Student Number 200 353 705

Title:

Do Verificationist Semantics Allow The Presentist To Sustain The ‘Last

Thursday’ Objection?

A child rustled his hands across some pebbles on a beach; he hit upon a rough
one, and picked it up. “Look Mum, it’s a fossil! This means dinosaurs were
here” said the child. The Mother, being an academic philosopher said, “No, the
world could have been a minute old, the dinosaurs might just be a fiction.”
“Oh” said the child.

In this essay I want to reconcile our everyday belief that present facts about the
world provide evidence for the past. I want to also claim that the evidence
provides a truthmaker for past statements.

Towards a justificational semantics

Truth is intimately connected to meaning. If people agree about all the relative
situations and circumstances related to a certain sentence, but disagree on the
truth value of that sentence, they must be assigning a different meaning to that
statement.

Frege argued that for every sentence that has definite sense, which if indexical,
is uttered on a particular occasion by a particular speaker, it is determinate
whether it is true or false. He did not believe that natural language could fulfil
these requirements because of vagueness and other problems – but for a
language that can operate as an instrument of deductive reasoning, every
predicate must be defined as such that it is determinate whether it applies or not
to any object. The ability to determine whether a predicate applies to an object
or not could not necessarily be performed by humans, all that is needed is that
predicates are impersonally determinately held to any object. It is reality that
determines whether a sentence is true or false. For Frege, to understand the
meaning of a sentence is to know its truth conditions.

I think this is false. I will first show that one can understand the meanings of
sentences even when one does not know the truth conditions. Secondly, I will
show that we can understand sentences even when we do not know the truth
conditions, and it would be impossible for us to determine the truth conditions.
Thirdly, I will argue that the truth conditional account of semantics is circular,
and we must reject truth conditional semantics in favour of semantics of
justification – where truth is determined by correct assertability.

Knowing how to use a sentence, when it is correct to assert a sentence is prior

to knowing the truth conditions for it. For example with grammar – we know
when it is correct to assert that a sentence is well formed, but we don’t know the
truth conditions for what well formed sentences are. We can derive the truth
conditions from the pattern of assertions we make with great difficulty but the
ability to recognise the correctness of an assertion is prior to developing the
truth conditions. We can grasp what it is to be a well formed sentence, the sense
of the predicate ‘well formed sentence’, without grasping the truth conditions
for ‘x sentence is a well formed sentence’.

Conversely, one may know the specification of the rules for a card game, where
we know how the cards rank in point order, but not know how to play it. When
one knows only the truth conditions for sentences in a language, one does not
yet know how to speak the language. One only understands complete meaning
through use.

For example, imagine the semantic values ‘true’ and ‘false’ were replaced by
unknown words (Dummett 2006 p.52), we would only gain the knowledge of
which stands for truth and falsity if one could observe how the sentences are
used. Truth conditional theorists convert a theory of truth into a theory of
meaning by implicitly assuming that we know how in practice truth values are
used (Dummett 20006 p53). One only knows what a speaker is saying if one
implicitly understands the connection between the condition for the truth of a
sentence and its use. Knowing the truth conditions for a sentence, is not
sufficient to explicate the full range of understanding in language phenomena.

When a child shouts ‘cold!’ upon touching a hot stove they are corrected and
told that the correct assertion is ‘hot!’ Our knowledge of correct assertability is
prior to that of truth conditions. Furthermore, our notions of truth and falsity are
informed by correct assertability. A proposition is true when it is correct to
assert it. Similarly, the meaning of ‘true’ and ‘false’ are determined by their use.

To understand a statement is to have the ability to recognize when the assertion

of that statement is correct, not the knowledge of its truth conditions. For
example, Goldbach’s conjecture, we feel understand the statement of
Goldbach’s conjecture, though under truth conditional semantics, we do not – as
to understand the meaning of the statement, we need to know what conditions
must obtain to make it true.
Truth conditional semantics holds

1. To understand a sentence is to know it’s truth conditions

2. The truth conditions of a statement can be unverifiable

In order to encapsulate a theory of meaning and understanding, both of these

cannot be true. If the truth conditions of a statement are unverifiable, and we
understand Goldbach’s conjecture, they we have knowledge of unverifiable
truth conditions. If meaning is use, then knowledge of unverifiable truth
conditions should be manifest in our use of language. However, we do not
manifest knowledge of unverifiable truth conditions. These premises result in a
contradiction. A way of solving this is by equating truth with ‘correct
assertability’ – to understand a sentence is to know when it is correct to assert
X, but how can one know when it is to correct to assert X if the truth conditions
are unverifiable? Dummet solves this by arguing that assertability is the key
ingredient in meaning, truth can be analysed in terms of correct assertability. If
it is correct to assert X, then it is X is true. There cannot exist unverifiable truth
conditions, because truth conditions are identical to assertability conditions, and
we always have epistemic access to what is assertable or not.

According to Dummett, we may have no means of putting ourselves into a

position where we can effectively decide whether the GC is true or false, but we
can, and often do decide the truth or falsity of undecideable sentences. We
judge the conjecture above to be false as soon as a counter-instance presents
itself, but until then we have no certain means of judging its truth value. To
understand a sentence is to have the ability to recognise whether it is true or
false, when suitably placed, even though no effective method exists to place
oneself.

When we have no recognition of the truth value of a sentence, and we lack an

effective method of deciding whether a given utterance of it is true or false, then
we have no right to assume that there is anything that, if were to hit on it would
show us if it were true or false. If we subscribe to the principle of bivalence,
these conjectures must be true or false, and reality must have determined it. It
could not be then that having a full grasp of the sense would be knowing the
assertibility conditions – we would have to know its truth conditions –
regardless of whether we are ever in a position to tell what that those truth
conditions are. We do not know truth conditions for many sentences, therefore
either we have to accept that we don’t understand many things that we do
understand, or that accept that bivalence is false. The consequence that this has
is that for sentences that are not verifiable are not true or false but instead
indeterminate until we have a procedure for verifying them.
Furthermore, a purely truth conditional explanation is inadequate, explaining
the understanding of a sentence as consisting in the possession of a piece of
knowledge about that sentence (the truth condition), and judging that
proposition to be true is circular. We will be led to an infinite regress of
theoretical knowledge about language. This is not sufficient to explain language
acquisition (Dummett 2006 p.50).

What relevance for presentism?

In the previous section I argued that truth values for undecideable sentences are
indeterminate and that an account of linguistic practice requires the concept of
recognising as true, and accepting-as-true but not necessarily ‘being true.’ Truth
is equivalent to justified assertability. We have no conception of verification-
transcendent states of affairs, if our evidence is sufficient to warrant an
assertion, then this assertion is true. If a verification transcendent statement is
existent, we will not be able to assert its truth due to lack of evidence, nor will
we be able to assert its negation. The statement will have an indeterminate truth
value. Under this view of truth, the classical conception of a truthmaker is
called into question.

For the Presentist, statements about other times are verification transcendent.
No-one can be suitably placed in order to confirm that an existential statement
about the past is true or false, unless it has left some evidence traces, because
the past is not real. Dummett’s program of justificational semantics suggests
that past tensed statements are indeterminate if there are not now ‘memories or
traces of things having been as it states’(Dummett 2006, p.73). He denies this,
as this claim would reject the links that bind the truth value of current utterances
made at one time with those made at a different time. For example, as I sit at my
desk, I can assert ‘it is true that I sit at my desk’ – I can also assert ‘in a month’s
time it will be true that to say I was sitting at my desk, a month before’ – even if
in a month’s time all traces of the past, have vanished and there are no true facts
about what was once present. The Presentist wants to deny this, because it is
difficult to see how truth value links can be part of a Presentist’s ontology.

Dummett claims that it is metaphysically repugnant to deny the existence of

these links because reality, what is true, would continually change (Dummett
2006 p.75). If I suppose that in a month, all evidence of my location is lost, and
someone claims ‘it was true that Joe was sitting at his desk a month ago’ and we
deny these truth value links, then the truth value of this statement will be
indeterminate. According to this stance, says Dummet, ‘it would not be the
present that continually changes but ... it would drag the past... with it’
(Dummett 2006 p.74). I disagree, it does not drag the past with it, the past does
not exist. Additionally surely, the project of a verificationist semantic denies the
existence of verification transcendent facts. To claim that there are such things
as decidable facts about the past seems incoherent. How could one be suitably
placed to identify a truth in a past that does not exist? It seems as equally
incoherent as to suggest that we can identify truth in the statement ‘there is a
planet in our solar system whose existence we cannot establish.’ Furthermore,
how can a verificationist semantic account for the truth of a cross temporal truth
value link? As we are only situated in one time, it seems impossible to conceive
of a truth value link connecting two assertions made at different times, when
only one distinct time exists.

How to ground truthmakers in the present

If truth is correct assertibility, then what is correctly assertable is true. If one can
make correct assertions about the past, then they must be true. The only
evidence to motivate an assertion is present evidence of memories and traces of
the past. This evidence is our truthmaker. Why not? It’s not that crazy!

This mirrors how we talk about the past. If I make a past oriented claim – say ‘it
was sunny yesterday’ and I am wrong, people attempt to correct me by referring
to present facts, things in virtue of which past-oriented statements are true. They
will point to the water on the ground, the news about the floods, or their own
respective memories. Being anti-realist about the past does not entail solipsism,
being part of a community of language users allow us to gain much knowledge
of the ‘traces’ that the past has left, and allows us to confer our limited evidence
for truths about the past with other’s evidence.

The problem with this account is the Omphalos hypothesis – or ‘last

thursdayism.’ I think that a verificationist account of semantics can account for
this sceptical hypothesis, or at least soften this objection. The sceptic will take
our fact S about the past and argue that the best evidence we have for that fact
happening could be compatible with another state of affairs – i.e. the Omphalos
hypothesis. This is a verification transcendent statement, we can never verify
that the past was not created 5 minutes ago. We have no way of knowing , or
verifying this undecideable statement, furthermore, in what situations could we
recognise this as occurring? Unless ‘Last Thursdayism’ left some trace on the
present, how could this statement have a truth value?

Bibliography

Dummett, Michael, Thought and Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2006).

Things in virtue of which make past-oriented statements true.

Fin

(notes and stuff follow)

For every truth, there is something that makes it true. Does it have to guarantee
its truth? The present facts are what make it true. Statements unrelated to
present facts hve no truth value.

Skeptic says it is true that past could have been 5 minutes old

I want to parallel this with another sceptical hypothesis

Assertability

A closely related question is whether the concept of truth is the most suitable
central concept for a semantic theory. Dummett (1976) challenged this, and
proposed instead the concept of correct assertibility, or alternatively,
verifiability. Dummett's reasons were, first, that if linguistic communication is
to work, speakers must be able to tell whether or not they understand each
other, and, secondly, this must be possible on a sentence by sentence basis,
rather than holistically, for many sentences together (as is the case in
Davidson's (1973) of radical interpretation). If meaning is truth conditions,
then, according to Dummett, this requirement is not met, for a speaker is not
always in a position to determine whether or not a sentence is true, which
would be the way of manifesting her understanding of it. By contrast, a
speaker is always in a position to determine whether or not there is evidence
enough for a correct assertion of the sentence.

to understand a statement is to know how to use it properly; and to

know that is to have the ability to recognize when the assertion of that statement
would be correct. Dummett encapsulates this insight in the proposal that we
replace the concept of truth-conditions with that of assertability conditions. To
know the meaning of a statement is to know (in the sense of 'to be able to
recognize') the conditions under which a speaker would be conclusively
justified or warranted in asserting the statement; and to assert a statement is to
assert that the conditions required for the statement to have conclusive warrant
obtain

meaning is use?

To know the meaning of something, it is sufficient to know how to use it

correctly

Potato?
For decideable sentences bivalence holds, as x is made true by x's
correspondence to a fact1 that x is made true by a fact, namely a
fact x corresponds to.

Truthmaker theory implies that there needs to be an actually existing thing to

assert things about the past. The eternalist solves this by asserting that there are
actually existing things, at all times existing eternally. They say that past
oriented statements are true, they can be translated as such ‘Ex(Dx&Bxu)’
(there exists a dinosaur located temporally before us) because there about
actually existing things. The growing block theorist does something similar.

The presentist seems stuck. Their ontology does not allow for past existents, and
if they want to hold onto truthmaker theory and quantify over past objects it
would seem that they have to

a) Postulate ‘peculiar’ properties such as past oriented properties, temporal

distributional properties, abstract times

b) Be anti-realist about the past, and reject the claim that “there are true
propositions concerning how things were, and the truth of such
propositions is independent of our beliefs about how things were and our
evidence as to how things were.”2 Taking this position would ensure that
one does not need truthmakers for past oriented ‘truths’ as there would be
none.

For every truth there is something that makes it true. 

“expresses one important feature of the concept of truth…: that a statement is

true only if there is something in the world in virtue of which it is true”

Firstly, how can present day evidence be a truthmaker?

When we say that X is blue, what makes that statement true. Well, intuitively
we’d say that it’d be that pen being blue. There are three stages going on here.
1
Stanford truth

2
Ross Cameron truthmakers
1 One sees blue pen

2 One states ‘this pen is blue’

3 The pen is actually blue

Statement is correct.

With fossils and dinosaurs it’s going to have be necessarily different, as when
we make past tense dinosaur statements as we can’t make reference to dinosaurs
actually existing. We can’t say, what makes dinosaurs existed true is because
there is a time that actually exists.

I want to make reference only to present facts, and use evidence as the thing that
makes sentences true.

Let’s return to the pen,

See blue pen

State X is blue

We say the truth conditions for the pen being blue is the pen actually being
blue. But what is this? All we have access to is the evidence that allows us to
see the pen being blue or scientific instruments to detect the pen being blue. We
hope that they way we determine the pen being blue is related to the pen being
blue. The truth conditions and the way we determine that pen’s characteristics
are intimately related. Truthmaker states only when we the pen is actually blue
can we truthfully state that the pen is blue. I want to undermine this. All we
have access to is our sense data, we may hope that the outside world
corresponds to our sense data, but this is only a hope. Ontological trut hmakers
play no part in our common sense semantics over what is actually true.

1 We have evidence for past object

2 We state that past object exists

....

We base the entirety of our (past) existential statements on present evidence,

and according to the presentists that is the only thing that exists. The evidence is
the only traces of the past we have left, by being the only way we can construct
the past, it is the past.

If we talk of the truthmaker for the pen as it actually existing – and we can
never make reference to that, what point is truthmaker.

Bob, ‘that pen is gold’

Everyone else: that pen is green.

We determine bob is false. We judge that bob is false. The truthmakers for
ordinary things is not that the thing is actually real existent, rather that there is
common agreement that the evidence corresponds to the thing existent. To make
reference to the thing actually existent is meaningless – we cannot reference the
actually existing thing. All we can make reference to is what we have access to,
and that is our sense data – and any evidence that we derive from that

Dummet argues in the case of sentence that we can recognise nothing as

conclusively establishing it true or false, it is the capacity to recognise evidence
for it when presented with it, and judge correctly whether it is or not
outweighed by a given piece of counter evidence.

Similarly with language.. It is the experience gained through use that allows us
to gain true understanding of the language. It is the knowledge that ‘cat’ can be
translated by pointing to a cat. It is the rules the child acquires when it learns
that a green man at a traffic lights is an instruction to walk, it is not a pure
knowledge of the truth conditions of a word or sentence. It is the knowledge of
when it is correct to assert sentences. It is only upon use of a language do we
know when sentences are assertable, and thus the content of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’
Non circular theory of content. Require facts, but these facts aren’t stateable in
words. What is it to know grammar, just gotta learn it, at a minimum be able to
assert when true or false.

Where does the evidence come from, we say it was once present.

The amount of raindrops that fell last night was even

Rejection of truth value link between present and past

Paraphrase past claims to memory and evidence

Can I meet you for coffee later – Nono I remember I have to do something,
Memories about the future?

Does eternalism have a claim about postulating indeterminate multiple entities

in the past using their translation function?

Ted sider: Shows that presentism does not need to quanitify over non present
(and non existent objects) objects

(1) Every truth has at least one truthmaker.

(2) The existence of a truthmaker necessitates the truths that it makes true.

Evidential truthmakers do not necessitate the truths that they makes true

Sanson & caplan – the way things were. They demonstrate that many ways of
paraphrasing tensed relationships fail, so they settle for past orientied properties.
At first face the immedieate problem is that it cannot cater for existential claims
about hte past.

In asking after the character of reality we are asking after that of the world we
inhabit it is merely to emply words devoid of any clear sense p23 dummet
thought and realitt

To ask what fats there are are to ask what facts we can grasp

Person who sees green, told to refer to it as blue

TRUTH CONDITIONS FOR PAST STATMENTS DON’T HAVE

BEARINGO ON REALITY

People can tell when and what to say o have their assertionscome out as true

Dummet says that we may have ‘were’ be placed in the past. But the past is
unreal

Truth of it’s statement connected with its jusifiability

You know that the contents of a basket has prime or compositite apples because
you know that ou could find it out, and it could only be either o those

Quantification over the past undecidable

Quantification over large finities decidable in principle, not practice

A properly constructed meaning-theory rightly seeks to characterise the

concepts of truth and meaning simultaneously, whereas the correspondence
theory took meaning as already given. It is an analogous mistake to regard the
principle that, if a statement is true, there must be something in virtue of which
it is true, is peculiar to realism. On the contrary, it is a regulative principle
which all must accept. (Dummett, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, 1991: 331

is that a meaning-theory would specify a set of rules from which we could

derive, for any sentence, a knowledge of the conditions under which that
sentence is true. The suggestion is that, if you know of some sentence of a
foreign language that the sentence is true if the cat is on the mat, and false if the
cat is not on the mat, then you know that the sentence in question means “The
cat is on the mat.”

IEP

He points out that while it is, no doubt, correct to say that someone understands
the meaning of “Davidson has a toothache” if, and only if, they know that an
utterance of this sentence is true if, and only if, Davidson has a toothache, this
account fails to provide us with a non-circular explanation of what it is to
understand the utterance

IEP

Fpr the realist knowing meaning consists in a knowledge for what it is to be

true. Past, knowing that dinosaurs exist, knowing that dinosaurs actually exist

For a justificationist, a grasp of a sentence consists in knowing how it can be

recognised to be true, past knowing that dinosaurs can be evidentially proved by
fossils

27 – thought and reality. child remembering without knowing what

remembering consists of.
Applauded for reporting past as true, reprimanded for reporting dreams as true

Hey it’s not totally finished, needs clearing up still but I have 2000 words to
write for language by tomorrow.

My argument is (to allow you to follow)

Truth conditional semantics requires for any statement, it is either true or false.
This implies truthmaker (something needs to make it true or false)

Justificational semantics says – for verification transcendent statements (i.e.

there is a planet in our solar system who’s existence we cannot establish, every
even number is the sum of 2 primes, 3 years ago a man called roger used his left
hand to comb his hair) have a third truth value, not false, not true... but
indeterminate. Things we can verify, this pen is blue, yesterday it rained, do
have truthmakers, and these are things necessarily we have epistemic access to.
Things we don’t have epistemic access to can’t be known, and have
indeterminate truth value.

This means that past statements have a truth valuefa iff we have evidence for
them, or memories etc. Dinosaurs exist is true because of the evidence for
them. The evidence is what makes this past statement true, (it’s a
truthmaker – think this only works for weak truthmaker – for every truth,
there is something that makes it true – not strong truthmaker ‘there is
something that guarantees its truth)

The claim ‘the world could have started 5 minutes ago’ is verification
transcendent, so is indeterminate and thus can’t be claimed. If the 5 minutes ago
past did leave some evidence on the present then it can be claimed, but then
then the world wouldn’t be exactly the same, and we would know it started 5
minutes ago.

Means we can reject any ‘last thursdayism’ - i.e. the world was created last
Thursday or 5 minutes agoclaims.

Identity is important – unger. An objects existence does not require