{"id":3186,"date":"2020-04-17T07:19:33","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T07:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/17\/truthmakers-and-truth-conditions\/"},"modified":"2020-04-17T07:19:33","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T07:19:33","slug":"truthmakers-and-truth-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/17\/truthmakers-and-truth-conditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Truthmakers and Truth Conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is an excerpt from an old entry<\/a> that makes a distinction we need to keep in mind in present discussions.<\/span><\/p>\n

………………..<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan offers<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

(*) The sentence 'Al is fat' is true because Al is fat<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

to show that a truthmaker need not be an entity.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems to me, though, that Dan is confusing a truthmaker with a truth condition.  A truthmaker is concrete chunk of extralinguistic and extramental reality whereas a truth condition is just another sentence, proposition, or cognate item. Our old friend Alan Rhoda in an old blog post<\/a> does a good job of explaining the distinction:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

. . .truthmakers are parcels of reality . . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

Not so with truth conditions. Truth conditions are semantic explications of the meaning of statements. They tell us in very precise terms what has to be true for a particular statement to be true. For example, a B-theorist like Nathan Oaklander will say that the truth conditions of the sentence "The 2006 Winter Olympics are over" is given by the sentence "The 2006 Winter Olympics end earlier than the date of this utterance". Thus truth conditions are meaning entities like statements that are used to spell out or analyze the meaning of other statements.<\/span>
 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dan's (*) merely sets forth a truth condition. It doesn't get us off the level of propositions and down to the level of truthmakers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another important point has to do with the asymmetry of truthmaking: if T makes true p, it does not follow that p makes true T.  It's an asymmetry of explanation. If one thing explains another, it does not follow that the other explains the one. The truthmaker theorist takes seriously the project of metaphysical explanation. Truthmakers explain why true truthbearers are true, but not vice versa.  Dan's (*), however, entails the following non-explanatory biconditional:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

(**) The sentence 'Al is fat' is true iff Al is fat.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But (**) has nothing to do with truthmaking; it is but an instance of Quine's disquotational schema according to which the truth predicate is but a device of disquotation. We remain on the level of sentences (propositions, etc.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In sum, I see no merit in Dan's suggestion that there are truthmakers but they needn't be entities. That shows a failure to grasp the notion of a truthmaker. What Dan should say is that there is no need for truthmakers. He might also try arguing that the truthmaking relation is bogus or unintelligible since it is neither a logical relation nor a causal one.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an excerpt from an old entry that makes a distinction we need to keep in mind in present discussions. ……………….. Dan offers (*) The sentence 'Al is fat' is true because Al is fat to show that a truthmaker need not be an entity. It seems to me, though, that Dan is … Continue reading “Truthmakers and Truth Conditions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}