A hyperintensional epistemic logic would take the contents which can be known or believed as more fine-grained than sets of possible worlds. I consider one objection to the idea: Williamson’s Objection from Overfitting. I propose a hyperintensional account of propositions as sets of worlds enriched with topics: what those propositions, and so the attitudes having them as contents, are about. I show that the account captures the conditions under which sentences express the same content; that it can be pervasively applied (...) in formal and mainstream epistemology; and that it is left unscathed by the objection. (shrink)

The theory of truthmaking has long aroused skepticism from philosophers who believe it to be tangled up in contentious ontological commitments and unnecessary theoretical baggage. In this book, Jamin Asay shows why that suspicion is unfounded. Challenging the current orthodoxy that truthmaking's fundamental purpose is to be a tool for explaining why truths are true, Asay revives the conception of truthmaking as fundamentally an exercise in ontology: a means for coordinating one's beliefs about what is true and one's ontological commitments. (...) He goes on to show how truthmaking connects to analyticity, truth, and realism, and how it contributes to debates over nominalism, presentism, mathematical objects, and fictional characters. His book is the most comprehensive exploration to date into what truthmaking is and how it contributes to metaphysical debates across philosophy, and will interest a wide range of readers in metaphysics and beyond. (shrink)

This article for the Stanford Encyclopedia for Philosophy provides a state of the art survey and assessment of the contemporary debate about truth-makers, covering both the case for and against truth-makers. It explores 4 interrelated questions about truth-makers, (1) What is it to be a truth-maker? (2) Which range, or ranges, of truths are eligible to be made true (if any are)? (3) What kinds of entities are truth-makers? (4) What is the motivation for adopting a theory of truth-makers? And (...) adds that there's another question to often put aside by metaphysicians but has critical consequences for truth-makers: (5) What are the truth-bearers? (shrink)

In this paper, I first present an overview of Asay’s _A Theory of Truthmaking_, highlighting what I take to be some of its most attractive features, especially his re-invigoration of the ontological understanding of truthmaking and his defence of ontology-first truthmaking over explanation-first truthmaking. Then, I articulate what I take to be a puzzling potential inconsistency: (a) he appeals to considerations to do with aboutness in criticising how well ontological views account for truth while (b) ruling out aboutness from the (...) right account of truthmaking. He argues, instead, that necessitation is both necessary and sufficient for truthmaking (§3.3). I suggest that adding aboutness to one’s account in the right way is not just compatible with but important for ontology-first truthmaking. I do all this to invite Asay to clarify his position on these matters. Overall, Asay’s worldview displays the fruitfulness of an ontologically serious approach to metaphysics that puts truthmaking centre-stage. (shrink)

Sentences \(\varphi\) and \(\psi\) are _cognitive synonyms_ for one when they play the same role in one’s cognitive life. The notion is pervasive (Sect. 1 ), but elusive: it is bound to be hyperintensional (Sect. 2 ), but excessive fine-graining would trivialize it and there are reasons for some coarse-graining (Sect. 2.1 ). Conceptual limitations stand in the way of a natural algebra (Sect. 2.2 ), and it should be sensitive to subject matters (Sect. 2.3 ). A cognitively adequate individuation (...) of content may be intransitive (Sect. 3 ) due to ‘dead parrot’ series: sequences of sentences \(\varphi _1, \ldots, \varphi _n\) where adjacent \(\varphi _i\) and \(\varphi _{i+1}\) are cognitive synonyms while \(\varphi _1\) and \(\varphi _n\) are not (Sect. 3.1 ). Finding an intransitive account is hard: Fregean equipollence won’t do (Sect. 3.2 ) and a result by Leitgeb shows that it wouldn’t satisfy a minimal compositionality principle (Sect. 3.3 )._Sed contra_, there are reasons for transitivity, too (Sect. 3.4 ). In Sect. 4, we come up with a formal semantics capturing this jumble of desiderata, thereby showing that the notion is coherent. In Sect. 5, we re-assess the desiderata in its light. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have tried to develop a version of truthmaker theory which ties the truthmaking relation closely to the notion of fundamentality. In fact, some of these truthmaker-fundamentalists, as I call them, assume that the notion of fundamentality is intelligible in part by citing, as central examples of fundamentals, truthmakers, which they understand necessarily as constituents of fundamental reality. The aim of this paper is first to bring some order and clarity to this discussion, sketching how far TF is compatible (...) with orthodox truthmaking, and then critically to evaluate the limits of TF. It will be argued that truthmaker theory cannot directly help with articulating the nature of fundamental reality and that T-REL does not necessarily relate truths with anything more fundamental, unless what is fundamental is what the truthbearers in question are about. I shall argue that TF faces a rather thorny dilemma and some general problems. I shall present two exhaustive types of fundamentalism on which a version of TF can be based: deflationary and inflationary. It will be argued that each version of TF runs into significant troubles accounting for all truth, specifically ordinary truths and metaphysical truths about the relations between ordinary facts and fundamental facts. I shall not attempt to solve these problems, but rather, at the end, diagnose the issues with TF as lying in the difficulties with reconciling the manifest image with the scientific and metaphysical images of reality. (shrink)

A central tenet of truthmaker theory is that necessitation is necessary for truthmaking (NEC). This paper defends NEC in a novel, piecemeal way, namely by responding to a potential counterexample involving a changing past. If Carter won a race at t1 but is later disqualified at t2, then Carter no longer won at t1. A wholly past event seems to have changed in the future. The event makes ‘Carter won the race at t1’ (RACE) true between t1‐2 but fails to (...) make it true at t2. So, we have a potential counterexample to necessitation: a truthmaker of RACE fails in another context to make the same truthbearer RACE true. I argue that the best solution to this challenge is not that there are different truthbearers at t1‐2 and t2 (the semantic response), or that RACE was never true because of the future disqualification or will always be true despite the future disqualification. The best solution is to accept that the past can change: past events can change based on what happens in the future (e.g., via their effects). This paper's novel defence of necessitation will illustrate the importance of utilising explicitly ontological and commonsensical tools in accounting for truth. (shrink)

This paper defends a new version of truthmaker non-maximalism. The central feature of the view is the notion of a default truth-value. I offer a novel explanation for default truth-values and use it to motivate a general approach to the relation between truth-value and ontology, which I call truth-value-maker theory. According to this view, some propositions are false unless made true, whereas others are true unless made false. A consequence of the theory is that negative existential truths need no truthmakers (...) and that positive existential falsehoods need no falsemakers. (shrink)

Linguistic ontologists and antilinguistic, ‘serious’ ontologists both accept the inference from ‘Fido is a dog’ to ‘Fido has the property of being a dog’ but disagree about its ontological consequences. In arguing that we are committed to properties on the basis of these transformations, linguistic ontologists employ a neo-Fregean meta-ontological principle, on which the function of singular terms is to refer. To reject this, serious ontologists must defend an alternative. This paper defends an alternative on which the function of singular (...) terms is not generally to refer and on which they are generally ontologically noncommittal. This is the best way to reject linguistic, ‘easy’ arguments for the existence of properties. The account recommends neutralism about quantification (drawing on Barcan Marcus and Meinongianism), coherently bringing together two important yet uncombined meta-ontological movements. Moreover, it employs Ramseyan insights about the transformations to provide a nonreductionist, non-error-theoretic redundancy approach to explicit talk about properties. (shrink)

This paper introduces and evaluates a possible truthmaking argument for a robust conception of aboutness commitment. According to the argument, the pure aboutness-based account of truthmaking and the thesis of Truthmaker Commitment entails that a truthbearer is ontologically committed to what it is about in an appropriate sense of “aboutness”. However, this argument encounters challenges, notably an inherent explanatory circularity within the robust conception of aboutness commitment, and a radical inconsistency between its two premises in terms of their underlying motivations. (...) To address these issues, this paper proposes a more moderate conception of aboutness commitment, drawing inspiration from B. Smith’s mixed aboutness-based account of truthmaking. According to this moderate proposal, the representationalist notion of intended aboutness, or the anti-representationalist notion of general aboutness, constrains, but does not determine, the notion of ontological commitment, which in turn contributes to a stronger notion of genuine or satisfied aboutness. This modified moderate conception not only sidesteps the explanatory circularity, but also aligns more closely with the objective of providing a fundamental ontology. Therefore, it is recommended as a fitting approach to engaging in the relation between aboutness and ontological commitment. (shrink)

Peter Van Inwagen argues that The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) either leads to contradiction or it leads to necessitarianism. Although I agree with Van Inwagen that the relationship between the PSR and necessitarianism is close, I argue that the PSR is compatible with innocent versions of necessitarianism. In this project my main argument is that modal realism can account for the PSR and integrate it within an innocent version of necessitarianism. My main claim will be that each fact in (...) each possible world is grounded in the principle of plenitude. Also, while each fact is grounded in plenitude, it avoids rigid necessitarianism because (i) actuality is not captured by the PSR, (ii) things could be otherwise because there are other worlds, and due to the principle of recombination (iii) cardinality of possible worlds is maximized and (iv) there are no necessary connections between distinct individuals. As a result, the relationship between modal realism and the PSR is symbiotic. Through modal realism, the PSR also results as: having its scope extended to the realm of all possibilia rather than being confined to mere actuality; it solves indeterminacy problems like Leibniz’s problem of space or the hard problem of consciousness; it accounts for facts in lawless worlds etc. On the other hand, through the PSR, modal realism gets one more benefit in its inventory because it accounts for the PSR. Thus, modal realism still continues on Lewis’ paradoxical path of proving to be highly pragmatic but counterintuitive at the same time. If added benefits are worth the costs for modal realism is still an open question. (shrink)

This paper argues that accepting an ordinary approach to truthmakers and rejecting something I call “the metaphysical knowledge assumption” allows us to account for inquiry in terms of truthmaking. §1 introduces inquiry and the potential place of truthmakers in inquiry. §2 presents the relevant ordinary notion of truthmakers. §3 presents and motivates MKA. This assumption, I argue, makes a truthmaker-focused account of inquiry whose objects are not the fundamental nature of things impossible and thus should be rejected. The ordinary picture, (...) which understands truthmakers not exclusively in terms of the objects of fundamental reality or of semantics, but in terms of the relevant, intentional objects of inquiry, gives us an attractive, general, truthmaker-based view of inquiry. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an account of how perceptual evidence might allow us to draw justified conclusions about the existence of composite objects. We call the thesis at issue PERCEPTUAL ADEQUACY, and argue that a specific, naïve realist picture of the phenomenal character of perception provides us with a straightforward way to defend it. The claim that we have empirical evidence for the existence of macroscopic composites cannot be propped up merely by the plausible claim, granted by many, that (...) our perceptual experiences have composites-presenting phenomenology. Rather, a specific account of the nature of the phenomenology is needed so that it can provide the required evidence. We propose a way to accomplish this: one on which in the good cases it would be constituted by the presentation of the truth-makers of the relevant ontological claims. We argue, further, that this potential defence of a feasible empirically-informed approach to metaphysics is preferable to the best alternative, one based on an object-dependent version of intentionalism about perceptual consciousness. (shrink)