Maybe, but then is there a future actuality if eternalism is not the case? Is there a past actuality if presentism is the case?

Does it make sense for a true sentence to have a non-existent truthmaker?

Debate? Not so much.

I like your explanation of truth in a world against truth at a world. And I think the argument you presented yesterday is quite interesting. I think there is an ambiguity going on in P2 over what it is for a sentence to exist, but there might be some value in your suggestion to treating the antecedent of the T-sentence as an utterance rather than as a proposition.

What I don't think is that this poses a problem for realism.

Take the example @Banno gave. "If everything remains undisturbed then there will be Gold". We know that is true because we have the condition "if everything remains undisturbed". Without that we don't know what the future will be. Nor do we know whether it is already fixed. As to the past we don't really know what actually happened apart from human records or what we can glean from archeology, paleontology and cosmology.

As to the past we don't really know what actually happened apart from human records or what we can glean from archeology, paleontology and cosmology. — Janus

Inferences from empirical premises run in both directions, past and future. Both similarly depend on the physical perdurance of matter. There is no substantial difference between them.

It was @Wayfarer who introduced "If everything remains undisturbed then there will be Gold", quoting someone else.

Seems to me that logic alone should not be able to commit us to a view on the truth functions of statements about the future. Rather if we hold that statements about the future are either true or false, we can adopt a biconditional logic, but if we think otherwise we might adopt an alternative logic.

That is, our view on what truth values statements about the future can take will decide which logic we adopt.

We then have the task of showing that the logic is consistent.

who introduced "If everything remains undisturbed then there will be Gold", quoting someone else. — Banno

You’re referring to the abstract of the introduction of Pinter’s book Mind and the Cosmic Order, which I quoted, which says in the early Universe, ‘There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds.’ When intelligent life evolves, then it will discover that gold is amongst the constituents of the Earth. I don’t read that as supporting metaphysical realism.

↪Janus It was Wayfarer who introduced "If everything remains undisturbed then there will be Gold", quoting someone else. — Banno

OK, but it seems the point stands regardless.

Inferences from empirical premises run in both directions, past and future. Both similarly depend on the physical perdurance of matter. There is no substantial difference between them. — Leontiskos

The substantial difference is that for us the past already happened, is thus fixed and has left its traces. The future is yet to happen and so is not (for us at least) fixed.

don’t read that as supporting metaphysical realism. — Wayfarer

Nor do I?

As asked previously, where do you differ with the SEP description? ‘According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independent of how humans...take it to be. The objects the world contains, together with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the world’s nature and these objects [together with the properties they have and the relations they enter into] exist independently of our ability to discover they do. Unless this is so, metaphysical realists argue, none of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or false, independently of what anyone might think.’ Doesn’t the ‘there is gold at Boroora’ argument fall under this heading?

The substantial difference is that for us the past already happened, is thus fixed and has left its traces. The future is yet to happen and so is not (for us at least) fixed. — Janus

This again brings out the difference between something being true and it being know to be true. We don't know if the coin we are about to flip will come up heads or tails, but it would be an error to conclude that therefore "the coin will come up heads" has no truth value.

I addressed that previously:

I've tried to be clear that ultimately neither realism nor idealism will do. The part of what you say that I agree with is that we construct our understanding of how things are; I've set this out in some detail in posts about both "counts as..." and direction of fit. The part on which it seems we disagree is that since not just any understanding will do, there is something else that places restrictions on the understanding we construct. — Banno

Sentences are true and cardboard boxes have 8 corners. Your claim that sentences merely express (abstract) propositions and that it is these (abstract) propositions that are true is like the claim that cardboard boxes merely exemplify cubes and that it is these abstract cubes that have 8 corners. — Michael

Sentences are also abstract objects. But you can adopt behaviorism and truth anti-realism, which says the truth predicate just serves a social function. Why are you opposed to those options?

What I don't think is that this poses a problem for realism. — Banno

It wasn't meant to be. It was meant to be an examination of "p" is true iff p. I think it's both problematic and impoverished.

It's problematic in that it appears to entail an absurd conclusion – but as mentioned in my earlier comment we can at least address this by amending the premise to if "p" exists then "p" is true iff p.

It's impoverished in that it only says that "if Hitler had not killed himself then he would have been assassinated" is true iff if Hitler had not killed himself then he would have been been assassinated, but this says nothing substantial about whether or not such a counterfactual can be true or about the ontology of counterfactual truthmakers (i.e. the consequent of the biconditional) – concerns that have merit regardless of truth deflationism. And these concerns also have merit when discussing non-counterfactual claims about the past, the future, and even the present.

So whether you're a realist or an anti-realist or an idealist, the bare assertion that "it is raining" is true iff it is raining says nothing to address any metaphysical issues – or even issues about truth. It's just a rather vacuous aphorism.

...cardboard boxes have 8 corners — Michael

Not the ones Toblerones come in.

So whether you're a realist or an anti-realist or an idealist, the bare assertion that "it is raining" is true iff it is raining says nothing to address any metaphysical issues – or even issues about truth. — Michael

That's all fine. There is very little that can be said about truth.

That's all fine. There is very little that can be said about truth. — Banno

But presumably more can be said about whether or not aliens exist, whether or not dinosaurs existed, whether or not I will win the lottery next week, and whether or not Hitler would have been assassinated had he not killed himself.

Not sure what you want here.

I suspect the conclusion in your argument is trivial, rather than significant. it's true that there are sentences. "There is gold in those hills" says there is gold in those hills.

So whether you're a realist or an anti-realist or an idealist, the bare assertion that "it is raining" is true iff it is raining says nothing to address any metaphysical issues – or even issues about truth. It's just a rather vacuous aphorism. — Michael

Yup. And it is odd to appeal to a vacuous aphorism over and over again as if one is saying something substantial. ...Not to mention refusing to go beyond the vacuous aphorism.

Trivial, yes, but perhaps not as trivial as is commonly supposed. It has the singular advantage of being correct, which is more than can be said for other, more profound theories of truth.

If there are no sentences then there are no correct descriptions of the world. But there's still rain. — Michael

The use of the phrase "correct description" may seem to remedy the situation somewhat from what I see but I am not sure it replaces "truth" or gives a better version. Surely, "correct" is just a synonym for "true" and so implicitly "truth" has been sneaked in there anyway. And you obviously cannot just replace "correct" with "correct description" because it regresses. So the remedy isn't an all-encompassingly general one.

If descriptive sentences are about things, then I think I can say that truth is plausibly about things too... truth is about what is the case. And so it seems a bit deeper than just an add-on adjective to a sentence.

The part on which it seems we disagree is that since not just any understanding will do, there is something else that places restrictions on the understanding we construct. — Banno

It is determined by both external and internal factors. There are definitely 'facts of the matter' as I've acknowledged.

I'm considering the idea that while there are inummerable objective facts, the existence of the world is not one of them. Our immensely sophisticated hominid forebrain generates the world in which there is space, time, and perspective, and within which individual particulars have features, location, composition, and the other attributes.

The complaint I have is against those philosophies that seek explanation only in objective terms, as they don't take the role of the mind (or brain) into account in what they consider to be real. The self-other division is implicit in all objective philosophies, but it is not acknowledged. It is, as Schopenhauer says, the philosophy of the subject who forgets himself.

This is the background to that exclamatory statement in the Critique of Pure Reason, 'take away the thinking subject, and the whole world must vanish'. Your instinctive response to that is 'tosh' - and I really do understand that. It sounds utterly outlandish or fantastic in isolation. But taken against the background of the rest of the critique, it is compatible with the overall insight of the constructive role of the mind in the world.*

Without that initial construction, 'gold, 'boorara' and 'exists' would all be meaningless noises. There would be no locations, no objects, nothing to speak of whatever.

I've been reading up on Hilary Putnam, who is referred to in the SEP article. HIs focus is narrower but not entirely incompatible: that the same phenomena can be explained in different and even incommensurable terms. He gives examples from mathematics, logic and science.

For Putnam, metaphysical realism boils down to the idea that the facts of the world (or the truth of propositions) are fixed by something mind-independent and language-independent. As a consequence of this idea, Putnam suggests that the Metaphysical Realist is committed to the existence of a unique correspondence between statements in a language or theory and a determinate collection of mind and language-independent objects in the world. Such talk of correspondence between facts and objects, Putnam argues, presupposes that we find ourselves in possession of a fixed metaphysically-privileged notion of ‘object’. Since it is precisely this possibility of dictating a right notion of concepts such as ‘individual’ and ‘object’ that Putnam takes the phenomenon of conceptual relativity to undermine, he naturally concludes that conceptual relativity presents a deep and insurmountable challenge to Metaphysical Realism. — Hilary Putnam and Conceptual Relativity, Travis McKenna

----

*I have briefly perused Bounds of Sense in the past, but I understand Strawson's critics (e.g. Henry Allison) to be saying that his analysis flattens out or naturalises Kant and in effect discards the baby with the bathwater.

I thought we reached at least a detente. Ok.

I'm considering the idea that while there are inummerable objective facts, — Wayfarer

If "Our immensely sophisticated hominid forebrain generates the world in which there is space, time, and perspective", then there is an immensely sophisticated hominid forebrain, logically prior to there being a generated world. I can't imagine how you could reconcile these two things. The brain is a part of the world it supposedly produces.

"Objective" is another of those words that detracts from a conversation more than it adds. If "...those philosophies that seek explanation only in objective terms" are muddled, it is not because they leave out the subjective, but becasue they first set up the objective/subjective dichotomy and then ignore half of it. Better to leave the supposed dichotomy aside.

Without that initial construction, 'gold, 'Boorara' and 'exists' would all be meaningless noises. But there would still be gold. )Note: no quotation marks). "There would be no locations, no objects, nothing to speak of whatever" is a step further than your argument will take us. You may conclude that there would be nothing spoken, but not that there would be nothing to speak of. You remain defeated by "...and nothing else changes".

"Our immensely sophisticated hominid forebrain generates the world in which there is space, time, and perspective", then there is an immensely sophisticated hominid forebrain, logically prior to there being a generated world. I can't imagine how you could reconcile these two things. The brain is a part of the world it supposedly produces. — Banno

That is indeed the 'strange loop': logical priority is a product of the brain, which in turn is a product of evolution.



Because you understand temporal sequence, you can imagine a world that would exist as if there were no observer in it - but that still is dependent on the mind. That's what I mean (and Husserl means) by 'implicit perspective'. 'Before man' or 'before I was born' are still mind-dependent. We can talk about them because we both possess the conceptual and linguistic resources within which it's meaningful to do so. But to us, the world is idea - not in the sense of representative realism, where the idea 'represents' but is separate from 'the object'. The whole process of the understanding comprises assimilating percepts and concepts into coherent wholes which are ideas (gestalts in Pinter's book). We believe that all of that would continue to exist outside that process, but being outside that process is, to all intents, being unconscious (or dead) - so we don't really know. As long as we're alive, that is what the mind is doing. We're not seeing it from no perspective, as it really would be with no observer in it, because then it wouldn't have any form, scale or perspective. It would not be a world. Which is not the same as saying that it would pass out of existence or that everything would dissappear.

See Schopenhauer’s Idealism: How Time Began with the First Eye Opening.

They first set up the objective/subjective dichotomy and then ignore half of it. — Banno

That is not inconsequential, I think it's a factor of considerable importance. That is the hallmark of the modern era beginning with Descartes. The very word 'objectivity' only came into use in the early modern period. And scientific naturalism has tended - I use past tense, because it is changing - to try to analyse everything from 'the view from nowhere' as Nagel says in his book.

That is indeed the 'strange loop': logical priority is a product of the brain, which in turn is a product of evolution. — Wayfarer

No, no. No strange loop. That's something quite different. You want the brain to generate reality, which presupposes that before there was reality there were brains - logically, as well as temporally and causally. Prestidigitation.

It won't work.

Does it have a truth value before the coin toss is completed?

So you think the outcome of the coin toss and everything else has an eternal truth value?

Einstein says the order of events depends on the observer's frame of reference.

Does it have a truth value before the coin toss is completed? — Janus

Seems to me that logic alone should not be able to commit us to a view on the truth functions of statements about the future. Rather if we hold that statements about the future are either true or false, we can adopt a biconditional logic, but if we think otherwise we might adopt an alternative logic. — Banno

I understand the idea that there is no universal now. No obsevers see time in reverse though do they?