Thread by @simonmaginn

Hi @s_antisemitism2.

I see from @leftworks1 you've made a whole lot of rather silly accusations against me.

Don't you think it would be the decent thing to do to make them to my face, rather than scuttling round behind my back spreading rumours?

#ItWasAScam

I've tried to explain this to you before, but you never seem to get it.
It doesn't make any difference whether I'm a good person or a bad person. It does not affect the truth-value of any statement I've made, because truth is *non-contingent* on the speaker of it.
Go look it up.

So if a bad person says 'Today is Saturday', and it is Saturday today, that remains true, no matter how bad the person saying it is. The truth of it being Saturday today is *non-contingent* on the virtue of the person who says it.

Please try to understand.

There are two types of truth, necessary and contingent. A necessary truth is one which is demanded by logic: so saying '2+2=4' is a necessary truth, since denying it leads to contradiction.

A contingent truth could be false, but isn't. Eg: 'Road lane markings are white,' Well ours are, but there's no logical reason why they couldn't be any other colour. There's no logical necessity for them to be white, they just are.

The facts here are continent in that sense: they are things that just are true, not things which logical necessity requires to be true.
But they're non-contingent in another sense: the truth value of them does not depend (= is not contingent) on the virtue of the speaker.

Satan himself could tell us 'Road lane marking are white', and it would still be true.

A much simpler way of saying all this is,
'Argue the facts, not who speaks them',
or, simpler still,
'Play the ball not the man'.