7 rather i t has all to do with the consequent ' I w ill no longer be a bachelor'.

As i t appears in the conditional, this sentence makes im plicit reference

to a point of time at which the speaker w ill cease to be a bachelor and become married. By focussing attention on this point of time, the consequent

forces the second interpretation of the antecedent's assertibility-condition . The fact that this has nothing to do with the appearance of (15) as antecedent of a conditional can be brought out by considering the following conditional:

(27) I f I am going to marry Jane, I must make a formal announcement. The consequent of this conditional suggests that the f ir s t interpretation of the assertibility-condition of (15) is appropriate in this case: what is at issue here is the speaker's having a certain intention, not whether the intention is fu lfille d . The use of the conditional is s tric tly

irrelevant to the issue. What is important is that a context is provided which determines that one or other kind of assertibility-condition is appropriate. When a conditional succeeds in doing th is, i t is due to the additional information its consequent bears. There are no consequences to be drawn about realism or truth from examining the use of compound sentences and, in particular, the use of the conditional.

In previous paragraphs I have hedged a l i t t l e on the exact point at which the distinction between truth and correct a s s e rtib ility comes into force for future-tense sentences. This is because I do not believe that there is one point at which the distinction comes into force in all contexts.

In some contexts,the condition for the correct assertion of a future-tense sentence w ill be just the same as the condition for its truth, and in other contexts i t w ill be different. I do not believe that the distinction between

7. I must make i t clear that the conditionals (17) and (18) are not Dummett's but Brandom's.

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truth and correct a s s e rtib ility emerges clearly in our everyday use of future- tense sentences. Rather, I believe, the distinction emerges most clearly

in those extreme philosophical examples lik e that of *A city w ill never be b u ilt here' which, from the re a lis t's point of view, highlight the contrast between our limited epistemic access to the world and its unlimited determinacy,

I add these remarks, without further development, to make my position clear. What is important at this point are the following claims I have argued

for: we do in fact draw a distinction between truth and a s s e rtib ility for future-tense sentences and this distinction does not arise through the use of compound sentences, as Dummett suggests.

Dummett seems to claim only for future-tense sentences that th eir use as constituents in compound sentences can induce of a notion of truth finer grained than warranted a s s e rtib ility . I f Dummett were to make the claim for other types of sentences, this would be significant for the discussion of realism. For Dummett says that the notion of truth that can be so induced obeys the principle of bivalence. (Frege, p.450) Can the use of past-tense sentences or mathematical sentences as constituents in compound sentences induce a re a lis t notion of truth for these sentences? There is one passage in which Dummett considers this question. After making his claim for future- tense sentences he says:

This particular example raises no especial d iffic u lty , for a conception of meaning as founded on verification and fa ls ific a tio n rather than on truth and fa ls ity , for there is no reason why the the verification and fa ls ific a tio n of a sentence should not require a lapse of time. But i t necessarily raises the question whether, in other cases, we may not acquire a re a lis t conception of truth for sentences of given

kinds by learning the use of compound sentences in which they are constituents. A case that does raise considerable d iffic u ltie s for a v e rifica tio n ist view is that of past-tense sentences. Whereas there is no absurdity in the idea of verifying an assertion after i t has been made, a verification cannot precede the making of the assertion verified . A previous observation

can serve as conclusively establishing the truth of a past-tense sentence only in so fa r as i t is known to have been made, e.g. remembered; so, from a v e rific a tio n is t point of view, i t is not the past observation it s e lf , but the present memory (or other trace)

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of its having been made which constitutes the verification of the assertion. This does not mean that the memory has to be treated as a datum from which the previous observation is to be inferred: but i t does place the past-tense sentence in the position of an undecidable one, one for which we may now have, or later find, a verification or a fa ls ific a tio n , but for which we possess no effective method of obtaining one or the other. ( Frege, p.469)

From th is passage i t appears that the use of a sentence as the antecedent of a conditional, or as modified by a tense-operator, can induce a re a lis t notion of truth only for future-tense sentences but not for past-tense

sentences. But i f the use of a type of sentence as a constituent in compound sentences really can induce a re a lis t notion of truth for that type of

sentence, i t should do this for every type of sentence: i f i t works for future-tense sentences, i t should work for a ll types of sentences. (This suggests that Dummett must have other reasons, which have nothing to do with the behaviour of sentences as constituents in compound sentences, for

allowing a re a lis t notion of truth to apply to future-tense sentences but

not to past-tense sentences.) The passage confirms my conclusion that Dummett's thesis about the truth-inducing capacity of certain sentential-contexts

is not a real explanation of the re a lis t notion of truth. This notion of truth, which the re a lis t contrasts with warranted a s s e rtib ility , has its origins, as suggested e a rlie r, in a metaphysical conception of the world

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