Truthmakers

I propose a novel A-theory, and show that it attractively articulates our common-sense, pre-relativistic conception of time. This A-theory posits fundamental facts about how things were at a specific past times. It allows fundamental cross-temporal relationships. It treats time’s passing by positing fundamental facts like: four hours passed from 8am today until noon. First, I motivate my account of time’s passing. Second, I defend fundamental cross-temporal relationships. Third, I rebut arguments demanding present truth-makers for truths about the past. Author (MS) (...) shows that the presentism–eternalism dilemma does not embarrass my A-theory. (shrink)

Adrian Heathcote has proposed a truth-making account of knowledge that combines traditional conditions of justified true belief with the truth-making condition, which would jointly provide us with the sufficient condition of knowledge, and this truth-maker account of knowledge in turn explains why a gettiered justified true belief fails to be regarded as a genuine instance of knowledge. In this paper, by the comparison of two different casual models that are illustrated by the thermometer and the clock respectively, however, it will (...) be argued that Heathcote’s truth-making account of knowledge fails to cope with the Gettier case of the stopped clock and therefore is called for some further remedy. (shrink)

It seems that the most common strategy to solve the liar paradox is to argue that liar sentences are meaningless and, consequently, truth-valueless. The other main option that has grown in recent years is the dialetheist view that treats liar sentences as meaningful, truth-apt and true. In this paper I will offer a new approach that does not belong in either camp. I hope to show that liar sentences can be interpreted as meaningful, truth-apt and false, but without engendering any (...) contradiction. This seemingly impossible task can be accomplished once the semantic structure of the liar sentence is unpacked by a quantified analysis. The paper will be divided in two sections. In the first section, I present the independent reasons that motivate the quantificational strategy and how it works in the liar sentence. In the second section, I explain how this quantificational analysis allows us to explain the truth teller sentence and a counter-example advanced against truthmaker maximalism, and deal with some potential objections. (shrink)

In both everyday language and philosophical discourse, the terms existence and reality are often used interchangeably. This conflation is especially evident in debates on the ontology of time. For example, an orthodox presentist will say that only present things truly exist, treating all non-present entities (past or future) as unreal in an absolute sense – “all such objects are unreal, according to Presentism,” as one defender neatly put it. This paper serves as a focused extension and clarification of the metaphysical (...) framework introduced in Existential Realism – A Distinct Ontological Framework Beyond Presentism. It addresses specific questions raised by readers and critics: Is it coherent to distinguish existence from reality? What philosophical work does that distinction do? How does it help with longstanding problems like truthmaking, the status of unobservable entities, and future ethics? In short, while the original paper laid out the core ontological structure, this follow-up revisits its foundations to deepen the theoretical implications, refine key definitions, and explore practical consequences. Our central thesis remains: existence and reality are not identical. But here, we argue more sharply that separating them yields a more nuanced, empirically grounded, and philosophically productive ontology of time. We defend this view against objections, offer clarified examples, and explore its implications for epistemology, phenomenology, and ethics. We proceed as follows. Section 2 defines existence narrowly, in terms of presentness and empirical accessibility, drawing on the spirit of van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism. Section 3 then defines reality more broadly, to include causal and structural aspects of the world inferable beyond the present—illustrated through examples such as dinosaurs, future climate events, and cognitive anticipations. Section 4 explores how this distinction addresses several philosophical issues: the truthmaker problem for past truths, the ontological status of unobservable scientific entities, the phenomenology of temporal experience (in the sense of Husserl and Metzinger ), and considerations of metaphysical parsimony. Section 5 argues why this two-tier ontology is not merely a restatement of presentism or eternalism, but a distinct metaphysical framework. Finally, Section 6 summarizes our contributions and highlights new directions this view opens—particularly in ethics (e.g., our duties to future persons), AI models of time, and decision theory under uncertainty. Throughout, we maintain an academic tone and use end-of-paragraph references in line with the original paper’s style. Our aim is for this article to stand on its own as a focused argument on the existence–reality distinction, while continuing and enriching the foundation laid by Existential Realism. (shrink)

Existential Realism (ER) is a contemporary ontological framework that sharply distinguishes between existence (the empirically accessible present) and reality (the broader causal web including past and future). By its doctrine, only what is present and observable exists, while past and future entities are real but lack present existence. This paper examines what it would mean to disprove ER by breaching its core empirical constraint: demonstrating an observable, measurable influence of matter outside the present. We outline a rigorous criterion for falsifying (...) ER, requiring a controllable, information-bearing, counterfactually robust influence originating from a non-present event. We then explore hypothetical scenarios that, if realized, would meet this criterion—ranging from superluminal quantum signals and retrocausal experiments to traversable wormholes and “present-sensing” devices—explaining in each case what empirical outcome would count as a true falsifier of ER and why. In counterpoint, we respond from within the ER framework to show why these scenarios remain speculative or inconsistent with known physics, and how ER’s integration of causality, relativity, and measurement constraints withstands such challenges. Rather than seeing ER as an unfalsifiable metaphysic, we argue that its immunity to these exotic tests reflects a deep concordance with physical law: all interactions with matter are bound to the present, while past and future matter, though real, are non-existent and inaccessible except through present traces. In conclusion, we defend ER as an empirically grounded ontology—far from ad hoc, it is rooted in a stable distinction between existence and reality that has broad implications for metaphysics, physics, and epistemology. This reinforces ER’s status as a fruitful philosophy of time that remains standing unless and until experiment accomplishes the seemingly impossible: observing matter, substance, or stuff beyond the now. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 The familiar challenges to historiographical knowledge turn on epistemological concerns having to do with the unobservability of historical events, or with the problem of establishing a sufficiently strong inferential connection between evidence and the historiographical claim one wishes to convert from a true belief into knowledge. This paper argues that these challenges miss a deeper problem, viz., the lack of obvious truth-makers for historiographical claims. The metaphysical challenge to historiography is that reality does not appear (...) to co-operate in our cognitive endeavours by providing truth-makers for claims about historical entities and events. Setting out this less familiar, but more fundamental, challenge to the very possibility of historiography is the first aim of this paper. The various ways in which this challenge might be met are then set out, including ontologically inflationary appeals to abstract objects of various kinds, or to “block” theories of time. The paper closes with the articulation of an ontologically parsimonious solution to the metaphysical challenge to historiography. The cost of this approach is a revision to standard theories of truth. The central claim here is that the standard theories of truth have mistaken distinct causes of truth for truth itself. This mistake leads to distorted expectations regarding truth-makers for historiographical claims. The truth-makers of historiographical claims are not so much the historical events themselves but atemporal modal facts about the order of things of which those events were a part. (shrink)

Bob and Ulf say logic should make explicit / The kinds of inference we take as licit. / They give a formalism that’s classically complete, / But in which an extra premise may defeat / An inference that seems a reasonable fact. / Thus reason’s made explicit but is it exact? / For reason in the sense of Brandom and Hlobil, / May explode like a logical Chernobyl. / This is the point on which I’d like to push back, / (...) And keep the game of giving reasons exact. / So with the help of fancy formal antics, / I’ll give nonmonotonic truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

According to the correspondence theory of truth a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to a fact. The present entry explains this definition, outlines an ontology of facts, and sketches a theory of meaning that naturally accompanies the correspondence theory of truth. It also discusses two major challenges the correspondence theory faces, related to the meanings of the logical expressions `not' and `all', and surveys possible solutions.

In this review I take to task the related views of E.J. Lowe, John Heil and Peter Simons according to which relations don't exist because they're dispensable qua truth-makers. I argue that this view is methodologically unstable because we also have reason to believe that relations exist because our best mathematical and scientific theories say so, i.e. quantify over them.

Classic Truthmaker Theory (ctt; e.g., Armstrong and Bigelow) takes there to be a deep connection between truthmaking and substantial realism (sr). It faces a pressing problem which no one has yet adequately addressed in defence of the truthmaker-realism link: the “Categorisation Problem”. In short, it is an explanatory challenge to articulate truthmaker realism in such a way as to categorise realisms and non-realisms correctly. This paper addresses this problem head-on. Specifically, it argues for what I call the “Aboutness Strategy”, that (...) the problem itself overlooks something important: that the best versions of ctt require that truths are made true by what they are about, that is, truthmaking has an aboutness component. The details of the aboutness component, especially Berto’s “Acceptability Constraint”, let us (a) articulate conditions for realism which are superior to the currently best rival accounts, namely the “Grounding Account” and the “Debate-specific Account”, and (b) avoid the categorisation errors plaguing ctt as well as rivals. Therefore, looking closely at and utilising truthmaking’s aboutness conditions allow us to retain the connection between truthmaking and sr that classic truthmaker theorists think there is. (shrink)

Aristotle famously observed: That you are pale is true because you are pale—but not vice versa. This insight plays an important role in contemporary debates about truth by expressing truth’s dependency on being. However, how to account for this insight remains controversial. This paper employs the logic of grounding to derive Aristotle’s insight rigorously. The derivation requires a specific truth theory as its starting point. Here, Wolfgang Künne’s Modest Conception of Truth is chosen, but it can also be adapted to (...) other theories of truth. As a by-product, this analysis uncovers a previously unnoticed problem in Künne’s theory—one for which I also propose a solution. (shrink)

We construct a presentist semantics on which there are no truth-makers for past and future tensed statements. The semantics is not an expressivist or projectivist one, and is not susceptible to the semantical difficulties that confront such theories. We discuss how the approach handles some standard concerns with presentism.

Presentism is the view that only present things exist. So understood, presentism is primarily an ontological doctrine; it’s a view about what exists, absolutely and unrestrictedly. The view is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature on time and change, with much of it focused on the problems that presentism allegedly faces. Thus, most of the literature that frames the development of presentism has grown up either in formulating objections to the view (e.g., Sider 2001: 11–52), or in response (...) to such objections (e.g., Bigelow 1996; Markosian 2004; Effingham 2023), with exceptions to this largely coming via the ways in which presentism is motivated (e.g., Markosian 2022; Builes & Impagnatiello 2025). This entry mirrors the structure of that literature, for the most part. Here’s the plan for what follows. We begin with a more detailed sketch of presentism, unpacking its commitments and motivations. Then, we move to consider several concerns raised for presentists. We use these to illustrate the breadth and severity of the challenges that presentism faces, as well as the range of different versions of presentism developed to help meet these challenges. (shrink)

Contemporary ontologies often assign states-of-affairs a central role in explaining semantic content, causation, and truth. This paper examines how Bernard Bolzano’s ontology—built around substances, adherences, and propositions in themselves—successfully fulfils these explanatory roles without invoking states-of-affairs, conceived as concrete complexes of objects and universals. By closely analyzing Bolzano’s original texts, including key aspects previously overlooked, the paper reconstructs his alternative machinery and highlights its ongoing systematic relevance. It also revisits the wrong historical narrative that credits Bolzano with pioneering the notion (...) of states-of-affairs, arguing that such attributions rest on a misreading of his ontology. Reappraising Bolzano’s rigorous approach not only corrects the historical record but also offers fresh insight into contemporary debates on ontology, grounding, and truth. (shrink)

This book presents a detailed, up-to-date, and historically informed survey and critical explication of the deflationary approach to the topic of truth. It is divided into three parts. Part 1 explains what deflationism about truth involves and develops a useful framework that clarifies how this approach differs from the traditional, "inflationary" approach. The framework illuminates certain general deflationary themes in terms of what we call broad four-dimensional deflationism, which comprises four different dimensions that any deflationary account must satisfy. We first (...) examine the degree to which each of these dimensions is displayed in early, "proto-deflationary" accounts. We then, while explaining the details and historical development of the different contemporary species of deflationism, assess the degree to which each version of them adheres to the deflationary dimensions, in addition to clarifying how each species differs from inflationism and how they all differ from one another. Part 2 of the book examines challenges to deflationism, systematizing them by considering the deflationary dimension that each targets and grouping the challenges in terms of them. For each challenge, this part explains its historical development and investigates the extent to which the most prominent contemporary deflationary accounts answer, or fail to answer, it. Part 3 of the book is an appendix that presents new directions for deflationism by developing a version of the approach that answers the challenges examined in Part 2. The three parts of the book together provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the challenges to and merits of the deflationary approach to truth. (shrink)

According to orthodoxy, our best physical theories strongly support Eternalism over Presentism. Our goal is to argue against this consensus, by arguing that a certain overlooked aspect of our best physical theories strongly supports Presentism over Eternalism.

Mental fictionalists propose that we should continue to engage in truth-conditional discourse about the mind, even though we have reason to believe that the discourse lacks truthmakers. In Mind As Metaphor, Toon attempts to motivate mental fictionalism with two arguments, one negative and one positive. Toon’s negative argument is that there are no internal mental states with intentional and causal properties, and therefore there are no truthmakers for the standard interpretation of our everyday folk-psychological discourse. This paper challenges Toon’s negative (...) argument by arguing that a commitment to internal mental states does not require a commitment to the representational theory of mind. Toon’s positive argument is that engaging with the discourse as form of pretense or make-believe enables us to make sense of the relation between mind and behavior in a way that other nonrepresentational interpretations of the discourse cannot. This paper argues that Toon’s positive argument undermines rather than supports his case for mental fictionalism, as it seems to ontologically commit him to the types of mental states he is trying to deny. (shrink)

Truth and Social Reality: A Metaphysical Inquiry presents a new theory of social truth and social construction. The book weds truthmaker theory with recent work in social ontology, arguing that social truths are true in virtue of socially constructed portions of the world. It focuses on the construction of human social kinds like gender, race, class, and disability. The book offers novel accounts of social construction (one in terms of truthmaking), realism, social kind pluralism, social context, the context dependency of (...) social truth, and social vagueness. Overall, Truth and Social Reality presents a realist picture of the social world in which there are objective truths about the way things are in the social world. Social truth is not socially constructed despite being grounded in a socially constructed reality. The theory it provides nonetheless captures the contingency, alterability, vagueness of the social world, and the context dependency of social truth. The book also addresses the relationships between truth, power, and justice. It argues that truth itself is not a tool of oppression, as some maintain. Rather, truth and truth-telling play an essential role in upending oppression and achieving justice. Truth and Social Reality aims to rebut the cynicism of the “post-truth” age by defending the possibility and value of social truth. (shrink)

I outline a deflationary truthmakers account of social groups. Potentially, the approach allows us to say, with traditional ontological individualists, that there are only pluralities of individuals out there, ontologically speaking, but that there are nevertheless colloquial and social-scientific truths about social groups. If tenable, this kind of theory has the virtue of being both ontologically parsimonious and compatible with ordinary and social-scientific discourse—a virtue which the stock reductive / ontological dependence accounts of social groups arguably lack.

Over the last decade it has been pointed out by several philosophers that not all Status Function Declarations are synchronic: some such declarations are directed toward the absolute past. Such Status Function Declarations are perplexing if one is an ontic realist with respect to institutional properties and states of affairs. If successful, such Status Function Declarations seem to change the absolute past; at the very least, they seem to involve some form of absolute backward generation. Both consequences look problematic: the (...) notions that the absolute past can change and that there is absolute backward generation are both regularly accused of being contradictory or entailing implausible metaphysics. In this paper, I argue that both issues can be avoided if the ‘results’ of absolutely backward-directed declarations are analysed in terms of mere Cambridge changes realised in B-time. A key upshot of the account is that ‘institutional properties’ are neither identifiable nor perfectly correlated with enablements and constraints, contrary to what is sometimes argued in the literature. (shrink)

Non-Realist Cognitivism is a meta-ethical theory that is supposedly objectionably unclear. Recently, Farbod Akhlaghi (2022) has provided a novel exposition of Parfit’s Non-Realist Cognitivism that employs truthmaker theory to clarify it. He illustrates that such clarification leads the non-realist cognitivist into a dilemma: either the theory has to accept truthmaker maximalism, rendering the theory inconsistent, or it has to let go of truthmaking altogether. He also attempts to undercut a “partners-in-innocence” strategy that the non-realist cognitivist utilizes to motivate the key (...) assumption of Non-Realist Cognitivism: that normative truths are truthmaker gaps. In this paper, we do three things in reply to Akhlaghi. First, we show how most of his attempts to disqualify candidate partners-in-innocence fail, or at best miss the point. Second, we provide a case for a partner-in-innocence Akhlaghi never covers, though inadvertently mentions. Third, we outline how the non-realist cognitivist could reply to Akhlaghi’s dilemma in a way that allows Non-Realist Cognitivism to come out unscathed. (shrink)

Within the past twenty years, meta-ethicists have started to make their ontological commitments minimal. This has led to the creation of a view called metaethical minimalism. Metaethical minimalism is a meta-ethical theory that states some moral truths are truthmaker gaps, that is, truths without truthmakers. Such a view, though, has not gone without criticism. In this paper, we have two aims. First, we aim to focus on responding to unaddressed criticisms from Donelson (Three problems with metaethical minimalism. 34, 1.) and (...) by extension deal with worries from Enoch (Taking morality seriously: A defense of robust realism), Ingram (Robust realism in ethics: Normative arbitrariness, interpersonal dialogue, and moral objectivity), and McPherson (Against quietist normative realism. 154, 223–240.). Mainly, we aim to diffuse the objections, but in some instances, we adopt parody objections so that if it attacks metaethical minimalism, it equally attacks its rivals. Second, we aim to show how, since the common objections to metaethical minimalism fail, it is an attractive meta-ethical view without any (ontological) costs. (shrink)

Recently, non-realist cognitivism has been charged with failing to meet various semantic challenges. According to one such challenge, the non-realist cognitivist must provide a non-trivial account of the meaning and truth conditions of moral claims. In this paper, we discuss the various strategies proposed to overcome this challenge. Our aim is to propose a new semantics, a Meinongian referential semantics that is based on truthmaker theory. The consequences of our proposal are two-fold. First, it alleviates objections raised against previous Meinongian (...) semantic approaches. Second, adopting the novel semantics highlights the great theoretical flexibility of non-realist cognitivism. (shrink)

This paper will first give an overview of the role of events in semantics against the background of Davidsonian semantics and its Neo-Davidsonian variant. Second, it will discuss some serious issues for standard views of events in contemporary semantics and present novel proposals of how to address them. These are [1] the semantic role of abstract (or Kimean) states, [2] wide scope adverbials, and [3] the status of verbs as event predicates with respect to the mass-count distinction. The paper will (...) show that abstract states as the entities described by (most) stative verbs are incompatible with Neo-Davidsonian event semantics and proposes a decompositional analysis of stative verbs that may be able to overcome the difficulty. The paper will argue that in addition to Davidsonian events, the semantics of adverbials requires events as truthmakers as well as actions as more complex entities sharply distinguished from events. The paper will also argue that the verbal domain of events sides with mass nouns rather than dividing into mass and count, unlike event nouns. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present a neo-Meinongian solution to the Truthmaking Problem of Negative Existentials. In other words, I attempt to offer what I presume to be the best Meinongian solution to the problem of answering what kind of object can make negative existentials true. Still, before offering this solution, this paper articulates the relationship between this truthmaking problem and the metaontological paradox of negative existentials.

I argue that relaxed moral realists are not ontologically committed to moral properties. Regardless of whether we tie ontological commitment to quantification, entailment, or truthmaking, if moral properties are not explanatory (as relaxed realists claim), then moral truths do not require moral properties. This permits a nominalist form of relaxed realism that is both simpler and more ecumenical than extant formulations. The possibility of such a position places pressure on the ontology of competing views—and helps focus attention on the critical (...) and underexplored explanatory element of the relaxed realist’s program. (shrink)

Many advocates of grounding believe that a proposition’s truthmaker grounds its truth—what I call the Alethic Grounding Principle. The principle was attacked by (Griffith, Inquiry 57(2):196-21, 2014), (Saenz Synthese, 2018), and (Audi, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1-24, 2019). According to Griffith, truthmaking is a species of grounding: however, something might be a proposition’s truthmaker, although its ground is not that proposition’s truthmaker. Saenz suggests that the ground of a proposition’s truth includes its truthmaker, but it includes a lot more. In (...) Audi’s view, what counts as the relation between truths and truthmakers lacks certain logical properties of the grounding relation; therefore, it does not count as grounding. I will suggest that Griffith’s and Saenz’s views imply an unnecessary inflation in ontology, as they rule out one motivation for the truthmaker theory. Furthermore, Audi’s conception of grounding is very similar to emergence. Taking some of these objections into account, I provide a revised version of the Alethic Grounding Principle, according to which the truth of a proposition is grounded in both the proposition and its truthmaker. (shrink)

The basic concepts we use to frame metaphysical discussions – our tools of metaphysics – profoundly influence how those discussions proceed. Much recent work in anglophone metaphysics has centred on a set of hyperintensional such tools: grounding, dependence, fundamentality, and essence. This topical collection will provide new perspectives on these debates by bringing them into contact with Asian metaphysical traditions.

In Categories 12 (14b11–22), Aristotle famously claims that [1] true sentences and reality stand in a mutually implicative relationship, and that [2] reality causes the truth of sentences but not vice versa. In this paper, I first argue that Boethius’ reading of the above passage led medieval logicians to assess [1] and [2] within the framework of a theory of consequence. Then, I consider two important questions raised by Boethius and later logicians in relation to [1] and [2], and, namely, (...) whether the implication described in [1] really satisfies the requirement for consequence, and whether the truthmaking relation posited in [2] can be boiled down to the relation of consequence. Boethius himself, I argue, answered affirmatively to both questions and thus (much like some contemporary truthmaker theorists) committed himself to an account of truthmaking as entailment. I then consider criticisms to Boethius’ account found in the writings of William of Champeaux, two anonymous authors connected to the school of Jocelyn of Soissons, Peter Abelard, and the author of the Ars Meliduna. Here, I argue that the emergence of a concern for relevance drives the need for abandoning Boethius’ account as well as his conception of truthmaking as entailment. (shrink)

This paper explores the ‘metatheoretical location’ of principles in metaphysical theories, using the debate between Cameron and Goff as a case study. These principles can be situated either in a pre-theoretical framework or within the process of theorizing itself. Traditional truthmaking theorists, like Goff, view truthmaking principles as pre-theoretical assumptions that guide metaphysical inquiry. In contrast, Cameron advocates for a heterodox approach, where such principles are treated as theoretical conclusions reached through contentious debate and argumentation. This distinction has significant implications (...) for how theories are evaluated. By examining this debate, the paper highlights how the metatheoretical positioning of methodological principles influences theoretical discourse in analytic metaphysics. (shrink)

I like the view that the fundamental facts are logically simple, not complex. However, some universal generalizations and negations may appear fundamental, because they cannot be explained by logically simple facts about particulars. I explore a natural reply: those universal generalizations and negations are true because certain logically simple facts—call them φφ—are the fundamental facts. I argue that this solution is only available given some metaphysical frameworks, some conceptions of metaphysical explanation and fundamentality. It requires a ‘fitting’ framework, according to (...) which metaphysical theories explain the aptness of representations in terms of how things are fundamentally. Fitting frameworks conceive of the fundamental facts as those that are metaphysically ‘real’; call them the ‘facts‐in‐reality’. Moreover, we must take as primary a plural notion of the facts‐in‐reality, not the singular notion of a fact‐in‐reality. By contrast, a metaphysics that grounds facts is incompatible with my strategy for keeping the fundamental facts logically simple. (shrink)

Relaxed realist theories are becoming more common in metanormative theory. They want the advantages of robust forms of realism but without their metaphysical underpinnings. However, it is not always clear how we should understand relaxed realist theories in general. In this paper I clarify and defend relaxed realism. First, I characterise and distinguish relaxed realist theories from robust realist theories. Second, I defend relaxed realism against a challenge from truthmaker theory.

This paper defines relational properties and argues for their reducibility in a, broadly speaking, Armstrongian framework of state of affairs ontology and truthmaking. While Armstrong’s own characterisation and reduction of them arguably is the best one available in the literature of this framework, it suffers from two main problems. As will be shown, it neither defines relational properties very clearly (if at all), nor provides an adequate conception of their reduction. This paper attempts to remedy this situation in four steps. (...) First, it introduces relational properties and why they matter in metaphysics in general. Second, by briefly comparing and contrasting them with extrinsic properties, and by briefly mapping them onto a tripartite division of relations, the particular kinds of relevant relational properties are identified. Third, it classifies relational properties and thereby makes possible an apt definition of them. Finally, using the notion of truthmaking, it outlines a more satisfactory case for their reduction. (shrink)

This paper gives a semantic analysis of 'completion-related verbs of absence' such as 'lack' and 'be missing' in English. The analysis is based on the notion of a conceptual (integrated or ideal) whole, the notion of a variable object and its variable parts, and an ontology of 'lacks' as entities whose satisfaction involves parts. The semantics will be embedded into that of object-based truthmaker semantics of modals (Moltmann 2008, 2024).

For many years there has been a debate in truthmaking theory between proponents of the substantive and deflationary approaches. Substantivists about truthmaking maintain that we need entities called truthmakers, while deflationists of truthmaking argue that the asymmetric form of the T-schema is sufficient. In contrast to incompatibilists, who argue that one should adopt only one of these approaches, I propose a compatibilist theory of truthmaking in which the two approaches complement each other through the distribution of different functions of truthmaking. (...) I find that this helps to solve the problem of truthmaking of certain contentious truths, such as negative truths. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a lot of skepticism about the existence of facts. It seems that one of the last places for their application is in truthmaking theory. In this paper I discuss two approaches to the use of facts in truthmaking. The first, categorial, holds that facts are entities that belong to one of three ontological categories (true propositions, truth of propositions, instantiations of universals).The second, deflationary, holds that a fact is merely a functional concept denoting any (...) entity that performs a truthmaking function. I argue that in the face of significant criticism of categorial facts as truthmakers, a defender of facts may resort to the deflationary concept. Nevertheless, even in this case we can do without facts as truthmakers. (shrink)

Developments in truthmaker semantics for the most part stay clear of the metaphysical issue of what sort of entities serve as the truthmakers and falsitymakers for sentences. It is assumed that perhaps facts or states of affairs (Fine 2017a; Jago 2020), with these taken sometimes as concrete particulars (Hawke 2018) could serve for the job, but nonetheless that some such entities would do. In this paper I take a closer look at the issue of what entities could or could not (...) play the role of truthmakers and falsitymakers in standard truthmaker semantics (Fine 2016, 2017a, b; Fine and Jago 2019), based on desiderata imposed by metaphysical and semantic considerations. (shrink)

Both Jago, in his 2020 article ‘A short argument for truthmaker maximalism’ and his 2021 article ‘Which Fitch?’, and Loss in his 2021 article ‘There are no fundamental facts’, employ arguments similar to that familiar from the Church–Fitch Paradox to infer some substantial metaphysical claims from their mere logical possibility. Trueman in his 2022 article ‘Truthmaking, grounding and Fitch’s paradox’ and Nyseth in his 2022 article ‘Fitch’s paradox and truthmaking’ respond by using exactly the same kind of argument to prove (...) contrary theses. Intended as bad company objections, these counterarguments cast doubt on the original arguments, but do not actually identify their flaw. This paper aims to fill this gap. (shrink)

Abstractionists claim that the only bearers of intrinsic value are abstract, necessarily existing states of affairs. I argue that abstractionism cannot succeed. Though we can model concrete goods such as lives, projects, and outcomes with abstract states, conflating models of goods with the goods themselves has surprising and unattractive consequences. I suggest that concrete states of affairs or facts are the only bearers of intrinsic value. I show how this proposal can overcome the concerns lodged against abstractionism and, in the (...) process, reconnect us with the good. (shrink)

According to alethic pluralism, sentences belonging to different domains of discourse can be true by having different alethic (i.e., truth-constituting) properties. Against this pluralistic view, Jamin Asay has recently argued that pluralists' appeal to multiple alethic properties is ill-motivated because the main advantages of pluralism can already be obtained within the framework of standard truthmaker theory. In response to this objection, this paper argues that Asay's claim does not hold with respect to one of the central advantages of pluralism, namely, (...) the ability to offer a proper understanding of the realism/anti-realism debate. This is because, first, when simply construed, truthmaker theory can only provide an inadequate understanding of the debate, and second, when construed in certain ways that allow it to avoid inadequacy, it becomes committed to multiple alethic properties. (shrink)

Truthmaking is the metaphysical exploration of the idea that what is true depends upon what exists. Truthmaker theorists argue about what the truthmaking relation involves, which truths require truthmakers, and what those truthmakers are. This Element covers the dominant views on these core issues in truthmaking. It also explores some key metaphysical topics and debates that are usefully approached by employing the tools of truthmaker theory: the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of entities from the past, and (...) the debate between actualists and possibilists over merely possible states of affairs. In the final section, the Element explores how to think about truthmakers for truths involving social constructions. (shrink)

When and why does awareness of a belief's genealogy render it irrational to continue holding that belief? According to explanationism, awareness of a belief’s genealogy gives rise to an epistemic defeater when and because it reveals that the belief is not explanatorily connected to the relevant worldly facts. I argue that an influential recent version of explanationism, due to Korman and Locke, incorrectly implies that it is not rationally permissible to adopt a “sparse” ontology of worldly facts or states of (...) affairs. I then propose a new explanationist account of genealogical defeat capable of accommodating rational belief in ontological sparsity. According to my account, awareness of a belief’s genealogy gives rise to a defeater when and because it reveals that the belief is not explanatorily connected to its truthmaker. (shrink)

William of Ockham (d. 1347) is well known for his commitment to parsimony and for his so-called ‘razor’ principle. But little is known about attempts among his own contemporaries to deflect his use of the razor. In this paper, I explore one such attempt. In particular, I consider a clever challenge that Ockham’s younger contemporary, Walter Chatton (d. 1343) deploys against the razor. The challenge involves a kind of dilemma for Ockham. Depending on how Ockham responds to this dilemma, his (...) razor will, Chatton argues, either prove unacceptably dull when it comes to determining ontological commitment or prove unacceptably sharp when it comes to determining commitments entailed by certain theological doctrines. While Chatton’s objection is subtle and interesting in its own right, the broader significance of the debate between these thinkers lies in the light it sheds on medieval approaches to issues surrounding metaphysical methodology. (shrink)

There are two versions of the correspondence theory of truth: the object-based correspondence theory and the fact-based correspondence theory. Some scholars have put forward their objections to my rejection of the concept of a fact and their defence of that concept. But their arguments are not cogent, since they haven’t clarified the relation between facts and propositions, haven’t successfully argued for the necessity and feasibility of introducing the concept of a fact, and haven’t provided an acceptable standard of identity for (...) facts. Under the framework of the fact-based correspondence theory, a “negative fact” is usually introduced to explain the falsehood of an affirmative proposition and the truth of a negative proposition. But, after careful analysis, we find that the positing of negative facts is the result of the concurrence of three factors: the positive states of objects, the expectations of cognitive subjects, and certain kinds of inferences, Thus, negative facts at most have a sort of inferential “existence” without independent ontological status. The positing of negative facts has been criticized for many reasons, such as the ontological inflation of negative facts, the supervenience of negative facts on positive facts, the imperceptibility of negative facts, and the lack of causal force of negative facts. Many replies to these criticisms have been put forward, such as the dilemma argument, the self-defeating argument, and the role-making of negative facts: constitution (e.g. hole-making), causation (event-making), chance-making, and truth-making. However, these replies can also be reasonably rejected. The final conclusion of this article is that, in order to account for the falsehood of an affirmative proposition and the truth of a negative proposition, we can appeal to the object-based correspondence theory of truth without appealing to the concept of a fact, let alone the concept of a “negative fact”. (shrink)

This paper addresses some problems related to the relation of truthmaking, especially those concerning its necessity, adopting an essentialist point of view and focusing on the nature of truthbearers. According to the orthodox view in truthmaker theory, the relation of truthmaking is necessary in some sense. Thus, an important question involves how the relation of truthmaking is made necessary. I adopt a version of Jonathan Lowe’s essentialist approach to this question. However, contra Lowe, I take token acts of predication as (...) the primary truthbearers. This is Peter Hanks’ view in the philosophy of language. I shall argue that some problems with the essentialist approach can be solved by taking the nature of token acts of predication to be the source of necessity in truthmaking. At the end of this paper, I shall also briefly outline two general consequences related to truthmaking that I suppose this move about truthbearers should have. (shrink)

I identify an inconsistency in Jago’s theory of truth. I show that Jago is committed to the identity of the proposition that the proposition that A is true and the proposition that A. I show that Jago is committed to the proposition that A being true because A if the proposition that A is true. I show that these two commitments, given the rest of Jago’s theory, entail a contradiction. I show that while the latter commitment follows from Jago’s theory (...) of truth, even by Jago’s own lights he should not be committed to the identity of the proposition that the proposition that A is true and the proposition that A. (shrink)