The General Truthmaker View of ontological commitment

Rettler, Bradley

doi:10.1007/s11098-015-0526-x

Cited by 33 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…10 See Sider (2004) and 2009 and 2011, (Cameron 2008), (Rettler 2015), and (Schaffer 2009). 11 See Sider (2004) and Sider (2011).…”

Section: Responding To the Dismissivistmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, from Sider: 42 See Crisp (2004). 43 See, e.g., Rettler (2015). 44 Relatedly, see McDaniel (2017), who discusses semantically primitive restricted quantifiers, which he says may be more fundamental than the quantifiers of which they're restrictions.…”

Section: Objectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantification in the Ontology Room

Rettler

2019

Dialectica

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There is a growing movement towards construing some classic debates in ontology as meaningless, either because the answers seem obvious or the debates seem intractable. In this paper, I respond to this movement. The response has three components: First, the members of the two sides of the ontological debates that dismissivists have targeted are using different quantifiers. Second, the austere ontologist is using a more fundamental quantifier than her opponent. Third, the austere ontologist's more fundamental quantifier is a restriction of her opponent's quantifier. This response takes seriously the intuition that there is something wrong with the ontological disputes, but does not entail dismissivism.

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“…10 See Sider (2004) and 2009 and 2011, (Cameron 2008), (Rettler 2015), and (Schaffer 2009). 11 See Sider (2004) and Sider (2011).…”

Section: Responding To the Dismissivistmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Objectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantification in the Ontology Room

Rettler

2019

Dialectica

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“…10 This is the option I recommend to Fine, given 9 See also Tahko 2013. 10 The idea of truthmaking as a theory of ontological commitment has been explored by Cameron (2008b), Schaffer (2008, and Rettler (2016). While I believe that truthmaker theory does provide answers to the ontological question of 18 his commitments about the logical structure of grounding that foreclose truthmaking being a species of it.…”

Section: Truthmaking and Groundingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Not everyone agrees, such as those likeRettler (2016) who require truthmakers to be fundamental entities.2 Furthermore, the fact that he claims that standard truthmakers are existential attributions suggests that he thinks all truthmakers are propositional in nature, which is another case of Fine reading his own grounding theory into truthmaking.…”

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confidence: 99%

Run Aground: Kit Fine's Critique of Truthmaker Theory

Asay¹

2016

Phil. Quart.

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Kit Fine, the leading proponent of the metaphysical project of grounding theory, has offered a number of potentially devastating objections to truthmaker theory, the branch of metaphysics dedicated to exploring the ontological grounds for truths. In this paper I show what presuppositions about truthmaker theory Fine's objections are based upon, and why they are false. I discuss four objections that Fine raises, and demonstrate how truthmaker theorists may respond to them. I then showcase the positive contribution that truthmaker theory can make to metaphysics, including its ability to speak to a core metaphysical topic (the ontological grounds for truths) that Fine's approach to grounding must ultimately remain silent on. I conclude by exploring what I take to be the best option when it comes to understanding how truthmaking and grounding fit together.'The truth-maker theorist is like someone who, faced with the problem of fitting a round peg into a round hole, first makes the round peg square and then attempts to solve the problem of fitting a square peg into a round hole.' Kit Fine, 'Guide to Ground'

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We don’t need no explanation

Asay

2017

Philos Stud

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Explanation has played myriad roles in truthmaker theory. The notion of explanation is sometimes thought to give content to the very idea of truthmaking, and is sometimes used as a weapon to undermine the entire point of truthmaker theory. I argue that the notion of explanation is dialectically useless in truthmaker theory: while it's true that truthmaking offers a form of explanation, this claim is theoretically unilluminating, and leaves truthmaker theorists vulnerable to various kinds of attack. I advocate an alternative approach to truthmaker theory that downplays the role of explanation, and show how it releases the enterprise from a variety of problematic commitments that have troubled truthmaker theorists. The "ontology-first" approach to truthmaking that I advocate not only restores the initial impulse behind truthmaking, but also has a number of theoretical advantages. Most prominently, it dodges the infamous problem of negative existentials, and lessens truthmaker theory's dependence on contentious intuitive judgments about both explanation and truthmaking.

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The General Truthmaker View of ontological commitment

Cited by 33 publications

References 22 publications

Quantification in the Ontology Room

Quantification in the Ontology Room

Run Aground: Kit Fine's Critique of Truthmaker Theory

We don’t need no explanation

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