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The fact that sentences (3) and (4) have the form 'a is F' does not warrant the conclusion that their respective truth-makers have the structure: particular-exemplifying-same universal.

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1 reason for

2 reasons against

Reasons For

1 perspective

Reason for

1.Not all predicates express properties (Armstrongian immanent universals).
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2.Predicates and their senses provide no sure guidance as to what properties the world contains.
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3.The ontological structure of the truth-maker of a true sentence cannot be read off from the syntactic structure of the sentence of which it is the truth-maker.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against 1 of 2

1.Frege's sense-reference distinction shows that grammatical predication systematically tracks a real distinction between objects and concepts.
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2.If predication were not ontologically revelatory, the logical validity of inferences like 'Socrates is mortal, all mortals die, so Socrates dies' would be inexplicable.
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3.The burden of proof lies with those who sever syntax from ontology, since our best formal semantics (Tarski, Davidson) treats predication as mapping to genuine extensions.
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Reason against 2 of 2

1.Armstrong's own truthmaker principle entails that distinct truths require distinct ontological grounds, which presupposes that sentence structure constrains what kinds of truthmakers are admissible.
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2.If syntactic form places no constraints on truthmaker structure, then the truthmaker theorist loses the principled basis for rejecting brute-fact primitivism about truth.
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Topics

Divine Attributes

Key Terms

exemplify (or exemplifying)(metaphysics): When something displays or possesses a quality. For example, a red apple exemplifies the quality of redness.
form (as in logical form)(logic): The basic structure or pattern of something, especially a sentence or statement. 'a is F' means 'some particular thing (a) has some property (F).'
particular(as used in philosophy of language and metaphysics): A specific individual thing (like this exact pen or that specific moment), as opposed to a general category or abstract concept.
truth-makers(Used here to explain how future facts could be determined now under eternalism): Entities or states of affairs in virtue of which a proposition is true
universal(Argument for the generality of Turing machines): A computing system capable of simulating any other computing system of the same or lesser power; used here to describe Turing machines as the most general model of computation.

Armstrong's own truthmaker principle entails that distinct truths require distin...Frege's sense-reference distinction shows that grammatical predication systemati...If predication were not ontologically revelatory, the logical validity of infere...If syntactic form places no constraints on truthmaker structure, then the truthm...

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Not all predicates express properties (Armstrongian immanent universals).Predicates and their senses provide no sure guidance as to what properties the w...

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SEP: divine-simplicity

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Oppy is not denying that many predicates express properties; he is denying that all do. Taking a page from David Armstrong (1978), he is saying that predicates and their senses provide no sure guidance as to what properties (Armstrongian immanent universals) the world contains. It follows that the ontological structure of the truth-maker of a true sentence cannot be read off from the syntactic structure of the sentence of which it is the truth-maker. Therefore, the fact that our two sentences (3) and (4) have the form a is F does not warrant the conclusion that the respective truth-makers have...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 3 (1 for, 2 against)
Edits: 1 edit

The fact that sentences (3) and (4) have the form 'a is F' does not warrant the conclusion that their respective truth-makers have the structure: particular-exemplifying-same universal.

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Reasons Against

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