Abstract
It is generally thought that truthmaking has to be an internal relation because if it weren’t, then, as David Armstrong argues, “everything may be a truthmaker for any truth” (1997: 198). Depending on whether we take an internal relation to be one that is necessitated by the mere existence of its terms (Armstrong 1997: 87 and 2004: 9) or one that supervenes on the intrinsic properties of its relata (Lewis 1986: 62), the truthbearers involved in the truthmaking relation must either have their contents essentially or intrinsically. In this paper, I examine Armstrong’s account (1973; 1997 and 2004), according to which what is made true at the fundamental level are mental state tokens. The conclusion is reached that such tokens have their contents neither essentially nor intrinsically, and so, are simply the wrong kind of entities to be made true internally.
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Notes
A notable exception is John Heil (2000).
See Armstrong (1997: 12, 87) and (2004: 9, 50). Notice that in order for this definition of an internal relation to be plausible, the particulars involved must be taken together with their non-relational properties. For as Armstrong points out, “Resemblances, for instance, depend upon the properties of the resembling things. If we abstract away from the properties of particulars, then almost no relations between particulars are internal”. What is needed, he says, “is the thick as opposed to the thin particular, the particular with its non-relational properties upon it” (Armstrong 1997: 88). See also footnote 16.
Some naturalists (e.g., Putnam 1979 and Quine 1981) argue that mathematical abstracta, like sets and classes, are indispensable to the natural sciences. Whether this is true or not, however, is far from being settled. For an overview of the criticism against the indispensability argument, see Colyvan (2011).
“This is the admittedly vague but undeniable heart of the notion” (Jubien 2001: 54).
Some philosophers dispute the claim that intentionality is solely reserved for the mental. Certain non-mental properties, those usually described as physical powers, dispositions or potencies are said to be distinguished from categorical properties in virtue of being directed towards certain possible manifestations under certain stimulus conditions. See, e.g., U.T. Place (1996) and Molnar (2003: 60–81). Besides being a controversial and highly disputed view, the philosophers that hold this view do not claim that purely physical powers are about or represent their corresponding manifestations. They are merely interested in drawing attention to a certain analogy between intentionality and dispositionality in the hope that dispositional properties could be distinguished from categorical ones in terms of directedness.
We can also define the truth of these propositions as follows: the first is true iff < the Eiffel Tower > is in the extension of the property of being 300 m tall; the second is true iff < the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben > is in the extension of the relation of being taller; and the third is true iff the truth-function for negation maps the truth value of <<the Eiffel Tower>, the property of being the tallest structure in Europe> to the false. In a similar manner we are able to provide definitions for other types of propositions, including those with other logical operators and with quantifiers.
Similar objections can be raised against the view that propositions are sets of possible worlds (reducible or irreducible), as the latter are particular set-theoretic constructions.
It remains unclear whether the set-theoretic approach to propositions is meant to provide an account of what propositions really are or whether it merely provides a surrogate model of propositions that tries to mimic the structure of the real propositions. Here, I have chosen the ontological interpretation. If the model interpretation is correct, then the set-theoretic approach becomes irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Although King (2007; and 2009: 259-60) thinks that propositions could not have truth conditions, and so, represent something as being the case, unless there were minds present to do the representing, he allows for propositions to have their representational features derivatively by virtue of being interpreted by external agents. See Section 2, where I argue against this form of externalism.
Unless otherwise specified, I shall henceforth follow Armstrong and refer to token beliefs and thoughts as states, rather than events. While it might seem rather borderline to talk about mental states being true (or false), I don’t find such predications disqualifyingly absurd, as long as we confine ourselves to representational mental states, and it is made clear that the predicates true and false are not receiving their ordinary employment (see Armstrong 1973: 48).
In footnote 2, we noticed that internal relations in the sense depicted by (1) hold between so-called thick particulars: i.e., particulars taken together with their non-relational properties. What this means with respect to Content Essentialism is that the contents of our mental state tokens are not only essential, but non-relational. Strangely enough, Armstrong equates intrinsic properties with non-relational properties and goes on to argue that contents are not purely non-relational properties of token beliefs (Armstrong 2004: 13). If he is correct about this, then, as I shall argue, it is hard to see how an internal relation could ever be established between mental state tokens and their corresponding truthmakers. If, however, there are genuine instances of extrinsic, but non-relational properties, then the arguments against Content Internalism need not apply to Content Essentialism. For the sake of strengthening my argument, I shall assume that this is the case. As a matter of fact, it could plausibly be argued that intentional mental contents are extrinsic in the sense discussed in the present section, but non-relational in that they are characterized by what Brentano called intentional inexistence: i.e., they can be directed towards something that does not exist (whatever that means).
Notice that the term mental state token is here being used solely to refer to the kind of truth-apt representational mental states discussed in the previous section. In accordance with naturalism, I will understand such mental states to be quantifiable particulars with spatiotemporal locations. This leaves open whether we should follow Donald Davidson (1969) and identify them with concrete regions in space-time that lack logical structure, or whether we should follow Kim (1976) and take them to be ordered triples consisting of substances, properties and times. I have no personal preference for one theory over the other, and the arguments to follow are compatible with both.
It should be noted that Fodor (1994) has since abandoned the idea that narrow content is important for psychology.
Burge is primarily concerned with token mental events, as opposed to token mental states. This difference, however, has no bearing on the argument presented here.
Kim has provided a similar argument against taking the constituents of events (understood as ordered triples) to be essential to them (1976: 320–322).
If one does not wish to exclude inherently indeterministic quantum effects from the scope of the principle, one is here free to take a sufficient cause to be a cause that fully determines the chance of its effect.
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Stenwall, R. Truthmaker Internalism and the Mind-Dependence of Propositions. Acta Anal 31, 59–76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0261-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0261-0