truthmakers the contemporary debate oct 2005

[...]... a proposition on the one hand and the existence of some entity in the world on the other Indeed, according to Armstrong, the truthmaker principle just is what is worth salvaging from the traditional correspondence theory of truth (Armstrong 1997: 128) The thought here is that once we ditch the idea that true propositions picture their truthmakers, and with it the presumption that the relation between... even believe in the relation of instantiation as an entity over and above the particulars and the properties they instantiate But, Dodd argues, it does not follow from the fact that the rose instantiates the property of being red that there is a further entity, over and above the rose, the property of being red, and the relation of instantiation, namely the fact or state of affairs that the rose is red... (a) is not good Surely, the rose’s being red and the truth of the proposition that the rose is red are connected in some way The proposition that the rose is red is about the colour of the rose, and so if it is true, it must have to do with the rose’s being red But (b) is not better than (a) The idea that the colour of the rose depends on the truth of a certain proposition about the rose, duly generalized,... shall do For the root of the idea of truthmakers is the very plausible and compelling idea that the truth of a proposition is a function of, or is determined by, reality Thus suppose that the proposition that the rose is red, which makes reference to a particular rose, is true Then the truth of this Why Truthmakers 21 proposition is a function of reality in the sense that the truth of the proposition... advance the cause of truthmakers. 8 The plausibility of truth’s being grounded in reality is better appreciated when one compares it with the alternatives For suppose truth was primitive If so, the following are different possibilities: (a) the truth of the proposition that the rose is red and the rose’s being red have nothing to do with each other, and (b) the rose is red because the proposition that the. .. entail the truth of hThe rose is redi either: redness might exist yet not be instantiated by the rose Consequently, truthmaker theorists have typically regarded the truthmakers of such contingent predications to be either states of affairs (particulars-havingproperties, such as the rose’s being red), or else tropes (particularized properties, such as the redness of the rose) (The standard-bearer for the. .. discuss the question of the nature of the bearers of truth at the end of x4 Introduction 3 so there are possible worlds where that object exists yet hThe rose is redi is false So what is the entity whose existence does entail the truth of hThe rose is redi? Merely adding redness to our inventory (which, from a nominalist perspective, is bad enough) will not help, since the existence of the rose and the. .. that world the proposition that the rose is red is true Now imagine a possible world w2, where exactly the same entities as in w1 exist, but in which the rose in question is white In w2 the proposition that the rose is red is false These worlds, if possible, are a counter-example to (ST), for they are ontologically equivalent—exactly the same entities, other than propositions, exist in them—but the proposition... truth of propositions by appeal to truthmakers How come it is true that the rose is red? A compelling answer, suggests Hornsby, is that hThe rose is redi is true because the rose instantiates the property being red This answer commits us to the existence of the rose, and to the existence of the property of redness, but not to a truthmaker So the challenge to the truthmaker theorist is to provide us with... tropes as the referents of nominalized sentences Consequently, there must be a reason why language and the world share this basic propositional structure; and, for Morris, the only defensible explanation is that the world has the structure it has because language is how it is The state-of-affairs and trope variants of truthmaker theory end up committed to the thesis that the world would not have the structure . instantiates the property being red. This answer commits us to the existence of the rose, and to the existence of the property of redness, but not to a truthmaker. So the challenge to the truthmaker theorist. Walton. Warm thanks to the contributors for their patience during the publication process, and to the Mind Association, the British Academy, and the Analysis committee for supporting the confer ence. This. criterion of the latter. According to Quine’s criterion, what exist are the values of the variables of a true theory. So, for example, the truth of hThe rose is redi (which we might rephrase as hThere