{"id":10148,"date":"2011-11-21T14:24:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T14:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/21\/regress-what-regress\/"},"modified":"2011-11-21T14:24:39","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T14:24:39","slug":"regress-what-regress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/21\/regress-what-regress\/","title":{"rendered":"Regress? What Regress? Truth-Making Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed continues to repeat<\/a> his regress argument against truth-makers, despite my hurling invective at it.  I think I called it "breathtakingly rotten" or something equally offensive, all in good fun of course:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I have argued (e.g. here<\/a> and here<\/a> that the notion of a \u2018truthmaker\u2019 leads to an infinite regress. If there is such a truthmaker, an entity that makes<\/em> a proposition like \u2018Socrates sits\u2019 true – let it be A – then it comes into existence when Socrates sits down, and ceases to exist when he stands up. But then there would have to be a further truthmaker for A existing. I.e. the sentence \u201cA exists\u201d can be true or false, and so requires a further truthmaker B, that makes it true when B exists. But then \u201cB exists\u201d requires yet another truthmaker, and so on ad infinitum<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now what is the regress supposed to be?  There is an entity  A and it makes-true sentence s.  A is not a sentence, or any other type of representation.  Since we can talk about A, we can say 'A exists.'  'A exists' is contingently true, so it too needs a truth-maker.  So far, so good.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ed assumes that the truth-maker for "A exists' must be distinct from the truth-maker for s.  Without this assumption, the regress can't get started<\/a>.  Therefore, to show that his regress argument is bogus, it suffices to show that one and the same entity A can serve as the truth-maker for both s and 'A exists.'<\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose the truth-maker of 'Tom is tired' is the fact, Tom's being tired<\/em>.  Now consider the sentence 'Tom's being tired<\/em> exists.'  I claim that the truth-maker of both sentences is Tom's being tired<\/em>.   I conclude that there is no regress.<\/span><\/p>\n

To appreciate this you must note that while 'Tom is tired' is a predication, 'Tom's being tired<\/em> exists' is not.  It is an existential sentence like 'Tom exists.'  So while the predication requires a fact for its truth-maker, the existential sentence does not.  It does not need a fact as a truth-maker any more than 'Tom exists' does.  The truth-maker of the latter is just Tom.  The truth-maker of  'Tom's being tired' is not the fact, Tom'sbeing tired's existence<\/em>, but just  Tom's being tired<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a second reason why the regress cannot arise.  Ed is a nominalist. He eschews propositions and believes only in sentences.  Well, there is no need for there to be the sentence 'A exists'!  If no one says that A exists, then there is no sentence 'A exists.'  And of course nonexistent sentences do not need truth-makers.   And if someone does say that A exists, there is no need that he, or anyone else, say that the truth-maker of 'A exists' exists.  So for this reason too the regress can't get started.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ed ends his post on this strange note: "If we buy the idea of a \u2018truthbearer\u2019 (a proposition, a thought, whatever), the idea of a \u2018truthmaker\u2019 comes with it."  That's plainly false.  That there are truth-bearers is self-evident; that there are truth-makers is not.  Must I dilate further on this self-evident point?  Second, if the quoted sentence is true, and Ed's regress argument is sound, the upshot is that there are no truth-bearers, which is absurd.  In effect, Ed has provided a reductio ad absurdum<\/em> of his own claim that there are no truth-makers!<\/span><\/p>\n

What Ed says about representation and the representation of the faithfulness of a representation would require a separate post to discuss.  But I sense the conflation of epistemological questions with ontological ones.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed continues to repeat his regress argument against truth-makers, despite my hurling invective at it.  I think I called it "breathtakingly rotten" or something equally offensive, all in good fun of course: I have argued (e.g. here and here that the notion of a \u2018truthmaker\u2019 leads to an infinite regress. If there is such a … Continue reading “Regress? What Regress? Truth-Making Revisited”<\/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":[483,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infinite-regress-arguments","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10148","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=10148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}