{"id":10094,"date":"2011-12-07T13:29:30","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T13:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/12\/07\/an-antilogism-revisited\/"},"modified":"2011-12-07T13:29:30","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T13:29:30","slug":"an-antilogism-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/12\/07\/an-antilogism-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Time, Truth, and Truth-Making: An Antilogism Revisited and Transmogrified"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier<\/a>, I presented the following, which looks to be an antilogism.  An antilogism, by definition, is an inconsistent triad.  This post considers whether the triad really is logically inconsistent, and so really is an antilogism.<\/span><\/p>\n

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1. Temporally Unrestricted Excluded Middle: The principle that every declarative sentence is either true, or if not true, then false<\/em> applies unrestrictedly to all declarative sentences, whatever their tense.<\/span>
2. Presentism: Only what exists at present exists.<\/span>
3. Temporally Unrestricted Truth-Maker Principle: Every contingent truth has a truth-maker.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Edward objects<\/a>:  "First, I don't see why the three statements are logically<\/em> inconsistent. Why can't the truthmaker for a future tense statement exist now<\/em>, in the present?"<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Objection sustained.  The triad as it stands is not logically inconsistent.<\/span><\/p>\n

'Miss Creant will die by lethal injection in five minutes.'  Let this be our example.  It is a future-tensed contingent declarative.  By (1) it is either true or, if not true, then false.  By (3), our sample sentence has a truth-maker, an existing truth-maker obviously, if it is true.   By (2), the truth-maker exists only at present.  Edward is right: there is no inconsistency unless we add something like:<\/span><\/p>\n

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4.  If a sentence predicts a contingent event which lies wholly in the future, and the sentence is true, then the truth-maker of the sentence, if it has one,  cannot exist at any time prior to the time of the event.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(4) is extremely plausible.  Suppose it is true now that Miss Creant will die in five minutes.  The only item that could make this true is the event of her dying.  But this event does not now exist  and cannot exist at any time prior to her dying. <\/span><\/p>\n

So our antilogism, under Edwardian pummeling, transmogrifies into an aporetic tetrad which, he will agree, is logically inconsistent.<\/span><\/p>\n

The solution, for Edward, is obvious: Deny the Temporally Unrestricted Truth-Maker Principle as stated in (3).  Of course, that is a<\/em> solution.  But can Edward show that it must be preferred to the other three solutions?  After all, one could deny Presentism, and many distinguished philosophers do.  I would hazard the observation that the majority of the heavy-hitters in the 20th century Anglosphere were B-theorists, and thus deniers of Presentism.  Or one could deny Unrestricted LEM, or even (4).<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I said that (4) is extremely plausible, one could conceivably deny it by maintaining that the truth-makers of future-tensed sentences are tendencies in the present.  For example, I say to wifey, "Watch it! The pot is going to boil over!"  Assuming that that's a true prediction, one might claim that it is the present tendencies of the agitated pasta-rich water that is the truth-maker.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Please note also that I too could solve the tetrad by denying Unrestricted T-maker.  Not by rejecting T-makers tout court<\/em> in the Edwardian manner, but by restricting T-makers to contingent past- and present-tensed declaratives.  I hope Edward appreciates that the above problem does not give aid and comfort to his wholesale rejection of T-makers.<\/span><\/p>\n

One can always solve an aporetic polyad by denying one of its limbs.  Sure.  But then you face other daunting tasks.  One is to show in a compelling way that your preferred solution should be preferred by all competent practitioners.  You have to show that your solution is THE solution and not merely a solution relative to your background assumptions and cognitive values.  A school-immanent solution is no final and absolute solution.  Another task is to show that your solution can be embedded in a theory that does not itself give rise to insoluble problems.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier, I presented the following, which looks to be an antilogism.  An antilogism, by definition, is an inconsistent triad.  This post considers whether the triad really is logically inconsistent, and so really is an antilogism. 1. Temporally Unrestricted Excluded Middle: The principle that every declarative sentence is either true, or if not true, then false … Continue reading “Time, Truth, and Truth-Making: An Antilogism Revisited and Transmogrified”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,408,113,541,204,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aporetics","category-language-philosophy-of","category-logica-utens","category-propositions","category-time-and-change","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}