Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 New work for a theory of universals
- 2 Putnam's paradox
- 3 Against structural universals
- 4 A Comment on Armstrong and Forrest
- 5 Extrinsic properties
- 6 Defining ‘intrinsic’ (with Rae Langton)
- 7 Finkish dispositions
- 8 Noneism or allism?
- 9 Many, but almost one
- 10 Casati and Varzi on holes (with Stephanie Lewis)
- 11 Rearrangement of particles: Reply to Lowe
- 12 Armstrong on combinatorial possibility
- 13 A world of truthmakers?
- 14 Maudlin and modal mystery
- 15 Humean Supervenience debugged
- 16 Psychophysical and theoretical identifications
- 17 What experience teaches
- 18 Reduction of mind
- 19 Should a materialist believe in qualia?
- 20 Naming the colours
- 21 Percepts and color mosaics in visual experience
- 22 Individuation by acquaintance and by stipulation
- 23 Why conditionalize?
- 24 What puzzling Pierre does not believe
- 25 Elusive knowledge
- Index
13 - A world of truthmakers?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 New work for a theory of universals
- 2 Putnam's paradox
- 3 Against structural universals
- 4 A Comment on Armstrong and Forrest
- 5 Extrinsic properties
- 6 Defining ‘intrinsic’ (with Rae Langton)
- 7 Finkish dispositions
- 8 Noneism or allism?
- 9 Many, but almost one
- 10 Casati and Varzi on holes (with Stephanie Lewis)
- 11 Rearrangement of particles: Reply to Lowe
- 12 Armstrong on combinatorial possibility
- 13 A world of truthmakers?
- 14 Maudlin and modal mystery
- 15 Humean Supervenience debugged
- 16 Psychophysical and theoretical identifications
- 17 What experience teaches
- 18 Reduction of mind
- 19 Should a materialist believe in qualia?
- 20 Naming the colours
- 21 Percepts and color mosaics in visual experience
- 22 Individuation by acquaintance and by stipulation
- 23 Why conditionalize?
- 24 What puzzling Pierre does not believe
- 25 Elusive knowledge
- Index
Summary
D. M. Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Suppose we have a thing A and a property F, and A has F. But suppose that A has F contingently: A could have lacked the property F even though A existed, even though F existed, or even though both existed together. And suppose that F is an intrinsic property: when something has F, that is entirely a matter of the nature of that thing itself, not at all a matter of its relations to other things. (Fill in an example if you like; but beware lest your example raise irrelevant questions about whether the property you chose really is a property in the fullest sense of the word, and whether it really is intrinsic.)
If we believe Armstrong, there must then exist a second thing, B. B is entirely distinct from A, and from F, and so from both together; yet B's existence is necessarily connected to whether or not A has F. Necessarily, if A has F, as it does, then B must exist; necessarily, if A had lacked F, as it might have done, then B could not have existed.
That is the central thesis of Armstrong's book. It is strange. If two things are entirely distinct, as A and B have been said to be, we want to say that questions about the existence and intrinsic nature of one are independent of questions about the existence and intrinsic nature of the other. Since Melbourne and Sydney are entirely distinct, Mel-bourne could exist without Sydney, or Sydney without Melbourne, or both of them could exist together, or neither.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology , pp. 215 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
- 13
- Cited by