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Towards a Pluralist Theory of Truthmaking

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Abstract

This paper introduces a new approach to the theory of truthmaking. According to this approach, there are multiple forms of truthmaking. Here, I characterize and motivate a specific version of this approach, which I call a ‘Pluralist Theory of Truthmaking.’ It is suggested that truthmaking is a plural, variegated phenomenon wherein different kinds of truths, e.g., positive truths, negative truths, counterfactual truths, etc., are made true in different ways. While the paper only aims to lay the groundwork for a Pluralist Theory of Truthmaking, I show how the theory can be applied to positive and negative truths. The upshot of this application is that truthmaking pluralism allows us to provide negative truths with ‘non-suspicious’ truthmakers. Finally, it is argued that Truthmaker Maximalists would do well to endorse truthmaking pluralism, as it offers a new strategy for upholding Maximalism while diminishing controversial ontological commitments.

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Notes

  1. Armstrong (1997, 2004), Lowe (2009), Cameron (2008a), Alston (1996), Mulligan (2007), and Schaffer (2010a), and (apparently) Rasmussen (2013) endorse this principle.

  2. Armstrong (1997, 2004), Smith (1999), Mulligan et al. (1984), Fox (1987), Rodriguez-Pereyra (2005), Lowe (2009), Molnar (2000), Cameron (2008a), and Merricks (2007) accept Necessitarianism. Though, Merricks is no truthmaker theorist; he only thinks truthmaker theorists ought to accept Necessitarianism. Not everyone agrees that truthmaking is or involves necessitation, e.g., Cameron (2005), Schaffer (2008, 2010a), Parsons (1999), Heil (2000, 2006), and Briggs (2012).

  3. See Merricks (2007), Smith (1999), Lowe (2009), and Read (2000), respectively, for these suggestions.

  4. Goff’s (2010) uses “OTT” to denote what he calls “Orthodox Truthmaker Theory,” which he characterizes as a commitment to only Truthmaker Maximalism and Necessitarianism.

  5. Merricks (2007: 35–38) and Sider (2003: 41) should be consulted for this sort of criticism.

  6. Armstrong (2004), Bigelow (1996), Cameron (2008a), Schaffer (2010b), Russell (1985), Martin (1996), and Kukso (2006) all offer putative truthmakers for the recalcitrant truths that have been criticized for being suspicious or otherwise problematic.

  7. Lewis (1999, 2001). Bigelow (1988), Mulligan et al. (1984: 315), Simons (2005), Smith (1999: 285), and Saenz (2014) also deny that negative truths have truthmakers. I’ll follow standard procedure and let <p> abbreviate ‘the proposition that p’.

  8. While familiar in the literature on truth, pluralist strategies have not been explored with respect to truthmaking, as far as I know. Goff (2010), Tallant (2009a, b), and Pendlebury (2010) are the only ones who explicitly entertain the idea of considering truthmaking on a kind-by-kind basis. A number of authors have explored diversity/plurality in the nature of ontological dependence and grounding. See, for example, Wilson (2014), Bennett (2011), Koslicki (2012), and Griffith (2014).

  9. Even Non-Maximalists are typically truthmaking monists. Non-Maximalists who simply restrict TM to certain truths often hold that there is exactly one truthmaking relation but that only some truths stand in that relation to entities in the world. Moreover, those altogether skeptical of truthmaking usually assume that if there were a truthmaking relation, it would be a single, non-plural relation.

  10. See Rami (2009) for discussion of the different principles of truthmaking.

  11. It appears that there are some philosophers who accept truthmaking pluralism but who would deny that each different form of truthmaking involves commitment to a unique truthmaking relation. Melia (2005), Schnieder (2006), and Hornsby (2005) hold that there can be ‘truthmaking without truthmakers.’ While these philosophers do not deny that positive existential truths are made true by having truthmakers, they think that inessential predictive truths can be made true without postulating truthmakers such as tropes or states of affairs. If there really can be truthmaking without truthmakers, it would seem that these philosophers are committed to a (Non-Maximalist) version of truthmaking pluralism. To accommodate this view, a more neutral definition of truthmaking pluralism is that it is the view that truthmaking can take more than one form. For the record, I am skeptical that a proposition can be made true without there being anything to make it true.

  12. Thanks to an anonymous referee and Aaron Cotnoir for encouraging me to make this distinction with respect to truthmaking pluralism.

  13. It would be more accurate to describe PTT as being committed to “Methodological Maximalism,” i.e., the view that there should be a presumption in favor of TM; we should think that all truths have truthmakers until we have reason to think that some truths do not have truthmakers. Below, in Sect. 4, I will discuss why Maximalists have a reason to endorse PTT. Jamin Asay should be given credit for coining the term ‘Methodological Maximalism.’ See Asay (dissertation: 48).

  14. Alethic pluralism has been developed in a number of ways. See, e.g., Wright (1992), Lynch (2009), Edwards (2013), Kölbel (2008), Pedersen (2010), and Beall (2013) among others. Pedersen and Wright (2013) canvass the various formulations of alethic pluralism. Sher (1999, 2013) and Barnard and Horgan (2013) think that there are varieties or correspondence.

  15. None of this is to say that PTT does not commit us to some views about truth. Indeed, it seems to commit us to thinking of truth as a relational property. And insofar as it seeks to provide every truth with a truthmaker, PTT appears to entail a kind of correspondence theory of truth, perhaps a variant of correspondence pluralism. All I want to do here is to distinguish the aim of a theory of truth and the aim of a theory of truthmaking. The aim of the former is to say what truth is, while the aim of the latter is to account for the dependence of truth on reality. Merricks (2007: 15) also distinguishes a theory of truth from a theory of truthmaking in this way. Armstrong (2004: 17) offers a theory truth in terms of having a truthmaker but recognizes that the theory cannot be regarded as a definition of truth since ‘true’ shows up on the right-hand side of the bi-conditional. Thanks to two anonymous referees for raising this question about the relation between truth theory and truthmaking theory.

  16. I thank an anonymous referee for their comments on this section. This section has also benefitted from Pedersen and Wright’s (2013) helpful overview of the various forms of alethic pluralism.

  17. This approach to truthmaking pluralism bears obvious structural similarities to Lynch’s (2001, 2009) functional theory of truth. According to Lynch, different first-order properties realize the functional second-order property truth in different domains of discourse.

  18. These core principles are analogous to the truisms or platitudes of truth that some alethic pluralists Lynch (2009) and Wright (1992) offer as a definition of truth. See Pedersen and Wright (2013: 91) for discussion of the alethic pluralist’s core principles.

  19. Treating TR as a multiply realizable relation is just one way in which truthmaking pluralism can be modeled. The truthmaking relation TR could be understood as a disjunctive relation TR1, ∨ TR2, ∨, …, ∨ TRn. The disjuncts would be unified insofar as they satisfy a certain generic characterization of truthmaking [e.g., the core principles (a)–(f) below]. An analogous view with respect to truth—“alethic disjunctivism”—is found in Pedersen and Wright (2013: 92) and Pedersen (2010). Alternatively, TR could be understood as a determinable relation whose determinates are the various truthmaking relations R1, …, Rn. This construal would be analogous to Edwards’ (2013) “determination pluralism” about truth.

  20. Alethic pluralists distinguish the domains for which truth is manifested by the subject matter of the propositions in each domain, e.g., material objects, mathematics, jurisprudence, ethics, etc. The reason PTT does not use subject matter as the primary criterion for distinguishing domains is that there are truths for which truthmaking is straightforward and truths for which truthmaking is not straightforward that seem to have the same subject matter, e.g., <Cabrera hits a home run> and <if Cabrera had not hit a home run, then the Tigers would not have won> both have the same subject matter, namely Cabrera and his home run. Whereas an account of how and on what the former proposition depends for its truth is forthcoming, it is not at all clear how and on what the latter depends for its truth.

  21. Asay’s (2012) “projectionist” truthmaking provides a distinct form of (non-realist) truthmaking appropriate for moral truth. If this form of truthmaking were taken on board by PTT, then the relation Asay describes would realize TR for the domain of moral truths.

  22. There is no universal agreement about how to understand the relevant notion of aboutness here. I assume that some such notion is well suited to serve as the relevance constraint on this form of truthmaking so that not any entity that necessitates a positive truth qualifies as its truthmaker.

  23. This is essentially the principle that Merricks (2007) urges truthmaker theorists to adopt. TMp may also apply to necessary positive truths, but since that is contentious, I’ll simply restrict its domain to contingent positive truths. Moreover, I assume that entities from any ontological category can be the value of ‘x’ in TMp. Hence, the principle allows positive predicative truths such as <the dog is brown> and positive relational truths such as <Detroit is north of Louisville> to be made true by states of affairs or tropes.

  24. See Griffith (2015) for a developed version of the following account of truthmaking for negatives.

  25. Some hold that necessitation is constitutive of truthmaking and hence hold that if negative truths are not necessitated by anything, then they do not have truthmakers. See Merricks (2007), Lewis (1999), and Melia (2005). However, I’m not convinced by the arguments for thinking that all truths with truthmakers have necessitating truthmakers. See Griffith (2015: Section 5) for reasons why the arguments given for Necessitarianism are unpersuasive.

  26. TMn requires negative truths to be about their truthmakers. There is no question that it is difficult to say what any negative existential truth is about. However, if negative existentials are about existing entities at all, they seem to be about that portion of being of which they say that something does not exist. In other words, negative existentials are about their domains of quantification. <There are no Hobbits> says that there are no Hobbits in our most unrestricted domain of quantification, which is the world itself. Other negatives are about more restricted domains, e.g., <there are no Arctic penguins> is about the Arctic and <there is no beer in the refrigerator> is about the refrigerator. Consequently, not every negative truth is made true by the world as a whole. Again, see Griffith (2015) for further discussion.

  27. See Griffith (2012) for a critique of Armstrong’s, Cameron’s, and Schaffer’s solutions to the problem of truthmakers for negatives.

  28. Is the form of truthmaking characterized by TMn off limits to the mereological nihilist? Not necessarily. TMn could be modified in a nihilist-friendly way. The nihilist will say that what <there is no beer in the refrigerator> is about is not the refrigerator, but simples-arranged-refrigerator-wise. It would only be in virtue of a change in the simples-arranged-refrigerator-wise that there would be a change in the truth-value of <there is no beer in the refrigerator>. TMn would, of course, have to be edited to involve plural quantification over entities that can be truthmakers, i.e., “For any entities xx…” See Cameron (2008b) for discussion of the relation between truthmaker theory and nihilism. I thank an anonymous referee for prompting me to address this issue.

  29. This possibility can be understood either temporally or modally. Temporally: it is possible that the world at time t 2 contains one or more entities than the world at t 1 (where t 1 is earlier than t 2). Modally: it is possible that there is a counterpart v of the actual world w that contains everything w contains and some more. Pawl (2013) discusses the interaction between principles like these and Truthmaker Necessitarianism.

  30. See Lynch (2001, 2009: 4; 32–36) for formulations of the scope problem. Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting that OTT faces an analogous scope problem.

  31. At least one Non-Maximalist, Noël Saenz (manuscript), has recognized this consequence of the view. Saenz also developed this argument independently of the version presented here. Barker and Jago (2012: 136) also point out that Non-Maximalism entails pluralism about truth.

  32. This undercuts the objection that p could be made true by x, without it being the case that being true is a relational property of p, i.e., that being true may be monadic and non-relational property of p even if p has a truthmaker. The problem with this objection is that if being true is a non-relational property of p, then p need not stand in any relation to anything else (a fortiori, to x) in order to be true. But this is false given that x is p’s truthmaker.

  33. Williamson (1994) and Tappolet (1997) spell out this problem, which is essentially the challenge of explaining how validity preserves truth in an argument with premises instantiating different truth properties.

  34. The reason this conclusion is conditional is that I haven’t argued that the best way to articulate the thought that truth depends on being is in terms of truthmakers. Dodd (2007) claims that the truthmaker insight is not well motivated, arguing that the dilemma mentioned above gives us reason to give up on truthmaking. I disagree, since PTT doesn’t fall prey to his dilemma.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Sven Bernecker, M. Oreste Fiocco, David W. Smith, Gila Sher, Cory Wright, Noël Saenz, Aaron Cotnoir, Adam Podlaskowski, Nikolaj Pedersen, Michael Lynch, Mark Bernier, Casey Hall, Daniel R. Siakel, Philip Walsh, two anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the 2013 APA Eastern Division Meeting and the 2014 APA Pacific Division Meeting for their helpful comments and discussion on various drafts of this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Religion, Central Michigan University, 243 Anspach Hall, Mt. Pleasant, MI, 48859, USA

    Aaron M. Griffith

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Griffith, A.M. Towards a Pluralist Theory of Truthmaking. Erkenn 80, 1157–1173 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9717-7

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