{"id":11718,"date":"2010-04-04T15:35:07","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T15:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/04\/truthmaking-and-the-aporetics-of-the-thing-and-its-properties\/"},"modified":"2010-04-04T15:35:07","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T15:35:07","slug":"truthmaking-and-the-aporetics-of-the-thing-and-its-properties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/04\/truthmaking-and-the-aporetics-of-the-thing-and-its-properties\/","title":{"rendered":"Truthmaking and the Ontological Assay of Concrete Individuals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could a concrete individual such as my man Peter function as the truthmaker of an accidental predication about him such as *Peter is hungry*?  Or must the truthmaker of such a truth be an entity with a proposition-like structure such as a concrete state of affairs or a trope?  Earlier posts have assumed and sometimes argued that Peter himself cannot make true any true accidental predications about him.  Alan Rhoda appears to disagree in a comment<\/a> to an earlier post<\/a>: "Unlike you, I don't find it 'obvious' that Peter cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry*. Or, rather, it's obvious if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular . . . ."<\/font><\/p>\n

So we need to take a few more steps into the truthmaking  problematic.  Whether or not Peter can function as the truthmaker of accidental predications about him depends on our 'ontological assay' (as Gustav Bergmann might have put it) of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars such as Peter.  <\/font><\/p>\n

1.  I begin on an irenic note by granting to Alan that if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular, then it is obvious that Peter cannot make true any accidental predications about him.  But 'Peter' in our sample sentence does not denote a bare or thin particular; it denotes  Peter 'clothed' in his intrinsic (nonrelational) properties, whether accidental or essential.<\/font><\/p>\n

2.  I now argue that even if we take Peter together with his properties he cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry,* *Peter is sunburned,* etc.  It is widely agreed that if T makes true *p,* then *T exists* entails **p* is true.**  (As before, asterisks around an indicative sentence form a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.) Truthmaking is a form of broadly logical necessitation.  So if Peter by himself is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* then in every possible world in which Peter exists, the proposition will be true.  But surely this proposition is not true in every world in which Peter exists:  being sunburned is an accidental property of Peter.  Therefore, Peter by himself is not the truthmaker of such accidental propositions as *Peter is sunburned.*<\/font><\/p>\n

3.  So even if we take Peter together with all his intrinsic properties, he still cannot function as truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* etc. He cannot, because there are possible worlds in which Peter exists, but *Peter is F* (where 'F' picks out an accidental property) is false.  But what if we 'assay' Peter as a concrete state of affairs (not to be confused with a Chisholmian-Plantingian abstract state of affairs) along the lines of a Bergmannian or Armstrongian ontology?  Take the conjunction of all of Peter's intrinsic properties and call that conjunction K.  What is left over is the individuating element in Peter, call it a<\/em>.  We can then think of Peter as the state of affairs or fact of a's being K. <\/strong>Included within this maximal state of affairs are various submaximal states of affairs such as a's being F<\/strong>, where 'F' picks out an accidental property.  We can then say that Peter, as a concrete maximal state of affairs which includes the submaximal state of affairs of Peter's being sunburned, is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned.*<\/font><\/p>\n

This, indeed, is my 'official' line, the line I took in my book on existence<\/a>.  For reasons I can't go into now, I assayed ordinary particulars are concrete states of affairs.  But many philosophers will balk at this.  Barry Miller, for instance, if I rightly recall, told me that it is a category mistake to think of ordinary particulars as states of affairs.  I see his point, but it is hardly compelling.  Be that as it may, I have been assuming in these posts on truthmaking that ordinary particulars are not states of affairs.<\/font><\/p>\n

And so I say to Alan Rhoda, if ordinary particulars are not concrete states of affairs, then such particulars, by themselves, cannot function as truthmakers for accidental predications about them.  The reason was given above in #2.  Only if an ordinary particular or concrete individual has a proposition-like structure, only if it is a concrete state of affairs or something like one, can it function as truthmaker of accidental predications about it.<\/font><\/p>\n

4.  To sum up.  Rhoda and I agree that bare or thin particulars cannot serve as truthmakers for accidental predications.  And it may be that we are also in agreement if he goes along with the Bergmannian-Armstrongian ontological assay of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars as concrete states of affairs.  But I do disagree with him if he thinks that ordinary particulars, not so assayed, can function as truthmakers of accidental predications.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could a concrete individual such as my man Peter function as the truthmaker of an accidental predication about him such as *Peter is hungry*?  Or must the truthmaker of such a truth be an entity with a proposition-like structure such as a concrete state of affairs or a trope?  Earlier posts have assumed and sometimes … Continue reading “Truthmaking and the Ontological Assay of Concrete Individuals”<\/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":[565,237,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bergmann-gustav","category-facts","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11718","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=11718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}