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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/16/2005 10:06 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hey Jeff-
Back on page one of this thread, Ross gave a link to an article that responds to a paper Greg read at an EPS meeting. It was basically an illustration (the Hexagon) of what Alan, Greg, and I argue in the article we've just finished. Anyhow, in response to that link and article, you said:
I've had a look at the post and it looks like these guys have picked up on the same issue that Craig has, and that I have been arguing in previous posts.
Johnny-Dee says that your view "confuses ontology with epistemology". Yep, it certainly does, as I've been saying for some time now.
As for Beaumont's comments about the past, I think you're arguing past one another. Beaumont cannot see any reason why past-tensed propositions should have a fundamentally different logic in terms of their truth from future-tensed propositions, *even supposing the future is open and presentism is true*, and I agree with him. But he doesn't seem to realize that you guys do think there is a reason that they have fundamentally different logics, so in that sense he is just begging the question, even though (in my opinion) he's right in his question-begging assumption. It's that ontology versus epistemology thing again.
I responded with:
Tell me quickly just where you think we conflate ontology and epistemology, Humphrey. Is it a confusion of these categories to insist that correspondence requires that both ontology and epistemology be in sync? That being in syn is in fact what 'correspondence' amounts to? Can you include some examples of true and false propositions you feel are unknowable? Any tense whatever, doesn't matter. I'm just thinking that if a proposition is true (which you admit is the case with unknowable propositions), it's true on account of its correspondence to reality. What these unknowable true propositions posit actually obtains. That's precisely how and why they're true. The only reason I can think they would not be known is if the reality they truthfully describe is not known. Some actual slice of the real world would not be known. This would have to be true of God for him to not know propositions which truthfully describing the real world. What sort of actuality, or obtaining state of affairs, would by defintion not permit of any justifiable reason for being known as it in fact is? I can't imagine one. But I'm happy to consider any examples you have.
It seems to me if we grant that there are true and false propositions describing the world as it really is but which God does not know, this is simply the rejection of omniscience, not an alternative omniscience.
Also, can you tell me what differentiates you as an open theist from the Ockhamist who is not an open theist? You and the Ockhamist agree that indeterminacy is a genuine feature of the real world and you agree with the Ockhamist, against us, on semantics. So where do you disagree with the Ockhamist which accounts for your being an open theist and his not? Is it just that you believe some future-tense "will" and "will not" props are unknowable (like Hasker) that differentiates you from someone like Craig?
Tom
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Humphrey Bogart
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| Posted 7/17/2005 7:46 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom said...
Tell me quickly just where you think we conflate ontology and epistemology, Humphrey. Is it a confusion of these categories to insist that correspondence requires that both ontology and epistemology be in sync?
Hi Tom. The conflation of ontology (or more directly, semantics) and epistemology is in your concept of "might". "Might" is an epistemic concept, not an ontological or semantic one, but you make it all three. Part of the problem here is confusion over the meaning of "will", a confusion which Alan discusses in his paper (see pages 9-11). Unfortunately, he comes down on the wrong side, from my perspective. Of course, at one level a definition is a definition and we are free to define things as we please. I'm not going to get into an argument about how the word "will" is used in ordinary parlance, since the use of such terms in ordinary language is imprecise and spans many different philosophical usages. BUT what I do insist is that when we use "will" as the future-tensed analogue of "is" and "was" in philosophy, *that it carries no causal force*. "Is" does not carry causal force, and neither does "was", so making "will" carry causal force makes it no longer analogous to "is" and "was". Since "will" carries no causal force, saying that either "X will or X will not" is true for all X, says nothing about the openness or closedness of the future. It just states the obvious fact that, at any given time t, a particular state of affairs S will either obtain or not obtain - irrespective of whether t is in the future, present or past. For this reason, there is no space for "mights" alongside "wills", "iss" and "wass".
Epistemically, though, there is certainly room for "mights" - and indeed for "wills" in Alan's sense, carrying causal force. But this epistemic use of "will" is not analogous to "is" and "was". It's a unique use that relates only to the future.
Tom said...
hat being in syn is in fact what 'correspondence' amounts to?
The problem, and the reason that your position does violate the correspondence theory of truth, is that in order for the truth of proposition X to be grounded by means of correspondence, it has to be grounded by corresponding to what X means. Just because you give some state of affairs which you say grounds the truth of a proposition by means of correspondence, doesn't mean you hold to the correspondence theory of truth. There has to be correspondence to what the proposition describes. If I say, "Jesus will come again", I obviously do not mean, directly, to assert that God has unconditionally determined that Jesus will return [or substitute whatever other present state of affairs you think grounds this statement]. I mean that, in the future, Jesus will appear in the sky and collect his followers. I am just not asserting anything about current states of affairs. That isn't what I mean. Your view dissociates the meaning of a statement from its grounds for truth, which is where you depart company from the correspondence theory.
Tom said...
Can you include some examples of true and false propositions you feel are unknowable?
The problem is, because they are unknowable, I can't presently say whether they are true or false. But that doesn't imply that they aren't true or false. As an example, the statement "In a week from today Tom will buy an ice cream", if you do buy an ice cream in a week, would be true; but assuming that your buying an ice cream is not presently rendered certain for other reasons (like God deciding that he will make you do it), then whether that statement is true or not is presently unknowable. From our perspective now, we (and indeed, even God) can't know whether or not it's true. But that is an epistemic limit, not a semantic one.
Tom said...
What sort of actuality, or obtaining state of affairs, would by defintion not permit of any justifiable reason for being known as it in fact is?
You've loaded the dice by the use of the present tense "is". The state of affairs in question are all in the future. They concern the open part of the future. These things do not permit any justifiable reason for saying what they will be.
Tom said...
It seems to me if we grant that there are true and false propositions describing the world as it really is but which God does not know, this is simply the rejection of omniscience, not an alternative omniscience.
I can't see any possible basis for your saying this. I've already posted a standard philosophical reference article that specifically sets out to define omniscience, and provides a definition in line with my view (that omniscience means possessing all propositional knowledge). If you want to promote an alternative definition, that's fine, but I'm having trouble seeing what argument you could muster to support it. There doesn't seem to be any philosophical reason for preferring one over the other that is independent of the broader debate. As for scripture, I can't imagine how you could prove one definition over the other. scripture seems much more concerned with God's perfect aquaintance with all creation then with propositional knowledge, and for the life of me I can't see how you could settle such a fine philosophical distinction based on scriptural texts which didn't have such things in view. Take a statement that God knows "all things". Even if we suppose that this has reference to propositional knowledge (and looking at the phrase "all things" in the NT makes this doubtful indeed), does this mean he has all propositional knowledge, and knows everything that there is to be known, or does it mean that he knows all true propositions? Who's to say? I think if either of us claimed that kind of specificity in the scriptures, we would be doing eisegesis, not exegesis. But I'm happy to be proved wrong if you can quote me a relevant scripture.
Tom said...
Also, can you tell me what differentiates you as an open theist from the Ockhamist who is not an open theist?
Good question. The answer is that I think that future indeterminate truths are intrinsically unknowable, whereas an Ockhamist thinks they are known by God (and this, of course, logically entails that they must be knowable somehow-or-other). By way of background to this, I think that saying that a future-tensed statement is knowable implies causal determinancy, but an Ockhamist does not. In other words, using Alan's categories of settledness in his paper (page 2):
Alan and Tom say: "semantic settledness and epistemic settledness both presuppose causal settledness"
Humphrey says: "epistemic settledness, but not semantic settledness, presupposes causal settledness"
Ockhamists say: "neither semantic nor epistemic settledness presuppose causal settledness"
Or here's a groovy little table:
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
| Semantic S. | Epistemic S. | Causally S. |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Alan & Tom | No | No | No |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Humphrey | Yes | No | No |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Ockhamist | Yes | Yes | No |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Calvinist | Yes | Yes | Yes |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
I think my position is probably similar to Hasker's but to be honest haven't read enough of his stuff to say so for sure.Post Edited (Humphrey Bogart) : 7/17/2005 8:13:22 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 7/17/2005 8:18 AM (GMT -6) | | Sahid: I believe that there are primary intuitions that all humans have. Obviously, we debate about what these are. But because these intuitions are involved in all propositions one way or another, the only way we can ARGUE PROPOSITIONALLY for knowledge is by using, knowingly or not, these very intuitions. In other words, there can be no logically consistent ARGUMENT against radical skepticism. It is either true or false that there is a "world" out there. But no one can provide "reasons" against the latter belief without being self-contradictory. Inevitably, something like the notion of causality or some other fundamental principle will be assumed in the very argument for certainty. And since no one can consistently argue PROPOSITIONALLY against all skepticism, the logically consistent opponent of radical skepticism will know that and put up no argument.
Jeff: Right. That's why I said on your "frustrated" thread that the only way to avoid that frustration is to find people who accept the intuitions you hold or who are open-minded to debate them a bit. If we come to an impasse on those, there is no ground for further discussion, for we should WANT people to be logically consistent. Or at least I do. But once I consciously accept the law of non-contradiction AND other intuitions, the law of non-contradiction has something to work on to constrain my other beliefs. Then there can be grounds for dialogue with those who accept the same intuitions. That's the point I'm making. I'm in total agreement with your basic point.
wjs | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/17/2005 9:11 AM (GMT -6) | | This may seem obnoxious, but it's for a point...
Sahid: There are primary intuitions that all humans have.
Tom: How do you know there even are other humans outside yourself?
Sahid: Obviously, we debate about what these are.
Tom: How do you know you're not fabricating all this?
Sahid: But because these intuitions are involved in all propositions one way or another, the only way we can ARGUE PROPOSITIONALLY for knowledge is by using, knowingly or not, these very intuitions.
Tom: How do you know?
Sahid: In other words, there can be no logically consistent ARGUMENT against radical skepticism.
Tom: How do you know?
Sahid: It is either true or false that there is a "world" out there.
Tom: That claim requires the truths of the excluded middle and bivalence. How do you know these are really true?
Sahid: And since no one can consistently argue PROPOSITIONALLY against all skepticism, the logically consistent opponent of radical skepticism will know that and put up no argument.
Tom: How do you know? Etc., etc. etc.
***********************
Jeff: Right. That's why I said on your "frustrated" thread that the only way to avoid that frustration is to find people who accept the intuitions you hold or who are open-minded to debate them a bit. If we come to an impasse on those, there is no ground for further discussion, for we should WANT people to be logically consistent. Or at least I do. But once I consciously accept the law of non-contradiction AND other intuitions, the law of non-contradiction has something to work on to constrain my other beliefs. Then there can be grounds for dialogue with those who accept the same intuitions. That's the point I'm making. I'm in total agreement with your basic point.
Tom: I agree with most of your response, Jeff, except the openning word, "right." Total skepticism is self-refusting. If it's true it entails the contradiction of its own truth claim. Done deal. But I like the rest of what you say. It certain is difficult having a conversation with a total skeptic when he's living out his beliefs.
Tom
"doGfood itself is good" SahidPost Edited (TGB) : 7/18/2005 12:12:42 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/17/2005 4:35 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Humphrey-
I hope to get around to several comments, but in the meantime, let me ask you a couple questions. Let me lay this out so I can keep it straight in my own mind. It’s NOT a syllogism. I just want to keep the issues separate.
(1) You believe indeterminacy is a genuine feature of the real world. Indeterminacy is ontological. For argument’s sake, let’s talk about JFK’s assassination and assume it was an indeterminate event.
(2) You argue that the proposition “JFK ‘will’ be assassinated in November 22, 1963” is true at all times prior to November 22, 1963.
(3) You believe that the truth of “JFK will be assassinated in November 22, 1963” has NO causal force whatsoever. This proposition’s being true is compatible with the event’s being indeterminate.
(4) You hold that though this proposition is true at all times prior to the event, it’s logically impossible for this truth to be known by anybody, God included.
(5) You’re also an A-theorist, so you don’t believe the event in question obtains or is real at times prior to November 22, 1963.
(6) You hold to the correspondence theory of truth.
So let me ask:
First, if ‘will’ has no causal force at all, and if it is the case with all events that do happen that it was true at all times before they happened that they ‘will’ happen, then what would be the problem with God’s knowing these truths? With no causal force to threaten freedom, I can’t see that it’s a problem. This of course, is Craig’s position and that of all Okhamists. But since you agree with them that ‘will’ has no causal force, what’s to lose by just agreeing with them that God knows true ‘wills’? Nothing’s jeopardized. Or is it just that true ‘wills’ can’t, as a matter of fact, be known? And why is that?
Secondly, I’m guessing that you’d agree that true ‘will’ propositions have grounds for their truth value. Something ‘makes’ them true. What might that be? What makes it true in 1900 that “JFK will be assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963”? Well, obviously some grounding relation or correspondence. So, to what reality does this proposition ‘correspond’ in 1900 to make it true in 1900? It can’t be the events of 1963. They don’t exist in 1900 and aren’t real. They are in fact indeterminate events. Unpack that grounding relation for me if you will. I’d like to know what, in 1900, serves as the grounds for the truth of “JFK will be assassinated in 1963” (even if 'will' in this case has no causal force).
Thanks,
Tom
"doGfood itself is good" SahidPost Edited (TGB) : 7/18/2005 12:15:10 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Doug B
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| Posted 7/17/2005 9:59 PM (GMT -6) | | To all involved on this thread - specifically Tom and Alan,
Greetings from Tu Quoque's Blog. I am honored by your recognition of my now apparently infamous Dodecahedron of Opposition. I am also rather embarrassed and somewhat baffled at the amount of dialogue that the post has drawn. To be perfectly honest, my "article" was written because I thought it would be funny to use the word "dodecahedron" in a title ('tis a humorous word no one can deny). Beyond that it was pretty much just some B.S. I hammered out during lunch.
Anyway, thank you all for the entertaining commentary and criticisms, but please do not try to evaluate my position based on anything in that post. I'm not sure what the article meant, if it meant anything, so I doubt anyone else will figure it out! Alan - thank you for your kind responses, and Tom - there are a lot of non-caffeinated brands on the market today that are just as good as the real thing! ;)
Doug Beaumont
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Humphrey Bogart
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Total Posts : 205
| Posted 7/18/2005 8:12 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom said...
You believe indeterminacy is a genuine feature of the real world. Indeterminacy is ontological. For argument’s sake, let’s talk about JFK’s assassination and assume it was an indeterminate event.
Saying indeterminacy is ontological is true but somewhat misleading. Indeterminacy is causal. So it depends on how causation fits into your ontology. Most ontologies require a "causal nexus", which is kind of a set of rules that regulates and specifies what causes what. The interesting thing is that the causal nexus does not really exist as such, at least not in the same way that a ball or a chair exists. This is why your statement is misleading. Indeterminacy does not relate to things that exist, to being. It relates to causation and the causal nexus. The causal nexus is one of the most problematic areas of philosophy, in my opinion. For example, did God create the causal nexus? He presumably created part of it, the contingent part, but he couldn't have created all of it, because to create something requires cause and effect (i.e. it requires that God willing something to be, should cause that thing to be). But that seems to suggest that something else "existed" besides God: the necessary part of the causal nexus. If you can figure that out, let me know!
But to get back to the point, it is probably better to say, as Alan does in his paper, that indeterminacy is causal, rather than ontological (hence "causal settledness" rather than "ontological settledness" ).
Tom said...
You argue that the proposition “JFK ‘will’ be assassinated in November 22, 1963” is true at all times prior to November 22, 1963.
Yes.
Tom said...
You believe that the truth of “JFK will be assassinated in November 22, 1963” has NO causal force whatsoever. This proposition’s being true is compatible with the event’s being indeterminate.
That's right. The proposition always was, is and always will be true for one reason and one reason only: because JFK was assassinated on said date.
Tom said...
You hold that though this proposition is true at all times prior to the event, it’s logically impossible for this truth to be known by anybody, God included.
That's right.
Tom said...
You’re also an A-theorist, so you don’t believe the event in question obtains or is real at times prior to November 22, 1963.
I always get my A's and B's mixed up, but if A-theory is presentism, then yes, and yes.
Tom said...
You hold to the correspondence theory of truth.
Yep.
Tom said...
First, if ‘will’ has no causal force at all, and if it is the case with all events that do happen that it was true at all times before they happened that they ‘will’ happen, then what would be the problem with God’s knowing these truths?
Remember that "will" has two definitions: there is semantic "will" (which in my opinion carries no causal force) and epistemic "will" (which we all agree, but Ockahmist's don't, does carry causal force). In order to know a "will", requires that it be an epistemic "will", not just a semantic "will", by definition. The problem is that knowledge is justified true belief, and in order for a belief about what will happen to be justified, it has to be causally determinate. If I say "the dice will roll a six", and the dice does roll a six, although I would say my statement was true, it was not knowledge. "Lucky guesses" don't count as knowledge, but they can be correct and true.
Tom said...
Secondly, I’m guessing that you’d agree that true ‘will’ propositions have grounds for their truth value. Something ‘makes’ them true. What might that be?
In agreement with Craig (see page 24 of Alan's paper), I think that it is an error "to hold that in order for a proposition to possess a truth value, the reality corresponding to the proposition or the causal conditions sufficient for the coming to be of the corresponding reality must actually exist at the time of the truth of the proposition". In other words, I think that as long as what is stated will obtain does obtain when the time rolls around, that is good enough to ground the truth of the proposition at any and all other times. Indeed, also in agreement with Craig, I don't think that propositions can be true at one time and false at another. Truth or falsity is timeless. When we say that a statement like "George Bush is President of the USA" was false in 1998 but is true in 2005, that is just a colloquial way of saying that the proposition "George Bush was President of the USA in 1998" is timelessly false and "George Bush is President of the USA in 2005" is timelessly true. In other words, I think that tense is internal to propositions and is a part of what the propositions refer to, and is not external and refering to the proposition itself.
Tom said...
I’d like to know what, in 1900, serves as the grounds for the truth of “JFK will be assassinated in 1963” (even if 'will' in this case has no causal force).
Nothing in 1900 serves as the grounds of truth for a proposition asserting something to occur in 1963. Neither does there need to be anything, and indeed to say that something in 1900 does need to serve as such a grounds of truth involves abandoning the correspondence theory. The grounds of truth for a proposition about a state of affairs in 1963 are found exclusively and only in 1963. The correspondence theory just doesn't require any present grounds for past- and future-tensed statements. That's a misunderstanding of the theory. | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
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Total Posts : 680
| Posted 7/18/2005 1:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Thanks for the input, HB.
HB: The conflation of ontology (or more directly, semantics) and epistemology is in your concept of "might". "Might" is an epistemic concept, not an ontological or semantic one, but you make it all three.
Alan: I'll grant you that "might" is often used in a purely epistemic sense, but it seems to me that the term is also used in a nonepistemic, causal sense. It seems quite natural to me to say of some causally indeterministic event that it "might happen" where the sense of causal indeterminacy takes priority--indeed, it is epistemically indeterminate for me only because I think it is causally indeterminate. At any rate, there's no conflation in the paper on this point because we stipulate what sense we take "might" to have and, so far as I am aware, adhere to it consistently. There would only be a conflation if we shifted back and forth between an epistemic use of "might" and our stipulated causal use.
HB: Part of the problem here is confusion over the meaning of "will". ... What I do insist is that when we use "will" as the future-tensed analogue of "is" and "was" in philosophy, *that it carries no causal force*. "Is" does not carry causal force, and neither does "was", so making "will" carry causal force makes it no longer analogous to "is" and "was".
Alan: I'm sympathetic to your point here. Preserving symmetry with "is" and "was" is a consideration in favor of a noncausal usage of "will" and is probably a major reason why most tense logicians construe it in that way. But I don't think this consideration is or ought to be decisive for there is, as any A-theorist who admits future contingencies will acknowledge, a fundamental asymmetry to time--the past and present are already settled in a way that the future is not. I think this consideration overrides the former--semantics should adapt to ontology, not vice-versa. Moreover, as I argue in section three of the paper, there are good reasons to think that "will", when used in a predictive sense, invariably carries causal force.
HB: There has to be correspondence to what the proposition describes. If I say, "Jesus will come again", I obviously do not mean, directly, to assert that God has unconditionally determined that Jesus will return [or substitute whatever other present state of affairs you think grounds this statement]. I mean that, in the future, Jesus will appear in the sky and collect his followers. I am just not asserting anything about current states of affairs. That isn't what I mean. Your view dissociates the meaning of a statement from its grounds for truth, which is where you depart company from the correspondence theory.
Alan: I don't think this is right, HB. Why do you think that Jesus will return? I submit that if you didn't think that the future was NOW settled in that respect, then you wouldn't make that claim. Hence you are implicitly making a claim about what obtains now, namely, that Jesus's going to return presently obtains.
HB: I think that future indeterminate truths are intrinsically unknowable, whereas an Ockhamist thinks they are known by God (and this, of course, logically entails that they must be knowable somehow-or-other). By way of background to this, I think that saying that a future-tensed statement is knowable implies causal determinancy, but an Ockhamist does not. In other words, using Alan's categories of settledness in his paper (page 2):
Alan and Tom say: "semantic settledness and epistemic settledness both presuppose causal settledness"
Humphrey says: "epistemic settledness, but not semantic settledness, presupposes causal settledness"
Ockhamists say: "neither semantic nor epistemic settledness presuppose causal settledness"
Or here's a groovy little table:
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
| Semantic S. | Epistemic S. | Causally S. |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Alan & Tom | No | No | No |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Humphrey | Yes | No | No |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Ockhamist | Yes | Yes | No |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Calvinist | Yes | Yes | Yes |
-----------|----------------|----------------|---------------|
Alan: As I understand it, your position is essentially the same as Hasker's.
HB: In agreement with Craig, I don't think that propositions can be true at one time and false at another. Truth or falsity is timeless.
Alan: The only reason I can think of why anyone might affirm that is if they think that propositions are inherently tenseless, which to my mind amounts to affirming the "old" B-theory of language that Craig discusses and rejects. Craig thinks that some propositions are tensed and restricts his claim about the temporal invariance of truth to tenseless propositions. Now, given a suitable construal of what it is for a proposition to be tenseless, I am prepared to concede the temporal invariance of truth for such propositions. but I see no reason to concede that all propositions are inherently tenseless or that the truth values of tensed propositions must be temporally invariant.
HB: The grounds of truth for a proposition about a state of affairs in 1963 are found exclusively and only in 1963. The correspondence theory just doesn't require any present grounds for past- and future-tensed statements. That's a misunderstanding of the theory.
Alan: I beg to differ. The correspondence theory holds that a proposition is true iff the state of affairs it posits obtains. The question then becomes what state of affairs is posited by a proposition. That's where our disagreement lies, not with the correspondence theory itself. I submit that tensed statements express tensed propositions which posit tensed states of affairs. But if a proposition or state of affairs is tensed then it contains an essential reference to a NOW. Hence, something must now be the case for a tensed proposition to be true. To deny that is, I think, to overlook or misconstrue the significance of tense.
My fundamental problem with Craig's approach, and by extension yours, HB, is that I see in it a pernicious sundering of ontology and semantics that leads ultimately to incoherence. Correspondence guarantees that what is true must stay in sync with what states of affairs obtain, hence applications of correspondence are not ontologically neutral. Craig, in particular, seems to want to understand truth conditions like a B-theorist while holding to an A-theoretical ontology. I think that's ontological "cheating", to use Sider's term.
Regards,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/18/2005 3:16 PM (GMT -6) | | |
I found this interesting: http://disputatio.com/articles/018-1.pdf
“The Impossibility of Temporal Relations Between Non-identical Times: New Arguments for Presentism” by Jeffrey Grupp, Western Michigan University
Abstract
I argue that relations between non-identical times, such as the relations, earlier than, later than, or 10 seconds apart, involve contradiction, and only co-temporal relations are non-contradictory, which would leave presentism the only non-contradictory theory of time. The arguments I present are arguments that I have not seen in the literature.
--------------------
His paper suggests that 1963 can’t be the grounds for the truth of propositions describing in 1900 the events of 1963. ‘Correspondence’ is a relational property of propositions, correspondence being the grounding relation that obtains between a proposition and its truth grounds or that in virtue of which the proposition is true. But given presentism, HB, it can’t be the case in 1900 that 1963 grounds the truth of “JFK will be assassinated in 1963,” for what makes the prop true in 1900 must be some real relation of correspondence between the prop and reality. But what you claim makes it true in 1900 that "JFK will be assassinated in 1963" is <JFK's actually being assassinated in 1963>. But these two stand in no 'real' relation, for the latter (the event of November 22, 1963) is not in 1900 a real entity. And relations obtain between real entities or objects. Given presentism, only the present is real. So the prop in 1900 can't be said to stand in any real relation to non-existent events or objects. 1963 simply isn't available in 1900 to ground the truth of anything in 1900. It can’t serve as grounds to which a proposition asserted in 1900 may correspond or relate. I understand Craig’s need to dismiss all this. His and your view requires it. But apart from your needing it to be true to support your view, I can’t think of a reason to dismiss the idea that truth requires correspondence to be a cotemporal relation between language and the world. If you can give us some examples of real transtemporal relations that would encourage us to doubt this, I'd love to see them.
Tom
"doGfood itself is good" SahidPost Edited (TGB) : 7/18/2005 3:29:03 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Humphrey Bogart
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Total Posts : 205
| Posted 7/19/2005 8:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Alan said...
I'll grant you that "might" is often used in a purely epistemic sense, but it seems to me that the term is also used in a nonepistemic, causal sense. It seems quite natural to me to say of some causally indeterministic event that it "might happen" where the sense of causal indeterminacy takes priority--indeed, it is epistemically indeterminate for me only because I think it is causally indeterminate. At any rate, there's no conflation in the paper on this point because we stipulate what sense we take "might" to have and, so far as I am aware, adhere to it consistently. There would only be a conflation if we shifted back and forth between an epistemic use of "might" and our stipulated causal use.
The problem I am trying to get to is what is the "primary" sense of the word for each of our positions. In practice it is hard to separate out the different senses. For instance, we both agree that all our present knowledge of what is going to happen in the future is based on causality. So what is causally settled is also what is possible for us to know, and hence the set of "causally settled future states of affairs" and the set of "presently knowable future states of affairs" are identical. In your case the distinction is even more difficult to make because your semantics is not differentiated from what is knowable either, so that the set of "true statements about what will or will not happen" is for you identical to the above two sets (but not for me). I'm not saying that you're being inconsistent in your definition, I'm just disagreeing with it - or at least, disagreeing with what you think is the primary sense of "might". That is, although there are epistemic and causal uses of might, at root you seem to hold that "might" is a semantic concept. Whereas I think it is at root epistemic.
Alan said...
I'm sympathetic to your point here. Preserving symmetry with "is" and "was" is a consideration in favor of a noncausal usage of "will" and is probably a major reason why most tense logicians construe it in that way. But I don't think this consideration is or ought to be decisive for there is, as any A-theorist who admits future contingencies will acknowledge, a fundamental asymmetry to time--the past and present are already settled in a way that the future is not. I think this consideration overrides the former--semantics should adapt to ontology, not vice-versa. Moreover, as I argue in section three of the paper, there are good reasons to think that "will", when used in a predictive sense, invariably carries causal force.
I actually agree with you that "will", when used in a predictive sense, almost always carries causal force. In that sense, I agree that my technical definition of "will" is not the usual commonplace usage. But I have a different explanation for that. The problem is that when someone asserts something, they are invariably implictly claiming to know the thing they are asserting. We don't just assert things. Consider the following dialogue:
Fred: It's going to rain tomorrow.
Bill: How do you know?
Fred: I don't know, I'm just asserting that it's going to rain tomorrow.
I think this would leave Bill very confused. In other words, in ordinary parlance, person X saying that "A is the case" is true, implies that person X also believes that "I know that A is the case" is true. Whereas in logic "A is the case" does not necessarily entail "A is knowable by someone-or-other". Since in ordinary parlance it is implicit that a statement is a claim to knowledge, it is the epistemic sense of "will", not what I call the semantic sense, that predominates. However, it is certainly arguable that if I boldly state, without knowing, that horse X will win the Melbourne Cup, that afterwards, if horse X wins, people would say my original statement was true (and was true when I said it), even if they don't think I knew it, but think I just guessed. So the semantic sense of "will" has some play in ordinary discourse. In any case, the fact that it is very difficult for us to assert things without thinking we know them renders, I think, your argument invalid (i.e. there is a feature of ordinary discourse that means that it can't be simply transfered across to a philosophical definition).
Alan said...
I don't think this is right, HB. Why do you think that Jesus will return? I submit that if you didn't think that the future was NOW settled in that respect, then you wouldn't make that claim. Hence you are implicitly making a claim about what obtains now, namely, that Jesus's going to return presently obtains.
This is exactly the same issue as the previous point. Obviously, if I say "Jesus will return", I must think I know that Jesus will return. But I think it's a mistake to confuse the basis of my knowledge with the grounds of truth of the statement.
I'll admit that I'm having to give a philosophical definition of "will" (for semantic "will" ) that is at odds with ordinary discourse. But I think that logic demands such a definition, whereas ordinary discourse is not really concerned with being logical. There are plenty of examples of this. Consider the conditional "if". In logic, when we say "if X then Y", and X is false, then the whole statement is true. So, for instance, the statement "if my name is Bill then tomorrow the Martians will attack" is true. Try explaining that to someone who uses "if" in ordinary English. I think we just have to be precise about our logical, semantic "will", even though it differs from typical ordinary English usage.
Alan said...
The only reason I can think of why anyone might affirm that is if they think that propositions are inherently tenseless, which to my mind amounts to affirming the "old" B-theory of language that Craig discusses and rejects. Craig thinks that some propositions are tensed and restricts his claim about the temporal invariance of truth to tenseless propositions. Now, given a suitable construal of what it is for a proposition to be tenseless, I am prepared to concede the temporal invariance of truth for such propositions. but I see no reason to concede that all propositions are inherently tenseless or that the truth values of tensed propositions must be temporally invariant.
This is a really important point. Can I start by objecting to the characterization of my position as saying "propositions are inherently tenseless", as containing some truth but also being misleading. Let me explain. To avoid the causality/epistemic confusion, let's confine ourselves to the past. Consider these two propositions:
P1: The proposition that "state of affairs S obtained at time t" is true.
P2: The proposition that "state of affairs S obtains" was true at time t.
Now it seems to me that you regard P2 as reflecting the fundamental meaning of tense. But you still need to deal with P1, so you make it a kind of corollary of P2, that is true more indirectly in terms of correspondence (because you think it is true by virtue of correspondence with the present consequences of S, rather than with S itself - hence it's indirect). However, I hold that P1 reflects the fundamental meaning of tense, and that P2 is just an imprecise, colloquial way of saying P1. But the important point is this: neither of us is ignoring tense, and neither of us thinks that propositions are "tenseless". It would be far more accurate to say that I think that tense is internal, that is, part of the state of affairs to which the proposition refers, whereas you think it is external, that is, relating to the truth-value of the proposition itself. I would rather characterize the debate as my internally tensed propositions theory versus your externally tensed propositions theory, than as tenseless propositions versus tensed propositions, which kind of loads the dice against me somewhat.
Having said this, we now get to the crucial issue that leads into the next point. Existence does not pertain to propositions. Propositions may be true or false, but to assert that a proposition exists or does not exist is a category error. Propositions have no place in ontology. Just as existence does not pertain to propositions, neither does it pertain to truth or falsity. While we might speak of truth or falsity as "properties" of propositions, we use the word "properties" in a highly misleading manner if we think of it as connected to properties in an ontological sense. Now only things that exist, things that have being, can be temporally or spatially located. Propositions and truth and falsity have no temporal or spatial location. To say that they do, in my opinion, is a category error: it brings an ontological concept across into the domain of semantics where it just don't belong. Saying a proposition is true at time X, if intended literally and not colloquially, is like saying that the sound of the piano is red.
Hopefully this now makes clear why, although my semantics may bear some parallels to eternalist, B-theory type ways of speaking about being, it actually has nothing to do with it. It is semantics and semantics only; it is not ontology. If it was ontology, then I would be a B-theorist.
Alan said...
I beg to differ. The correspondence theory holds that a proposition is true iff the state of affairs it posits obtains. The question then becomes what state of affairs is posited by a proposition. That's where our disagreement lies, not with the correspondence theory itself. I submit that tensed statements express tensed propositions which posit tensed states of affairs. But if a proposition or state of affairs is tensed then it contains an essential reference to a NOW. Hence, something must now be the case for a tensed proposition to be true. To deny that is, I think, to overlook or misconstrue the significance of tense.
This is where I think you go wrong. When you say, "the question then becomes what state of affairs is posited by a proposition", I think you are skating around the obvious. There is no question about what state of affairs is posited by any given well-formed proposition; but you are forced by your position to make a question out of it. When someone says "Caesar crossed the Rubicon", it is plain what they mean; and they certainly do not mean that God currently remembers that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or whatever else. They mean that back then, there was a dude called Caesar and he crossed the Rubicon. They aren't saying something about now, they're saying something about then. You have to, so to speak, "sneak in" a whole lot of extra meaning to the proposition in order for your theory to work. A proposition's meaning is governed by the speaker's intent. If you do a survey and ask people, "when you say that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, you're saying something about present states of affairs, aren't you", and see how many people reply in the affirmative. If they don't intend to say anything about present states of affairs, then they aren't saying anything about present states of affairs. Of course, there may be logical implications of what they say for present states of affairs; but asserting X doesn't involve asserting (or even believing) all the logical implications of X.
Going back to my two propositions, you have to pack the meaning of all the differently tensed P1s into the meaning of P2. But all there is is the one meaning: P1.
Alan said...
My fundamental problem with Craig's approach, and by extension yours, HB, is that I see in it a pernicious sundering of ontology and semantics that leads ultimately to incoherence. Correspondence guarantees that what is true must stay in sync with what states of affairs obtain, hence applications of correspondence are not ontologically neutral. Craig, in particular, seems to want to understand truth conditions like a B-theorist while holding to an A-theoretical ontology. I think that's ontological "cheating", to use Sider's term.
Again, I don't agree with your claim about correspondence theory; but even if it were correct, it wouldn't help your case. It would simply disprove presentism. Correspondence requires that what is posited by the proposition obtain, but a (temporally unambiguous) proposition posits not just a state of affairs, but a time at which that state of affairs obtains. So all that is required for correspondence is that the state of affairs obtained/obtains/will obtain when the time asserted rolls around. This is where internal tensing comes in. Your theory doesn't allow for internal tensing; but it's internal tensing that makes the world go around in my theory.
Now for Tom:
TOM said...
His paper suggests that 1963 can’t be the grounds for the truth of propositions describing in 1900 the events of 1963. ‘Correspondence’ is a relational property of propositions, correspondence being the grounding relation that obtains between a proposition and its truth grounds or that in virtue of which the proposition is true.
Here we have the same mistake noted above, of treating propositions ontologically. "Correspondence" or reference is not a "relational property" at all in the usual sense. This is just as misleading as calling truth or falsity a "property" of propositions. Relational properties hold between things, between things that are part of ontology. But propositions are not things and do not dwell in ontology-land. The rest of the argument, I think, is shipwrecked on this rock. Correspondence or reference, if we are to call it a relation, is an entirely unique relation, absolutely distinct from relational properties in the ontological sense.
Consider your claim that "relations obtain between real entities or objects". This is of course true for relational properties; but it isn't true for reference or correspondence. Let me construct an analogous argument to the one you are maintaining, that makes the same mistake:
1. Truth and falsity are properties of propositions.
2. Properties must be properties of real entities or objects.
Conclusion: Propositions must be real entities or objects.
Let me ask you both a final question. Suppose I say to you, perhaps in my confusion, the following statement:
"Caesar crossed the Rubicon, but I emphatically, absolutely, do not mean by this that God remembers Caesar crossing the Rubicon or anything else about present states of affairs".
My question is, what do you think my statement means? Would you say that I am really unintentionally still saying something about the present, even though I am not intending to and am adamant that I'm not? If so, doesn't that mean that the meaning of statements isn't governed by the author's intentions? Or is my statement just incoherent, like "I'm telling you there is a square circle", or something like that. If so, do you think that incoherent statements are still meaningful? If you do, I think you are in trouble (because you'd be saying that one proposition P1 about the past contradicts another proposition P2 about the present; but you'd have to "convert" the statement P1 about the past into a statement P3 about the present; but that would suppose that I was somehow idiotically claiming two different things about the present without being aware of it). Or is my statement meaningless, in the sense that it has no possible grounds of truth?Post Edited (Humphrey Bogart) : 7/19/2005 9:42:44 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 7/19/2005 11:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey Tom,
I just got an email from Trenton Merricks. He's a philosophy prof. at the University of Virginia who is writing a book on truthmakers including a chapter on presentism. He found our paper on a Google search and wants to reference it, and possibly discuss it, in his book. That's good news.
For the record, Merricks argues that there are no good truthmakers for propositions about the past given presentism, but since presentism is well-motivated he wants to jettison truthmakers, the idea that truth supervenes on being, and the correspondence theory of truth in favor of the view that truth is just a primitive, nonrelational property of propositions.
Alan
PS: HB, thanks for your reply. I'll try to get back to you later today. | | Back to Top | | |
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