 Okay, so hello, I'm JJ Joaquin and welcome to Philosophy and What Matters, where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Our topic for today is truth making. Now, it's true that two and two make four. It's also true that we are now in a philosophy interview. But what makes these things true? Now, according to Australian philosopher David Armstrong, truths are made true by truth makers. But what are these truth makers and why do they matter? Now, in today's episode, we are privileged to have James Franklin, one of David Armstrong's most brilliant students. Professor Franklin is an honorary professor at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales. So hello, Jim. Welcome to Philosophy and What Matters. Hi. Thanks for the invitation. Glad to be here. Okay, so before we get into Armstrong's main theory, I'd like to know your personal impressions of him. So what were your first impressions of David Armstrong? What was he like as a philosopher? You can almost see this in the picture that he's a rather tall and dominating sort of personality. So you certainly sat up and listened when he lectured, which he did in a rather slow and deliberative form. But immediately you realised that there was a powerful mind behind it and one very concentrating on arguments for and against positions in a very fair way. He wasn't polemical in the sense of disparaging other views. He thought that philosophy was really about putting the views for and against a position and just reaching a balance. I didn't always agree with what he said. The first topic he lectured on us was Descartes Cogito. And I thought, look, he's got that all completely wrong. And that, of course, as I was a mathematics student at the same time, I wasn't used to that because in mathematics you don't say, look, people have got it wrong. It doesn't work like that. Philosophy, I realised, was different. But nevertheless, Armstrong was a great introduction. So yeah, you have a personal connection with David Armstrong. But what's the history behind this picture? Why was Armstrong called the Beast here? Yeah, the Beast. This is the famous Beast photo. This was the early 1970s when University of Sydney, like many other Western universities, was convulsed by the wash-up of the 60s in left versus right fights. And Armstrong, as head of department, was very much to the right. In this photo, he was, he'd invited a representative from the South Vietnamese consulate to talk about the Vietnam War, of course, from a right-wing perspective. And a radical student seized the microphone and started abusing the speaker. And here Armstrong attempted to seize it back unsuccessfully. But a photographer caught exactly the right moment. And this photograph, Armstrong called the Beast by everyone to the left of centre. It was commonly used to wallpaper left-wingers' walls around the Sydney in the 1970s. And shortly after that, a left-wing member of department, Mike Devon, who is now a distinguished philosopher in the style actually rather like Armstrong, wrote a strategy document called Strategies to Isolate the Beast. And due to the efforts of the departmental secretary, it fell into the wrong hands and was read out in New South Wales State Parliament. So that really fixed the nickname, the Beast. Okay, so let me get it straight. There's a division in the University of Sydney philosophy department during that time, right? So do you have the right-wing people and the left-wing people or the conservative people and the liberal people? So what cost that division? Well, it went back to, well, there was always left versus right. I mean, it's part of the human condition, left versus right. But it had got worse in these days. And what was left in those days didn't mean post-modernist like it means now it meant pretty much Marxist-Leninist. And there were divisions in Australia, especially over the Vietnam War. Australia sent troops to the Vietnam War and there was angst about that, especially among students who were liable for conscription to actually feelings ran high about that. So there were issues that were, well, off-campus about war. But then on campus, there were issues about course content. So there was a very hard-loan Marxist-Leninist in Armstrong's department, Walt Suchty, who wanted to introduce courses on Stalin and Mao. And Armstrong and his side of things naturally dug in against that. So that was the issue at that time. And you have the feminists as well, right? Yeah, the feminist issue came a little later than that, about a year after this talk. Strangely, feminism was hardly invented up to about 1972. And then all, well, I mean, it was known in popular culture, but it wasn't seen much in academic circles until all of a sudden in 1973. There was a demand that a feminist course be taught, of course, from a Marxist perspective, at the University of Sydney Philosophy Department. And there was a strike and tents on the quadrangle lawn, that sort of thing. And eventually it did happen against the opposition of Armstrong and others. Okay, so Armstrong was more of the traditional philosopher than Mao. Yeah, the traditional philosopher. So he thought that if you intruded, allowed political content to take over philosophy, that real philosophy would no longer be able to be done. Of course, this is 45 years ago, and we've seen what happened. To some extent that has happened, and to other extent the traditional philosophy has found a place for itself and hasn't disappeared completely. Okay, so you're a philosopher and a mathematician. So you're also a historian of ideas and of Australian philosophy in particular, and a social advocate. So in what way did Armstrong influence your views on these matters? Well, he influenced my views in some of those matters and not others. Naturally, not on mathematics, which he knew nothing about to put it bluntly. And not on social and ethical things either. Armstrong had a very naturalist view similar to his colleague and friend John Mackey. And there was really no such thing as ethics. And because in fact, there's no truth makers for ethical truths. There's nothing out there that would make ethical things true. Well, I don't accept that position. My background is Catholic. And I think there are things that provide truth makers for ethical truth, in particular the worth of persons, which is a serious and real aspect of persons. But where Armstrong did influence me positively was on Aristotelian realism about universals. So Armstrong thinks that reality includes not only individual things, but their properties like mass and charge. And that those are the things that science talks about. So Newton's laws link mass and gravitational force, for example. And that these are about the real properties of things. Well, I was influenced by that and wrote an Aristotelian realist philosophy of mathematics, which extended that theory to a philosophy of mathematics. Yeah, so you will discuss that later. But for now, let's go to Armstrong's main idea. So what is truth making all about? So as I understand it, truth making theory has three phases. So you have truth maker maximalism. Every truth has a truth maker. Truth maker necessitarianism. Necessarily if a truth maker exists, then some proposition is true. And finally, the entailment principle. If some truth maker makes through a proposition, then if that proposition entails another proposition, then that truth maker is the truth maker for the entail proposition. So let's try to understand these things one by one. What does he mean by truth making in the first place? Yeah, so let's get back to something more simpler and more simple and maybe understand what this kind of theory contrasts with. So yeah, the phrase truth supervenes on being is a good one. The idea is being first, what's out there and truth beliefs, anything to do with language and the mental comes second and has to agree with that. So out there there's so many elephants and in the world of propositions or thought or beliefs, there's the statement that there are so many elephants and the elephants come first and even if there'd been no people, no thinking, no statements, no language, the elephants being the way they are being is solid and the truth has to agree with that. And that's what the idea is truth supervenes on being. It contrasts with theories that you might call linguistic idealism like those of Derrida famously who seem to think of languages freestanding but not pinned down somehow by being. They're inclined to say that language exists by itself and you can't get beyond it or see through it to being. Well, that's not, that's got things, that's got the wrong end of the stick, you know, being first. Okay, so what does it mean by the idea that every truth has a truth maker? Yeah, it means that if there's a truth, a proposition or individual belief, that's true for it to be true. There's got to be something out there that makes it true. Well, of course, it could if the proposition itself is about India, like what I'm thinking that the truth maker is in here as well. But normally, if you're talking about a truth like there are seven, there are eight billion people on earth. Well, what makes that true is the eight billion people out there. And that comes first, the truth and the knowledge of it or anything to do with the mental or linguistic world super veins on it, that it sits on top of it, is caused, is quite not necessarily the right word, comes second and is dependent on it, ontologically dependent on it. Is that the idea of the decisitarianism? So necessarily if there's a truth maker, you have some proposition that's made true by that truth maker. Is that the thing going on? Yeah, so that depends a bit on your view of propositions. It could be that there are facts about the distant universe that nobody's ever thought of. And if you think propositions are somehow mentally dependent, then you would think there is no such proposition. In that case, there's no proposition to do the supervening on the beam. On the other hand, if you think of propositions as a kind of plate and a standard that must exist, then for every truth, then for every aspect of being, if that's the word, there will be a proposition expressing it. Well, that's a, as you and I have discussed, the theory of propositions is itself very difficult. And the truth maker theory tries to leave those things aside and look, concentrate on the being aspect. And thinks, of course, there's got to be a philosophy of propositions and what the kind of things that are true. But we will kind of leave that for the moment. Actually, there is in Armstrong's book Truth and Truth Makers, there is a serious chapter about propositions and the nature of them. Which reviewers thought was the least successful, I think. Difficult questions, but they're not quite what truth maker theory is about. They must be solved really. Okay. So how about this entailment principle? So I'll give you an example. So, Jim is a philosopher and it's made to by your existence. But that entails that someone is a philosopher. So your existence also makes that true, that someone is a philosopher? Yes, that's right. So to take existential propositions, the proposition there is an elephant is made, has lots of truth makers. Any elephant being what it is, is enough to make that true. And if some of the elephants disappeared, but not all of them, it would still be true, there'd still be a truth maker for it. So we shouldn't take the singular in truth makers as too literally. And we shouldn't think perhaps that there's a one-to-one relation. It's only between truths and truth makers. So, yeah, in that case, an existential proposition, anything being that true, anything being an elephant, is enough to make there is an elephant true. Okay, so what are these truth makers? Are they facts or states of affairs or abstract objects? According to Armstrong and I think rightly states of affairs is the right answer. So what makes the table, the proposition, this table is round true, is the actual tables being round, which is a state of affairs. The way the table is out there in the real world. The word facts is sometimes used to mean the same as states of affairs. But it's unfortunately ambiguous, I think. Sometimes when you say facts, you mean truths and sometimes I mean states of affairs. So it's just better to leave that word aside. And there's certainly not abstract objects either. Well, according to Armstrong, there aren't any abstract objects. It's anti-platedness. But if there were, they wouldn't be the right kind of things to be truth makers of something like there is an elephant. For the truth makers of there is an elephant, what you want is elephants, not abstract, abstractions. No, that's right. Okay, so why do these truth makers matter in our thinking, in our metaphysics? In our thinking. Well, why does it matter? Because you need to understand in each case what it is. If you're doing science, well, you've got theories. You need to understand what it is for those to be true, what counts, what you've got to go and look for, to observe perhaps to make it true. If you think your proposition is that God exists, well, you need to know what it is. You've got to explain what kind of thing God is that would make a truth maker. And yeah, especially you may be with ethics, whether it's quite hard to say. If you think your obligation is to help the poor or something, what is it that makes that true? If you don't have an answer to that, you might be unmotivated to do it. It's the philosopher's job to say why it does matter to help the poor or whatever. Okay, so we're touching on some of the problems with Armstrong's suitmaking theory. So let's go there. So one problem is about general truth. So how does Armstrong hunt for a suit like all dogs are mammals? Well, that one is probably a necessary truth. And it's about the universal dog, about what it is to be a dog. But when he talks about universal truth, I think he's thinking more of what he calls a universal state of affairs or nothing. So the statement that there are only, well, that eight billion people on Earth, all the people that there are, that's the kind of statement that is thought to be a problem. What is it that makes that true that there aren't any more people? But that's all there are. Well, that's not so easy to describe exactly, but it has to be a fact about the whole universe that you go around the universe and you'll see where the people are. They're on Earth, they're on the whole, you look at all the people, they're all on Earth and they add up to eight billion. Well, we've described the way the world is and I think that's sufficient to say what the truth maker of that truth is, is the truth that all the people there are are those eight billion. Yeah, but that implies a kind of negative fact, right? That's right. Yeah. It's a negative fact like there aren't any people except on Earth. And that is a very sort of ambit or big claim and it's a claim about the whole universe, the same as there aren't any unicorns. There are no unicorns. So that is, in a sense, not a fact about unicorns. It's a fact about the whole universe and it's whole lot of contents. It says if you got the whole, if you got the whole universe in front of you, counted all the arcades and classified them, well, for each one, it's not a unicorn, it's something else. So it's a very diffuse sort of truth maker and Armstrong admits that he says it looks a bit more up in the air or you might say abstract but harder to grasp than a statement like this is an elephant, the elephant's there, it's got its properties and you'll observe it. You're really in touch with that. But a statement like there are no unicorns is very different. It's a statement about the whole universe. Well, that's how it is. You still have a good grasp of this that would make that true and false. What would make it true is that for all the elements, things in the universe, there's something other than a unicorn and what would make it false is a unicorn. Okay, how about... You still grasp how truth supervenes on being even though it's a rather... not so close a relationship as we first thought of. Okay, so how about temporal sentences? How are they true? I had breakfast this morning and I will go to the studio. Yes, the past world. In one sense it's not the business of truth maker theory to solve all problems in other areas of philosophy like the philosophy of time. However, you could perhaps give a sketch. One possibility, and I don't necessarily agree with this, is the growing block theory like Peter Forrest defends. According to that, the past exists, but the future doesn't. So the past, it's kind of like... as it says, a growing block, that's kind of etched to it that moves forward like weaving a carpet. So the past is left behind and it's solidly existing in some sense. It's for the philosophy of time to say exactly what sense. And that makes truth makers of past things. But the future doesn't exist at all and strictly speaking there aren't truth makers of future contingent statements like the sun will rise tomorrow. They're not statements, they're predictions which are not strictly true or false. Todd will have some suggestions, something like that. Predictions about them can be reliable or unreliable. There's reasons to think that this prediction that the sun will rise tomorrow is reliable. But it's still strictly speaking not a truth and there's no truth maker for it. Well, it's a theory, but it's not really for truth maker theory to evaluate that. So you're talking about moral facts as well. So there's some moral truths and according to a truth making theory if those are true then there should be a truth maker. Are you going for that position as well? Yes, and Armstrong I think thought that there was no possible truth maker for that. So although he didn't really go on about it in public very much he really thought there's no ethical truths. So he was certainly capable of being very dogmatic about political ethical truths about what the left should do with itself. Nevertheless, I would say that there are solid truth makers for ethical truths and most of them are the worth of persons that the way people are with consciousness, rationality, emotions and so on means that they are worthwhile, their importance, moral significance absolutely speaking, supervenes on that. That just being that way, a rational conscious person means that it matters absolutely what happens to you and hence obligations to not to murder you for example or to assist your education follow from that supervene on it in the ordinary sense. Okay, so I reckon that a robust truth maker theory implies some metaphysics that is a complete picture of reality. I think that Armstrong's philosophical views are informed by this commitment as well, the truth makers. So is this a right assessment of the relationship between truth making and metaphysics a complete picture of reality? It is, but it doesn't imply any very definite philosophical position. It certainly rules out the linguistic idealism in the style of Derrida as I was saying but it would be compatible for example Platonism. So if your theory was that there are a lot of abstract objects like propositions and numbers and sets you could think in as a truth maker theorist that the truth is about meaning and mathematics supervene on those. Armstrong didn't think that but because he was anti-Platonist and all he is a much more naturalist theory theorist. So his idea of what the truth makers are is much more naturalist. So in that sense, truth maker theory implies a realist attitude or truth supervene on being, the being is first but what view you have of being could vary quite a lot. Okay, let's go to your view. So in the philosophy of mathematics you defend a view called, as she called it a while ago an Aristotelian yieldist philosophy of mathematics. Now according to your view, mathematics is about the structure of reality. Is your view somehow influenced by Armstrong's truth making theory here? Yes and perhaps more definitely by his truth making theory as realized in an Aristotelian realist theory of universals. So he thinks science is about universals like mass, charge and length and my view is that mathematics is also about universals which are realized in the real world like shape, size, length but perhaps the central example is ratio. So for example you're a certain height and I'm a certain height which is slightly different and that means that what supervades on that is the ratio of our heights and if you and I were standing next to each other instead of thousands of kilometers apart the views would be able to see immediately the ratio of our heights approximately. So ratio is very typically studied by mathematics and it's out there. It's observable, it affects our senses. In fact, our senses, especially vision and I guess hearing as well, are very set up to register to complexes of universals complex patterns of ratios. But that's assuming that these universals are real things in the world, right? That's right. Well it isn't assuming it. I'm telling you, you can see. You can see ratio. So if for example you have a tall thin person next to a short fat person you can immediately see. Your vision is set up to immediately see the ratio of height to width is different. Okay so there's a good reason. So I'm trying to make sense of that. So there are patterns and structures in reality that make some mathematical truths true. For example, the ratio that you have been talking about geometric truths as well and perhaps some truths and calculus for example are made true by things in the world, right? How about some other truths like truths about infinities, about higher-order mathematics, modular forms. Yes, well I would say that is certainly the most difficult problem for Aristotelian realist philosophies of mathematics. You need some theory of unstantiated universals and Armstrong worked hard on that and I think was never totally happy with his answer. It would help I think if we, instead of thinking about infinities that are beyond our ken somewhat, we thought about the simple example, the one of Hume, about a missing shade of blue. Suppose that there are lots of shades of blue but there is one shade of blue that by complete coincidence is not realised in the real world. Now, what about the science of colour? Does it deal with that shade of blue? Doesn't it? Well, I think you would say yes, that it's the business of science to deal with universals and their necessary relations like it's a necessary truth about colours, for example, the oranges between red and yellow. Well, you can study that without having to worry about whether some particular shade of blue or orange happens to be not realised. You need some input from the real world to get the idea of colour but having done that you realise that colour comes on a spectrum and that spectrum is in principle continuous and that it's just a matter for the real world to decide which things are realised. But I wonder if we could think instead of infinities about much, what if the world was a lot smaller? Suppose that there are only six things in the world like, say, God and five angels. Now, what about the truth 7 plus 5 is 12? Is it true in that world or isn't it? Well, I would say yes and it's an unrealised possibility. It says that if that world did expand like some more things were created like atoms, they must conform to 7 plus 5 is 12 even though at the moment there aren't any 7 or 12 realised. So actually I would defend that what I call a semi-platinous Aristotelian realism of uninstantiated real... uninstantiated universals such as an uninstantiated shade of blue or something that says that unlike platinism, they're the kind of things that could be realised in the world though it may happen by coincidence that they're not. So are these uninstantiated universals merely possible or... Well, it's merely possible. It's mere. I don't like the phrase merely. It's possible and it's possible by a constraint on the way the world could expand. It's just the way colours are that the space of colours meaning the space of possible colours is the way it is and has a certain structure. And you can learn about that to some extent from observing the colours that happen to be realised. But the statements about it are not contingent. A statement like oranges between red and yellow is not contingent. It's a necessity. And that world of necessities imposes its will, so to speak, on the actual world and the business of mathematics and the science of colours to understand those necessities. Okay, so yeah, I think you have an idea about perceiving necessities in the world as well, right? So what is that about? Yes, that's right. And I would say you can sometimes perceive necessities. It would be better if we had a picture but I think I can ask people to do it in their mind's eyes. Suppose you have a row of three dots and below that align with them another row of three dots. So you have two threes, two threes, which is six. Now, mentally rearrange them so that there's three columns of two. There's the left-hand column, the middle column of two, the right-hand column of two. But it's the same six objects. So you can actually see that two multiplied by three equals three multiplied by two. And you can see that it must be that because it's the same six objects. So your visual facility meaning the eyes themselves and the intellectual processing behind it can see that necessity. Okay, so... On a more personal note, you were a student of some of the best philosophers we have in the 20th century. You have Armstrong, David Stove, who was your main teacher, John Mackey, et cetera. So why did you pursue philosophy as your academician here? Why mathematics? To some extent it was because I had talent in it and to make sure I got a job. So I... At the beginning of my mathematics... At the beginning of my undergraduate career at the end of school, I did very well at mathematics. And my motivation for mathematics was not quite 100%. In fact, not quite enough for a really serious career in it. And at that stage, I knew nothing about philosophy. I thought to myself, I don't understand where philosophy fits into the scheme of things. I know what biology is about. The animals and mathematics is about numbers. What the hell is philosophy about? To pick up an extra subject, I just enrolled in philosophy. I wanted to see, well, it's abstract. I thought I love abstract things. I'll find out what it's about. So it turned out to be good. And to have... And I was motivated to do it. I could have attempted a career just in that. It was dangerous to do that. And perhaps largely to get a job. But also, I did enjoy the pure mathematics. I gained a PhD in algebra and did a little work further in certain areas of mathematics. Mathematics is very interesting. Yeah, it is. And part of the reason is that it... As Plato says, it keeps you in touch with necessities. I don't think you're going to become a deridian post-modernist if you're a mathematician because you understand what the truthmakers are for the necessity of mathematical truths. You're not going to be sucked into linguistic idealism in no way. And I also became interested in mathematical model, which is how mathematics applies to, for example, climate science. What it is about the surface of the earth and the motions of the currents that mathematical science gets a hold of. And what does it tell you about the world over and above what just the science tells in physics? But I'm still hearing the Armstrong Toothmaking theory in your way of doing mathematics. You would say that, yes. Although I specialized in pure mathematics, I always felt that pure mathematicians weren't telling me what it was for. And that there should be a path that the student could take back to seeing what in the real world it connected with. So, for example, group theory is at the core of abstract algebra, but also it's the correct classification of symmetry. And symmetry is, like ratio, one of the basic mathematical properties of the real world. You can see whether my face is symmetrical or not. And if it isn't, you will say that guy shouldn't become a politician because it looks bad on television. Your symmetry is very visually prominent, which is why it's such a big thing in art. But at the same time, it's a mathematical property and the core of modern abstract algebra. Yeah, but the philosophy still is about the real world. So maths is about the real world. Well, some art will be part of the real world. Yes, that's right. And the history of ideas, I've found it very hard to settle down and do one thing. And I don't recommend that to the young people of today because it's hard to make a career doing lots of different things. I'm sorry, but specialization, at least in early years, seems to be what's called for a career. Okay, so speaking of a lot of interest, one of the main things that influenced me to pursue this really is your book, Corrupting the Youth. For those who don't know, Jim here authored or written an opinionated history of Australian philosophy corrupting the youth. So what inspired you to write that? I was inspired by remembering at school when we studied Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War. And he said, unlike other philosophers, other historians, I'm going to write the history of my own time. So I was there on the front line at the philosophy strike and Armstrong versus the anti-beast people and Marxists. And it was an exciting time. But the philosophy as well was exciting and had an interesting history. So I knew some of those people. I put them to the foreground, but there were plenty of other philosophers as well. Philosophy makes for good history, unlike mathematics. You can't, I think, write an exciting story about the history of mathematics in Australia. But philosophers well, shall we say, the point of philosophy has conflict. Which mathematics doesn't. Like in sitcoms and thrillers, conflict makes for a good story. And the human mind is not quite well adapted to getting the truth in philosophy. So people have crazy views and opposite crazy views. And they're at each other's throats. Of course it makes a good story. So I wrote it. Well, purchase the book, corrupting the youth, it's a really fun read. So finally, I had a privilege of learning from you and learning how to really excel in academic work. To many interactions throughout many years. What's your advice to people who are starting their careers in academia or in philosophy? Yeah, that's not easy to say. I'm glad I'm not trying to do it myself today because I would feel under pressure to write technical and complicated articles to get citation profile and so on. So philosophy really needs to be more of a vocation as well, even though you have to do those things. So you don't ask it's crazy to think of going back and asking Socrates how his citation profile was going. That wasn't what it was about. It wasn't in that for the career. But still, as we say in moral philosophy, you've got to eat. And at the moment, you have the way to do it is to concentrate on something. You've got to find something that's interesting to yourself and that's not just an off cut from what your supervisor has got in his bottom drawer or something like that. You have got to find something that you're passionate about deciding. And then when you just have to imitate how to do it and get published. What much more I can say about that. You could consider like I did getting a job somewhere else like teaching mathematics or something and doing philosophy as well. That might work for some, depending on your skills and talents. Okay, so is this career worth it? For some it is. For some it isn't. It worked for me. I had some luck from time to time. Well, I had some luck in having mathematical skills that would get me a job teaching mathematics pretty much no matter what because it's a good career prospect because there's a shortage of people in mathematics with mathematical skills. So I was lucky that I could do that and then do what I felt like. So the first thing I felt like was a book about the history of probability before Pascal. So it has mathematical connections but really it's about things like the law of evidence. Well, I just got into that. This is an interesting copy. I wrote the book. It was quite successful. Who knows whether anybody is going to have that luck. Well, it worked for me but I don't necessarily advise everybody else to do the same. You have to look at the situation and see what the prospects are. Okay. So I think that's enough for now. Thanks Jim for sharing your time with us and join me again. Thanks. Join me again for another episode of philosophy and what matters where we talk about things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Thanks. Thanks.