Truth and Truth-making

E. J. Lowe, A. Rami

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317492672
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Truth depends in some sense on reality. But it is a rather delicate matter to spell this intuition out in a plausible and precise way. According to the theory of truth-making this intuition implies that either every truth or at least every truth of a certain class of truths has a so-called truth-maker, an entity whose existence accounts for truth. This book aims to provide several ways of assessing the correctness of this controversial claim. This book presents a detailed introduction to the theory of truth-making, which outlines truth-maker relations, the ontological category of truth-making entities, and the scope of a truth-maker theory. The essays brought together here represent the most important articles on truth-making in the last three decades as well as new essays by leading researchers in the field of the theory of truth and of truth-making.

Chapter 1
Introduction: truth and truth-making

Adolf Rami

The aim of this essay is to provide a detailed and critical overview of the main topics and problems of the current debate concerning truth-making. In §1 I give a brief outline of the history of the theory of truth-making and in §2 I identify three central goals of such a theory. In §3 I introduce the truth-maker principle and the doctrines of truth-maker maximalism and truth-maker purism. Section 4 contains a discussion and critique of several attempts to justify the truth-maker principle and §5 introduces some distinctions that concern different possible formal and ontological properties of the truth-making relation. In §6 I argue for the thesis that propositions conceived as certain kinds of abstract objects are the best candidates to fill the role of primary truth-bearers. Section 7 is about the explication of the truth-maker relation; I shall discuss and criticize a considerable number of the attempts at explication that have been made. In §8 I introduce further principles that may be combined with the truth-maker principle. It will be shown that some of these principles imply implausible consequences if they are combined with certain explications of the truth-maker principle. Section 9 is concerned with so-called supervenience principles concerning truth. I shall assess the claim that these principles are plausible replacements for the truth-maker principle. Section 10 contains four arguments against the thesis that a truth-maker theory may be conceived of as a theory of truth. It will be shown that at least two of these arguments constitute a deep challenge for a truth-maker theory of truth.

1. The history of the theory of truth-making

There is a European tradition and an Australian tradition in the theory of truth-making. The modern origins of the European tradition can be traced back to the seminal works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell on this topic. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), Wittgenstein introduced the doctrine of logical atomism, which says that only atomic truths have truth-makers on the basis of a correspondence relation between truth-bearers and truth-makers. This doctrine marks an important difference between modern theories of truth-making and classical correspondence theories of truth. Classical correspondence theories of truth postulate for each truth a (different) corresponding truth-maker. Russell followed his former pupil and advocated his own version of logical atomism in “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (1918). He agreed with Wittgenstein that atomic truths have corresponding truth-makers whereas, for example, disjunctive truths do not. But unlike Wittgenstein, Russell also postulated corresponding truth-makers for general and negative truths.

Little attention was paid to logical atomism for some time aft er the publication of Wittgenstein’s and Russell’s works on this topic.¹ It was left to Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith to revive the debate concerning logical atomism and also to initiate the current debate concerning truth-making in their seminal paper “Truth-makers” (this vol., Ch. 3).

The modern Australian tradition of the theory of truth-making originates in the works of C. B. Martin and especially in his influence on his most famous pupil, D. M. Armstrong (cf. Armstrong 2004: 1), who is possibly the most important current defender of a truth-maker theory. Besides Martin and Armstrong, the Australian tradition produced a whole armada of truth-maker theorists: John Bigelow, John Fox, Frank Jackson, George Molnar and Greg Restall, to name only a few.

Current debate about theories of truth-making flourishes in Australia, Europe and the USA. The most important defenders of a theory of truth-making in Europe are E. J. Lowe, Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra. In the USA truth-maker theories are currently defended by Herbert Hochberg, Josh Parsons and Barry Smith.

2. The proposed goals of a theory of truth-making

There are at least three general goals that a truth-maker theorist typically aims to achieve. First, he may aim to vindicate the correspondence theory of truth by replacing classical versions of this theory with a more elaborate and subtle modern version of it. Classical correspondence theories presuppose a substantial external correspondence relation between truths and truth-makers. This relation is mostly conceived of as an isomorphic relation. The theory typically postulates for each truth a different truth-maker and it claims that every truth corresponds to a truth-maker. Modern truth-maker theorists of truth deny either some or even all of these presuppositions of a classical correspondence theory.

Secondly, truth-maker theorists may aim to use a truth-maker theory to justify a certain kind of ontology. They may use it to vindicate the postulation of certain ontological categories such as facts, states of affairs, tropes or universals. Armstrong, for example, makes use of a so-called truth-maker argument to argue for the recognition of states of affairs. His argument runs as follows. According to the truth-maker theory a singular predication of the logical form ‘Fa’ requires a truth-maker. But neither the object a, nor the universal of F-ness, nor the sum or set consisting of these two entities can account for the truth of such a predication. Each of these four entities may exist and nevertheless ‘Fa’ might be false. There is only one entity that can account for the truth of ‘Fa’ according to Armstrong – namely, a’s being F – and this kind of entity is best conceived of as an obtaining state of affairs (cf. Armstrong 1997: 115–16).

Thirdly, a truth-maker theory may be used to detect so-called ontological “cheaters” (cf. Merricks 2006: 3–5). An ontological cheater typically defends a very restrictive and sparse kind of ontology. A truth-maker theorist may use the truth-maker principle to demonstrate that the cheater cannot account for certain important truths on the basis of his restrictive ontology. Martin and Armstrong, for example, made use of this strategy to argue against behaviourism and phenomenalism (cf. Armstrong 2004: 1–3).

3. The truth-maker principle: maximalism and purism

A full-blooded truth-maker theory contains as central component the following truth-maker principle:

(TM) For every x: x is true if and only if (iff) there is a y such that y is a truth-maker for x.²

Therefore, a full-blooded truth-maker theory implies the following two theses:

(MAX) For every x: if x is true, then x has a truth-maker.

(PUR) For every x: if x has a truth-maker, then x is true.

Someone who accepts (MAX) is called a truth-maker maximalist; someone who holds (PUR) might be called a truth-maker purist.

But a truth-maker theory need not contain (TM) and imply (MAX) and (PUR). Someone may accept (PUR), but reject (MAX); and he may therefore hold instead of (TM) any restricted version of (TM). That is, he may restrict the class of truth-bearers that require truth-makers in order to be true to a certain subclass of the class of all truth-bearers.

Is it also possible to reject (PUR)? There are reasons for the thesis that it is not possible for a truth-maker theorist to reject (PUR). If an entity has a truth-maker, then there is something that makes it true. So if α is a truth-maker for T, α makes T true. But then it is impossible that α makes T true and T is not true. (PUR) is an analytic truth concerning truth-making.³ Someone who does not accept (PUR) does not attribute the intended content to the notion of a truth-maker. So we may claim that every truth-maker theorist is a truth-maker purist.

In this respect (TM) differs from related principles such as:

(DE) For every x: x is true iffthere is a y such that the truth of x depends on y.

(GR) For every x: x is true iff there is a y such that the truth of x is grounded in y.

In the cases of (DE) and (GR) it can be reasonably denied that the conditional part from the right-hand side to the left-hand side is true. The truth of the proposition that snow is white and grass is green, for example, depends on (or is grounded in) the truth of the proposition that snow is white and the truth of the proposition that grass is green. This may be the case and nevertheless the proposition that snow is white and grass is green may not be true. So (DE) and (GR) may be called siblings, but they are at most cousins of (TM).

Our results concerning (MAX) und (PUR) can be summarized as follows. It is a minimal requirement for a truth-maker theory that it implies at least (PUR) and the following principle:

(MIN) There is at least one x such that x has a truth-maker.

On this basis a truth-maker theorist has the following options: he may choose between (MAX), (MIN) or any thesis weaker than (MAX) and stronger than (MIN) that restricts the possession of a truth-maker to a certain class of truth-bearers.

Someone who rejects (MAX) is called a truth-maker anti-maximalist. There are three prominent kinds of anti-maximalism that should be mentioned here: (a) logical atomism, which holds that only logically atomic sentences have truth-makers,⁴ while logically complex sentences have none; (b) contingent anti-maximalism, which holds that only contingently true propositions have truth-makers, while necessary truths have none (cf. Dodd 2002: 70); and (c) synthetic anti-maximalism, which holds that only synthetically true propositions have truth-makers, while analytic truths have none.⁵

4. Motivating the truth-maker principle

(TM) (or any restricted version of it) is by no means an uncontroversial principle; so it requires justification (cf. Dodd 2002: 70–71; Beebee & Dodd 2005b: 4–5; Rodriguez-Pereyra, this vol., Ch. 13, 230; Merricks 2006: 2). There seem to be two kinds of strategy to provide such a justification. According to the first strategy, our acceptance of (TM) is justified by the explanatory resources of (TM): one can justify (TM) by pointing out the explanatory roles that (TM) can fill concerning (a) the solution of philosophical problems and (b) the vindication of certain philosophical theses. According to the second strategy our acceptance of (TM) is justified by the intuitive appeal of (TM): one can justify (TM) by pointing out that (TM) provides the best (or only adequate) explication of an important philosophical intuition (cf. Beebee & Dodd 2005b: 5).

Several attempts have been made to pursue the first strategy. It has been claimed that (TM) is required: (a) to solve the problem of universals in an adequate way; (b) to provide a more plausible and powerful alternative to W. V. Quine’s famous criterion of ontological commitment; (c) to vindicate realism and reject antirealism; (d) to vindicate the correspondence theory of truth; and (e) to falsify behaviourism and phenomenalism.

But most of these attempts do not seem to be successful. If we regard the problem of universals as a serious ontological problem, we have to explain how it is possible that two different entities exemplify the same property. According to Rodriguez-Pereyra, a solution to this problem needs to invoke the existence of an entity that entails that two objects a and b are both F; and it is possible to satisfy this requirement on the basis of a certain restricted variant of (TM). Both of these claims seem to be problematic. A solution to the problem of universals seems to require more than postulating a certain entity that entails that two objects a and b are both F. If we aim to solve the problem of universals exclusively on the basis of a restricted variant of (TM) and without including further substantive principles, then we trivialize the problem. This is first because it is then a rather trivial matter to find the required entity; for example, the fact that two objects a and b are both F could fill this role. Secondly, invoking a truth-maker for a proposition is not to explain the truth of this proposition. It is therefore by no means clear that (TM) (or any variant of it) has any substantive explanatory power concerning the solution of the problem of universals (cf. MacBride 2002: 31; Beebee & Dodd 2005b: 5–6; Daly 2005: 98–102).

In fact, (TM) (or any restricted version of it) provides an alternative to Quine’s criterion ...