Abstract
Philosophical discussion of truthmaking has flourished in recent times, but what exactly does it mean to ‘make’ a truth-bearer true? I argue that ‘making’ is a concept with modal force, and this renders it a problematic deployment for truthmaker theorists with nominalist sympathies, which characterises most current theories. I sketch the outlines of what I argue is a more genuinely realist truthmaker theory, which is capable of answering the explanatory question: In virtue of what does each particular truthmaker make its particular truthbearer(s) true? I do this by drawing on recent work by Frederik Stjernfelt on Charles Peirce’s account of the proposition as having a ‘particular double structure’, according to which a proposition not only depicts certain characters of an object, it also depicts itself claiming those characters to pertain to the object. This double structure, I shall argue, also resolves important issues in analytic philosophers’ truthmaker theory, including the proper distinction between reference and truthmaking, and a dilemma concerning an infinite regress of truthmaking.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
By realism here I mean a certain ‘broad church’ version of the view that in spite of its extreme generality has in recent decades been influential in analytic metaphysics, particularly in “Australian realism” as developed by Armstrong (e.g. 1978; 1989) and his key (‘honorary Australian’) interlocutor David Lewis. This realism’s clearest and most definitive claim is arguably a negative one – the avoidance of “some sort of pragmatism or idealism”, as John Bigelow remarks below. That this realism has been a guiding light in truthmaker theory can be seen in claims such as Greg Restall’s “Australian Realists are fond of talking about truthmakers” (Restall 1996, p. 331). There are of course many ways in which realism so broadly conceived may be disambiguated. One way is realism about universals or scholastic realism, and in this paper I advance this interpretation both because I see it as – ironically – relatively untried by truthmaker realists, and because I believe it enables me to do interesting theoretical work.
See also (Fox 1987, p. 189).
This is apart from certain special cases where propositions make other propositions (or themselves) true.
This formulation is derived from (Price 1998, p. 41).
For argument that the standard division into ‘metaphysical’ and ‘deflationary’ accounts of truth constitutes a false dichotomy, see (Legg 2014).
Only one contemporary analytic truthmaker theorist seems to have had an inkling of this possibility: Barry Smith, who writes, “Truthmakers, like visual fields, are cognition-dependent entities which exist only as a result of certain sorts of cognitively effected demarcations of reality” (Smith 1999, p. 289). See also (Smith 1992).
Another interesting distinction to explore could be that between ‘made true by us’ and ‘made by us’. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
Likewise, see the “semantic” defence of nominalism in (Devitt 1980).
It is neutral, that is, amongst the plethora of ontological forms currently posited and discussed in analytic metaphysics – such as objects, events, states of affairs, properties, tropes, facts, and more.
Lewis’ possible worlds are maximal sums of spatiotemporally related concrete particular objects (Lewis 1986b, p. 86).
For an argument that Armstrong is in fact a “nominalistic Platonist” see (Legg 2002).
See (Armstrong 1997, p. 126) for “The Victory of Particularity” with respect to first-order states of affairs, although they contain universals as constituents.
Armstrong himself heads in this direction (Armstrong 1997, chapter 5).
See for instance, (Armstrong 1997, p. 3). Wittgenstein also profoundly influenced Russell, who is credited as a truthmaker forefather by Armstrong, and Mulligan et al.
For explicit recognition of this see (Skyrms 1981), which Armstrong acknowledges in a number of places has greatly influenced him.
Armstrong comes close to admitting this when he acknowledges that supervenience relation between truthmakers and truthbearers is symmetrical (Armstrong 2004, p. 8). This is not the usual understanding of supervenience. This point is expanded on at (David 2005, p. 147). David does also qualify that Armstrong explicitly repudiates the Identity Theory of Truth, giving a citation to support this (David 2005, p. 155). But the citation is to Armstrong’s 1973 book Belief, Truth and Knowledge, and we have already noted that Armstrong’s views evolved significantly through his career.
This claim does assume the view known as Truthmaker Maximalism. But (Milne 2005 notwithstanding) without it there seems little point in a truthmaker theory, as once one allows some truthbearers to lack truthmakers, one must devise an alternative explanation for their truth, and why then can’t such an account be developed for all truthbearers?
Others have made this point – see for instance Lewis’ correction of Quine: “I want to construe ‘being’ broadly: it covers not only whether things are, but how they are” (1992, p. 218). How this irenic claim fits with Lewis’ Humean Supervenience manifesto is not entirely clear. See also (Cameron 2008; Schaffer 2008).
“Russellian” should here be understood in a broad sense indicating not every detail of the doctrine adumbrated in “On Denoting” so much as the sweeping influence of these ideas through twentieth century philosophy of language (albeit amended by later philosophers such as P.F. Strawson, who noted that descriptions such as “the F” need not uniquely refer to count as “definite”).
Here the point might have been more clearly made if Restall had said that a unicorn is something whose existence necessitates the truth of the claim “a unicorn exists”, since the mere existence of an entity does not necessitate that anyone claim that that entity exists. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.
although see (Smith and Murray 1981)
“2.12: the picture is a model of reality” (Wittgenstein 1961).
“5.526: We can describe the world completely by means of fully generalized propositions, i.e. without first correlating any name with a particular object” (Wittgenstein 1961).
Robert Brandom concurs, placing the insight within his distinctive inferentialism by categorising it as the smallest unit of meaning for which we can take responsibility (Brandom 2000).
Peirce arguably expresses this point when he says, “The most perfectly thorough analysis throws the whole substance of the Dicisign into the Predicate.” (Peirce 1931-58 2.318). One might protest that such a move robs the Dicisign’s subject of all meaning, which cannot be correct. But this depends what one means by ‘meaning’. The subject retains a pure indexing role with regard to the Dicisign’s first object, which is its proper function. Meanwhile, the predicate, properly analysed (which may not correspond exactly to the proposition’s ‘surface grammar’) assumes the entire iconic signification. There is a further important story to tell, which must be postponed to another time and place, about how these icons and indices are mobilised to co-function by an overall interpretation which counts as a symbol in Peirce’s sign-theory. I am grateful to challenges from an anonymous referee on these points.
Or, even better, a “Picture-Pointing Theory of the Meaning of Propositions”, since the meanings of terms and arguments require a different analysis. I am grateful to John Bishop for incisive discussion on this point.
A final objection at this point is that it seems perverse to think that the proposition is made true, not by white snow, but by its own semiotic relationship with white snow. But is this really perverse? Why? Isn’t some sort of ‘semiotic relationship’ between proposition and fact precisely what is wanted in a truthmaker? Here I urge the astute reader to be careful not to beg the question for the nominalism that I have suggested runs through much previous truthmaker theory.
This is exactly what happens in Peirce’s graphical logic system, the Existential Graphs, with the so-called ‘cut’ which represents negation. For further details, see (Roberts 1973).
“Consider ‘there are three ways in which Joe could win his chess match.’…What makes the quantified sentence true is nothing more than that ⋄P and ⋄Q and ⋄R” (Melia 2005, p, 84).
Armstrong’s philosophy has been discussed in this regard above. See also David Lewis, “New Work for a Theory of Universals” (Lewis 1983).
References
Armstrong, D. M. (1978). Universals and Scientific Realism (2 Vol.s). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, D. M. (1989). A combinatorial theory of possibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, D. M. (1997). A world of states of affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, D. M. (2004). Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beebee, H., & Dodd, J. (Eds.). (2005). Truthmakers: The contemporary debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bigelow, J. (1988). The reality of numbers: A Physicalist’s philosophy of mathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brandom, R. (2000). Articulating reasons: An introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Cameron, R. P. (2008). Truthmakers and ontological commitment: Or how to deal with complex objects and mathematical ontology without getting into trouble. Philosophical Studies, 140(1), 1–18.
David, M. (2005). Armstrong on Truthmaking. In H. Beebee & J. Dodd (Eds.), Truthmakers: The contemporary debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Devitt, M. (1980). Ostrich nominalism’ or ‘mirage realism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 61(4), 433–439.
Fox, J. F. (1987). Truthmaker. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 65(2), 188–207.
Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of Worldmaking. London: Hackett.
Hornsby, J. (2005). Truth without Truthmaking entities. In H. Beebee & J. Dodd (Eds.), Truthmakers: The contemporary debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackson, F. (1998). From metaphysics to ethics: A Defence of conceptual analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
James, William. (1907). Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking, published (1975) in Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kripke, S. A. (1980). Naming and necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Legg, C. (2002). Predication and the problem of universals. Philosophical Papers, 30(2), 117–143.
Legg, C. (2014). Charles Peirce’s limit concept of truth. Philosophy Compass, 9(3), 204–213.
Lewis, D. (1983). New work for a theory of universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61(4), 343–377.
Lewis, D. (1986a). Philosophical papers volume II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1986b). On the plurality of worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, D. (1992). Review of Armstrong A combinatorial theory of possibility. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 70(2), 211–224.
Lewis, D. (2001). Truthmaking and difference-making. Noûs, 35, 602–615.
Lillehammer, H., & Mellor, H. (2005). Ramsey’s legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Linsky, B. (1994). Truth-makers for modal propositions. Monist, 77(2), 192–206.
Melia, J. (2005). Truthmaking without Truthmakers. In H. Beebee & J. Dodd (Eds.), Truthmakers: The contemporary debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Milne, P. (2005). Not every truth has a Truthmaker. Analysis, 65(287), 221–224.
Mulligan, K., Simons, P., & Smith, B. (1984). Truth-makers. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 44(3), 287–321.
Nozick, R. (1981). Philosophical explanations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Parsons, J. (1999). There is no ‘Truthmaker’ argument against nominalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 77(3), 325–334.
Peirce, C.S. (1905). Manuscript 284 [unpublished].
Peirce, C.S. (1931-1958). Collected Papers. In C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and A. Burks (Eds.) (8 vol.s). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1998). Essential Peirce. In N. Houser & C. Kloesel (Eds.), Selected Philosophical Writings (1893–1913) (Vol. 2). Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Pihlström, S. (2005). Truthmaking and pragmatist conceptions of truth and reality. Minerva – An Internet Journal of Philosophy, 9, 105–133.
Price, Huw. (1998). “Three norms of Assertibility”, in J. Tomberlin, ed. Philosophical Perspectives 12, 41–54.
Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, truth and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Restall, G. (1996). Truthmakers, entailment and necessity. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74(2), 331–340.
Roberts, D. D. (1973). The existential graphs of Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Rodriguez-Pereyra, G. (2006a). Truthmakers. Philosophy Compass, 1, 186–200.
Rodriguez-Pereyra, G. (2006b). Truthmaking, entailment and the conjunction thesis. Mind, 115(460), 957–982.
Russell, B. (1985). In D. Pears (Ed.), The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. La Salle: Open Court.
Schaffer, J. (2008). Truthmaker commitments. Philosophical Studies, 141(1), 7–19.
Simons, Peter. (2008). Why the negations of false atomic sentences are true. In T. De Mey & M. Keinänen (eds.), Essays on Armstrong, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 84, 15–36.
Skyrms, B. (1981). Tractarian nominalism. Philosophical Studies, 40(2), 199–206.
Smith, B. (1992). Characteristica Universalis. Language, Truth and Ontology (Kluwer), 48–77.
Smith, B. (1999). Truthmaker realism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 77(3), 274–291.
Smith, B., & Murray, D. (1981). Logic, form and matter. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary, 55, 47–74.
Stjernfelt, F. (2014). Natural propositions. Boston: Docent Press.
Stjernfelt, F. (2015). Dicisigns. Synthese, 192(4), 1019–1054.
Stjernfelt, F. (2016). Dicisigns and habits: Implicit propositions and habit-taking in Peirce’s pragmatism. In D. West & M. Anderson (Eds.), Consensus on Peirce’s concept of habit: Before and beyond consciousness (pp. 241–262). Cham: Springer.
Tahko, T. (2013). Truth-grounding and transitivity. Thought, 2(4), 332–340.
Tahko, T. (2016). Armstrong on Truthmaking and realism. In F. F. Calemi (Ed.), Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong (pp. 207–218). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. trs. D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Legg, C. Is Truth Made, and if So, What Do we Mean by that? Redefining Truthmaker Realism. Philosophia 48, 587–606 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00128-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00128-x