@Zetherin,
Zetherin wrote:
guigus wrote:Is "bats have wings" and instance of the principle of identity? How is that?
No, but it is an example of a contingent truth. You know, the sorts of truth people think you're claiming do not exist.
guigus wrote:What I mean is "necessarily, all truths are true" or "all truths are necessarily true," which are the same to me, and not "all truths are necessary," which would be a form of determinism.
This is the problem. You're not understanding why "necessarily, all truths are true" and "all truths are necessarily true" are not identical. They are not identical because the different positions of the modal operator, "necessary", change the meaning of the sentence.
The first sentence, "necessarily, all truths are true" is tautologous, and Swartz calls the necessity in this first sentence "relative" necessity, and what he means by this is that the necessary condition in that sentence is, the truth is true. Given that condition, the truth is true! And that's all that sentence means. The second sentence, "all truths are necessarily true", however, means, as you say, "all truths are necessary". It means that contingent truths do not exist, and that every truth is a necessary truth. And this is false.
The problem seems to be
not that you believe that all truths are necessary, but that you cannot understand the difference between these two sentences. I have no clue how the discussion got this out of control, especially if this is the only issue. There's no need to talk about possible fathers, actual fathers, fat fathers, thin fathers, or sex with fathers.
I appreciate your good will in trying to explain this to me, and although you cannot conceive of it, I do understand the difference you are pointing to: what I am saying to you is that it is just a misunderstanding, not of the syntax of the sentence, but of its semantics, as well as of the nature both of truth and of the principle of identity. To see that, just ask yourself: is "necessarily, A is A" different from "A is necessarily A"? If the necessity of being the same as itself were not immanent in all things, then there would be no point in uttering the necessity that anything were identical to itself, since nothing would have in itself the necessity of being identical to itself: the principle of identity would become
arbitrary.
Besides, uttering that "necessarily, A is A" is true while "A is necessarily A" is false is just misreading "A is necessarily A," as if the first "A" were not identical to the second one, which it is. It would be the same as reading "my father is necessarily my father" as if the first "my father" meant "James" while the second meant a father status. Or, finally, it would be the same as reading "every truth must be true" as if "truth" meant a possibility and "true" meant an actuality - which is what you are doing. The statement says that any (already) actual truth must be the same as itself - or a truth - hence true (A is A).
