Truthmaker is a Goner

I've been reading Trenton Merricks' new book Truth and Ontology, and he spends the first few chapters beating up on Truthmaker.  I now think that Truthmaker is a goner.

"Truthmaker says that for every true claim there is something or other that - just by existing - makes that claim true" (p. 1).  If Truthmaker is true, then presentists who believe that propositions like D: that there were dinosaurs are true are in trouble because it seems that nothing presently exists to make (D) true.  Similar things could be said for propositions about brute dispositions, modal properties, subjunctive conditionals (including counterfactuals of freedom), and so on.  The principle motivation behind Truthmaker, Merricks points out, is to "catch the cheaters" - cheaters like presentists.

A big objection to Truthmaker is that negative existentials like H: that Hobbits don't exist don't need truthmakers but are true.  (H) is obviously true.  So Truthmaker is false.

Merricks devotes chapter 3 to dealing with ways that the Truthmaker theorist might try to account for the truths of negative existentials.  Perhaps the universe has the property of being such that there are no hobbits, and this property is the truthmaker for (H).  But then cheaters can make the same move.  They can say that the proposition (D) is made true by the universe's having the property of being such that there were dinosaurs.

Or perhaps (H) is made true by the totality of all existing objects in the universe.  But all this could exist and (H) could be false.  (It's possible that all existing objects in the universe exist and Hobbits exist as well.)

Perhaps (H) is made true by the totality of all existing objects in the universe and the universe's having the property being such that there is nothing else.  But then, as mentioned above, there doesn't seem to be a principled reason to disallow properties like being such that there were dinosaurs.

Merricks' response to that last objection is what did it for me.  Truthmaker theorists should move on to defending other principles like "truth supervenes on being" or they should formulate new principles.  But maybe my conclusion is to quick.  Is there any hope for Truthmaker?

Comments

[Jonathan Tallant]

Hi Andrew,

One line of defending maximalism (the view that every truth has a truth-maker) that I've seen pushed recently has come from Ross Cameron: http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/%7Ephlrpc/research.htm
Especially his paper on Truthmaker Maximalism forthcoming in Nous. Ross argues that 'the world' is the truth-maker for negative existential truths; invididuates worlds according to what's true at them; and argues that it's part of the essence of the world to have the truths that it does (sorry if that's a bit short!). To quote:

'I’ve claimed that the actual world is individuated by what is true according to it. This amounts to the claim that it has all its properties essentially. As such it is a suitable truthmaker for true negative existentials. No proper part of the world necessitates that there are no unicorns, since every proper part might have been a proper part of a different world that did contain unicorns; so the truthmaker, and hence the ontological commitment, of is just the actual world.' (from the e-copy)

I should add, though, that Ross isn't anti-presentist. He has a work-in-progress paper that discusses how the presentist might reply to the problem (though I remain deeply suspicious of his proposed solution).

[Andrew Moon]

Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for the reference! I hope to take a look at that paper some day. (Maybe after I finish Merricks' book.) Does he have a response to the point that the world alone doesn't seem enough to make a negative existential true, but you need some "nothing more" property? (See my second to last paragraph in my opening post.)

You have some interesting papers on your own website that I hope to get to read some day.

[Jonathan Tallant]

Hi Andrew,

Ross seems to want to avoid saying that there *is* a 'nothing more' property: the thought seems to be that if there's no possible world that is a counterpart to this world at which there are, for instance, unicorns: then the world gets to make it true that .

The inference *seems* to be that: the world is essentially thus. If that makes it necessary that P, where P entails ~Q, then we have a truth-maker for ~Q. So because the world is as it is essentially, and nowhere in the world will you find unicorns, that entails that is true.
That, at least, is my (plausibly poor) interpretation!

Very best wishes,
Jonathan

[Jonathan Tallant]

Hmm... Seems to be a missing proposition at the end of the first paragraph - 'there are no Unicorns'

[Kephalos Clazomenoon]

Andrew,
The notion of 'truth-maker' is marketplace. Intuitively a statement is true when there is, was or will be a situation, which makes the statement true. That insight is worth at least a plug nickel somewhere in the market.

Do you find it curious that few would have Time be a maker?

Imagine having a ticket, which permits admission to an event at any time before 2 pm (on some day) but not after "said" time. Imagine arriving and saying to the doorman "But I have a right to be admitted" and the doorman replying "Time has made false your right of admission."

Now you can let two flies out the bottle. Time makes some statements, which were true of dinosaurs, false; but not false if said in past 'time' of the dinosaurs.

It was cruel of you to capture the second fly. Plato let that fly free in the Sophist. To use your example, hobbits are creatures that are other than any creatures we find in any locally occurring fauna.

Surely, hobbits have to exist somewhere, no? Actually they do. They exist at those times when someone is thinking of one or more hobbits. They exist in time without taking up space.

Say ‘Hello Frodo’ for me the next time you think of Frodo. If you do not, you will make true the statement “Andrew thought of Frodo, and at that time did not say ‘Hello Frodo’.”

Kephalos