Truth and Truthmakers

Armstrong, D. M.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511487552

Cited by 599 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…It doesn't require the inclusion of any exotic objects in one's ontology. This contrasts strongly with views positing negative facts, totality facts or absences as truthmakers for negative truths (Russell 1918;Priest 2000;Beall 2000;Jago and Barker 2012;Martin 1996;Kukso 2006;Armstrong 1997Armstrong , 2004. In fact, (Simple) doesn't require any modification of one's ontology, given that, by the previous adoption of truthmaking theory, one is already committed to the existence of propositions or to the existence of whatever one's favourite truthbearers happens to be.…”

Section: Advantages Of (Simple)mentioning

confidence: 87%

Positive truthmakers for negative truths: a solution to Molnar’s problem

Waechter

2016

Philos Stud

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The present paper addresses Molnar's problem (Australas J Philos 78(1): [72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86] 2000): that of finding positive truthmakers for negative truths. The proposed solution, called (Simple), is to hold truth and falsity to be primitive and positive features of propositions and to take every literal negative truth to be made true by the falsity of the atomic proposition that it embeds. The solution is shown to be compatible with Maximalism, Necessitarianism and with the Entailment Thesis, as well as with most if not all possible variants of truthmaking theory. Other advantages of (Simple) are noted: it doesn't require the inclusion of exotic objects in one's ontology; it doesn't require any revision of one's logic or of one's theory of modality. The solution also allows one to eschew negative facts, tropes and properties while providing a definition of negativity (DefNegativity) for certain literal propositions. The paper ends by rebutting several objections that may be levelled against (Simple).

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Section: Advantages Of (Simple)mentioning

confidence: 87%

Positive truthmakers for negative truths: a solution to Molnar’s problem

Waechter

2016

Philos Stud

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“…Modern truth-maker theory positing facts or states of affairs as truthmakers goes back to Stumpf and Husserl on the European continent and to Russell and Wittgenstein in Britain. Its most prominent contemporary advocate was David Armstrong, who also upheld the principle of truth-maker maximalism, according to which every truth has a truth-maker ( [1]). Maximalism encounters grave difficulties with general propositions and negative existentials which will not be pursued here, but which are sufficient to warrant abandoning it in favour of the more moderate principle of John Bigelow that truth supervenes on being: that what is true or false depends on what does and does not exist ( [2,133]).…”

Section: Truth-making In Generalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mereology and truth-making

Simons

2015

LLP

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Abstract. 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.

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“…e.g. Simons (1992), Armstrong (2004), Beebee and Dodd (2005), Cameron (2008). 5 As much follows from so-called truthmaker necessitarianism (TN); the assumption that the existence of a truthmaker necessitates the truth of some particular proposition (h((TM(p) exists) ?…”

Section: An Argument Against the Possible Existence Of Sammentioning

confidence: 99%