From Logic to the existence of the past, Part 2 - general objections
You will find the initial argument here: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1404567170448363537
The crucial premise - defining the truth-makers
I must say that the first premise of the argument that defines what the truth-makers are ("it's how the reality is that makes the statements about it true") - sounded very persuasive and intuitive in the beginning.
Without the cognitive dissonance that the incompatibility with Presentism gave me, I'd probably just accept it by default.
The definition requires us to be in principle able to point to facts - to things existing in certain way in reality (objects or processes) for the statements describing them to be true.
Ontology vs language
So what's the issue? Cutting to the chase - ontology comes first, the language and our endeavor to discover what the ontology is and to formalize it with language, including logic, come second.
We use language in an attempt to capture the ontology conceptually. Our language is contingent on the world and its ontology, not the other way around.
To say otherwise, one would have to commit to the belief that not only our reality is based on some primordial or divine language, but also that our human tongue conforms sufficiently to that standard. I can hardly see a way one could defend that.
And while some tools of logic are inescapable and I'd be ready to say they reflect the nature of reality, the history shows that research in logic and semiotics was not at all static or unchanging. Mistakes were committed, new things discovered, paradoxes revealed and attempts to fix them made - often by constructing new, wider theories.
So if it is the case that Presentism is true, the language should conform to that, or the understanding of the meanings in the language should be shifted to accommodate it in case they haven't already.
And if we don't know what the ontology of time is - which we arguably don't - then that meaning should be left open to all of the possibilities.
Circularity?
To derive the existence of the past from logic, one has to assume that the aforementioned definition of the truth-makers is the correct one: "it's how the reality is that makes statements about it true".
Because this definition is compatible with the existing past to the exclusion of Presentism, it's actually contingent on a hidden premise that the past exists (again, the ontology comes first, our attempts to capture it with language, including finding the correct definition for truth-makers, come second and have to be based on our understanding of it).
So if one doesn't justify that choice by other means, the argument becomes circular - assuming the existence of the past to prove the existence of the past; or at best it becomes question begging, in the sense of dodging the issue as to where that choice came from and whether it was justified in any way at all.
To be fair though, one potential attempt at justification could be made by attacking Presentism itself, claiming that under this model of time there are no truth-makers when one refers to the past which we believe we can make true statements about.
Presentism vs the past tense
So what makes the statement "John Lennon died on the 8th of December 1980" true, in case the past doesn't exist any longer?
A Presentist could modify the definition in question as follows: "It's how the reality is or was (but isn't any longer) that makes the statements about it true".
But then, if that past isn't any longer, how can that non-existent 'thing' make a statement about the past true?! We can't point to those past events anywhere in reality to corroborate the statement!
To explore the issue, I think it will be helpful to go a bit deeper:
Deterministic and Indeterministic Presentism
For a Presentist Determinist it would be in principle possible to derive any state of the past or future history from any other state, provided that all laws of reality are known.
We can point to how reality is and deduce from it how it was. Therefore our modified definition holds.
Presentist Indeterminist however wouldn't be able to do that. So now what?
It seems like two basic strategies are possible here:
- Bite the bullet and say that statements about the past don't have any truth-values at all.
But even if it were somehow possible to make this work formally, it seems like it would be a very counter intuitive and impractical complication to our communication. We can hardly function without referring to the past events as true or false.
- Say that statements about the past don't have classical truth-values, but probabilistic ones (or more loosely, they are based on how plausible they seem).
This could be achieved by the inference to the best explanation derived from how the present moment is (since the Now remains as the only concrete thing that we can refer to).
In that second case however, it could be that sometimes the inference to the best explanation - even done by some hypothetical, perfectly rational being - would point to 'truths' that weren't actually true and nobody would be able to tell, even in principle.
Is it an issue? Not necessarily, if you believe that reality just is, irrespective of our existence and our beliefs about it. Or that the assignment of truth values to statements is for us humans a subjective process based on how our minds perceive that reality (that's not a call to extreme subjectivism, just taking notice of our limitations and also a reflection that while we may not like the prospect, reality doesn't owe us - contingent beings - the possibility of perfect knowledge about everything, neither would it necessarily care that some facts present in one moment become for us unknowns some time later).
TL;DR
- Ontology comes before the language, so the choice of the definition of what makes statements true should be based on our understanding of that ontology, instead of being justified only by intuition.
- Just as long as a model of time is consistent, it's a viable candidate to be an explanation of that element of reality
- Given Presentism, we can still successfully assign truth values to the statements in the past tense
- Determinists have no issues at all (arguably, determinism is more plausible than indeterminism anyway, satisfying the Principle of Sufficient Reason)
- Indeterminists would have to expand the category of what truth might refer to in the context of the past - inference to the best explanation being the hard limit under such ontology. But that doesn't falsify Presentism either.
- Presentism hasn't been shown to be false by the initial argument (see the link on top), or by attacking it on the grounds of supposed impossibility to find truth-makers relating to the past
- Thus if we don't know the ontology of time, we should leave room for Presentism (but also for all other viable theories of time) in how we assign or understand the meaning of statements or defining what makes them true or false.
[That's in the context of this discussion of course, as one could be persuaded by other arguments for or against certain models of time].
Tenseless statements
As for the tenseless forms of statements ("John Lennon dies on the 8th of December 1980"), one could say that these are not valid statements, since they ignore proper tenses. The 'tenseless' nature of such sentences already tells us some crucial information has been removed.
It's as if someone drew a timeline on paper, pointed to the events marked on it, and claimed that this sufficiently captures the nature of time (while completely ignoring dynamism and the change of the Now).
Alternatively, one could simply say that what is meant by such statements depends on the time-perspective of the one who utters it - referring to something that has just happened and maybe continues, or to a past (or maybe even future) event.
The choice seems to be a matter of convention really, provided you agree that before anything can be seriously done with such sentence, we have to fill the gap of information that was removed.
Platonism and Theism
Admittedly, I've written my response from the perspective of what one could describe as Naturalism. Given either Platonism or Theism, their respective ontological bedrocks could simply hold the statements with truth values within and Presentism could still be true.
A Platonist or a Theist may have to stipulate the assumption of the wholly unchanging nature of their postulated bedrocks though. I may come back to that topic later, but the main goal of Part 3 will be to show how the initial definition of truth-makers isn't actually viable given the existing past.
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AiArt made by entering the title into NightCafe Studio; somehow I found it symbolically relevant - and funnily enough, not necessarily to the title, but to other thoughts in this entry.