Abstract
In this paper, we discuss the coherence and the stability of three rather plausible philosophical intuitions: the idea that all that exists is present (Presentism); the idea that there exists a true future, although it is just a contingent future (Thin Red Line); and the idea that a proposition depends on (or is grounded in) a truthmaker (Truthmaking). We will not show that assuming these three ideas together is logically incoherent; however, their combination seems to be very difficult to hold and, ultimately, it should be discarded. As a consequence, some of these assumptions must be rejected. We will analyze in detail one of the most promising strategies that can be pursed to reconcile Truthmaking and Presentism: adopting a liberalized version of Truthmaking, for which not only what exists but also what will exist and what existed can ground the truth of a proposition. However, as for the future, this strategy works only if the future is historically closed. If there are future contingents, this line of defense is flawed.
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Notes
- 1.
We would like to thank all the participants in the Workshop on Ockhamism held at the University of L’Aquila; in particular, many thanks to Alessio Santelli and Giorgio Lando for inviting us to write this essay. We thank also two anonymous referees for constructive comments and recommendations, which definitely help to improve the quality of the paper.
- 2.
A primary truth bearer is an entity that can be true or false in an absolute and non-derivative way. Other entities can be truth bearers in a derivative way, in which case they are not primary truth bearers. For example, it can be supposed that the sentence “snow is white” is true (and thus it is a truth bearer) because it expresses the proposition that snow is white. The proposition is the primary truth bearer, whereas the sentence is true or false depending on the truth value of the proposition it expresses.
- 3.
Some scholars do not agree with this affiliation, and there are reasons that militate against it. A precise judgement on this matter presupposes a taxonomy of theories and positions which is quite intricate and which is too far afield from the topic of this paper.
- 4.
- 5.
We are not committed to a specific theory of mathematical truths here. By mathematical truths we simply mean the most relevant statements of mathematical theories or the statements on which mathematicians agree.
- 6.
How can we have an epistemic access to facts that are conceivably constituted by abstract objects and properties? See Benacerraf (1973) for one of the best-known starting points of the debate; Cameron (2008) for a discussion of the problem of ontology of mathematics in the framework of truthmaking; and De Florio (2018) for the connection between truthmaking and grounding in the philosophy of mathematics.
- 7.
John Mackie is an error theorist in ethics; a similar view in the philosophy of mathematics is proposed by Hartry Field.
- 8.
- 9.
There are intermediate positions between these two, such as the growing block theory, according to which the present and the past, but not the future, exist, and the shrinking block view, according to which the present and the future, but not the past, exist. However, to simplify matters, in this paper we will consider just the two opposite views.
- 10.
Here, we consider Eternalism as the view according to which the whole temporal reality is a four-dimensional block and time is a B-series. Although natural, this connection is not necessary: there are dynamic eternalist positions, such as the moving spotlight theory. Since our focus is on truthmakers, we disregard dynamic eternalist views here.
- 11.
For a presentist rejection of past truths such as (1) and (2), cf., for example, Markosian (1995, 2013), but he is a rather isolated case. More frequent is the rejection of past truths among those sympathetic with verificationism (cf., for instance, Dummett (1968, 2004)). However, this rejection is based on reasons wholly different from Presentism, and it is certainly possible to be a verificationist (and reject past truths) without being a presentist.
- 12.
For such an idea, see Bigelow (1996). This idea, in turn, has many variants. Keller (2004, pp. 99–101) suggests that past entities are constituted by more fundamental entities (atoms, strings, etc.), which still exist and which possess tensional properties sufficient to account for propositions such (1) and (2). Cameron (2011) believes that present entities instantiate temporal distributional properties such as being red at t 0 and being white at t 1 as well as an age, a property which says how far an object is in its life. The combination of these two properties allows the grounding of the proposition that x was red if x’s present age is t 1.
- 13.
- 14.
As a referee suggests, actualists might ground modal truths on what actually exists by stating that there are real facts in virtue of which there is a possible world in which Emma is blonde. These might be facts about Emma’s essence, for example. Of course, this is correct. However, this is not the only way of characterizing the actualist position: the actualist might say that the concept of possibility and necessity are primitive and not reducible to essences or other existing facts.
- 15.
Of course, this does not imply that the past could have been different from the way in which it was. The histories that pass through an instant t do not differ for the facts preceding t, but an instant t’ previous to t can belong to many histories that differs for the facts following t’ (the future facts of t’). This asymmetry between past and future is grounded on the intuition that, while the past is stable and settled, the future can be, to a certain extent, determined by what will do.
- 16.
Under the label “Aristotelism” we collect the positions according to which propositions regarding future contingents cannot be true. By “untrue” we mean that these propositions can be considered either false (Peircean semantics, see Prior, 1967, pp. 128–9 and, more recently, Todd, 2016) or neither true nor false (supervaluationism, cf. Thomason, 1970, 1984). For present purposes, these two alternatives can be treated on a par because both suppose that there is no true future history that is privileged over the others.
- 17.
We will use the term “Aristotelian” without adopting any stance about the historical question of Aristotle’s actual theory (on this issue, see Crivelli, 2004, pp. 198–226)
- 18.
- 19.
A libertarian agent is an agent that can perform (at least) a free action in the following sense: the agent determines the action and the agent could do otherwise.
- 20.
The expression “Thin Red Line” was introduced by Belnap and Green (1994).
- 21.
- 22.
Recall that by “untrue” we mean either false or neither true nor false. As Todd (2016) points out, there are some analogies between the positions according to which the propositions concerning the future lack a truth value or are false and the respective positions of Strawson and Russell regarding which truth value, if any, to assign to a proposition such as “The actual king of France is bald”, expressed at a time when France is a republic. However, Schoubye and Rabern (2017) show that the standard arguments for Russell’s treatment of definite descriptions fail to apply the treatment of the future operator.
- 23.
This is the intuition underlying the supervaluationism. According to this semantic framework, sentences can be either supertrue, or superfalse or neither.
- 24.
This has been underlined by some eternalists, for instance Oaklander (1998).
- 25.
If we assume a supervaluationist semantics, predicate D could be defined as the following:
$$ M,t\models \mathrm{D}(p)\iff \forall h\in t\kern0.5em M,t/h\models p\vee \forall h\in t\kern0.5em \mathrm{M},t/h\nvDash p $$That is, p is determinate at t (in model M) if (and only if) in all histories h which pass through t, p is true or in all histories which pass through t, p is false. It is indeterminate if in some histories p is true and in other histories it is false.
- 26.
A further possibility is to reject [Truthmaking], i.e. the idea that propositions are made true by how things are in the world. However, as we have seen, renouncing the idea of a link between the truth of propositions and the world has high costs and forces deep revisions of very basic philosophical assumptions.
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De Florio, C., Frigerio, A. (2022). A Too Thin True Future: The Problem of Grounding Within Presentist TRL Semantics. In: Santelli, A. (eds) Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time. Synthese Library, vol 452. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90359-6_6
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