Time, Truth, and Truth-Making: An Antilogism Revisited and Transmogrified

Earlier, I presented the following, which looks to be an antilogism.  An antilogism, by definition, is an inconsistent triad.  This post considers whether the triad really is logically inconsistent, and so really is an antilogism.

1. Temporally Unrestricted Excluded Middle: The principle that every declarative sentence is either true, or if not true, then false applies unrestrictedly to all declarative sentences, whatever their tense.
2. Presentism: Only what exists at present exists.
3. Temporally Unrestricted Truth-Maker Principle: Every contingent truth has a truth-maker.

Edward objects:  "First, I don't see why the three statements are logically inconsistent. Why can't the truthmaker for a future tense statement exist now, in the present?"

Objection sustained.  The triad as it stands is not logically inconsistent.

'Miss Creant will die by lethal injection in five minutes.'  Let this be our example.  It is a future-tensed contingent declarative.  By (1) it is either true or, if not true, then false.  By (3), our sample sentence has a truth-maker, an existing truth-maker obviously, if it is true.   By (2), the truth-maker exists only at present.  Edward is right: there is no inconsistency unless we add something like:

4.  If a sentence predicts a contingent event which lies wholly in the future, and the sentence is true, then the truth-maker of the sentence, if it has one,  cannot exist at any time prior to the time of the event.

(4) is extremely plausible.  Suppose it is true now that Miss Creant will die in five minutes.  The only item that could make this true is the event of her dying.  But this event does not now exist  and cannot exist at any time prior to her dying. 

So our antilogism, under Edwardian pummeling, transmogrifies into an aporetic tetrad which, he will agree, is logically inconsistent.

The solution, for Edward, is obvious: Deny the Temporally Unrestricted Truth-Maker Principle as stated in (3).  Of course, that is a solution.  But can Edward show that it must be preferred to the other three solutions?  After all, one could deny Presentism, and many distinguished philosophers do.  I would hazard the observation that the majority of the heavy-hitters in the 20th century Anglosphere were B-theorists, and thus deniers of Presentism.  Or one could deny Unrestricted LEM, or even (4).

Although I said that (4) is extremely plausible, one could conceivably deny it by maintaining that the truth-makers of future-tensed sentences are tendencies in the present.  For example, I say to wifey, "Watch it! The pot is going to boil over!"  Assuming that that's a true prediction, one might claim that it is the present tendencies of the agitated pasta-rich water that is the truth-maker. 

Please note also that I too could solve the tetrad by denying Unrestricted T-maker.  Not by rejecting T-makers tout court in the Edwardian manner, but by restricting T-makers to contingent past- and present-tensed declaratives.  I hope Edward appreciates that the above problem does not give aid and comfort to his wholesale rejection of T-makers.

One can always solve an aporetic polyad by denying one of its limbs.  Sure.  But then you face other daunting tasks.  One is to show in a compelling way that your preferred solution should be preferred by all competent practitioners.  You have to show that your solution is THE solution and not merely a solution relative to your background assumptions and cognitive values.  A school-immanent solution is no final and absolute solution.  Another task is to show that your solution can be embedded in a theory that does not itself give rise to insoluble problems.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Bill, "The solution, for Edward, is obvious: Deny the Temporally Unrestricted Truth-Maker Principle as stated in (2)."

I think you mean here (1).

[Account Deleted]

Or perhaps you really meant (3). That makes more sense, knowing Ed's position on truth-makers.

[Bill Vallicella]

Thanks for the correction, Peter. Damn me and my typos! I meant (3).

I think Ed holds that LEM is temporally unrestricted. But we know he rejects truth-makers.

I suspect you will solve the problem by rejecting Presentism. Is that right? This assumes that you agree that (1)-(4) are inconsistent.

My challenge to Ed: Prove that it is more rational to reject Truth-Maker than it is to reject Presentism. After all, the latter is problematic for reasons I have given before.

But if you reject Presentism, then you could be challenged to show why it is more rational to reject Presentism than to reject Unrestricted Truth-Maker.

I suspect both you and Ed agree that the problem has a solution. But the fact that you givefdifferent solkutions is a bad sign, no? I take that as partial evidence that the problem is insoluble, absolutely speaking.

[Account Deleted]

Bill,

You are right about everything you said in your comment. Ed (quite irrationally, I think!) rejects TMs; I (quite sensibly, I think!) reject presentism. So now we are locked in a dispute who is right, a consequence which provides some support to your meta-philosophical hypothesis, which I also reject. More soon!

[Bill Vallicella]

Presentism has its problems, but I fear the same is true of the various anti-presentisms.

[David Brightly]

"Watch it! The pot is going to boil over!" 

It's interesting that we use the present tense of the verb 'to go' to express a future contingency. Perhaps as if, by a spatial analogy, the pot is presently on course to reach the destination we call 'boiling over'. Rather than claiming that the present tendency of the pot is the truthmaker of the future contingency 'the pot will boil over' we could be simply remarking on the presence of this tendency: the pot is on its way to boiling over. Further, this particular utterance cannot be an assertion of a true fact about the future since the intent is to prevent the boiling over (and thus falsify the future claim) rather than an invitation to enjoy a spectacle. Thus we can 'explain' this example without recourse to (1), (3), or (4). I'm lead further to doubt that it makes sense to attribute truth values to future-tensed contingent statements, by symmetry, as it were, with past-tensed statements.

[Bill Vallicella]

I only mentioned the bit about present tendencies since Michael Dummett said something along similar lines.

So you deny (1). Now what is particularly interesting is that while you presumably agree with Peter and Ed that the tetrad is inconsistent, you plump for a different solution. You deny (1). Peter denies (2). Ed denies (3).

Why then would it not be equally reasonable to accept all four limbs and pronounce the problem insoluble? If the problem is soluble, then one of you should be able to convince the other two. It is not as if you three lack intelligence or are ignorant of some fact.

[David Brightly]

Bill, I may have misunderstood your post here, but wouldn't the conjunction of all four limbs be a self-contradictory proposition, and hence to accept it would amount to mysterianism?