{"id":7883,"date":"2014-06-24T12:14:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T12:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/24\/a-truthmaker-account-of-validity\/"},"modified":"2014-06-24T12:14:08","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T12:14:08","slug":"a-truthmaker-account-of-validity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/24\/a-truthmaker-account-of-validity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Truthmaker Account of Validity"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you accept truthmakers, and two further principles, then you can maintain that a deductive argument is valid just in case the truthmakers of its premises suffice to make true its conclusion.  Or as David Armstrong puts it in Sketch of a Systematic Metaphysics<\/em> (Oxford UP, 2010), p. 66,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In a valid argument the truthmaker for the conclusion is contained in the truthmaker for the premises.  The conclusion needs no extra truthmakers.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For this account of validity to work, two further principles are needed, Truthmaker Maximalism and the Entailment Principle.<\/span>  Truthmaker Maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker.  Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every<\/em> truth has a truthmaker.  Thus I question<\/a> Truthmaker Maximalism.  (The hyperlinked entry sports a fine photo of Peter L.)
<\/span><\/p>\n

Armstrong, on the other hand, thinks that "Maximalism flows from the idea of correspondence and I am not willing to give up on the idea that correspondence with reality is necessary for any truth." (63)  Well, every cygnet is a swan.  Must there be something extramental and extralinguistic to make this analytic truth true?  And let's not forget that Armstrong has no truck with so-called abstract objects.  His brand of naturalism excludes them.  So he can't say that there are the quasi-Platonic properties being a cygnet<\/em> and being a swan<\/em> with the first entailing the second, and that this entailment relation is the truthmaker of 'Every cygnet is a swan.'
<\/span><\/p>\n

The Entailment Principle runs as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Suppose that a true proposition p<\/em> entails a proposition q<\/em>.  By truthmaker Maximalism p<\/em> has a truthmaker.  According to the Entailment Principle, it follows that this truthmaker for p<\/em> is also a truthmaker for q<\/em>. [. . .] Note that this must<\/em> be an entailment.  If all that is true is that p –> q<\/em>, the so-called material conditional, then this result does not follow.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I would accept a restricted Entailment Prinicple that does not presuppose Maximalism.  To wit, if a proposition p<\/em> has a truthmaker T, and p<\/em> entails a proposition q<\/em>, then T is also a truthmaker for q<\/em>.  For example, if Achilles' running<\/em> is the truthmaker of 'Achilles is running,' then, given that the proposition expressed by this sentence entails the proposition expressed by 'Achilles is on his feet,' Achilles' running<\/em> is also the truthmaker  of  the proposition expressed by 'Achilles is on his feet.'<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Regress? What Regress? Truth-Making Revisited<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Logical Form and the Supposed Asymmetry of Validity and Invalidity: A Defense of Symmetry<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Times as Maximal Propositions<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>A Question About Constituent Ontology: Sensible Properties as 'Parts'<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you accept truthmakers, and two further principles, then you can maintain that a deductive argument is valid just in case the truthmakers of its premises suffice to make true its conclusion.  Or as David Armstrong puts it in Sketch of a Systematic Metaphysics (Oxford UP, 2010), p. 66, In a valid argument the truthmaker … Continue reading “A Truthmaker Account of Validity”<\/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":[108,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-logica-docens","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7883","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=7883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}