Partnership in Truth-Making

After arguing that truth-making is properly construed as a partnership between truth bearers and truth-makers, I focus on two prominent arguments against the category of fact as one of the key relata in the truth-making relation. After rejecting those arguments, I go on to examine a more difficult issue, one that might force us to appreciate more fully the robust role that thought has in “creating” truth.     

Making Sense of Truth-Makers

This essay argues that propositions are made true by facts. A proposition is the sense expressed by a statement (sentence token used to make a truth claim). Facts are positive or negative constitutive properties of the domain of discourse (usually the actual world). The presence of horses is a positive constitutive property of the world; the absence of unicorns is a negative one. This notion of constitutive properties accords well with the Hume-Kant claim that existence is not a property of any individual said to exist. While Frege held existence to be a property of concepts and Russell held it to be a property of propositional functions, our view sees existence as a property of a domain of discourse. To say that Native Dancer exists is simply to say that the world is characterized by the presence of Native Dancer; to say that Pegasus does not exist is to say the world is characterized by the absence of Pegasus. Such properties of presence and absence are facts. Facts make true propositions true; nothing makes false propositions false (they simply fail to be made true). Facts are not items in the world; they are (constitutive) properties of the world.     

The Trouble with Truth-Makers

This paper argues that theories of truth which seek to specify the ontological ground of true statements by appealing to an ontology of truth-makers face a severe and possibly insurmountable obstacle in the form of logically complex statements. I argue that there is no apparent way to develop an account of logically complex truth within the confines of a modest and plausible ontology of truth-makers and to this end criticize independent attempts by Armstrong and Pendlebury to develop such an account.     

Truth-Making and Analysis: A Reply to Rodriguez-Pereyra

Abstract

The law requires that plaintiffs in fraud cases be ‘justified’ in relying on a misrepresentation. I deploy the accumulated intuitions of the law to defend externalist accounts of epistemic justification and knowledge against Laurence BonJour's counterexamples involving clairvoyance. I suggest that the law can offer a well-developed model for adding a no-defeater condition to either justification or to knowledge but without requiring that subjects possess positive reasons to believe in the reliability of an epistemic source.     

The Problem of Universals and the Limits of Truth-Making

Abstract

There is no single problem of universals but a family of difficulties that treat of a variety of interwoven metaphysical, epistemological, logical and semantic themes. This makes the problem of universals resistant to canonical reduction (to a ‘once-and-for-all’ concern). In particular, the problem of universals cannot be reduced to the problem of supplying truth-makers for sentences that express sameness of type. This is (in part) because the conceptual distinction between numerical and qualitative identity must first be drawn before a sentence is eligible to be supplied with truth-makers. The case is made through a consideration of a recent argument by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra.     

没有知识和信念的认识论

本文是欣迪卡生前最后一部论文集《苏格拉底认识论》的第一篇文章。欣迪卡认为,我们不应该孤立地探讨知识和信念这些认知概念,而应该把它们放到人的行动和决策的语境中去探讨。在这种探讨中,至关重要的概念不是知识和信念,而是信息。我们不应该把研究重点放在知识的定义和证成,而应该放到知识的发现和获取,即把知识作为探究过程的结果。由此,他提出了基于问答逻辑的询问探究模型,试图由此去建立认知逻辑和认识论,其中知识和信念都不具有关键地位。     

Reading without semantics

Analysis of the reading of a neurological patient (HTR) indicates that it is based on the operation of a relatively unimpaired phonological route. Quantitative investigations of type of error, reading speed and the effects of lexicality and spelling-to-sound regularity all support this conclusion. Spelling-to-sound regularity is shown to influence reading not only through regular words being better read than irregular, but also through mildly irregular words being better read than very irregular ones. A model is presented of the operation of the phonological route and of its progressive impairment in certain types of neurological disease.     

Life without definitions

The question ‘what is life?’ has long been a source of philosophical debate and in recent years has taken on increasing scientific importance. The most popular approach among both philosophers and scientists for answering this question is to provide a “definition” of life. In this article I explore a variety of different definitional approaches, both traditional and non-traditional, that have been used to “define” life. I argue that all of them are deeply flawed. It is my contention that a scientifically compelling understanding of the nature of life presupposes an empirically adequate scientific theory (vs. definition) of life; as I argue, scientific theories are not the sort of thing that can be encapsulated in definitions. Unfortunately, as I also discuss, scientists are currently in no position to formulate even a tentative version of such a theory. Recent discoveries in biology and biochemistry have revealed that familiar Earth life represents a single example that may not be representative of life. If this is the case, life on Earth today provides an empirically inadequate foundation for theorizing about life considered generally. I sketch a strategy for procuring the needed additional examples of life without the guidance of a definition or theory of life, and close with an application to NASA’s fledgling search for extraterrestrial life.     

Coherence without additivity

The Dutch book argument is a coherence condition for the existence of subjective probabilities. This paper gives a general framework of analysis for this argument in a nonadditive probability setting. Particular cases are given by comonotonic and affinely related Dutch books that lead to Choquet expectations and Min expectations.     

Compassion without illusion

This paper describes the present crisis in the mental health system relative to the chronically mentally ill. It asks how we can apply our usual social contract with the sick to noncompliant mental patients. The paper identifies some American assumptions about freedom and individualism that undermine a more effective response and offers alternative assumptions based on the Judeo-Christian tradition that may help resolve some difficulties.