The principle of truth-value links is a concept in
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
discussed in debates between
philosophical realism
Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has ''mind-independent ex ...
and
anti-realism
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument ...
. Philosophers who appeal to truth-value links in order to explain how individuals can come to understand parts of the world that are apparently cognitively inaccessible (the past, the feelings of others, etc.) are called truth-value link realists.
Truth-value link realism
Proponents of truth-value link realism argue that our understanding of past-tense statements allows us to grasp the truth-conditions of the statements, even if they are evidence-transcendent. They explain this by noting that it is unproblematic for us to conceptualize a present-tense true statement being true in the future. In other words, if "It is raining today" is true today, then "It was raining yesterday" will be true tomorrow. Truth-value link realists argue that this same construction can be applied to past-tense statements. For example, "It was raining yesterday" is true today if and only if "It is raining today" ''was'' true yesterday.
The truth-value link allows us to understand the following. First, suppose that we can understand, in an unproblematic way, truth about a present-tense statement. Assume that it is true, now, when one claims "On 22 May 2006, Student X is writing a paper for her philosophy seminar," and call it statement A. Suppose that, a year later, someone claims, "On 22 May 2006, Student X was writing a paper for her philosophy seminar," and call it statement B. According to
Michael Dummett
Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He ...
’s explication of the truth-value link, "since the statement A is now true, the statement B, made in one year’s time, is likewise true."
[Dummett, Michael, "The Reality of the Past," in ''Truth and Other Enigmas'' (Harvard University Press, 1978), 363.] It is in understanding the truth-value link that one is able to understand what it is for a statement in the past-tense to be true. The truth-value persists in the tense shift – hence the "link."
Criticisms
Some philosophers, including
Michael Dummett
Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He ...
and
John McDowell
John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology ...
, have criticized truth-value link realism. They argue that it is unintelligible to suppose that training in a language can give someone ''more'' than what is involved in the training, i.e. access to inaccessible realms like the past and the minds of others. More important, they suggest that the realist appeal to the principle of truth-value links does not actually explain how the inaccessible can be cognized. When the truth-value link realist claims that, if "It is raining today" ''was'' true yesterday, then "It was raining yesterday" ''is'' true today, he or she is still appealing to an inaccessible realm of the past. In brief, one is attempting to access that which one has already conceded as being inaccessible.
See also
*
Anti-realism
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument ...
*
Crispin Wright
Crispin James Garth Wright (; born 21 December 1942) is a British philosopher, who has written on neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and on issues related to truth, realism, cognitivism, ...
*
Philosophical realism
Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has ''mind-independent ex ...
*
Principle of bivalence
In logic, the semantic principle (or law) of bivalence states that every declarative sentence expressing a proposition (of a theory under inspection) has exactly one truth value, either true or false. A logic satisfying this principle is called ...
*
Problem of future contingents
References
{{Philosophy topics
Concepts in metaphysics
Concepts in epistemology
Philosophy of language
Philosophical realism