Truths and Processes: A Critical Approach to Truthmaker Theory

In the Introduction, I explained why we should take truthmaking seriously. One important moral to be drawn from that discussion is that the idea of truthmaking is alive and well in philosophy, even if sometimes left implicit. It is not just self-identified truthmaker theorists, then, who deploy the notion of truthmaking. However, it is truthmaker theorists who believe that framing metaphysical questions in terms of truthmaking is a useful way of defending and objecting to metaphysical positions. In fact, this is how I conceive of what it is to be a truthmaker theorist. To be a truthmaker theorist is not to accept any particular metaphysical doctrine; as we shall see, nearly every thesis under discussion within truthmaker theory is contentious. Rather, it is to adopt a methodology, to confront metaphysical questions with the tools and resources of truthmaker theory.  As a result, taking truthmaking seriously does not require taking on the most controversial commitments that have long been associated with it, such as the doctrine that all truths require truthmakers, or that entities such as facts or states of affairs exist. Those are positions that one may ultimately stake out, but they are not compulsory.But what form should such truthmaking arguments take? What kind of theory should truthmaker theorists endeavor to produce? What assumptions are truthmaker theorists allowed to hold when exploring their inquiries? These sorts of questions raise methodological issues for truthmaker theorists, and are of the first importance when developing comprehensive theories of truthmaking. Those who make casual appeals to the notion of truthmaking will also benefit from some reflection on truthmaker methodology, as it is easy to fall into tempting assumptions about truthmaking that are ultimately optional. Hence I could not disagree more with the very first sentence of Dodd (): "To be a truthmaker theorist is to commit oneself to a principle stating that the members of a certain class of true propositions have truthmakers" ().

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Introduction

2020

A Theory of Truthmaking

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Truths and Processes: A Critical Approach to Truthmaker Theory

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The Long Shadow of Semantic Platonism

A Theory of Truthmaking

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