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Truthmakers

Edited by Jamin Asay (Lingnan University)
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Summary Truthmakers are the things in the world in virtue of which truth bearers are true. For example, any individual human makes it true that humans exist. What's more controversial is what the truthmakers are for counterfactuals, and claims involving the past, modality, ethics, mathematics, and many others. Truthmaker theory explores the relationship between what is true and what exists. Central questions for truthmaker theory include whether or not all truths have truthmakers, what the nature of the truthmaking relation is, and what sorts of objects are needed to serve as truthmakers. The notion of truthmaking has been used to argue for particular kinds of ontologies (such as the existence of states of affairs or tropes), argue against certain metaphysical views (such as presentism and nominalism), and elucidate issues about the nature of truth (such as how truthmaker theory is related to correspondence theory).
Key works Contemporary truthmaker theory draws historical inspiration from Russell 1985. Classic papers on truthmaker theory include Mulligan et al 1984 and Fox 1987. David Armstrong has long advocated the idea of truthmaking, and Armstrong 2004 presents his most fully developed theory of truthmaking. Merricks 2007 is the most comprehensive critique of truthmaker theory. Classic papers concerned with the question of whether all truths require truthmakers include Molnar 2000 and Lewis 2001Restall 1996 discusses the nature of the truthmaking relation.
Introductions Rodriguez-Pereyra 2006 is an excellent general introduction to truthmaker theory. Another accessible resource that covers a number of contemporary issues in truthmaker theory is Fraser MacBride's Stanford Encyclopedia article (MacBride 2013). Caplan & Sanson 2011 introduces the consequences of truthmaking for presentism. Lowe & Rami 2009 collects a number of classic papers on the subject.

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  1. Takeshi Akiba (2011). Why Should the Truthmaker Principle Be Restricted? Kagaku Tetsugaku 44 (2):115-134.
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  2. Peter Alward (2004). Review of D. M. Armstrong, Truth and Truthmakers. [REVIEW] Disputatio 1 (17):74-78.
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  3. Elizabeth Anscombe (2000). 'Making True'. In Roger Teichmann (ed.), Logic, Cause and Action: Essays in honour of Elizabeth Anscombe. Cambridge University Press.
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  4. Chrudzimski Arkadiusz (2002). Two Concepts of Trope. Grazer Philosophische Studien 64 (1):137-155.
    The concept of a trope (understood as an individual property and not as a figure of speech) plays an important role in contemporary analytical metaphysics. It is, however, often far from clear what the logic of this concept really is. Indeed, there are two equally important intuitions underlying the concept of trope, two intuitions that generate two quite different conceptual frameworks. According to the first intuition, a trope is a particularised property – a property taken as an individual aspect of (...)
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  5. Bradley Armour-Garb & James A. Woodbridge (2010). Truthmakers, Paradox and Plausibility. Analysis 70 (1):11-23.
    (No abstract is available for this citation).
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  6. D. M. Armstrong (2010). Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    David Armstrong sets out his metaphysical system in a set of concise and lively chapters each dealing with one aspect of the world.
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  7. D. M. Armstrong (2007). Truthmakers for Negative Truths, and for Truths of Mere Possibility. In Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (ed.), Metaphysics and Truthmakers. Ontos Verlag.
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  8. D. M. Armstrong (2007). Reply to Keller. In Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (ed.), Metaphysics and Truthmakers. Ontos Verlag.
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  9. D. M. Armstrong (2006). Reply to Cheyne and Pigden. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2):267 – 268.
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  10. D. M. Armstrong (2006). Reply to Efird and Stoneham. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2):281 – 283.
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  11. D. M. Armstrong (2006). Reply to Heil. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2):245 – 247.
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  12. D. M. Armstrong (2006). Reply to Rissler. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2):211 – 212.
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  13. D. M. Armstrong (2004). Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge University Press.
    Truths are determined not by what we believe, but by the way the world is. Or so realists about truth believe. Philosophers call such theories correspondence theories of truth. Truthmaking theory, which now has many adherents among contemporary philosophers, is the most recent development of a realist theory of truth, and in this book D. M. Armstrong offers the first full-length study of this theory. He examines its applications to different sorts of truth, including contingent truths, modal truths, truths about (...)
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  14. D. M. Armstrong (2000). Difficult Cases in the Theory of Truthmaking. The Monist 83 (1):150-160.
    Analyzes difficult case in the theory of truthmaking. Account on the notion of a truthmaker by philosopher Bertrand Russell; Context of the correspondence theory of truth; Requisites of a truthmaker; Discussion on negative truths, universally quantified truths and modal truths.
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  15. D. M. Armstrong (1997). A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge University Press.
    Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the "logical atomism" of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts (or states of affairs, as the author calls them) the ...
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  16. D. M. Armstrong (1993). A World of States of Affairs. Philosophical Perspectives 7:429-440.
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  17. David Armstrong (2005). Reply to Simons and Mumford. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2):271 – 276.
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  18. David Armstrong (2003). Truthmakers for Modal Truths. In Hallvard Lillehammer Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (ed.), Real Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of D. H. Mellor. Routledge.
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  19. David M. Armstrong (2002). Vérifacteurs Pour des Vérités Modales. Revue de Métaphysique Et de Morale (2):491-507.
    Revenant sur la question des vérifacteurs, D. Armstrong demande ici d'abord comment concilier le maximalisme (toute vérité a un vérifacteur) et la relation de nécessitation (toute vérité contingente peut servir de vérifacteur pour une vérité nécessaire quelconque). L'A. examine quel sens métaphysique donner à la notion d'implication, et s'il y a un sens à admettre une contingence de re. Il traite à ce niveau des possibilités pures, examine le cas des aliens chez <span class='Hi'>David</span> Lewis, puis pose la question de (...)
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  20. Jamin Asay (forthcoming). Three Paradigms of Scientific Realism: A Truthmaking Account. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science.
    This paper investigates the nature of scientific realism. I begin by considering the anomalous fact that Bas van Fraassen’s account of scientific realism is strikingly similar to Arthur Fine’s account of scientific non-realism. To resolve this puzzle, I demonstrate how the two theorists understand the nature of truth and its connection to ontology, and how that informs their conception of the realism debate. I then argue that the debate is much better captured by the theory of truthmaking, and not by (...)
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  21. Jamin Asay (forthcoming). Against Truth. Erkenntnis:1-18.
    I argue that there is no metaphysically substantive property of truth. Although many take this thesis to be central to deflationism about truth, it is sometimes left unclear what a metaphysically substantive property of truth is supposed to be. I offer a precise account by relying on the distinction between the property and concept of truth. Metaphysical substantivism is the view that the property of truth is a sparse (non-abundant) property, regardless of how one understands the nature of sparse properties (...)
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  22. Jamin Asay (2013). Truthmaking, Metaethics, and Creeping Minimalism. Philosophical Studies 163 (1):213-232.
    Creeping minimalism threatens to cloud the distinction between realist and anti-realist metaethical views. When anti-realist views equip themselves with minimalist theories of truth and other semantic notions, they are able to take on more and more of the doctrines of realism (such as the existence of moral truths, facts, and beliefs). But then they start to look suspiciously like realist views. I suggest that creeping minimalism is a problem only if moral realism is understood primarily as a semantic doctrine. I (...)
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  23. Jamin Asay (2012). A Truthmaking Account of Realism and Anti-Realism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3):373-394.
    Realism and anti-realism about a domain of thought are metaphysical theses that involve the natures of the truthmakers in that domain and the truthmaking relation that is operant in the domain. Truthmaker theory is not exclusive territory for realists: anti-realist views are also best understood in terms of how they understand truthmakers and truthmaking. In particular, I explore the possibility of projectivist truthmaking, and show how it makes sense of quasi-realism. In addition to critically examining some extant accounts of the (...)
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  24. Jamin Asay (2011). Truthmaking, Truth, and Realism: New Work for a Theory of Truthmakers. Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    Truthmaker theory begins with the idea that truth depends upon reality. When a truth-bearer is true, that is because something or other in the world makes it true. My dissertation offers a theory of truthmakers that shows how we should flesh out this thought while avoiding the contentious metaphysical commitments that are built into other truthmaker theories. Because of these commitments, many philosophers have come to view truthmaker theory as being essentially tied to correspondence theories of truth, and to metaphysical (...)
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  25. Jamin Asay & Sam Baron (2012). Unstable Truthmaking. Thought 1 (3):230-238.
    Recent discussion of the problem of negative existentials for truthmaker theory suggests a modest solution to the problem: fully general negative truths like do not require truthmakers, whereas partially general negative truths like do. This modest solution provides a third alternative to the two standard solutions to the problem of negative existentials: the endorsement of truthmaker gaps, and the appeal to contentious ontological posits. We argue that this modest, middle-ground position is inconsistent with certain plausible general principles for truthmaking. The (...)
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  26. J. L. Austin (1961). Unfair to Facts. In J. O. Urmson & G. J. Warnock (eds.), Philosophical Papers. Clarendon Press.
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  27. Murat Baç (2003). The Ontological Status of Truthmakers: An Alternative to Tractarianism and Metaphysical Anti-Realism. Metaphysica 4 (2):5-28.
    This paper aims to describe and defend a Pluralistic Kantian, as opposed to a Tractarian, version of realism vis-à-vis the ontological basis of truthmaking relations. One underlying assumption of my position is that propositional truth is a robust property and, consequently, is normatively distinct from epistemic justification. Still, it does not follow from this realist contention that truth is generated ontologically, viz., independently of cognitive and intensional contributions of human agents. This point brings my view notably close to H. Putnam’s (...)
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  28. Murat Baç & Renée Elio (2004). Scheme-Based Alethic Realism: Agency, the Environment, and Truthmaking. Minds and Machines 14 (2):173-196.
    This paper presents a position called Scheme-based Alethic Realism, which reconciles a realist position on the nature of truth with a pluralistic Kantian perspective that allows for multiple environments in which truthmaking relationships are established. We argue that truthmaking functions are constrained by a stable phenomenal world and a stable cognitive architecture. This account takes truth as normatively distinct from epistemic justification while relativizing the truth conditions of our statements to what we call Frameworks. The pluralistic aspect allows that these (...)
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  29. Alex Baia (2012). Presentism and the Grounding of Truth. Philosophical Studies 159 (3):341-356.
    Many philosophers believe that truth is grounded: True propositions depend for their truth on the world. Some philosophers believe that truth’s grounding has implications for our ontology of time. If truth is grounded, then truth supervenes on being. But if truth supervenes on being, then presentism is false since, on presentism, e.g., that there were dinosaurs fails to supervene on the whole of being plus the instantiation pattern of properties and relations. Call this the grounding argument against presentism. Many presentists (...)
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  30. Stephen Barker, Expressivism About Truth-Making.
    My goal is to illuminate truth-making by way of illuminating the relation of making. My strategy is not to ask what making is, in the hope of a metaphysical theory about is nature. It's rather to look first to the language of making. The metaphor behind making refers to agency. It would be absurd to suggest that claims about making are claims about agency. It is not absurd, however, to propose that the concept of making somehow emerges from some feature (...)
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  31. Sam Baron (forthcoming). Tensed Supervenience: A No-Go for Presentism. Southern Journal of Philosophy.
    Recent attempts to resolve the truthmaker objection to presentism employ a fundamentally tensed account of the relationship between truth and being. On this view, the truth of a proposition concerning the past supervenes on how things are, in the present, along with how things were, in the past. This tensed approach to truthmaking arises in response to pressure placed on presentists to abandon the standard response to the truthmaker objection, whereby one invokes presently existing entities as the supervenience base for (...)
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  32. Sam Baron (forthcoming). A Truthmaker Indispensability Argument. Synthese.
    Recently, nominalists have made a case against the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument for mathematical Platonism by taking issue with Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment. In this paper I propose and defend an indispensability argument founded on an alternative criterion of ontological commitment: that advocated by David Armstrong. By defending such an argument I place the burden back onto the nominalist to defend her favourite criterion of ontological commitment and, furthermore, show that criterion cannot be used to formulate a plausible form of (...)
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  33. Sam Baron (2013). Presentism, Truth and Supervenience. Ratio 26 (1):3-18.
    Truthmaker theory is commonly thought to pose a challenge for presentism. Presentism seems to lack the ontological and ideological resources required to adequately underwrite the truth of propositions concerning the past. That is because if presentism is true, then the past does not exist. According to the standard response to this challenge, the truth of propositions concerning the past supervenes on surrogate entities that ‘stand proxy’ for past things. I argue that in order for the standard response to the truthmaker (...)
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  34. Sam Baron (2013). Talking About the Past. Erkenntnis 78 (3):547-560.
    In this paper I consider the aboutness objection against standard truth-preserving presentism (STP). According to STP: (1) past-directed propositions (propositions that seem to be about the past) like , are sometimes true (2) truth supervenes on being and (3) the truth of past-directed propositions does not supervene on how things were, in the past. According to the aboutness objection (3) is implausible, given (1) and (2): for any proposition, P, P ought to be true in virtue of what P is (...)
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  35. JC Beall (2000). On Truthmakers for Negative Truths. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (2):264 – 268.
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  36. Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.) (2005). Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Clarendon.
    This volume will be the starting point for future discussion and research.
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  37. Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (2005). Introduction. In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Clarendon.
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  38. Karen Bennett (2011). Truthmaking and Case-Making. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1):187-195.
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  39. Michael Bergmann & Jeffrey E. Brower (2006). A Theistic Argument Against Platonism (and in Support of Truthmakers and Divine Simplicity). Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 2:357-386.
    Predication is an indisputable part of our linguistic behavior. By contrast, the metaphysics of predication has been a matter of dispute ever since antiquity. According to Plato—or at least Platonism, the view that goes by Plato’s name in contemporary philosophy—the truths expressed by predications such as “Socrates is wise” are true because there is a subject of predication (e.g., Socrates), there is an abstract property or universal (e.g., wisdom), and the subject exemplifies the property.1 This view is supposed to be (...)
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  40. Scott Berman (2013). A Platonic Theory of Truthmaking. Metaphysica 14 (1):109-125.
    A Platonic explanation of non-modal and modal truths is explained and defended using non-spatiotemporal entities as their truthmakers. It is argued, further, that this theory is parsimonious, naturalistic, and ontologically serious. These features should commend the view to a wide swath of philosophers.
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  41. Sven Bernecker (2011). Keeping Track of the Gettier Problem. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2):127-152.
    This paper argues that for someone to know proposition p inferentially it is not enough that his belief in p and his justification for believing p covary with the truth of p through a sphere of possibilities. A further condition on inferential knowledge is that p's truth-maker is identical with, or causally related to, the state of affairs the justification is grounded in. This position is dubbed ‘identificationism.’.
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  42. John Bigelow (1988). The Reality of Numbers: A Physicalist's Philosophy of Mathematics. Oxford University Press.
    Challenging the myth that mathematical objects can be defined into existence, Bigelow here employs Armstrong's metaphysical materialism to cast new light on mathematics. He identifies natural, real, and imaginary numbers and sets with specified physical properties and relations and, by so doing, draws mathematics back from its sterile, abstract exile into the midst of the physical world.
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  43. J. Biro (2013). Showing the Time. Analysis 73 (1):57-62.
    The so–called truthmaker solution to the problem Gettier is thought to have posed for the analysis of knowledge as justified true belief is to add a fourth condition, requiring that one’s evidence for one’s belief be the state of affairs that makes the belief true. Adrian Heathcote argues that the reason why one lacks knowledge in Russell’s case of the stopped clock is that, as in the classic Gettier–style cases, this condition is not satisfied. I argue that the proposed solution (...)
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  44. Gunnar Björnsson, If You Believe in Positive Facts, You Should Believe in Negative Facts. Hommage à Wlodek. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz.
    Substantial metaphysical theory has long struggled with the question of negative facts, facts capable of making it true that Valerie isn’t vigorous. This paper argues that there is an elegant solution to these problems available to anyone who thinks that there are positive facts. Bradley’s regress and considerations of ontological parsimony show that an object’s having a property is an affair internal to the object and the property, just as numerical identity and distinctness are internal to the entities that are (...)
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  45. Simon Bostock (2005). Review of D. M. Armstrong, Truth and Truthmakers. [REVIEW] Philosophical Books 46 (4):369-370.
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  46. Craig Bourne (2006). A Theory of Presentism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (1):1-23.
    Most of us would want to say that it is true that Socrates taught Plato. According to realists about past facts,1 this is made true by the fact that there is, located in the past, i.e., earlier than now, at least one real event that is the teaching of Plato by Socrates. Presentists, however, in denying that past events and facts exist2 cannot appeal to such facts to make their past-tensed statements true. So what is a presentist to do?
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  47. Phillip Bricker (forthcoming). Truthmaking: With and Without Counterpart Theory. In Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to David Lewis. Blackwell Publishing.
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  48. Rachael Briggs (2012). Truthmaking Without Necessitation. Synthese 189 (1):11-28.
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  49. Jeffrey E. Brower (2005). Aquinas's Metaphysics of Modality: A Reply to Leftow. Modern Schoolman 83 (3):201-212.
    Brian Leftow sets out to provide us with an account of Aquinas’s metaphysics of modality.1 Drawing on some important recent work, which is surely close to the spirit (if not quite the letter) of Aquinas’s thought, he frames his discussion in terms of “truthmakers”: what is it that makes true claims about possibility and necessity—that is to say, what serves as their ontological ground or ultimate metaphysical explanation?2 Leftow’s main thesis is that, for Aquinas, all true modal claims are made (...)
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  50. Jeffrey E. Brower (1998). Abelard's Theory of Relations: Reductionism and the Aristotelian Tradition. The Review of Metaphysics 51 (3):605-631.
    Due to the influence of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), twentieth-century philosophers have devoted a great deal of attention to questions concerning the logic and metaphysics of relations. But systematic philosophical interest in relations does not originate in the twentieth century. On the contrary, it originates in antiquity, dating back at least to Aristotle’s short treatise, the Categories.1 In the Categories, Aristotle attempts to provide a philosophical account of relations (or relatives, ta pros ti) as part of an (...)
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  51. Jeremy Byrd (2010). The Necessity of Tomorrow's Sea Battle. Southern Journal of Philosophy 48 (2):160-176.
    In chapter 9 of De Interpretatione, Aristotle offers a defense of free will against the threat of fatalism. According to the traditional interpretation, Aristotle concedes the validity of the fatalist's arguments and then proceeds to reject the Principle of Bivalence in order to avoid the fatalist's conclusion. Assuming that the traditional interpretation is right on this point, it remains to be seen why Aristotle felt compelled to reject such an intuitive semantic principle rather than challenge the fatalist's inference from truth (...)
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  52. J. R. Cameron (2005). Truth and Truthmakers by D. M. Armstrong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. XII+158. £40, £17.99. Philosophy 80 (2):285-289.
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  53. Ross Cameron, Necessary Truth, Truthmaking and Triviality.
    Some claim that there are no truthmakers for necessary truths. D.H. Mellor says, for example, “Because the identity of a necessary proposition entails its truth, I cannot see why any other entity must exist to make it true.”2 But notice that the reason given here for p’s not needing a truthmaker when p is necessary seems simply to be another way of saying that p is necessary: ‘the identity of p entails the truth of p’ doesn’t seem to say anything (...)
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  54. Ross Cameron, Truthmaking for Presentists.
    This paper aims to reconcile presentism with truthmaker theory. I begin by motivating the reconciliation. In section 2 I ask what is wrong with the Lucretian strategy of grounding 'there were dinosaurs' in the world’s instantiating 'being such that there were dinosaurs'. I aim to pinpoint what is peculiar about such properties and hence to say what kind of properties the presentist needs in order to give an acceptable reconciliation; in section 3 I argue that certain distributional properties do the (...)
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  55. Ross Cameron (2013). Changing Truthmakers: Reply to Tallant and Ingram. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 8.
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  56. Ross Cameron (2006). Tropes, Necessary Connections, and Non-Transferability. Dialectica 60 (2):99–113.
    In this paper I examine whether the Humean denial of necessary connections between wholly distinct contingent existents poses problems for a theory of tropes. In section one I consider the substance-attribute theory of tropes. I distinguish first between three versions of the non-transferability of a trope from the substratum in which it inheres and then between two versions of the denial of necessary connections. I show that the most plausible combination of these views is consistent. In section two I consider (...)
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  57. Ross P. Cameron, Truthmakers.
    Truthmaker theory says that there is an intimate link between truth and ontology: i.e. between what is the case and what there is. According to truthmaker theory, for a proposition to be true requires there to be some thing (or things) that makes it true. The truthmaker is the ontological ground of the truth; its existence explains why the proposition in question is true.
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  58. Ross P. Cameron, Truthmaking, Ontological Cheats, and Ockham's Razor: Response to Tallant.
    Instead of accepting that truth supervenes on what exist, Tallant seems to accept only that truth supervenes on what there is, was or could be. The principle he appears to admit to endorsing is2.
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  59. Ross P. Cameron, Quantification, Truthmaking and Ontological Commitment: Reply to Schaffer.
    Truthmaking and ontological commitment How do we determine the ontological commitments of a theory? Quine told us to look to the quantifier.1 What must be in the domain of the quantifiers if the (regimented) sentences of the theory are all to be true? Those are the ontological commitments of the theory.
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  60. Ross P. Cameron (2010). From Humean Truthmaker Theory to Priority Monism. Noûs 44 (1):178-198.
    I argue that the truthmaker theorist should be a priority monist if she wants to avoid commitment to mysterious necessary connections. In section 1 I briefly discuss the ontological options available to the truthmaker theorist. In section 2 I develop the argument against truthmaker theory from the Humean denial of necessary connections. In section 3 I offer an account of when necessary connections are objectionable. In section 4 I use this criterion to narrow down the options from section 1. In (...)
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  61. Ross P. Cameron (2010). How to Have a Radically Minimal Ontology. Philosophical Studies 151 (2):249-264.
    I am attracted to a radically minimal ontology. Many of the entities we quantify over in everyday speech do not, I hold, really exist. Complex objects are one such case: there is no mereology in reality – our ontology is one of entities lacking proper parts. However, I do not want to embrace an error-theory of talk about tables, chairs, etc: it is, even speaking strictly and literally, true to say such things exist. Rather, I suggest, we should view the (...)
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  62. Ross P. Cameron (2010). Necessity and Triviality. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3):401-415.
    In this paper I argue that there are some sentences whose truth makes no demands on the world, being trivially true in that their truth-conditions are trivially met. I argue that this does not amount to their truth-conditions being met necessarily: we need a non-modal understanding of the notion of the demands the truth of a sentence makes, lest we be blinded to certain conceptual possibilities. I defend the claim that the truths of pure mathematics and set theory are trivially (...)
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  63. Ross P. Cameron (2008). Comments on Merricks'struth and Ontology. Philosophical Books 49 (4):292-301.
    In his Truth and Ontology,1 Trenton Merricks argues against the truthmaker principle: Truthmaker: ∀p( p → ∃xxᮀ(Exx → p)). Truthmaker says that for any true proposition, there are some things whose existence guarantees the truth of that proposition: that is, some things which couldn’t all exist and the proposition fail to be true. His main arguments against Truthmaker are that there cannot be satisfactory truthmakers for (i) negative existentials, (ii) modal truths, (iii) truths about the past (given that presentism is (...)
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  64. Ross P. Cameron (2008). Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 83 (62):107-128.
    in LePoidevinMcGonigalBeing, pp. (forthcoming).
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  65. Ross P. Cameron (2008). Truthmakers and Ontological Commitment: Or How to Deal with Complex Objects and Mathematical Ontology Without Getting Into Trouble. Philosophical Studies 140 (1):1 - 18.
    What are the ontological commitments of a sentence? In this paper I offer an answer from the perspective of the truthmaker theorist that contrasts with the familiar Quinean criterion. I detail some of the benefits of thinking of things this way: they include making the composition debate tractable without appealing to a neo-Carnapian metaontology, making sense of neo-Fregeanism, and dispensing with some otherwise recalcitrant necessary connections.
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  66. Ross P. Cameron (2008). How to Be a Truthmaker Maximalist. Noûs 42 (3):410 - 421.
    When there is truth, there must be some thing (or things) to account for that truth: some thing(s) that couldn’t exist and the true proposition fail to be true. That is the truthmaker principle. True propositions are made true by entities in the mind-independently existing external world. The truthmaker principle seems attractive to many metaphysicians, but many have wanted to weaken it and accept not that every true proposition has a truthmaker but only that some important class of propositions require (...)
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  67. Ross P. Cameron (2005). Truthmaker Necessitarianism and Maximalism. Logique Et Analyse 48 (189-192):43-56.
    In this paper I examine two principles of orthodox truthmaker theory: truthmaker maximalism - the doctrine that every (contingent) truth has a truthmaker, and truthmaker necessitarianism - the doctrine that the existence of a truthmaker necessitates the truth of any proposition which it in fact makes true. I argue that maximalism should be rejected and that once it is we only have reason to hold a restricted form of necessitarianism.
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  68. Ross Paul Cameron (2008). Truthmakers and Modality. Synthese 164 (2):261 - 280.
    This paper attempts to locate, within an actualist ontology, truthmakers for modal truths: truths of the form or . In Sect. 1 I motivate the demand for substantial truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 21 criticise Armstrong's account of truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 31 examine essentialism and defend an account of what makes essentialist attributions true, but I argue that this does not solve the problem of modal truth in general. In Sect. 41 discuss, and dismiss, a theistic (...)
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  69. Ross Paul Cameron (2008). Truthmakers and Necessary Connections. Synthese 161 (1):27-45.
    In this paper I examine the objection to truthmaker theory, forcibly made by David Lewis and endorsed by many, that it violates the Humean denial of necessary connections between distinct existences. In Sect. 1 I present the argument that acceptance of truthmakers commits us to necessary connections. In Sect. 2 I examine Lewis’ ‘Things-qua-truthmakers’ theory which attempts to give truthmakers without such a commitment, and find it wanting. In Sects. 3–5 I discuss various formulations of the denial of necessary connections (...)
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  70. Ben Caplan & David Sanson (2011). Presentism and Truthmaking. Philosophy Compass 6 (3):196-208.
    Three plausible views—Presentism, Truthmaking, and Independence—form an inconsistent triad. By Presentism, all being is present being. By Truthmaking, all truth supervenes on, and is explained in terms of, being. By Independence, some past truths do not supervene on, or are not explained in terms of, present being. We survey and assess some responses to this.
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  71. Ben Caplan & David Sanson (2010). The Way Things Were. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1):24-39.
    Presentists say that only the present is real.1 Saying that might seem like a pretty good way of accounting for what is special about the present, but it might also seem like a pretty bad way of accounting for anything about the past. To begin with, presentists face an ontological challenge. To say that only the present is real is, in part, to say that only presently existing things exist, that existence is present existence. The ontological challenge is to account (...)
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  72. Stefano Caputo, The Dependence of Truth on Being: Is There a Problem for Minimalism?
    Abstract. The aim of this paper is first to defend the intuition that truth is grounded in how things are and, second, to argue that this fact is consistent with Minimalism. After having cashed out that intuition in terms of explanatory claims of the form ‘if it is true that p, it is true that p because p’, I set out an argument against Minimalism which is based on the same intuition, and I argue that a strategy the minimalist could (...)
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  73. Stefano Caputo (2007). Truthmaking: What It Is Not and What It Could Be. In Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (ed.), Metaphysics and Truthmakers.
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  74. Laurent Cesalli (2007). Intentionality and Truth-Making: Augustine's Influence on Burley and Wyclif 's Propositional Semantics. Vivarium 45 (s 2-3):283-297.
    Walter Burley (1275-c.1344) and John Wyclif (1328-1384) follow two clearly stated doctrinal options: on the one hand, they are realists and, on the other, they defend a correspondence theory of truth that involves specific correlates for true propositions, in short: truth-makers. Both characteristics are interdependent: such a conception of truth requires a certain kind of ontology. This study shows that a) in their explanation of what it means for a proposition to be true, Burley and Wyclif both develop what we (...)
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  75. Colin Cheyne & Charles Pigden (2006). Negative Truths From Positive Facts. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2):249 – 265.
    According to the truthmaker theory that we favour, all contingent truths are made true by existing facts or states of affairs. But if that is so, then it appears that we must accept the existence of the negative facts that are required to make negative truths (such as 'There is no hippopotamus in the room.') true. We deny the existence of negative facts, show how negative truths are made true by positive facts, point out where the (reluctant) advocates of negative (...)
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  76. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2012). Negative States of Affairs: Reinach Versus Ingarden. Symposium. The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 16 (2):106-127.
    In Reinach’s works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs. Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Now in spite of this claim of the “ontological equality” of positive and negative states of affairs there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs could be directly (...)
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  77. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2009). Brentano, Marty, and Meinong on Emotions and Values. In Beatrice Centi & Huemer Wolfgang (eds.), Values and Ontology. Ontos.
    At least since Hume we have a serious problem with explaining our moral valuations. Most of us – with notable exception of certain (in)famous esoteric thinkers like Nietzsche or De Sade – share a common intuition that our moral claims are in an important sense objective. We believe that they can be right or wrong; and we believe that if they happen to be right, then they are binding for each human being conducting a similar action in similar circumstances. Now (...)
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  78. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2009). Catégories formelles, nombres et conceptualisme. La première philosophie de l’arithmétique de Husserl. Philosophiques 36 (2):427-445.
    Résumé -/- Dans son premier livre (Philosophie de l’arithmétique 1891), Husserl élabore une très intéressante philosophie des mathématiques. Les concepts mathématiques sont interprétés comme des concepts de « deuxième ordre » auxquels on accède par une réflexion sur nos opérations mentales de numération. Il s’ensuit que la vérité de la proposition : « il y a trois pommes sur la table » ne consiste pas dans une relation mythique quelconque avec la réalité extérieure au psychique (où le nombre trois doit (...)
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  79. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2009). Sachverhalte, Objekte und Supervenienz. Brentano, Marty und Meinong. Brentano Studien 12:99-119.
    Die offizielle Urteilstheorie Brentanos war eine nicht-propositionale Theorie. Die These, dass man, um die in einem Urteilsakt involvierten intentionalen Beziehungen zu erklären, keine propositionalen Entitäten einführen muss, war in der Tat eine seiner interessantesten Ideen. Brentano hat aber im Laufe seiner Lehrtätigkeit sehr viele neue Wege ausprobiert und so finden wir in seinen Vorlesungen aus den späten achtziger Jahren auch eine Urteilstheorie, die jedem Urteilsakt eine propositionale Entität zuordnet. Gerade diese Lehre war für Brentanos Studenten besonders inspirierend. Vor allem Anton (...)
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  80. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2003). Contentless Syntax, Ineffable Semantics and Transcendental Ontology. Reflections on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Kriterion 17:1-6.
    Wittgenstein’s Tractatus contains some very striking theses. We read, e.g., that „in a sense” we could not be wrong in logic, and that the whole subject matter of the theory of modalities could be reconstructed on the ground of the insights in the mechanism of the linguistic reference. Yet in the light of the last sentences of Tractatus the whole semantics turns out to be principaly ineffable. In our paper we will try to clarify these matters. We show how these (...)
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  81. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2002). Objects, Properties and States of Affairs. An Aristotelian Ontology of Truth Making. Axiomathes 13 (2):187-215.
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  82. Gabriele Contessa (2010). Modal Truthmakers and Two Varieties of Actualism. Synthese 174 (3).
    In this paper, I distinguish between two varieties of actualism—hardcore actualism and softcore actualism—and I critically discuss Ross Cameron’s recent arguments for preferring a softcore actualist account of the truthmakers for modal truths over hardcore actualist ones. In the process, I offer some arguments for preferring the hardcore actualist account of modal truthmakers over the softcore actualist one.
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  83. Roy T. Cook (2011). The No-No Paradox Is a Paradox. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (3):467-482.
    The No-No Paradox consists of a pair of statements, each of which ?says? the other is false. Roy Sorensen claims that the No-No Paradox provides an example of a true statement that has no truthmaker: Given the relevant instances of the T-schema, one of the two statements comprising the ?paradox? must be true (and the other false), but symmetry constraints prevent us from determining which, and thus prevent there being a truthmaker grounding the relevant assignment of truth values. Sorensen's view (...)
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  84. Phil Corkum, Presentism and Distributional Properties.
    Presentists face a challenge from truthmaker theory: if you hold both that the only existing objects are presently existing and that truth supervenes on being, then you will be hard pressed to identify some existent on which a given true but traceless claim about the past supervenes. One reconciliation strategy, advocated by Cameron (2011), is to appeal to distributional properties so to serve as presently existing truthmakers for past truths. I argue that a presentist ought to deny that distributional properties (...)
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  85. Fabrice Correia, From Grounding to Truth-Making: Some Thoughts. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan.
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  86. Fabrice Correia & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.) (2012). Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality. Cambridge University Press.
    Some of the most eminent and enduring philosophical questions concern matters of priority: what is prior to what? What 'grounds' what? Is, for instance, matter prior to mind? Recently, a vivid debate has arisen about how such questions have to be understood. Can the relevant notion or notions of priority be spelled out? And how do they relate to other metaphysical notions, such as modality, truth-making or essence? This volume of new essays, by leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, is the (...)
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  87. Damian Cox (1997). The Trouble with Truth-Makers. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (1):45–62.
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  88. Thomas M. Crisp (2007). Presentism and the Grounding Objection. Noûs 41 (1):90–109.
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  89. Chris Daly (2005). So Where's the Explanation? In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Clarendon.
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  90. Marian David (2009). Truth-Making and Correspondence. In E. J. Lowe (ed.), Truth and Truth-Making. Acumen Press.
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  91. Marian David (2006). Kuenne on Conceptions of Truth. [REVIEW] Grazer Philosophische Studien 70 (1):179-191.
    The review focuses on Kuenne's account of truthmaking and on his minimalist approach to truth.
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  92. Marian David (2005). Armstrong on Truthmaking. In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Clarendon.
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  93. Matthew Davidson (forthcoming). Presentism and Grounding Past Truths. In Roberto Ciuni, Giuliano Torrengo & Kristie Miller (eds.), New Papers on the Present: Focus on Presentism. Verlag.
    I set out and evaluate several solutions to the grounding problem for presentism.
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  94. TIm de Mey & Markku Keinänen (eds.) (2008). Problems From Armstrong. Acta Philosophica Fennica 84.
    For almost fifty years, David Armstrong has made major contributions in analytic philosophy. The aim of this volume is to collect papers that situate, discuss and critically assess Armstrong’s contributions. The book is organized in three parts. In Section I: Analytical Metaphysics and Its Methodology, certain basic principles of analytic metaphysics advocated by Armstrong (such as truthmaker maximalism and the Doctrine of Ontological Free Lunch) and their consequences are critically examined. The articles of Section II: Laws of Nature, Dispositions, and (...)
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  95. Raphael Demos (1917). A Discussion of a Certain Type of Negative Proposition. Mind 26 (102):188-196.
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  96. J. Dodd (2010). Truth and Truth-Making. Analysis 70 (3):567-571.
    (No abstract is available for this citation).
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  97. Julian Dodd (2007). Negative Truths and Truthmaker Principles. Synthese 156 (2):383-401.
    This paper argues that a consideration of the problem of providing truthmakers for negative truths undermines truthmaker theory. Truthmaker theorists are presented with an uncomfortable dilemma. Either they must take up the challenge of providing truthmakers for negative truths, or else they must explain why negative truths are exceptions to the principle that every truth must have a truthmaker. The first horn is unattractive since the prospects of providing truthmakers for negative truths do not look good neither absences, nor totality (...)
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  98. Julian Dodd (2001). Is Truth Supervenient on Being? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1):69–86.
    This paper asks whether we should accept a weakened version of the truthmaker principle: namely, the claim that truth supervenes on being, in which 'being' is understood as whether things are. I consider a number of positive answers to this question, including the following: that the truthmaker principle is a requirement of any plausible explanation of truth; that the principle must be accepted, if we are to do justice to the Wittgensteinian insight that the world is the totality of facts, (...)
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  99. Heather Dyke (2007). Tenseless/Non-Modal Truthmakers for Tensed/Modal Truths. Logique Et Analyse 199:269-287.
    There is a common approach to metaphysical disputes, which takes language as its starting point, and leads to a view about the range of acceptable metaphysical positions in any such dispute. I argue that this approach rests on accepting what I call the Strong Linguistic Thesis (SLT). In the metaphysical debate about time I argue that the new B-theory has rejected SLT, and for good reasons. The metaphysical debate about modality parallels the early metaphysical debate about time. I argue that (...)
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  100. David Efird & Tom Stoneham (2009). Is Metaphysical Nihilism Interesting? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2):210-231.
    Suppose nothing exists. Then it is true that nothing exists. What makes that true? Nothing! So it seems that if nothing existed, then the principle that every truth is made true by something (the truthmaker principle) would be false. So if it is possible that nothing exists, a claim often called 'metaphysical nihilism', then the truthmaker principle is not necessary. This paper explores various ways to resolve this conflict without restricting metaphysical nihilism in such a way that it would become (...)
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