Truthmaker realism (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Mereological Basis of Truthmaker Semantics
2024
This articles explores the mereological foundation of truthmaker semantics. Building upon Kit Fine’s abstract theory of part in [16], we engage in an exploration of the mereological assumptions that determine the construction of truthmaker semantics. Our approach yields semantics for a diverse range of logics, including substructural logics such as the associative Lambek calculus, as well as the logics of analytic containment. Furthermore, we elucidate the philosophical implications that arise from this pioneering approach.
2015
Many mereological propositions are true contingently, so we are entitled to ask why they are true. One frequently given type of answer to such questions evokes truth-makers, that is, entities in virtue of whose existence the propositions in question are true. However, even without endorsing the extreme view that all contingent propositions have truth-makers, it turns out to be puzzlingly hard to provide intuitively convincing candidate truth-makers for even a core class of basic mereological propositions. Part of the problem is that the relation of part to whole is ontologically intimate in a way reminiscent of identity. Such intimacy bespeaks a formal or internal relation, which typically requires no truth-makers beyond its terms. But truth-makers are held to necessitate their truths, so whence the contingency when A is part of B but need not be, or B need not have A as part? This paper addresses and attempts to disentangle the conundrum.
A Useful Ambiguity in Truthmaker Theory
Proponents and critics of truthmaker maximalism (the notion that for every true proposition, there is a necessary something as that proposition's truthmaker) often neglect an ambiguity about ontological commitments in the theory, which results in needless debates over metaphysical presuppositions instead of needful discussion of truthmaker theory per se. The aim of this paper is to account for this problem, and expose a more defensible version of truthmaker theory, which will accommodate diverse metaphysical views, with a less problematic notion of correspondence for the truthmaking relation of truthmaker theory.
Informally speaking, a truthmaker is something in reality in virtue of which sentences of a language can be made true. This fundamental philosophical notion plays a central role in applied ontology. In particular, a recent non-orthodox formulation of this notion proposed by the philosopher Josh Parsons, which we labelled weak truthamking, has been shown to be extremely useful in addressing a number of classical problems in the area of Conceptual Modeling. In this paper, after revisiting the classical notion of truthmaking, we conduct an in depth analysis of Parsons' account of weak truthmaking. By doing that, we expose some difficulties in his original formulation. As the main contribution of this paper, we propose solutions to address these issues which are then integrated in a new precise interpretation of truthmaking that is harmonizable with commonsense as well as with existing four-category foundational ontologies.
Aboutness and ontology: a modest approach to truthmakers
Philosophical Studies
Truthmaker theory has been used to argue for substantial conclusions about the categorial structure of the world, in particular that states of affairs are needed to play the role of truthmakers. In this paper, I argue that closely considering the role of aboutness in truthmaking, that is considering what truthbearers are about, yields the result that there is no good truthmaker-based reason to think that truthmakers must be states of affairs understood as existing entities, whether complex or simple. First, I introduce an aboutness-based account of truthmaking as a metaphysically modest alternative to the orthodox necessitarian account of truthmaking. Second, I discuss the distinction between states and events that has been made on the basis of linguistic evidence regarding aspectual markers and nominalisation. I argue that the modest approach to truthmaking allows us to accept that there is a real distinction between states and events without requiring that the distinction is ontologically substantial. Specifically, what we are talking about with state-truthbearers really differs from what we are talking about with event-truthbearers, but this difference need not be understood as a difference in kinds of entities. Because of its overall modesty, this is a theoretically virtuous result.
Truth Predicates, Truth Bearers, and their Variants
Theories of truth can hardly avoid taking into account how truth is expressed in natural language. Existing theories of truth have generally focused on true occurring with that-clauses. This paper takes a closer look at predicates of truth (and related notions) when they apply to objects as the referents of referential noun phrases, focusing on what I call the 'core' of language. It argues that truth predicates and their variants, predicates of correctness, satisfaction, and validity, do not apply to propositions (not even with that-clauses), but to a range of attitudinal and modal objects, objects we refer to as 'claims', 'beliefs', 'judgments', 'demands', 'promises, 'obligations' etc. As such natural language reflects a notion of truth that is primarily a normative notion conveyed by correct. This normative notion, however, is not action-guiding, but rather constitutive of representational objects independently of any actions that may go along with them (in the sense of Jarvis 2012). The paper furthermore argues that the predicate true is part of a larger class of satisfaction predicates (satisfied, realized, taken up etc). The semantic differences among different satisfaction predicates, the paper will argue, are best accounted for in terms of a truthmaker theory along the lines of Fine's (to appear) truthmaker semantics. Truthmaker semantics also provides a notion of partial content applicable to attitudinal and modal objects, which may exhibit partial correctness, partial satisfaction, and partial validity.
Philosophical Studies, 2020
Schipper, A. (2020). Aboutness and ontology: a modest approach to truthmakers. Philosophical Studies, February 2020, Volume 177, Issue 2, pp 505–533. Download the in-print copy here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-018-1192-6 Truthmaker theory has been used to argue for substantial conclusions about the categorial structure of the world, in particular that states of affairs are needed to play the role of truthmakers. In this paper, I argue that closely considering the role of aboutness in truthmaking, that is considering what truthbearers are about, yields the result that there is no good truthmaker-based reason to think that truthmakers must be states of affairs understood as existing entities, whether complex or simple. First, I introduce an aboutness-based account of truthmaking as a metaphysically modest alternative to the orthodox necessitarian account of truthmaking. Second, I discuss the distinction between states and events that has been made on the basis of linguistic evidence regarding aspectual markers and nominalisation. I argue that the modest approach to truthmaking allows us to accept that there is a real distinction between states and events without requiring that the distinction is ontologically substantial. Specifically, what we are talking about with state-truthbearers really differs from what we are talking about with event-truthbearers, but this difference need not be understood as a difference in kinds of entities. Because of its overall modesty, this is a theoretically virtuous result.
Logic and Logical Philosophy, 2015
Many mereological propositions are true contingently, so we are entitled to ask why they are true. One frequently given type of answer to such questions evokes truth-makers, that is, entities in virtue of whose existence the propositions in question are true. However, even without endorsing the extreme view that all contingent propositions have truth-makers, it turns out to be puzzlingly hard to provide intuitively convincing candidate truth-makers for even a core class of basic mereological propositions. Part of the problem is that the relation of part to whole is ontologically intimate in a way reminiscent of identity. Such intimacy bespeaks a formal or internal relation, which typically requires no truth-makers beyond its terms. But truth-makers are held to necessitate their truths, so whence the contingency when A is part of B but need not be, or B need not have A as part? This paper addresses and attempts to disentangle the conundrum.
Introduction: truth and truth-making
2009
The aim of this essay is to provide a detailed and critical overview of the main topics and problems of the current debate concerning truth-making. In §1 I give a brief outline of the history of the theory of truth-making and in §2 I identify three central goals of such a theory. In §3 I introduce the truth-maker principle and the doctrines of truth-maker maximalism and truth-maker purism. Section 4 contains a discussion and critique of several attempts to justify the truth-maker principle and §5 introduces some distinctions that concern diff erent possible formal and ontological properties of the truth-making relation. In §6 I argue for the thesis that propositions conceived as certain kinds of abstract objects are the best candidates to fi ll the role of primary truth-bearers. Section 7 is about the explication of the truth-maker relation; I shall discuss and criticize a considerable number of the attempts at explication that have been made. In §8 I introduce further principles that may be combined with the truth-maker principle. It will be shown that some of these principles imply implausible consequences if they are combined with certain explications of the truth-maker principle. Section 9 is concerned with so-called supervenience principles concerning truth. I shall assess the claim that these principles are plausible replacements for the truthmaker principle. Section 10 contains four arguments against the thesis that a truth-maker theory may be conceived of as a theory of truth. It will be shown that at least two of these arguments constitute a deep challenge for a truth-maker theory of truth.
Truthmakers, Entailment and Necessity
Advances in Logic, 2001
Australian Realist analytic philosophy is full of claims about truthmakers and truthmaking. In this paper, I seek to show that a number of intuitions about truthmaking are jointly inconsistent, and that some common attempts at resolving the inconsistency are unsatisfying. Finally, I propose an account of truthmaking which resolves the tensions as best as possible. This account has great a nities with both relevant entailment and situation semantics. This note can be seen as an apologetic for relevant entailment for those who are familiar with truthmaking, or as an introduction to truthmaking for those familiar with logic. Either way, it is an attempt to apply modern logical methods and insights to a philosophical problem.