Presentism and truthmakers again

Bill was kind enough to respond to a post of mine on Presentism and Truthmakers.

The idea expressed there is that the truthmaker of

(T)  Kennedy commands PT109, 

uttered in 1943 is also the truthmaker of 

(S)  Kennedy commanded PT109, 

uttered in 2022.  S is a rule-governed transformation of the made truth T---the verb tense merely changes from present to past.  Bill objects that the truthmaker of T---a state of affairs existing in 1943---no longer exists in 2022.  And there is nothing else in 2022, according to presentism, that could count as a truthmaker for S.  I guess my reply has to be that a truth and its maker need not be contemporaries,  and I will try to sketch out how this is possible.  But first it's worth pointing out that we are looking at the basis of the tense logic rule  p-->FPp.

Suppose we are observing an ongoing process or event.  We will say, for example, "Kennedy commands PT109", "Caesar is crossing the Rubicon", etc, in the present tense.  We then turn away and cease observing for some time.  We are aware that processes and events have beginnings and ends.  We cannot then say with certainty that Kennedy commands PT109.  But we have a memory of Kennedy commanding PT109 which we take to be veridical.  We express this memory as "Kennedy commanded PT109",  "Caesar was crossing the Rubicon",  using the past tense.  The tense difference distinguishes between the sources of experience---sense perception and memory.  Clearly memory is laid down while an event is ongoing or shortly after and as long as memory lasts it will be reported in the past tense.  There are exceptions to this.  While she was alive I would not have expressed my memory of my mother's eye colour by saying "Her eyes were brown",  because we know that eye colour lasts a lifetime and we don't think of it as a process or event.  But generally the past tense correlates with memory recollections and the present with ongoing sensory experience.  We learn to make this distinction as we learn our mother tongue.  Later, as our conceptualising of time develops and refines, the tense distinction associates more with our understanding of past and present.   How does this help with truthmaking?

On this view the link between truthmakers and truthbearers is essentially a causal one extending across time.  Once the experience of a truthmaker has been committed to memory the truthmaker can pass out of existence without compromise to any truth expressed from the memory of it.  Thus the truthmaking relation does not entail the simultaneous existence of maker and bearer. Moreover, a truth made by acquaintance can be passed by description in spoken or written form down the generations.  In this respect it is no more egregious than less contentious relations.  "Lincoln was taller than Trump" expresses a known truth.  Lincoln's death preceded Trump's birth but we have an accurate record of his height.

I am beginning to think that I do not understand the truthmaker objection to presentism.  At least, not to the kind of presentism that I'd want to defend.


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