Truth-Makers

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 44 (3):287-321 (1984)
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Abstract

A realist theory of truth for a class of sentences holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar, we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. The core of our theory is the account of truthmaking for atomic sentences, in which we expose a pervasive ‘dogma of logical form’, which says that atomic sentences cannot have more than one truthmaker. In contrast to this, we uphold the mutual independence of logical and ontological complexity, and the authors outline formal principles of truthmaking taking account of both kinds of complexity.

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Author Profiles

Barry Smith
University at Buffalo
Kevin Mulligan
University of Geneva
Peter Simons
Trinity College, Dublin

Citations of this work

Ontological Dependence.Tuomas E. Tahko & E. J. Lowe - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Logical Pluralism.J. C. Beall & Greg Restall - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. Edited by Greg Restall.
Ground.Michael J. Raven - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (5):322-333.
The Pure Logic of Ground.Kit Fine - 2012 - Review of Symbolic Logic 5 (1):1-25.

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References found in this work

Individuals.P. F. Strawson - 1959 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 14 (2):246-246.
Objects of thought.Arthur Norman Prior - 1971 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press. Edited by P. T. Geach & Anthony Kenny.
The elements of being.Donald Cary Williams - 1953 - Review of Metaphysics 7 (2):3-18, 171-92.

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