Truthmakers, knowledge and paradox

Abstract

According to the truthmaker principle, every truth – at least, every contingent truth – has a truthmaker, something in virtue of which it is true. This is perhaps too strong. True negative existentials – such as the truth that there are no unicorns – might motivate a retreat to the weaker principle that truth requires at most a truthmaker or lack of a falsemaker (in our example, lack of a unicorn). Such a principle would still vindicate the idea that truth supervenes on being – on what there is. However, some true (non-essential) predications – such as the truth that the rose is red – might motivate a further retreat to an even weaker principle, if one were to hold the view that it is not required that there be some thing (say, a state of affairs) in virtue of which it is true that the rose is red. On this view, truth would no longer supervene on what there is, but only on what there is and how it is. Notice though that both weakenings still respect what seems to be the essential core of the thought that truths require truthmakers: that truths are about things, that they ‘do not float in a void’, in Lewis's (1992: 218) apt phrase.

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