BHA: society, santa, truth, etc.

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi guys,

I can't help but toss in that when I was little (4 or 5-ish?) I asked my mom
if Santa Claus (the guy) was real.  She reports that she didn't know what to
do at first, but decided that she didn't want to lie about it.  So she said
no.  And that was that.  No lingering effects, except perhaps for a
continuing preoccupation with truth. (I don't mean to belittle the real
struggle that many parents do have with this, especially when they're poor,
just to say that the situation with respect to Santa is not always as dire
as it was starting to sound.)

I assume, though, that if Santa is real despite never having existed, then
so is God.  Does this mean that declarations of atheism are trivial?  What
is their meaning/significance?

And couldn't one argue on the basis of DPF that the cause of strife around
the globe is the absence of God, since (1) God is, on this view, real and
(2) presumably things would be very different if God either existed or
decided to impose world peace?

Also, if Santa and God both count as de-onts, and count on the grounds that
lots of people act on the intersubjectively held belief that they actually
exist, then it seems as though what makes something be a *determinate*
absence (and thus a de-ont) is simply that it happens to be the
(non-existent and/or non-present) referent of a causally efficatius belief
or expectation.  Louis is right: I'm still not sold.

[Plus, if *onts* can be real but not actual, why not de-onts?  That is, in
the example, does Louis even have to have acted on the belief that there
would be a monsoon for the one-that-he-expected-but-which-never-came to be
real?  I suppose that the answer here is yes, but this suggests that the
reality of de-onts is contingent upon their actuality.  So maybe society and
santa are the same!  No, I'm only kidding...  anyway, I'll stop thinking
aloud now.]

Howie, could spell out more of what you mean when you say that the
multiplicity of truth(s) is an ontological (as well as epistemic) phenomenon?

I agree with you, Michael, that Bhaskar's account of the social sciences is
not quite as persuasive, somehow, as RTS.  I think it weakens right where
you said.

R.



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