Aboutness and ontology: a modest approach to truthmakers

Abstract

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.

Ontological accounting and aboutness: on Asay’s A Theory of Truthmaking

“…"Pegasus doesn't exist"), then nothing needs to exist for them to be true. Asay's trivialism about mathematics and fictional entities is compatible with Schipper's (2016Schipper's ( , 2018Schipper's ( , 2020Schipper's ( , 2021 aboutness-focused picture. He could say that the number 2 is the direct truthmaker and what the truthbearer is directly about, but he doesn't rule out that everything else is necessary as the truthmaking's background conditions, what < 2 exists > is indirectly about and the truth's indirect truth-necessitators.…”

Hyperintensionality and overfitting

“…What meaningful items are about is their subject matter or, as I will also say, their topic. Research on topics has been burgeoning in recent decades (Lewis, 1988a, b;Gemes, 1994Gemes, , 1997Humberstone, 2008;Fine, 2016Fine, , 2017Hawke, 2018;Moltmann, 2018;Schipper, 2018Schipper, , 2020Plebani, 2020;Plebani & Spolaore, 2021). What are topics?…”

Topics of Thought

“…A way better alternative understands truthmaking in terms of (fundamental) metaphysical explanation: Jago (2018), ch. 6; see also Schipper (2018Schipper ( , 2020 for cognate ideas. And connects it to a certain notion of exactness.…”

“…This is their subject matter or, as I will also say, their topic. Research on aboutness and subject matter has been burgeoning in the last decades, thanks to the works of philosophers and logicians like David Lewis (1988a,b), Ken Gemes (1994, 1997, Lloyd Humberstone (2008), Stephen Yablo, Kit Fine (2016a, Peter Hawke (2018), Friederike Moltmann (2018), Arthur Schipper (2018Schipper ( , 2020, and more.…”