Truths qua Grounds

A number of philosophers have recently found it congenial to talk in terms of grounding. Grounding discourse features grounding sentences that are answers to questions about what grounds what. The goal of this article is to explore and defend a counterpart‐theoretic interpretation of grounding discourse. We are familiar with David Lewis's applications of the method of counterpart theory to de re modal discourse. Counterpart‐theoretic interpretations of de re modal idioms and grounding sentences share similar motivations, mechanisms, and applications. I shall explain my motivations and describe two applications of a counterpart theory for grounding discourse. But, in this article, my main focus is on counterpart‐theoretic mechanisms.     

Anti-Luck Epistemologies and Necessary Truths

That believing truly as a matter of luck does not generally constitute knowing has become epistemic commonplace. Accounts of knowledge incorporating this anti-luck idea frequently rely on one or another of a safety or sensitivity condition. Sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge have a well-known problem with necessary truths, to wit, that any believed necessary truth trivially counts as knowledge on such accounts. In this paper, we argue that safety-based accounts similarly trivialize knowledge of necessary truths and that two ways of responding to this problem for safety, issuing from work by Williamson and Pritchard, are of dubious success.     

Turning Words and Twisting Truths

SUMMARY

A collection of statements related to relationship enrichment offering fresh insights through changing the sequential order of words and ideas.     

Necessary Moral Truths and Theistic Metaethics

Theistic metaethics usually places one key restriction on the explanation of moral facts, namely: every moral fact must ultimately be explained by some fact about God. But the widely held belief that moral truths are necessary truths seems to undermine this claim. If a moral truth is necessary, then it seems like it neither needs nor has an explanation. Or so the objection typically goes. Recently, two proponents of theistic metaethics — William Lane Craig and Mark Murphy — have argued that this objection is flawed. They claim that even if a truth is necessary, it does not follow that it neither needs nor has an explanation. In this article, I challenge Craig and Murphy’s reasoning on three main grounds. First, I argue that the counterexamples they use to undermine the necessary truth objection to theistic metaethics are flawed. While they may provide some support for the notion that necessary truths can be explained, they do not provide support for the notion that necessary moral truths can be explained. Second, I argue that the principles of explanation that Murphy and Craig use to support theistic metaethics are either question-begging (in the case of Murphy) or improperly motivated (in the case of Craig). And third, I provide a general defence of the claim that necessary moral truths neither need nor have an explanation.     

Four Fictions and Their Theological Truths

Four novels elicit theological reflection in the college classroom. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver describes justification by grace and the difficulty of living liberated from guilt. The Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling prompt tensions between destiny and free choice in determining personal identity. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon challenges conscientious Christian community to open itself in risk to outsiders. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant retrieves silent women's voices in the Book of Genesis, raising tensions between fiction and biblical authority.     

Some Notes on Truths and Comprehension

In this paper we study several translations that map models and formulae of the language of second-order arithmetic to models and formulae of the language of truth. These translations are useful because they allow us to exploit results from the extensive literature on arithmetic to study the notion of truth. Our purpose is to present these connections in a systematic way, generalize some well-known results in this area, and to provide a number of new results. Sections 3 and 4 contain some recursion- and proof-theoretic results about Kripke-style fixed-point theories of truth. Section 5 shows how to derive full second-order arithmetic from principles of truth. Section 6 investigates the proof-theoretic strength of disquotation without an arithmetical base theory.     

Developmental Truths in Memories of Childhood and Adolescence

This study of age-related changes in memories of personally important encounters showed “developmental truths,” that is, patterns that converged with prior developmental theories and research. Participants were 47 males and 48 females in their early 20s. An average of 16 memories were collected from each person during an intensive personal interview. Memories were coded for age at the time of the episode, the identity of the other person with whom the study participant was interacting, what the participant wanted from the other person, and the outcome. As expected, memories of encounters with parents and about wanting help prevailed for childhood, whereas memories of encounters with close friends and about wanting intimacy prevailed by mid-adolescence. Memories about wanting to help others were sparse for this young-adult sample, but, like needs for intimacy, increased with age. Although patterns for males tended to be more dramatic than patterns for females, this trend appeared more attributable to actual developmental differences in social dynamics than to differences in the degree to which current concerns intruded into the memory process. The advantages of personally salient, event-specific retrospective reports for understanding personality development and change are discussed.     

Ministry with Adolescents: Tending Boundaries, Telling Truths

This essay explores anxieties, risks, and responsibilities of ministers and other spiritual leaders who seek honest and healing dialogue about sex and sexuality with young people in their care. Building on a delicate scene from Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel Speak, it draws from psychotherapeutic works of Ron Taffel and David Schnarch, and from theological writings of Sebastian Moore and Mark D. Jordan, to press the importance of safe, direct, non-shaming pastoral conversations around sensitive adolescent sexual concerns.     

Does The Necessity of Mathematical Truths Imply Their Apriority?

It is sometimes argued that mathematical knowledge must be a priori, since mathematical truths are necessary, and experience tells us only what is true, not what must be true. This argument can be undermined either by showing that experience can yield knowledge of the necessity of some truths, or by arguing that mathematical theorems are contingent. Recent work by Albert Casullo and Timothy Williamson argues (or can be used to argue) the first of these lines; W. V. Quine and Hartry Field take the latter line. I defend a version of the argument against these, and other objections.