Presentism, Truthmakers and Theoretical Virtues

I’m just back from the BSPC where I gave my Truthmaking for Presentists. I got loads of good questions of and comments, but wanted to comment on one of them. In the paper I argue that truthmaker theory can be contingently true and hence that it’s no immediate objection to my view if there are possible presentist scenarios in which my account doesn’t work, so long as we can reasonably believe that they are not actual. (The scenario in question discussed in the paper is a presentist world with an infinite past.)

One of my commentators, Caspar Hare, was pushing me on whether I thought it was similarly okay for the truthmaker principle to simply be true now. He was expecting me to say yes – but I say no, it must be true always; and he was rightly pushing me to say why one should demand that the principle be true at all times but not at all worlds when one holds a view that treats times and worlds analogously in holding that only one of each (the present time, the actual world) is real.

For me the reasons to be a truthmaker theorist concern theoretical virtues. Truthmaker theory is the theory that all the brute truths are truths about what there is, and this is theoretically more virtuous than theories that take as brute truths not only about what there is but also truths about what there was, could be, should be, etc, as well as truths about how things are, what laws hold, etc, etc. If truthmaker theory is true, God’s language only needs names and an existence predicate: that’s ideologically simpler, and hence more virtuous (other things being equal), than theories which require God to be able to make predications, express tensed facts, etc.

I think that in the absence of further information, if the only reason to believe a theory is that it is theoretically virtuous, then we should take that theory to be at best contingently true. There’s no inconsistency in a theoretical virtue selecting a necessarily true theory, but we’d need some reason to think that it does in any particular case. In general the world needn’t have cooperated with what is theoretically virtuous: being guided by simplicity, parsimony etc might have taken us badly wrong – we just hope it doesn’t actually do so. That’s why I only hold truthmaker theory to be a contingent truth. (It’s also why I hold the contingency of composition, and the contingency of whether there is a fundamental level.)

But it seems to me that satisfaction of the theoretical virtues makes a demand on how the world is across times, not just at the present time, even if the present is all that is real. Suppose we’re faced with two theories, T1 and T2. T1 says that there are always 10,000 things. T2 says that there are now only 100 things but that at all other times there are billions. It seems to me that the presentist doesn’t get even a pro tanto reason to accept T2 on the basis that it says that there are fewer things in reality. (I’m assuming quantitative parsimony is a virtue – replace talk of number of things with number of kinds of things if you don’t.) Sure, the present is all that there is, and T2 says that there are presently 100 things whereas T1 says that there are presently a hundred times as many things. But the presentist should still be moved, I think, by the fact that according to T2 reality just was, and is soon to be again, massively more unparsimonious than T1 says it is. The fact that those times aren’t real shouldn’t make us worry any less about that. (By contrast, if T3 and T4 agree on what actually exists but T4 says there are more possibilia than T3 does, this only gives us even a pro-tanto reason to prefer T3 if we are realist about possibilia.)

I think that what’s driving this thought is an idea that Kit Fine pushes in his fantastic paper ‘Tense and Reality’: that everyone should think of non-present times as part of the same ‘all encompassing reality’ whereas only the realist about possibilia should think that about worlds. Now Fine takes that as a reason to deny that the present time is privileged, and so to be a non-standard realist if you’re going to be a realist about tense; but I think that one can still accept that thought and accept a privileged present. One just needs to accept that what’s going on at other times is relevant to how we judge theories in a way that what’s going on at other worlds is not (at least, not in the same way).

So parsimony doesn’t tell the presentist to accept T2 over T1, and if the truthmaker principle is only true now it doesn’t tell the presentist to be a truthmaker theorist. The virtues of truthmaker theory are only obtained if it is always true; by contrast, whether it is necessarily true are neither here nor there, as far as securing those virtues is concerned.

Graduate conference in metaphysics

See following call for papers for the CMM graduate conference
__________________________________________________________________

The Centre for Metaphysics and Mind at the University of Leeds is
hosting the 4th Annual CMM Graduate Conference on Friday 4th
September.

Submissions are welcome on any area of metaphysics. Metaphysics should
be broadly construed to include not only traditional metaphysical
topics, but also the metaphysical aspects of e.g. philosophy of mind,
philosophy of physics, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics.

Submissions of any length up to 5,000 words will be considered.

Each paper presented at the conference will be followed by a response
from a member of academic staff or PhD student from the University of
Leeds Department of Philosophy.

As with last year's conference we hope to be able to pay some or all
of the travel and accommodation costs for those people whose papers
are accepted. (This is dependent on successful funding applications.)

Please submit complete papers, preferably by e-mail, to Joanna
Pollock, joeykpollock@googlemail.com. Please mark your submission
clearly as such. Receipt will be acknowledged asap.

All papers should be suitable for blind review (we cannot guarantee
anonymised refereeing if your paper is not suitably anonymised).
Please include a cover page with title, abstract and contact details.

Deadline for receipt of submissions is Sunday 19th July 2009.

Decisions will be made by Monday 10th August 2009.

For more general details on the conference please consult:

http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phsk/cmmgc09/index.htm

or e-mail Duncan Watson at phl5dw@leeds.ac.uk

Composition as identity does not entail universalism

In my Contingency of Composition paper, I deny the commonly held claim that composition as identity (CAI) entails universalism about composition. (The entailment is defended by Sider, Merricks, et al.) My basic thought was: CAI says just that a complex object is identical to its parts – that tells us only that when you’ve got a complex object, it is identical to its parts, and this is silent about whether or not for any collection of objects there is such a complex object that they are identical to. If many-one identity makes sense then, prima facie, it makes sense to claim that for some collections of objects there’s a one that they are identical to, and some collections of objects such that there’s no one object that they are identical to. All CAI tells us is that it’s all and only the first collections that compose. To assume that every collection composes is just to assume that for any collection of objects, there’s a one to which they are identical. Why would I accept that if I doubted universalism?

In denying the entailment, I need to respond to an argument that both Sider and Merricks give for it. They argue as follows: Suppose (for reductio) the Xs don’t compose. They could do. Go to the world where they do (w). In w, there’s a one, A, that’s identical to the Xs. Given the necessity of identity, A is actually identical to the Xs. So the Xs actually compose A. Contradiction. Formally:

1) ◊(Xs=A)
2) ◊(Xs=A) -> □(Xs=A)
3) @(Xs=A)

In my paper I attempted to resist this argument with some pretty tricky moves – and while I still think they’re right, I think I haven’t exactly convinced the world! (See the earlier discussion on this blog) But I think I can actually make the point more simply than I did then.

The argument aims to prove that the Xs are actually identical to A. Thus, there is a one that the Xs are identical to: A. So since to compose is to be identical to a one, the Xs compose. But wait! All the argument shows is that it’s actually true that the Xs are A. Where do we get the claim that there’s a one that the Xs are identical to? This follows, obviously, if A is actually a one. But where does that claim come from? All we know is that A is possibly a one. Ex hypothesi A is a one in the world in which the Xs compose. But we can only conclude that A is actually a one – and hence that there’s a one that the Xs are actually identical to – if we have the assumption that anything that is possibly a one is necessarily a one. But what right do we have to make that assumption? If we’re leaving open the possibility that there’s a many that’s not a one but could be (and at this stage we must, lest we beg the question), we should also leave open the possibility that there’s a many that is a one but might not be. Since the many is the one, this is a one that might not be a one: a one that is a many, but that might have been a mere many – a many that is identical to no one. If the Xs don’t actually compose this is the status we should think A has in the world in which they do compose. So sure A is actually identical to the Xs: but A is actually just a name for the plurality, a plurality that don’t actually compose. A is only a one in the worlds in which that many do compose. And we’ve been given no reason to think we’re forced into thinking that our world is one of those.

The Trinity and contingent identity

I got thinking about the Trinity after the workshop on the metaphysics of theism at Leeds last week, and I got to wondering: has anyone ever suggested that the Trinity is a case of contingent identity? (The good thing about a blog is you can put out those ideas that are too weird for publication! All my thoughts on the philosophy of religion are a proper subset of that category.)

So forget the Trinity for the moment and focus on the father's relationship to the son: the idea is that they are actually identical, but contingently so, and that the father is a necessary existent but the son a contingent existent. In every world in which the son exists, he is identical to the father, but there are worlds in which the father exists and is not identical to the son because there are worlds in which the son does not exist (for the son to exist depends on an act of will on the part of the father, and he might not have so willed).

So there is of course a very tight connection between the father and the son: strict numerical identity - it doesn't get much tighter! Thus vindicating Jesus's claim that that father and he are one. But we can also quite easily, on this view, make sense of Jesus's claim that the father is greater than he is: he's a mere contingent existent, the father a necessary being - that's good grounds for saying that the father is greater.

How to fit in the spirit? Well perhaps the spirit is also a contingent existent, and also actually identical to the father (and, by transitivity, the son), but that there are worlds with son but no spirit and worlds with spirit but no son. So the idea is that although the father, the son, and the spirit are each numerically identical to the others, we can distinguish them by their differing modal profiles. For any two, while they're actually identical, they might not have been. But monotheism is easily seen to be a necessary truth, on this view (whereas other views of the Trinity threaten to commit us to tritheism): necessarily, there is only one God, for necessarily any divine being is numerically identical to the father.

Objection: how can they be numerically identical if they have differing modal profiles? Reply: well, we all know the contingent identity theorist has to resist the Leibniz law argument from differing modal profiles to numerical distinctness. Whatever story they're going to tell to make sense of contingent identity in general, let them tell it here.

Objection: but isn’t there a difference in non-modal properties as well? The father is atemporal, the son temporal, the son human the father not, etc? Reply: okay, we’re going to have to say something odd here. Perhaps we just deny the atemporality of the father, or perhaps we say that God is atemporal qua father but not qua son, etc (and hopefully unpack that and say what it means!). But every view of the Trinity ends up saying something a bit odd at this point – it’s not clear that there’s a particular objection to the contingent identity view here.

So, does anyone know if this has been discussed before, or see any problems with it that aren’t faced by all accounts of the Trinity?

(Posts on sane topics will resume once marking season is over, I suspect!)

Routledge Companion to Metaphysics

The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is now out! I'm very proud of this: I think our contributors all did an excellent job, and the volume looks excellent.

It's divided into three sections: the history of metaphysics, ontology, and metaphysics and science, and contains 53 original essays. I hope and believe it'll be a useful work of reference for the foreseeable future. You should buy it!

New research centre in Scotland!

Exciting news for philosophy in Scotland! Crispin Wright has accepted an offer to found and direct a new philosophical research centre at the University of Aberdeen. The centre will ‘go live’ Sep 1st 09, and is provisionally named ‘The Northern Institute of Philosophy’.

The NIP’s areas of remit will be: Epistemology, Formal Logic, Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mathematics, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and the History of Analytical Philosophy. A number of appointments will be made of various categories in the near future, and a bunch of the Leeds faculty will be involved as Associate Fellows, and in other respects.

Arbitrary Reference

I posted a while back toying with a view of vagueness whereby there was a sharp cut-off in any sorites series as a result of there always being a unique most meaning among the candidate meanings (i.e. those that fit equally well with usage) for any vague expression; since naturalness is a reference magnet – and since it is ex hypothesi not trumped by usage – this is the meaning we will in fact mean, thus determining that the cut-off is where it is. (I further toyed with the idea that it is ontically indeterminate which meaning is the unique most natural, thus yielding the conclusion that it’s determinate that there’s a sharp cut-off in the sorites series but that it’s ontically indeterminate where it is – but forget about this complication for now.)

I’ve also been thinking about this with respect to arbitrary reference. What’s going on when we reason as follows? Let n be an arbitrary multiple of 4. n is a multiple of 2, all multiples of 2 are even, so every multiple of 4 is even. In particular, what, if anything, is referred to by ‘n’ throughout? Maybe it doesn’t refer; but then it’s hard to see how the sentences could be truth-apt, and we get a kind of Frege-Geach problem. Maybe it refers to a special kind of entity: the arbitrary multiple of 4; but that’s kind of weird. Ofra Magidor and Wylie Breckenridge have a really interesting paper where they argue that n actually refers to some particular multiple of 4 – we just cannot know which one. But in virtue of what do I refer to this particular multiple of 4 rather than some other? In virtue of nothing, they say: this is a brute fact. The semantic facts, on their view, are not fixed by the non-semantic facts: all the non-semantic facts could have been just the same but you have referred to some other multiple of 4 by ‘n’. I don’t like brute semantic facts, but I like a lot about their account, so I am quite attracted to extending the above account of vagueness to cases of arbitrary reference: ‘n’ refers to the most natural arbitrary multiple of 4. (Psst! – and it’s ontically indeterminate what this is. But again, forget this just now.)

There are two problems, one of which is encountered by both Magidor and Breckenridge and myself, the other of which might be thought to tell in favour of Magidor and Breckenridge’s view over my variant. I’d appreciate any thoughts on what I have to say about these.

First the common problem. Any view that takes us to genuinely refer to an F when we aim to refer to an arbitrary F has to have something to say about the case where there can be no Fs. For example, suppose we reason as follows. Let n be an arbitrary even prime greater than 2. n is (because it’s even) divisible by 2. So n is divisible by a number other than itself or 1. So n is not prime. Reductio: there is no such n. This chain of reasoning is perfectly good; but it’s obviously hopeless to take ‘n’ to refer to any even prime greater than 2, precisely because there are no such things. (I guess we could go Meinongian, and claim that there are such things, and ‘n’ refers to one, but that n doesn’t exist. But let’s not.) So what’s going on in this case? This is a case where those who postulate special entities as the referents in the cases of arbitrary reference – the arbitrary F – are at an advantage over those who take us to refer to an F; for if the arbitrary even prime greater than 2 isn’t really an even prime greater than 2, there can be no objection to its existence on these grounds. But of course, such views face other problems: such as, if the arbitrary F isn’t an F, what is it? I think we should treat cases like this as not really being cases of arbitrary reference after all. Despite their surface similarity to such cases, these cases, I suggest, are really reductios on the hypothesis that we have a case of genuine reference. So when we say ‘Let n be an arbitrary even prime greater than 2’, I suggest we are really supposing for reductio the hypothesis that ‘an arbitrary even prime greater than 2’ refers. Then, of course, we need some principle that lets us semantically descend, and conclude that there are no even primes greater than 2 if that expression cannot refer.

Now to the other problem. While I might not know what the most natural F is when I refer to an arbitrary F, there are some things I do know. I do know, for example, that if I refer to an arbitrary property I do not refer to grue, because grue is less natural than green. So when I say ‘Let F be an arbitrary property’, I can conclude that F is not identical to grue. But can’t I then conclude that all properties are not identical to grue, for isn’t one of the rules we’re trying to capture the one that says that if x is an arbitrary F and x is G then all Fs are G? But this rule would then take us wrong, for it’s not true that all properties are not identical to grue, for grue is identical to grue.

If this is a problem for my view, however, there is as much of a problem with Magidor and Breckenridge’s view. Indeed, any view that takes you to refer in a case of arbitrary reference has such a problem, including views that take you to refer to a special kind of entity (the arbitrary F), for the above rule would tell you to infer that all the Fs have the property of having being referred to by you when you said ‘Let n be an arbitrary F’. If I, at time t, say ‘Let n be an arbitrary number’ then, if ‘n’ refers – no matter what it refers to, or how the reference fact is determined – then n has the property having been referred to by me at t. If we follow the rule that tells us to infer that all Fs are G if the arbitrary F is G, it follows that all numbers were referred to by me at t. This is false: either I referred to a particular number, or to a special entity that is the arbitrary number, but I certainly didn’t refer to each number.

So anyone who takes cases of arbitrary reference to really be cases of reference can’t admit that rule in full generality. But views which take us to refer to an F (rather than to a special entity, the arbitrary F) when we say ‘Let a be an arbitrary F’ obviously needed to restrict this rule in any case. Suppose I say ‘Let n be an arbitrary multiple of 4’. We want to be able to reason as follows: n is even, hence every multiple of 4 is even. But suppose, as a matter of fact (putting aside why this is the case), ‘n’ refers, arbitrarily, to 28. 28 is a multiple of 14. So can’t we now conclude, mistakenly, that all multiples of 4 are multiples of 14? The rule had better be restricted so that we cannot so infer. Magidor and Breckenridge respond to this problem by modifying the rule to say that we can only conclude that every number is F if we can prove that the arbitrary number n is F. Because you can’t know that n is 28, you can’t prove that n is a multiple of 14, and hence you can’t conclude that all multiples of 4 are multiples of 14.

I think Magidor and Breckenridge are basically right to restrict the rule so that the properties we can conclude that all Fs have aren’t the ones that n has if n was our arbitrary F but rather just those ones that we can prove that n has from a certain basis. But the basis can’t be the properties we know that n has: for while that would deal with the problem immediately above, since we can’t know that n, our arbitrary multiple of 4, is a multiple of 14, even if it is, this won’t deal with the prior problem, since we can know that n was referred to at t when I said at t ‘Let n be an arbitrary multiple of 4’. I think instead we should restrict the rule as follows: if a is an arbitrary F, then if you can prove that a is G from facts that are true solely in virtue of a being an F (i.e. excluding those facts that are true in virtue of a being the particular F that it is), conclude that all Fs are G. 28 isn’t a multiple of 14 in virtue of being a multiple of 4, it’s a multiple of 14 in virtue of being that particular multiple of 4, but it is even in virtue of being a multiple of 4, and that’s why we conclude that all multiples of 4 are even but why we can’t conclude that they’re all multiples of 14. Nor was 28 the referent of ‘n’ solely in virtue of being a multiple of 14: on my view, it is true in virtue of being the most natural multiple of 14; on Magidor and Breckenridge’s view it is not true in virtue of anything. Either way, the move to ‘all multiples of 14 were referred to by ‘n’ at t’ is blocked.

This also lets me respond to what would otherwise have been an advantage of Magidor and Breckenridge’s approach over my own (I owe the objection to Ofra). Suppose we say ‘let n be an arbitrary number and let m be an arbitrary number’? If the reference facts are just brutely settled, they might be brutely settled so that ‘n’ and ‘m’ co-refer and they might not be. Either way, we can’t prove either that n is identical to m or that n is distinct from m, so we can’t ever conclude that arbitrary Fs a and b are identical (unless we can prove that there’s only one) or that they are distinct: and of course, that’s exactly as it should be. But the worry is that I can know that n=m because I know that ‘n’ and ‘m’ co-refer: they must both refer to the most natural number.

But once the rule isn’t restricted to the properties we can prove n has from the basis of facts we know about n but rather, as it has to be to deal with the reference problem, to the properties we can prove n has on the basis of facts that hold solely in virtue of n being a number, this problem dissolves. n is not identical to m, if it is, solely in virtue of being a number. It is in virtue of n being the particular number that it is, i.e. m, that it is identical to m. Likewise if n is in fact distinct from m, this is true in virtue of n being the particular number that it is - one other than m. With this restriction on the rule – and let me re-emphasise that any account that takes us to refer in cases of arbitrary reference must place some such restriction – I think there will be no unwelcome consequences to my approach. (At least, no additional unwelcome consequences over the brute facts view!) And the advantage is that, at the price of accepting these facts about naturalness, we avoid both brute semantic facts and the postulation of weird entities like the arbitrary number.

Ontological Cheating and Ockham's Razor

I’ve written a brief reply to Jonathan Tallant’s forthcoming Analysis paper, 'Ontological Cheats Might Just Prosper', that argues in favour of being the kind of ‘cheating’ presentist and actualist that simply takes truths concerning the past, or what could have been, to be ungrounded. Tallant argues that Ockham’s razor suggests we should be cheats, because if we can do without past or merely possible ontology, Ockham’s razor says we should. Don’t multiply entities beyond necessity, so since it’s possible not to believe in such things, you shouldn’t believe in them.

I argue that this has to be a bad understanding of Ockham’s razor: were it good, we should be Ontological Nihilists and believe that nothing exists. Since it’s possible to believe in nothing at all, believing in anything multiplies entities beyond what’s necessary, hence we shouldn’t believe in anything! Since we’re not Ontological Nihilists, we can’t be operating with this version of the razor.

Why aren’t we Ontological Nihilists? Because while it’s ontologically parsimonious, it’s ideologically extravagant. (See Jason’s paper.) Ockham’s razor has to allow that ontological parsimony needn’t be purchased if the cost is extravagant! But once we allow this, we’re just back to the old game of weighing up the admitted ontological benefits of cheating against what should be the admitted costs in its ideology and/or in its account of how truth depends on reality. The debate hasn’t progressed any.

I argue that every theory owes us an account of three things: what exists, what is true, and how truth links up to ontology. Ockham’s razor tells us, I suggest, that we shouldn’t accept a theory that postulates the existence of some things that don’t, according to its own view of how truth depends on ontology, do any work in accounting for what it itself says is true. That principle is going to tell us not to say, e.g., both that truths about the past are brute but yet there are nevertheless past entities. And that’s as it should be: that’s a bizarre combination of views to hold. But it’s never going to let us decide between two theories just by looking at their ontologies. And I think that’s as it should be: we have to look at the other two components as well, and see if the ontological advantage is being paid for at an appropriate price. And I can’t see any version of the razor that will mandate accepting the ‘cheating’ theories that won’t also mandate accepting Ontological Nihilism.

(I’ve also written a reply to a forthcoming paper by Stefano Predelli which argues against my view that there are no musical works. It’s here.)

Leeds metaphysicians sweep Oxford Studies in Metaphysics prize!

Some fantastic news for the Leeds metaphysicians: Jason Turner has won the the Younger Scholar Prize in Metaphysics, for his paper 'Ontological Nihilism'! This was after a record number of submissions. Well done Jason!

And the joint runners-up are Robbie Williams and Elizabeth Barnes for their paper 'A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy' and me for my 'Truthmaking for Presentists'. So a clean sweep for Leeds!

These three papers will all be appearing in a forthcoming volume of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.

Update: Jason's paper is now available on-line: check it out via the link above!

Further update: It looks like the above three papers will be published alongside Richard Woodward's earlier accepted paper 'Metaphysical Indeterminacy and Vague Existence'. So it looks like Leeds is really going to dominate that issue of OSM! Maybe it should be called 'Oxford Studies in Leeds Metaphysics'.

(Both Rich's and my paper make use of the way of thinking about metaphysical indeterminacy in the way Elizabeth and Robbie tell us to - so this journal will also see three papers defending the Elizabeth/Robbie plan. Metaphysical indeterminacy's day is here!)

New metaphysics blog

Just to announce a new group blog on metaphysics:
Matters of Substance. The idea is that this will be a forum for a whole bunch of metaphysicians, along the lines of PEA soup, Certain Doubts, The Garden of Forking Paths, etc. Robbie, Elizabeth and I will be showing up there, as will a bunch of other awesome metaphysicians, so add it to your bookmarks!

New Leeds philosopher

I'm delighted to announce that Heather Logue will be joining the department at Leeds in September. Heather is currently finishing up her PhD at MIT, and specialises in the philosophy of mind and epistemology, with interests in metaphysics, philosophy of science and feminist philosophy. She has published on disjunctivism, as well as co-editing an anthology of classic texts on that topic.

Since I arrived at Leeds (three and a half years ago), we've made 11 permanent appointments and 5 of them have been women. That's 45%. It's really nice to be in a department where that's true, and where it's true solely because we've pursued a policy of hiring the best person for the job.

Cameron on Merricks on Cameron on Merricks on Truthmakers

I've linked before to my contribution to a symposium on Trenton Merricks' book 'Truth and Ontology' (T&O). Merricks' reply (to me and my fellow symposiasts (?), Jonathan Schaffer and Scott Soames) can be found here. Obviously, in a symposium the author gets the final word. The good thing (and the bad thing) about a blog, though, is that there can always be another word! So here I'm going to respond to some of Merricks' replies to me.

A general style of argument that Merricks makes a few times in T&O runs as follows. If truthmaker theory is true then every truth has a truthmaker; the best candidates for truthmakers for the truths in domain D are the Xs; but we shouldn't believe in the Xs; therefore we shouldn't believe the truths in domain D have truthmakers; but we should believe they're true, therefore truthmaker theory is false.

Two instances of this argument schema plug in truths about the past and negative existentials for D and, respectively, Lucretian properties and totality facts in for the Xs. In my paper, I agree with Merricks that we shouldn't believe in Lucretian properties or totality facts, but I argue that the truthmaker theorist (even if she is a presentist) can do better in each case. Merricks argues that my candidate truthmakers shouldn't be believed in either. He also makes a te quoque against me, and argues that the reasons I give for not believing in Lucretian properties rule out my proposed truthmaker for negative existentials. I'll respond to these charges.

Let's take truths concerning the past first. Given the truth of presentism, what makes it true that I was once a child? The Lucretian says I have (presently) a purely past-directed property: the property of having once been a child. In 'Truthmaking for Presentists', I argued that what is peculiar about such properties is that an object's having them makes no difference to the intrinsic nature of the object at the time it instantiates it. We should only believe in a property F, I argued, if an object instantiating F at t makes a difference to how F is intrinsically at t. Lucretian properties don't make such a difference: they only make a difference to how the bearer was intrinsically – so we shouldn't believe in them. I argued that temporal distributional properties do better: an object's instantiating a temporal distributional property at t makes a difference to how the object is intrinsically at t (thus avoiding the charge of peculiarity facing the Lucretian) but it also makes a difference to how the object was intrinsically at the previous moments of its existence (thus solving the truthmaker problem).

Why might you not like this solution? Here's an inconsistent tetrad:

1) Presentism is true
2) Objects instantiate temporal distributional properties
3) If an entity instantiates a distributional property, it extends throughout the region across which that property distributes
4) If an object extends throughout a region of some dimension, the region of that dimension exists

From (2) and (3), objects extend through temporal regions. From (4) it follows that there are extended temporal regions, which contradicts (1), which entails that only a point of the temporal dimension exists.

Abandoning (1) or (2) would just be to reject my theory, so can either (3) or (4) plausibly be given up? In my contribution to the symposium, I suggested abandoning (4). I said the presentist has to abandon this anyway, since they believe in persisting objects, and these are objects which are extended throughout time, even though the regions of time throughout which they extend do not (according to the presentist) exist.

Merricks objects that "presentists should deny that existing at a time is anything like being located at a region . . . Similarly, presentists should deny that persistence is extension throughout a temporal region. . . So they should reject the view that persisting objects are extended throughout nonexistent regions."

The invocation of location at a (I presume spatial) region suggests that Merricks is thinking of my view as one where objects stretch throughout time just like they stretch throughout space, even though extended regions of time do not (unlike extended regions of space) exist. But certainly, I never urged the presentist to hold that view! The sense in which I claimed the presentist must hold that objects are extended throughout time is a trivial one: they must believe that there are objects which are not instantaneous existents – objects which do exist and either did or will exist at some past or future time. Call this extension through time. The presentist believes in the possibility of extension through time, in this sense, without extended regions of time existing. So in this sense of 'extension', (4) is definitely false, according to any sensible presentist. My point can basically be put as a challenge to those who see a tension between presentist and truthmaker theory: give me an argument that I should accept (3) for any sense of 'extension' stronger than this one. I grant (3) in this trivial sense of 'extension', but then (4) is obviously going to be denied by the presentist. And there are senses of 'extension' like the way an object extends through space which make (4) true, but then I don't see why I must accept the corresponding reading of (3). The burden of proof is on one who is pushing the inconsistent tetrad: tell me the sense of 'extension' you have in mind, and give me an argument as to why I should accept both (3) and (4) – until then, I'll continue to believe my account reconciles truthmaker theory with presentism.

Let's turn to negative existentials. Following this earlier paper, I argued that the truthmaker for claims of the form 'There are no Xs' is the world itself. The view is that each positive truth has a truthmaker, and that the world is essentially composed of all and only these truthmakers. Furthermore, the world is essentially maximal: it is necessarily a world, necessarily the largest thing there is – i.e. it is necessarily composed of all the truthmakers for the positive truths. So it can't be a proper part of any other thing. That means that, necessarily, the world can only exist if all and only the truthmakers for the positive truths are all and only the actual truthmakers for the positive truths. And so, since an actually true negative existential couldn't be false without some actually false proposition being a positive truth requiring a truthmaker, the world suffices as a truthmaker for all the true negative existentials.

Merricks objects to this proposal by objecting to the property of being a world. He says this is "a totality property, equivalent to being such that there is nothing more in the universe. So Cameron's world resembles the totality state by exemplifying a totality property essentially. . . Thus what Cameron calls 'the world' is nearly the same thing as the totality state." And hence I haven't really made any advance over Armstrong's totality states. And then there's the te quoque: the property being a world makes no difference to the intrinsic properties of its bearer at the time of instantiation, hence by my own lights (as seen above, RE Lucretianism) it's peculiar, and so my own principle tells us not to accept my own ontology. Ouch!

I think Merricks' objections here are misplaced. (In fairness, I should point out that he makes some others that I am not responding to here.) Merricks objects to the property of being a world. But I didn't appeal to any such property: I only appealed to the world!

I'm assuming the following kind of picture. The reason a truthmaker theorist admits properties into her ontology is to ground accidental predications. The reason we need to admit a property of being charged is to make true truths of the form 'X is charged' – but one only needs the property because X is merely accidentally charged: were X essentially charged, X itself would be an acceptable truthmaker for 'X is charged'. If every charged entity is essentially charged, we simply don't need to admit the property of being charged – the charged entities are ontology enough. It's only because the charged things might not have been charged that we need to admit the state of affairs of them being charged (which involves the existence of the property), to provide a necessitating truthmaker for the fact that they are charged.

There's only one thing that's a world, and it is essentially a world. So I deny that we need to admit a property of being a world. The world is ontology enough. That is why my view is perfectly compatible with the principle that mandates my rejection of Lucretian properties. It's also (one of the reasons) why I think I have an advantage over Armstrong's totality states view (for other reasons, see this paper): I am merely attributing a more robust essence (but in familiar ways) to an entity many of us already believe in – I am not introducing a peculiar property for the sole purpose of solving some truthmaker problem.

Finally, I'll say something about possibilism and modal truth. In T&O Merricks makes what seems to me a very odd claim: that admitting mere possibilia to ground truths concerning what might have been is no use, because both actualist and possibilist alike should, if they are to be truthmaker theorists, hold that what is actually true depends on what there actually is. Hence actual truths concerning what might have been must be grounded in actual ontology – and so admitting mere possibilia is no help to securing the truthmaker thought.

I see no reason why a possibilist who wants to be a truthmaker theorist should hold that actual truth depends on actual being. Actual truth is just truth, so this principle is just that truth depends on actual being. I think that should only be acceptable to a truthmaker theorist if they hold that actual being exhausts being simpliciter. The truthmaker thought, I think, is just that truth depends on ontology: and the truthmaker theorist should be able to appeal to whatever ontology they believe in, whether actual or merely possible, present or past, etc. The only reason for a truthmaker theorist not to appeal to the Xs to ground some truth is if they don’t believe in the Xs.

I made the following analogy to illustrate this. Would anyone think it a good demand that the truthmaker theorist ground truths concerning what goes on at other places only in ontology that exists here? I considered the proposition 'It's raining on the other side of the world', which is true in Australia. Should we demand that Armstrong account for this truth only by appealing to entities that are located in Australia? Surely not! Surely, Armstrong is at liberty to appeal to all the entities he believes in to ground this truth, no matter where in the world they happen to be located. Only a here-now-ist should believe that the only entities to be appealed to in truthmaking are ones that exist here.

Merricks objects to the analogy because he denies "that propositions are true at places". (He points out that were he an eternalist he would deny that propositions are true at times.) But I don't need to commit to propositions being true at places in any objectionable sense in order to make the analogy. My point is just that modal truths should be treated by the possibilist just like truths concerning what goes on at other places should be treated by all of us who deny here-now-ism. There's a perfectly good sense in which 'It's raining on the other side of the world' is true in Australia and not in the UK (given that it's raining in the UK, not raining in Australia, and that Australia is the other side of the world to the UK and vice-versa); there's a perfectly good sense in which 'Gordon Brown is now the Prime Minister of the UK' is true at the present time and not true 10 years ago; there's a perfectly good sense in which 'It's merely possible that there are talking donkeys' is true at this world and not at a world containing talking donkeys. Those are the pre-theoretic data; the philosophical work to be done is spelling out what this amounts to. I agree with what I take to be Merricks' thought: that what we should say in each case depends on what we think about the ontology of places, times and worlds, respectively. If you are a here-now-ist/presentist/actualist you should say that propositions are true at locations/times/worlds; if you are sensible/an eternalist/a possibilist you should say that the propositions expressed by these sentences at one location/time/world are different from the proposition expressed at a different location/time/world, and that the proposition expressed is true or false simpliciter, and not at a location/time/world. But the point remains: whatever we who deny here-now-ism say about my sentence, so should the possibilist say about modal claims. And so I can't see any more reason to insist that the possibilist appeal only to actual ontology in accounting for modal truths than I can see to insist that Armstrong only appeal to Australian ontology in accounting for my truth.

Anyways, Merricks' reply had loads of interesting stuff in it - these are just my initial thoughts about how best to respond.

Indeterminate truthmaking

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to think about truthmaker theory if there’s ontic indeterminacy. If you thought that p’s being indeterminate amounted to p’s lacking a truth-value and you were a truthmaker maximalist, your life would be quite easy: you could say that ‘p is indeterminate’ is true just because there’s neither a truthmaker for p not a truthmaker for not-p.

But I, following Elizabeth and Robbie’s work, have committed to the view of ontic indeterminacy whereby ‘p is indeterminate’ does not entail a truth-value gap. ‘Indeterminately, p’, on this bivalent view, is compatible with both the truth of p and the falsity of p. p is either true or false, it’s just unsettled which.

On this view, there’s a gap between truth and determinate truth, and it’s an interesting question in that case what the truthmaker theorist should say. One option is that ‘Indeterminately, p’ and ‘Determinately, p’ just get treated like any other proposition, and get assigned possible truthmakers, but I prefer the option that says we should assign possible truthmakers only to the ‘indeterminacy free’ propositions, and determine the truth-value of the ‘determinacy involving’ propositions based on whether those truthmakers determinately exist or exist but not determinately so.

So the idea is that, e.g., the state of affairs of Ball being red makes it true that Ball is red. And if it’s determinately true that Ball is red that’s not because there’s some further thing, the state of affairs of Ball being determinately red, but rather because the state of affairs of Ball being red is a determinate existent. The thought being that if p is determinately true at one world and true but not determinate at another, it is difference in being enough if the truthmaker for p is a determinate existent at the former world and a mere existent (one which exists, but not determinately so) at the latter. (You can think of this as a difference in the way that the truthmaker exists, or alternatively allow yourself extra ideology – see section 7 of this paper.)

Now, if every proposition got mapped onto exactly one possible truthmaker, life would be simple. But it doesn’t, and it’s not. p might be determinately true not because there is some truthmaker for p that determinately exists but rather because it’s determinate that there exists some truthmaker for p. The case I’m most interested in is the open future. If there’s a fixed past but open future then, I say (see my joint paper with Elizabeth), there’re a bunch of candidate states of the world being a certain way throughout history that agree on how things were and are but disagree on how things will be, and it’s determinate that exactly one of these states exists, but indeterminate which.

It’s determinate that young Earth creationism is wrong because there’s determinately a truthmaker for ‘Dinosaurs existed millions of years ago’ – but there’s no determinately existing truthmaker for that proposition. Each candidate state would make that true, and it’s determinate that one exists, so it’s determinate that it’s made true. ‘Martian colonies will exist in a hundred years’, on the other hand, is neither determinately true nor false, since if a certain candidate state exists it will be made true and if another exists it will be made false, and it’s not determinate which exists.

Exactly one of these candidate states gets things right – it gives us the actual history of the world – so that state exists and all the others don’t. But none of them get it determinately right or wrong, so the existent state is a mere existent and the non-existent states mere non-existents. But saying this doesn’t tell us that it’s determinate that exactly one of these states exists, so we need to either take that as a brute fact or admit a disjunctive state of affairs – the state of affairs of this world state existing or that world state existing or . . . etc – and proclaim it to be a determinate existent.

A decision has to be made when it comes to non-existence. Truthmaker theorists disagree as to whether to admit truthmakers for negative existentials or to let explanation bottom out at facts about what there is not as well as facts about what there is. But either way, the story is going to be more complicated once it can be indeterminate what there is.

Suppose a determinately exists, b exists but not determinately so, c fails to exist but not determinately so, and every other possible existent determinately fails to exist. If you are not a truthmaker maximalist and want to take facts about what there is not as brute you still have to be able to distinguish between the mere non-existence of c and the determinate non-existence of d (say). If you were inclined to believe in two ways of being – determinate and mere being – you should now postulate two ways of non-being – determinate and mere non-being. On this view, to completely determine a world, what God has to do is to say of every possible being which of the four ways of being or non-being it has: once He’s done that, He’ll have settled everything there is to settle. (At least provided that the disjunctive states of affairs mentioned above number amongst the possibilia.)

Now suppose we are attracted to maximalism. Since a and b are the only things there are, we must admit the existence of the second-order totality state of affairs of a and b being the only first-order things that there are. Now for Armstrong, you can stop there: there’s no need to posit an additional third-order totality state of affairs saying of the second-order totality state of affairs that it’s the only second-order totality state of affairs that there is; that’s because it’s necessarily true that there’s only one second-order totality state of affairs, and hence it can itself make it true that it’s the only one. And so there’s no risk of regress. But if it’s not determinate what there is, it will likewise not be determinate what second-order totality state of affairs exists. In our situation it’s not determinate that a and b are all the things there are: both the totality state of affairs of a being the only thing, and of a, b and c being the only things, are non-existents, but they are mere non-existents. However, since it’s determinate that exactly one of these totality facts exists we can’t stop at the postulation of the second-order totality state of affairs; we need to admit a new entity: the disjunctive state of affairs of one of these three totality states of affairs existing. And now we need another new entity – a third-order totality state of affairs – that says that everything we’ve talked about so far are all the things that exist at levels one and two. In essence, this third-order totality state of affairs is the thing that makes it true that all the candidate second-order totality states of affairs are all the candidate second-order totality states of affairs.

Now, our story can stop here if it’s necessarily true that whatever third-order totality state of affairs exists, it is determinately the only third-order totality state of affairs that exists. But if it’s possible for there to be higher-order indeterminacy in what there is – that is, if it’s possible that it’s indeterminate not just what the totality of entities is but what the candidate totalities are – then the third-order totality state of affairs itself may be a mere existent. There could be other candidate third-order totality states of affairs, and it not be determinate which of them exists. But it will be determinate that one of them does . . . and so we’re off on a regress. Now personally, I doubt the coherence of higher-order indeterminacy; I think that while it might be indeterminate what there is, it necessarily won’t be indeterminate what the range of candidate totalities are, and so I think the maximalist will be able to stop at the determinately existing third-order totality state of affairs and resist infinite regress.

Anyway, I go into all of this in more detail in sections 6 and 7 (and 8 to a lesser degree) of my Truthmaking for Presentists paper. If anyone has any comments on either what’s written here or there, I’d welcome them.

Academics as border police

New rules on overseas students are being introduced by the Government, which will involve academics having to report to the Border Agency when such students have missed a certain number of contact hours. If you are a British citizen or resident and think it is not our role to act as immigration officers, that such rules threaten the autonomy of Universities, that they will make it harder for us to attract overseas students, or that this is generally a Bad Idea, please sign the petition below:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Overseasstudent/

Job: deadline this Friday

Just a last reminder that the deadline for applications for the lecturer or senior lecturer at Leeds (in US terms, roughly equivalent to a tenured assistant or associate prof respectively) is THIS FRIDAY (28th).

For details on how to apply, see the post below.

Leeds job: reminder

Just a reminder that the deadline for the lecturer/senior lecturer position at Leeds is Nov 28th: just over two weeks from the time of posting.

AOS is open over all areas of the department, but we're particularly interested in applicants working in Theoretical Philosophy (broadly construed: so logic, phil logic, phil language, epistemology, metaphysics, phil of maths, phil mind etc) or the history of philosophy.

For the job ad go here (and scroll down a bit).

Schaffer on truthmakers and ontological commitment

In a few places, I've argued that Quine was wrong about ontological commitment. If you want to know what a sentence is ontologically committing to, look not to what the quantifier must range over, say I, but to what must exist to make it true.

Jonathan Schaffer replied in his 'Truthmaker Commitments'. He argues that the motivations for my view are bad ones and goes on to offer some objections to it. He does argue that truthmakers play a role though: but it's not in identifying the ontological commitments, but in identifying what is fundamental according to the theory.

I've just written my reply. I argue that the motivations are good ones, and I aim to counter the objections. I hope the view becomes a bit clearer in my responses to the objections - certainly, they forced me to say some things I hadn't said in the paper Schaffer is criticising. I end, though, by suggesting that it's not obvious there's a genuine dispute between me and Schaffer - that we just mean something different by 'ontological commitment'.

Comments, of course, would be welcome.
Update: the paper has been revised as of 18/10/08

Blind refereeing - request for info

Here's something you don't learn in grad school - probably because it isn't an issue until after you've been publishing for a bit. When submitting a paper, you make it suitable for blind review. Usually, that's really easy: just delete self-references, your name, acknowledgements (well, the latter isn't always done - but I think it should be), etc. But what if you're responding to a paper that is itself responding to you? Do you still need to prepare it for blind review? That would be much more work and might significantly change the tone of the paper, because while you might say things like 'I was unclear: what I meant was . . .' or 'X has misunderstood me' or 'I would respond thus . . .', you would have to hedge everything: 'perhaps Cameron meant . . .', 'Cameron might respond', etc. I'd be interested to hear from people who have experience of writing such replies whether that's what they do or whether they ignore the request to prepare the paper for blind refereeing in such cases (or whether they do something else).

Necessity and triviality

I’ve posted a new draft paper 'Necessary truth, truthmaking and triviality'. The main motivation of the paper is to defend the view that the necessary truths are all and only the trivial truths. A secondary motivation is to argue that, given truthmaker theory, this entails that the necessary truths are exactly the truths that lack a truthmaker.

A sentence is trivially true if and only if its truth makes no demand on the world. That is to say, its truth-conditions are trivially met. Nothing is required of the world for the truth conditions of a trivial truth to be met. Crucially, this is not the same as saying that the world meets the demands that the truth of the sentence imposes on it as a matter of necessity. It is conceptually consistent that the truth of a sentence makes demands on the world that the world necessarily meets. The substantial claim defended in this paper is that there are no such truths: all substantial truths (ones whose truth makes a demand on the world) are contingent.

To make sense of the idea of a truth with trivial truth-conditions, we must have a non-modal understanding of ‘demands’. The demands the truth of a sentence makes on the world can’t simply be what must be the case if the sentence is true. That is independently plausible: even if there are necessary existents such as numbers, or God, we should want an understanding of ‘demands’ such that the truth of ‘Socrates is a philosopher’ demands that Socrates exist and be a philosopher, but not that God or the number 2 exists. Indeed, I argue in the paper that if you only have a modal understanding of ‘demands’ there are a bunch of apparent conceptual possibilities that you simply can’t make sense of. Now if it makes sense that the truth of a sentence not demand that p be the case, even when p is necessary, we can make sense of the idea that the truth of the sentence makes no demands at all.

I argue that such trivial truths must be necessary, lest we violate a very weak version of the principle that truth is grounded in reality (one far weaker than the truthmaker principle). In that case we have an explanation for the necessity of at least some necessary truths: they are necessary because trivial. I further argue that if this is true we should hold that all necessary truths are trivial, lest we admit unexplained necessitites.

This has real consequences for certain debates in metaphysics. It settles the debate over whether there could have been no concrete objects, since ‘there are concrete objects’ is a substantial truth (it demands that there be concreta), hence a contingent one. It motivates, I argue, in favour of states of affairs as opposed to tropes as the truthmakers for contingent intrinsic predications. That is because ‘If the state of affairs of A being F exists, A is F’ is trivially true if true whereas ‘If the particular redness of A exists, A is red’ is substantially true if true (since more is required for A’s existence than that one of A’s properties exist, whereas since A is a constituent of the state of affairs of A being F, the conditions for A’s existence are already met in meeting the conditions for the existence of the state of affairs), and so only the former can be necessary – and given truthmaker necessitarianism, whichever is true is necessarily true.

(I want to give a shout out to Agustin Rayo. I've been much inspired and influenced by his recent work on truth-conditions, ontological commitment, etc. Go to his webpage and read 'On Specifying Truth-Conditions', 'Ontological Commitment' and 'Towards a Trivialist Account of Mathematics'. It's all really excellent stuff, and will give you an idea of the background I'm operating with in this paper.)

Permanent lecturer/senior lecturer at Leeds

Leeds is hiring again. We're seeking to appoint a lecturer or senior lecturer - AOS open, but we'd be especially keen on applicants with AOS in Theoretical Philosophy (broadly construed: i.e. phil logic and language, metaphysics, epistemology, phil mind, etc) or the history of philosophy.

Here's the ad:

University of Leeds

Faculty of Arts

Department of Philosophy


Lectureship/Senior Lectureship in Philosophy

(Available from 1 September 2009)


The Department of Philosophy is one of the largest Philosophy
departments in the UK, with around 30 academic staff and a
large intake of students. In recent evaluations it received a
maximum 24 for Teaching Quality and a rating of 5 in the 2001
Research Assessment Exercise. The Department includes the
Centre for History and Philosophy of Science,
the Centre for Ethics and Metaethics and the Centre for
Metaphysics and Mind.

The ‘Area of Specialisation’ for this position is open
across all areas of the Department but we are particularly
interested in applicants working in the areas of Theoretical
Philosophy (broadly construed) or History of Philosophy.

The position will incorporate undergraduate and postgraduate
teaching, some thesis supervision, and usual non-teaching duties.
With a strong record of research publication, the successful
candidate should be qualified to masters level or equivalent.
A PhD prior to application and teaching experience are strongly
preferred for a Lectureship and are essential for a position at
Senior Lecturer level.

For general information see http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/

University Grade 7 (£30, 912 - £33,780 p.a.) or University 8
(£34,792 - £41,545 p.a.) or University Grade 9
(£42,791 - £49,606 p.a.)

Informal enquiries to Professor Steven French: S.R.D.French@leeds.ac.uk

To download an application form and job details please visit
www.leeds.ac.uk and click on ‘jobs’.

Job ref 321001  Closing date 28 November 2008

Interviews will take place on 14/15 January 2009

Applicants should submit the completed application form,
full CV, and a writing sample (of no longer than 25 pages)
by the closing date of 28 November.