{"id":3141,"date":"2020-05-15T04:33:46","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T04:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/05\/15\/reductive-presentism-and-truth-value-links\/"},"modified":"2020-05-15T04:33:46","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T04:33:46","slug":"reductive-presentism-and-truth-value-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/05\/15\/reductive-presentism-and-truth-value-links\/","title":{"rendered":"Reductive Presentism and the Truth-Value Links"},"content":{"rendered":"

What renders a statement about the past true? On one version of presentism, nothing does: statements about the past are brute truths. A rather more plausible version holds that "whatever renders a statement about the past true must lie in the present." (Michael Dummett, Truth and the Past<\/em>, Columbia UP 2004, 75)  Craig Bourne labels this view "reductive presentism." (A Future for Presentism<\/em>, Oxford UP 2006, 47 ff.)  But it too is untenable for various reasons, one of which is that it "conflicts with the truth-value links which assuredly govern our use of tensed statements." (ibid.) Dummett continues:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Such a truth-value link requires that if a statement in the present tense, uttered now, of the form "An event of type K is occurring," is true, then the corresponding statement in the past tense, "An event of type K occurred a year ago," uttered a year hence, must perforce also be true. (ibid.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Suppose I now scratch my right ear and intone 'I am now scratching my right ear.'   If precisely a year later I were to say, 'I scratched my right ear exactly a year ago,' I would say something true. "But it might well be that in a year's time you would have forgotten that trivial action, and that every trace of its occurrence would have dissipated." (ibid.)  But then on reductive presentism, my statement, 'I scratched my right ear exactly  a year ago' would not<\/em> be true.<\/span><\/p>\n

It would not be true because there would be nothing presently in existence to render it true. No  memory, no video-taped recording, no causal trace whatsoever.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What renders a statement about the past true? On one version of presentism, nothing does: statements about the past are brute truths. A rather more plausible version holds that "whatever renders a statement about the past true must lie in the present." (Michael Dummett, Truth and the Past, Columbia UP 2004, 75)  Craig Bourne labels … Continue reading “Reductive Presentism and the Truth-Value Links”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-time-and-change","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141","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=3141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}