not depend on a prior establishing that it is true that snow is white. In general, our establishing of any proposition in the infinite series does not depend on having first established the next proposition in the series. The truth regress, though infinite, is benign.

Note that if the truth-regress were vicious, then the notion of truth itself would have been shown to be incoherent. For the truth-regress is a logical consequence of the equivalence principle (1) above, a principle that simply unpacks our understanding of 'true.' So if the truth-regress were vicious, then (1) would not be unproblematic, as it surely is.

It follows that if Frege's Regress is to amount to a valid objection to the definition of truth as correspondence, "and [to] every other attempt to define truth," then Frege's Regress must be different from the truth regress. In particular, it must be a vicious regress. Only vicious infinite regresses have the force of philosophical refutations. But then what is Frege's Regress? Consider

2. Necessarily, for any p, it is true that p iff *p* corresponds to reality.

One can think up counterexamples to (2), but the precise question before us is whether (2) issues in a vicious infinite regress. Now what would this regress (progress?) look like? Let 'T(p)' abbreviate
'it is true that p.' And let 'C*p*' abbreviate '*p* corresponds to reality.' (The asterisks function like Quine's corners.) The regress, then, looks like this:

3. p iff T(p) iff C*p* iff T(C*p*) iff C(T(C*p*)) iff T(C(T(C*p*) iff C(T(C(T(C*p*)) . . .

Is (3) a vicious regress? It would be vicious if one could establish T(p) only by first establishing C*p* and so on. But if these two terms have the same sense, in the way that the first and second terms have the same sense, then (3) will be as benign as the truth regress. Suppose that 'It is true that p' and '*p* corresponds to reality' have the same sense. Suppose in other words that the correspondence theory of truth is the theory that the sense or meaning of these distinct sentences is the same. It would then follow that to establish that it is true that p and to establish that *p* corresponds to reality would come to the same thing, whence it would follow that the regress is benign.

For the regress to be vicious, the second and third terms must differ in sense. For again, if the second and third terms do not differ in sense, then to establish one is to establish the other, and it would not be case that to establish that it is true that p one would first have to establish that *p* corresponds to reality or to some chunk of reality. But if the second and third terms do not differ in sense, then it appears that the regress doesn't get started at all. For the move from the second term to the third to be valid, the entailment must be grounded in the sense of the second term: the third term must merely unpack the sense of the second term. If, however, the two terms are not sense-connected, then no infinite regress is ignited.

My interim conclusion is that it is not at all clear that Frege's Regress is either benign, or not a regress at all, and therefore not at all clear that it constitutes a valid objection to theories of truth, in particular to the theory that truth resides in correspondence.

REFERENCE: Peter Carruthers, "Frege's Regress," Proc. Arist. Soc., vol. LXXXII, 1981/1982, pp. 17-32.

An Infinite Regress Argument Against Truth-Makers?

Edward, the proprietor of Beyond Necessity, presents an infinite regress argument against truth-makers. Here it is:

. . . I reject the idea of a truthmaker altogether. If there is such a truthmaker, let it be A, it comes into existence when Socrates sits down, and ceases to exist when he stands up. If it were something real – let’s say a candle flame, which comes into existence when we light the candle, and ceases to exist when we blow it out – then there would have to be a further truthmaker for A existing. I.e. the sentence “A exists” can be true or false, and so requires a further truthmaker B, that makes it true when B exists. But then “B exists” requires yet another truthmaker, and so on ad infinitum. That is absurd. Therefore, there are no truthmakers.

I am not sure Ed understands what a truth-maker is. Here is a Philosophy 101 explanation. Suppose we have some true contingent declarative sentence such as 'Tom is tired.' The truth-maker theorist maintains that for contingent true sentences, there is more to the sentence than its being true. There must be something external to the sentence, something that is not a sentence, that 'makes it true.' If you deny this, then you are saying that the sentence is just true and that there is no explanation of its being true in terms of anything extralinguistic. And surely that is absurd, assuming you are not some sort of linguistic idealist. 'Tom is tired' cannot just be true; it is true because there exists a man to whom 'Tom' refers and this man is in a certain state.

Could Tom by himself be the truth-maker of 'Tom is tired'? No. For if he were, then he would also be the truth-maker of 'Tom is manic' — which is absurd. This is why truth-maker theorists (not all but most) introduce facts or states of affairs as truth-makers. David Armstrong is a prominent contemporary example.

Now what are we to make of Edward's argument? The argument seems to be that if sentence s has a truthmaker t, then the sentence 't exists' must also have a truth-maker, call it t*. But then the sentence 't* exists' must itself have a truth-maker, t**, and so on ad infinitum.

Now this is a terrible, a thoroughly and breath-takingly rotten, argument which is why no one in the literature (to the best of my knowledge) has ever made it. Suppose that 'Tom is tired' is made-true by the fact of Tom's being tired. Call this fact F. If 'Tom is tired' is true, then F exists, whence it follows that 'F exists' is true. (This of course assumes that there is the sentence 'F exists,' an assumption I will grant arguendo.) Since 'F exists' is contingent, we can apply the truth-maker principle and ask for its truth-maker. But surely its truth-maker is just F. So there is no regress at all, let alone an infinite regress, let alone a vicious infinite regress. (Please note that only vicious infinite regresses have the force of refutations.) 'Tom is tired' has F as its truth-maker, and 'F exists' has the very same F as its truth-maker. Tom's being tired makes true both 'Tom is tired' and 'Tom's being tired exists.' No regress.

So Ed's argument is a complete non-starter. There are, however, plausible arguments against facts as truth-makers. See my Facts category.

Another Round with Hennessey on Accidental Predication

Having had my say about what is known in the trade as Occam's Razor, and having secured some welcome agreement with the proprietor of Beyond Necessity in the combox of the aforelinked post, I am now ready to address the meat of Richard Hennessey's response to my three-post critique of what I took to be his theory of accidental predication.

There is no need to stray from our hoary example of accidental predication: 'Socrates is seated.' I took Hennessey to be saying that in a true accidental predication of this simple form subject and predicate refer to exactly the same thing. If they didn't, the sentence could not be true. Here is how Hennessey puts it:

Let us take the proposition “Socrates is sitting” or the strictly equivalent “Socrates is a sitting being.” The referent of the subject term here is the sitting Socrates and that of the predicate term is one and the same sitting Socrates. . . . only if the referent of the “Socrates” and that of the “sitting” of “Socrates is sitting” are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting.

Since Hennessey uses the word 'identity' we can call this an identity theory of accidental predication: in true predications of this sort, the referent of the subject term and the referent of the predicate term are identical, and this identty is what insures that the predication is true. If so, then the same goes for all other true predications which are about Socrates. So consider 'Socrates is standing' which is the logical contrary (not contradictory) of 'Socrates is sitting.' These sentences cannot both be true at the same time, but they can be true at different times. Suppose we ask what the truth-maker is in each case. Given that subject and predicate terms refer to exactly the same thing, namely, Socrates, it follows that in each case it is Socrates and Socrates alone that is the truth-maker of both sentences. When he is sitting, Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is sitting' and when he is standing Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is standing.'

What I do not understand, however, is how these obviously different sentences, which differ in their truth-conditions, can have one and the same entity as truth-maker. The same problem does not seem to arise for such essential predications as 'Socrates is human.' For there is no time when he is not human, and (this is a distinct modal point), at every time at which he is human he is not possibly such as to be nonhuman. In the case of essential predications an identity theory may be workable. Perhaps we can say that Socrates himself is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is human,' 'Socrates is rational,' and Socrates is animal.'

In the case of accidental predications, however, it seems definitely unworkable. This is because different accidental predications about Socrates need different truth-makers. It is not Socrates, but Socrates' being seated that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is seated' and it is not Socrates, but Socrates' standing that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is standing.'

Without worrying about what exactly the italicized phrases pick out (facts? states of affairs? tropes?), one thing seems crystal clear: there cannot be a strict identity of, e.g., the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated.' And since there cannot be a strict identity, there must be some difference between the referents of the subject and predicate terms. Hennessey seems to show an appreciation of this in his response (second hyperlink above):

If we tweak the [B.V.] passage a bit, we can, it strikes me, improve the thesis about the referencing at work in the sentence “Socrates is sitting” so that it offers a more satisfactory support of the neo-Aristotelian thesis of anti-realism in the theory of universals, one indeed getting along “without invoking universals.” First, let us speak of “particular property” instead of “particularized property,” for the latter expression suggests, at least to me, that the property would be, prior to some act of particularization, a universal and not a particular. Let us then accept, but with a precision, Bill’s statement that “‘sitting’ refers to a particularized property (a trope),” saying instead that while the “Socrates” in our statement refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, the “sitting” primarily refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, and also co-refers to the particular property of sitting that inheres in Socrates. (An alternative terminology might have it that the “Socrates” in our statement denotes Socrates and the “sitting” primarily denotes Socrates, still the person sitting, and also connotesthe property of sitting that inheres in Socrates; come to think of it, I believe I recall having read, long ago, a similar distinction in the Petite logique of Jacques Maritain, a book which I no longer have, thanks to a flooded basement.)

This is definitely an improvement. It is an improvement because it tries to accommodate the perfectly obvious point that there must be some difference or other between the worldly referents of the subject and predicate terms in accidental predications. Hennessey is now telling us that 'Socrates' in our example refers to exactly one item, Socrates, while 'sitting' refers to two items, Socrates and the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness which inheres in Socrates.

But Hennessey is not yet in the clear. For I will now ask him what the copula 'is' expresses. It seems he must say that it expresses inherence. He must say that it is because seatedness inheres in Socrates that 'Socrates is seated' is true. Now inherence is an asymmetrical relation: if x inheres in y, then it is not the case that y inheres in x. But there is no sameness relation (whether strict identity, contingent identity, accidental sameness, Castaneda's consubstantiaton, etc) that is not symmetrical. Thus if x is in any sense the same as y, then y is (in the same sense) the same as x. Therefore, Hennessey's bringing of inherence into the picture is at odds with his claims of identity. Inherence, being asymmetrical, is not a type of identity or sameness. So why the talk of identity in the first passage quoted above?

Why does Hennessey say that 'seated' refers primarily to Socrates but also to the particular property seatedness? Why not just say this: 'Socrates' refers to the primary substance (prote ousia) Socrates and nothing else; 'is' refers to the inherence relation or nexus and nothing else; 'seated/sitting' refers to the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness and nothing else. This would give him what he wants, a theory of predication free of universals.

But this is not what Hennessey says. He is putting forth some sort of identity theory of predication. He thinks that in some sense the subject and predicate terms refer to the very same thing. He tells us that 'seated' refers both to a substance and to an accident. The upshot is that Hennessey has given birth to a hybrid theory which I for one do not find intelligible.

Here is the question he needs to confront directly: what, in the world, makes it true that 'Socrates is seated' (assuming of course that the sentence is true)? Here is a clear answer: the sentence is true because seatedness inheres in Socrates. But then of course there can be no talk of the identity of Socrates and seatedness. They are obviously not identical: one is a substance and the other an accident. The relation between them, being asymmetrical, cannot be any sort of sameness relation.

The other clear answer which, though clear, is absurd is this: the sentence is true because 'Socrates' and 'seated' refer to the very same thing with the result that the copula expresses identity. Now this is absurd for the reasons given over several posts. This was his original theory which he has wisely moved away from.

Instead of plumping for one of these clear theories, Hennessey gives us an unintelligible hybrid, a monster if you will, as we approach Halloween.

Again on the Ontological Argument for Truth

I gave the following argument:

We have the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept true proposition is instantiated, and there necessarily exists at least one truth, namely, the truth that the concept true proposition is instantiated.

A reader asks: Does not your argument presuppose that "to be instantiated" means "to exist extra-mentally"? What if someone believed that esse est percipi? If your argument was based on the aforementioned assumption, then would not it beg the question because it presupposes what needs to be demonstrated?

Let us first note that it cannot be coherently maintained that to be is to be perceived without qualification. To be perceived is to be perceived by someone or something. For Bishop Berkeley, the someone in question is God whose being is precisely not identical to his being perceived. The slogan therefore does not apply to God. If absolutely everything were such that its being were its being perceived, then a vicious infinite regress would arise. To put it figuratively, the world cannot be mere percepts 'all the way down.' You have to come eventually to something whose being is in excess of its being perceived.

Perhaps what the reader is getting at is that any true proposition that instantiates the concept true proposition is true only for a mind, and not true absolutely. But this too leads to an infinite regress which appears to be vicious. For consider the proposition *Every truth is true-for some mind or other; no truth is true absolutely.* Call this proposition 'P.' Is P true? No, it is true-for some mind or other. Call that proposition P*. Is it true? No, it is true-for some mind or other. An infinite regress arises, and it appears to be vicious.

An Ontological Argument for Truth and the Correspondence Theory

A Pakistani correspondent e-mails:

Regarding your recent post An Ontological Argument for Objective Reality, do you think your argument demonstrates that the correspondence theory of truth is inherent to our notion of objective reality, because we cannot meaningfully, without contradiction, even talk about truth in the absence of objective reality? If so, your argument also settles the case in favor of correspondence theory of truth.

Excellent question. I define 'ontological argument' in the earlier post, and note that 'ontological argument' and 'ontological argument for the existence of God' are not to be confused. Here is an ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth:

This is a sound ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth using only the concept true proposition, the law of excluded middle, and the unproblematic principle that, for any proposition p, p entails that p is true. By 'proposition' here I simply mean whatever can be appropriately characterized as either true or false. That there are propositions in this innocuous sense cannot be reasonably denied.

Does it follow that the correspondence theory of truth is true? I don't think so. What the above argument shows is that there are truths. A truth is a true proposition, or, more generally, a true truth-bearer. But a truth-bearer is not the same as a truth-maker. A correspondence theory of truth, however, requires truth-makers. And so there is a logical gap between

1. There are truths

and

2. There are truth-makers of these truths.

My ontological argument establishes (1). It establishes the existence, indeed the necessity, of at least one truth 'outside the mind.' But truths outside the mind might just be true Fregean propositions. Such items are truth-bearers but not truth-makers. So (2) does not straightaway follow from (1).

To get to (2), we need to introduce a truth-maker principle as supplementary premise. Discussions of truth-maker principles can be found in the Truth category.

An Ontological Argument for Objective Reality

The proprietor of Beyond Necessity has a post on objective reality which is directed against some New Age mumbo-jumbo. One of the commenters remarks, "Your argument for the existence of objective reality sounds very much like the ontological argument for God, and about as plausible." Ed, the proprietor, responds, ". . . the argument in no way resembles the logical form of the ontological argument."

What I will now do is present a sound ontological argument for objective reality. In so doing I will show that both proprietor and commenter are wrong. The latter because the argument is plausible; the former because it is ontological in form.

Definition. An ontological argument from mere concepts (aus lauter Begriffen, in Kant's famous phrase) is a ratiocinative procedure whereby the being instantiated of a concept is proven by sheer analysis of the concept. It is thus an argument in which one attempts to infer the existence of X from the concept X. For example, the existence of God from the concept God; the existence of a golden mountain from the concept golden mountain; the existence of objective reality from the concept objective reality. Concepts are mental items by definition. So a sound ontological argument will take us from thought to (extramental) being, in a manner to please Parmenides.

To mention a concept I use italics. Thus a word in italics refers to a concept.

1. We have and understand the concept the (total) way things are. It doesn't matter how we acquired this concept. We have it and we understand it. The way things are includes every fact, every obtaining state of affairs. So the way things are is equivalent to the world in Wittgenstein's sense: "Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge." (Tractatus 1.1) It is also equivalent to objective reality.

2. Now let us entertain the possibility that nothing answers to the concept the way things are, that the concept is not instantiated. We are thus to entertain the possibility that there is the concept in our minds but nothing to which it applies. We can formulate this possibility using the proposition *There is no objective reality.* Call this proposition P.

3. Could P be true? If P is true, then P is true in objective reality: that is just what 'true' means. So if P is true, then it is true in objective reality that there is no objective reality. This is a contradiction. So we must conclude that If P is true, then P is false. And if P is false, then of course P is false. So, necessarily, P is false, which implies that its negation is not only true but necessarily true: it is necessarily true that there is objective reality. So by sheer analysis of the concept objective reality one can validly infer that there is objective reality. Here then is a case in which an ontological argument from mere concepts is sound.

4. Have I pulled a fast one? Not as far as I can see. I have merely analyzed the concept objective reality, teasing out an implication of the claim that the concept is not instantiated.

5. Response to the commenter. The commenter is right to appreciate that the above sort of reasoning is ontological and thus similar to the God proof found in Descartes' Meditation V and criticized famously by Kant. He is wrong, however, to think that the former reasoning is cogent if and only if the latter is.

6. Response to the proprietor. The proprietor is right, as against the commenter, when it comes to the cogency of the above sort of reasoning. But the commenter is wrong to fail to see that it is ontological reasoning in a clear sense of that term. It is a priori reasoning from thought to being, from concept to existence.

Companion post: Four Kinds of Ontological Argument

Sentences as Names of Facts: An Aporetic Triad

There are good reasons to introduce facts as truth-makers for contingently true atomic sentences. (Some supporting reasoning here.) But if there are facts, and they make-true contingent atomic sentences, then what is the semantic relation between these declarative sentences and their truth-makers? It seems we should say that such sentences name facts. But some remarks of Leo Mollica suggest that this will lead to trouble. Consider this aporetic triad:

1. 'Al is fat' is the name of the fact of Al's being fat.
2. 'Al is fat' has a referent only if it is true.
3. Names are essentially names: a name names whether or not it has a referent.

Each limb of the triad is very plausible, but they can't all be true. The conjunction of (1) and (3) entails the negation of (2). Which limb should we abandon? It cannot be (1) given the cogency of the Truth Maker Argument and the plausible assumption that the only semantic relation between a sentence and the corresponding fact is one of naming.

(2) also seems 'ungiveupable.' There are false sentences, and there may be false (Fregean) propositions: but a fact is not a truth-bearer but a truth-maker. It is very hard to swallow the notion that there are 'false' or nonobtaining facts. If 'Al is fat' is false it is because Al and fatness do not form a fact. The existence of a fact is the unity of its constituents. Where there is the unity of the right sort of constituents you have a fact; where there is not, you don't.

As for (3), suppose that names are only accidentally names, than a name names only on condition that it have a referent. We would then have to conclude that if the bearer of a name ceases to exist, that the name ceases to be a name. And that seems wrong. When Le Verrier put forth the hypothesis of an intra-Mercurial planent that came to be called 'Vulcan,' he did not know whether there was indeed such a planet, but he thought he had good evidence of its existence. When it was later decided that there was no good evidence of the planet in question, 'Vulcan' did not cease to be a name. If we now say, truly, that Vlucan does not exist we employ a name whose naming is not exhausted by its having a referent.

So it seems that names name essentially. This is the linguistic analog of intentionality: one cannot just think; if one thinks, then necessarily one thinks of something, something that may or may not exist. If I am thinking of something, and it ceases to exist, my thinking does not cease to be object-directed. Thinking is essentially object-directed. Analogously, names are essentially names.

So far, then, today's triad looks to be another addition the list of insolubilia. The limbs of the triad are more reasonably accepted than rejected, but they cannot all be true. A pretty pickle.

By the way, I insist on the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.

A Failed Defense of Nietzsche’s Perspectivism

Prowling the Web for material on Nietzsche and the genetic fallacy, I stumbled across this passage from Merold Westphal, "Nietzsche as a Theological Resource," Modern Theology 13:2 (April 1997), p. 218:

     Perspectivism need not be presented as an absolute truth; it can be
     presented as an account of how reality looks from where one is
     situated. It does not thereby cease to be of value. The account of
     the game given by the winning coach cannot claim to be THE truth
     about the game: other accounts must be taken into account,
     including those from the losing coach, the players, the
     referees,…. But that does not mean that we do not listen with
     attention to what the winning coach has to say about the game.

Perspectivism is the proposition P: All truths are perspectival. Either (P) applies to itself or it does not. If the former, then one must conclude that (P) is itself perspectivally true. Call this perspectivized perspectivism (PP). If the latter, if (P) is not taken to apply to itself, then (P) is nonperspectivally true. Westphal mentions, but does not take, this tack, so I shall ignore it here. His position appears to be perspectivized perspectivism. Unfortunately, his example shows that he does not understand it. He   confuses (PP) with a quite different doctrine that could be called alethic partialism.

What the latter says is that the whole truth about a subject cannot be captured from any one perspective. Take a quart of 10 W 30 motor oil. From the perspective of a salesman at an auto parts
store, it is a commodity from the sale of which he expects to make a profit. From the perspective of a motorist, it is a crankcase lubricant. From the perspective of a chemist, the oil's viscosity and other such attributes are salient. From the perspective of an eco-enthusiast, it is a potential pollutant of the ground water. And so on. But note that these partial truths add up to the whole truth about the oil. (By a 'partial truth' I do not mean a truth that is only partially true, but a truth that is wholly true, but captures only a part of the reality of what it is about.)

Alethic partialism sounds reasonable. But that is not what the perspectivized perspectivist is saying. What he is saying is that every truth is merely perspectivally true, and that this thesis itself is true only from his, and perhaps some (but not all) other, perspectives. Unfortunately, this allows a nonperspectivist such as your humble correspondent to say: "Fine! Truth is perspectival for you, Fritz, but for me it is absolute, and one of my absolute truths is that you are mistaken in your theory of truth." Clearly, the perspectivized perspectivist is in an uncomfortable position here. He wants to say something that is binding on all, but he cannot given the self-limiting nature of his position, a self-limitation demanded by logical consistency.

Pace Westphal, perspectivism is not "an account of how reality looks from where one is situated," but an account of the nature of truth, an account that implies that there is no reality. For truth is the truth of reality. A truth-bearer (a belief, say) is true just in case it corresponds to what is the case independently of anyone's beliefs, desires, or interests. To speak of truth as perspectival is to dissolve reality along with truth. From this one can see how obtuse Westphal's account of perspectivism his. He fails to grasp its radicality. And failing to grasp its radicality, he fails to appreciate its utter incoherence.

Truth and Consolation

Nothing is true because it is consoling, but that does not preclude certain truths from being consoling. So one cannot refute a position by showing that some derive consolation from it. Equally, no support for a position is forthcoming from the fact that it thwarts our interests or dashes our hopes.

The Eliminativist/Reductivist Distinction: Three Further Examples

For Part I of this discussion, and the first six examples, see here. Recall that my concern is to show via a variety of examples that the eliminativist-reductivist distinction is useful and important and indeed indispensable for clear thinking about a number of topics.

7. Truth is warranted assertibility. Someone who makes this claim presumably intends to inform us about the nature of truth on the presupposition that there is truth. He is saying: there is truth all right; and what it is is warranted assertibility. But I say: if truth is warranted assertibility, then there is no truth. The italicized claim, no matter what the intentions of a person who makes it, amounts to a denial of truth. This example, as it seems to me, is 'on all fours' (as the Brits say) with the Feuerbach example and the 'properties are sets' example. Just as a property is not the sort of entity that could be identified with a set, truth is not the sort of property that could be identified with warranted assertibility (even at the Peircean ideal limit of inquiry.) These three claims are all of them eliminativist.

8. Truth is relative. Ditto. Truth is not the sort of property that could be relative: if you know what truth is then you know that truth is absolute. So if you say that truth is relative, then you are either confusing truth with some other property (e.g. the property of being believed by someone) or you are willy-nilly denying the very existence of truth. If you understand the concept of God, then you understand that God cannot be an anthropomorphic projection. And if you understand the concept of truth, then you understand that truth cannot be relative to anything, whatever your favorite index of relativization might be, whether individuals, social classes, historical epochs . . . .

See Truth is Absolute! Part One. Part Two.

9. The morally obligatory is that which God commands. In stark contrast to the two foregoing examples, this example cannot be given an eliminativist reading. The very concept of truth disallows truth's relativization. But there is nothing in the concept of moral obligation to disallow the identification of the morally obligatory with that which God commands. But here we need to make a distinction.

You will have noticed that identity is a symmetrical relation: if x = y, then y = x. But reduction is asymmetrical: if x reduces to y, then y does not reduce to x. Therefore, an identification is not the same as a reductive identification or reduction. 'Hesperus = Phosphorus' is an identity claim but not a reductive claim: the claim is not that Hesperus reduces to Phosphorus, as if Phosphorus were the fundamental reality and Hesperus the less fundamental, or perhaps a mere appearance of Phosphorus. But 'Table salt = NaCl' is a reduction of what is less fundamental to what is more fundamental.

Now what about our italicized claim? There are problems with reading it as a left-to-right reduction. The morally obligatory is what we morally ought to do; but what we ought to do cannot be reduced to what anyone commands, not even if the commander is morally perfect. The normative oughtness of an act or act-ommission cannot be reduced the mere fact that someone commands it, even if the commander always commands all and only what one ought to do. So one could argue that the italicized claim, if construed as a reduction of the morally obligatory to what God commands, collapses into an elimination of the morally obligatory. Be we needn't take it as a reduction; we can take it as a nonreductive identification. Accordingly, being morally obligatory and being commanded by God are the same property in reality even though they are conceptually distinct.

But even if you don't agree with the details of my analysis, I think you must agree to distinguish among eliminative claims, reductive identity claims, and nonreductive identity claims.

But Is It True?

Peter and I were having lunch with a pretty lady yesterday. While recounting some paranormal experiences, he expressed doubt as to whether they were true. The lady, quite sympathetic to the experiences and their contents, but having come under the influence of the PoMo crowd, piped up, "There is no truth." Peter shot back, "So it is true that there is no truth?"

Peter's response was 'knee-jerk,' reflexive, not reflective. He didn''t need to reflect. His was a stock response, but none the worse for being stock or easily come by. It is a prepared line that you should all have at the ready when confronted with PoMo nonsense. Not that it will do you much good with the PoMo crowd.

The probative force of Peter's riposte is devastating. What's amazing, though, is that the Pomo types are not moved by it. I think this shows that truth is not their concern. Something else is, power perhaps. It is no surprise that leftism is alive and well within the precincts of PoMo. I'd have to think about it some more, but 'conservative post-modernist' smacks of being an oxymoron.

Let S be a declarative sentence. Then surely

E. 'S' is true iff S.

The equivalence schema (E) doesn't say much. But what it says suffices to refute the claim that there is no truth. For anyone who asserts 'There is no truth' makes an assertion which is equivalent to "'There is no truth' is true." And so truth comes back into the picture. Truth, she's a wily bitch. Drive her out of the front door, she comes in through the back. And I don't think it matters how minimalist is your theory of truth. My argument does not assume that truth is a metaphysically substantive property. Even if no property at all corresponds to the predicate ' is true,' that predicate has a sense. If it had no sense, then (E) would be gibberish, like

E*. 'S' is schmue iff S.

I'd have to think about it some more, but it looks as if the equivalence schema by itself suffices to refute the PoMo nonsense that there is no truth. For even if there is no property of truth, and truth is merely the sense of the predicate 'is true,' that sense cannot be denied. It's always and necessarily along for the ride.

Misgivings About Deflationary Theories of Truth

1. From my survey of the literature, there are four main types of truth theory being discussed: substantive theories, nihilist (for want of a better label) theories, deflationary theories, and identity theories. Let me say just a little about the first two main types and then move on to deflationism. The Commenter (William Woking) will be sure to disagree with me about deflationism, which is good: by abrasion the pearl (of wisdom) is formed. Or as I read on a T-shirt at a road race recently: No pressure, no diamonds.

2. Substantive theories maintain that truth is (i) a metaphysically substantive item, presumably a property or relation, (ii) susceptible of non-trivial analysis or explication. Correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories count as substantive theories. Such theories purport to analyze truth in terms of other, presumably more basic, terms such as a relation of correspondence or adequation to 'reality' or to facts as in Veritas est adequatio intellectus ad rem. Or in terms of coherence of truth-bearers (beliefs, propositions, etc.) among themselves. Or in terms of conduciveness to human flourishing as in William James' "the true is the good by way of belief." Or in terms of broadly epistemic notions such as rational acceptability or warranted asseribility as in the Putnamian-Peircean 'Truth is rational acceptability at the ideal limit of inquiry.'

The latter is not a good proposal for reasons I won't go into now, but it illustrates the project of giving a substantive theory of truth. One tries to analyze truth in more basic terms. One tries to give an informative, noncircular answer to the question, What is truth? The sunbstantive approach is in the Granbd Tradition deriving from Plato wherein one asks What is X? for many values of 'X.'

The substantive approach to truth can be summed up in three propositions:

A. The facts about truth are not exhausted by the substitution-instances of the equivalence schemata 'p' is true iff p and *p* is true iff p.

B. There is a substantive property of truth common to all and only truths.

C. This substantive property is analyzable.

3. The 'nihilist' as he is known in the truth literature rejects substantive theories, not because they are substantive, but because they are theories. He may grant that truth is a deep, substantial, metaphysically loaded, ontologically thick, topic. But he denies that one can have a theory about it, that one can account for it in more basic terms: truth is just too basic to be explained in more fundamental terms. The nihilist accepts (A) and (B) above but denies (C).

4. The deflationist, like the nihilist, rejects substantive theories of truth. The difference is that the deflationist holds that an account of truth is possible albeit in very 'thin' terms, while the nihilist denies that any account is possible thick or thin: truth is too basic to be accountable. Nihilism allows truth to be a thick (metaphysical) topic. Deflationism disallows this. Deflationists deny (A), (B), and (C).

5. The deflationist makes a big deal out of certain perfectly obvious equivalences and he tries to squeeze a lot of anti-metaphysical mileage out of them. Here are two examples, one involving a declarative sentence, the other involving a proposition. Note that asterisks around a sentence, or around a placeholder for a sentence, form a name of the proposition expressed by the sentence.

E1. 'Grass is green' is true iff grass is green.

E2. *Grass is green* is true iff grass is green.

Note that such biconditionals express logical, not material, equivalences: they are not just true but true across all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds. With respect to such biconditionals, there is no possible situation in which the RHS is true and the LHS false, or vice versa. If asked for the ground of this necessity, I would say it resides in the mere logic of the truth predicate. Saying this, I do not concede that there is nothing more to truth than the merely syntactic role played by 'true ' in equivalences like the above.

Now let us assume something which, though false, will simplify our discussion. Let us assume that there is no other type of use of the truth predicate other than the uses illustrated in logical equivalences like the foregoing. (Thus I am proposing that we ignore such uses as the one illustrated by 'Everything Percy says is true.')

The deflationist thesis can now be formulated as follows: There is nothing more to truth than what is expressed by such truisms as the foregoing equivalences. Thus there is no metaphysically substantive property of truth that the LHS predicates of 'Grass is green' or of *Grass is green.* The content on both sides is exactly the same: 'is true' adds no new content. 'Is true' plays a merely syntactic role. In terms of Quine's disquotationalism (which is a version of the deflationary approach), 'is true' is merely a device of disquotation. 'Is true' has no semantic dimension: it neither expresses a substantive property, nor does it refer to anything. Truth drops out as a topic of philosophical inquiry. There is no such property susceptible of informative explication in terms of correspondence, coherence, rational acceptability, or whatnot. The question What is truth? gets answered by saying that there is no such 'thing' as truth: there are truths, and every such truth reduces via the equivalence schema to a sentence or proposition in which the truth predicate does not appear. Accordingly, there is nothing all truths have in common in virtue of which they are truths. There is only a multiplicity of disparate truths. But even this says too much since each 'truth' reduces to a sentence or proposition in which 'true' does not appear.

6. Now for my misgivings about deflationism. But first three preliminary points.

a. Equivalence is symmetrical (commutative); if p is equivalent to q, then q is equivalent to p. But explanation is asymmetrical: if p explains q, then q does not explain p. From ' p iff q' one cannot infer 'p because q' or 'q because p.' 'p iff q' is consistent with both. Connected with the asymmetry of explanation is that equivalences do not sanction reductions. Triangularity and trilaterality are logically equivalent properties, but it doesn't follow that either reduces to the other.

b. If two items are equivalent, then both are propositions or sentences. There cannot be equivalence between a sentence or proposition and something that is neither.

c. To define equivalence we need to recur to truth. To say that p, q are logically equivalent is to say that there is no possible situation in which p is true and q false, or q true, and p false.

Now what is the deflationist saying? His thesis is negative: there is nothing to truth except what is captured in the the equivalence schemata and their substitution-instances. Consider

E. *p* is true iff p.

First Misgiving: The truth of the biconditional is not in question. But equivalences don't sanction reductions. From (E) one cannot infer that the LHS reduces to the RHS, or vice versa. But the deflationist is saying that the LHS reduces to, and is explained by, the RHS. But what is his justification for saying this? Why not the other way around? Why not say that p because *p* is true?

Second Misgiving: For an equivalence to hold, both sides must be true (or false). Suppose both sides are true. Then, although the predicate 'true' does not appear on the RHS, the RHS must be true. So, far from dispensing with truth, the equivalence schemata and their instances presuppose it!

You don't get it, do you? Let me try an analogy with existence. A deflationist about existence might offer this equivalence schema:

F. Fs exist iff something is an F. (E.g., 'Cats exist iff something is a cat.')

Squeezing this triviality hard, our deflationist announces that 'exist' plays a merely syntactic role and that there is no substantive property of existence. But is it not obvious that if something is an F, then that thing must exist? Are you quantifying over a domain of nonexistents? If yes, then the equivalence fails. But if you are quantifying over a domain of existents, then the existence of those existents is being presupposed. So, even though 'exist' does not occur on the RHS of (F), existence is along for the ride. Same with (E). Even though 'true' does not occur on the RHS of (E), truth is along for the ride. In both cases, existence and truth in meaty substantive senses are being presupposed.

Third Misgiving. 'Grass is green' and 'It is true that grass is green' have exactly the same content. That is perfectly obvious and denied by no one. 'Is true' adds no new content. But how is it supposed to follow that truth is not a substantive property? What follows is that truth is not a content property. How do our deflationist pals get from 'Truth is not a content property' to 'Truth is not a substantive property'? Isn't it obvious that truth refers us outside the content of the proposition or sentence?

Compare existence. A thing and the same thing existing have exactly the same quidditative content. The fastest runner and the existing fastest runner are numerically the same individual. Does it follow that existence is not a property? No, what follows it that existence is not a quidditative property. Same with truth. There is no difference in content between p and true p. But it makes a world of difference whether p is true or false just as it makes a world of difference whether an individual exists or not.

Fourth Misgiving. If p and q are equivalent, then both are propositions. The instances of (E) therefore do not get us outside the 'circle of propositions.' But isn't it obvious that whether or not a sentence or a proposition or a belief (or any truthbearer) is true or false depends on matters external to the truthbearer?