Truths are determined not by what we believe, but by the way the world is. Or so realists about truth believe. Philosophers call such theories correspondence theories of truth. Truthmaking theory, which now has many adherents among contemporary philosophers, is the most recent development of a realist theory of truth, and in this book D. M. Armstrong offers the first full-length study of this theory. He examines its applications to different sorts of truth, including contingent truths, modal truths, truths about (...) the past and the future, and mathematical truths. In a clear, even-handed and non-technical discussion he makes a compelling case for truthmaking and its importance in philosophy. His book marks a significant contribution to the debate and will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

In recent work on truth and truthmaking, D. M. Armstrong has defended a version of 'truthmaker necessitarianism', the doctrine that truths necessitate truthmakers. Truthmaker necessitarianism, he contends, requires the postulation of 'totality facts', which serve as ingredients of truthmakers for general truths and negative truths, and propositions, which function as the fundamental truth bearers. I argue that neither totality facts nor propositions need figure in an account of truthmaking, and suggest that both are artifacts stemming, albeit in different ways, from (...) an ontologically shady 'linguisticizing' tendency to conflate features of descriptions and features of what is described. (shrink)