A Theory of Truthmaking

At the core of Jamin Asay’s book is a distinction and a claim. The distinction is between two conceptions of truthmaker theory. On one of them, truthmaker theory aims at “ontological accounting”—that is, “properly coordinating our beliefs and ontological inventories”; on the other conception, it aims at “alethic explanation”—that is, “offering systematic explanations as to why true truth-bearers are true” (31). The claim is that we should embrace the first conception and abandon the second.The distinction is spelled out, and the claim defended, in part 1 of the book, entitled “Foundations.” There, Asay also defends the (nowadays) nonorthodox view that truthmaking is necessitation; he argues, against many philosophers, that truthmaker maximalism—the view that all truths have truthmakers—is not part of the “nature” of truthmaker theory and that truthmaker theorists should reject it; and he finally addresses several objections against the theory. In part 2, he discusses the consequences that truthmaker theory, as he conceives of it, has on the question of the nature of truth, the analytic/synthetic distinction, and the realism/antirealism debate. In part 3, he examines how truthmaker theory, again as he conceives of it, shapes, or can shape, ontology on various topics of inquiry: properties, past objects, mathematical entities, and fictional objects.The book is very rich in content and original in many respects. And there is a lot to be liked in it. To start with, take the central distinction I mentioned at the beginning. Regardless of whether it is desirable to deprive truthmaker theory of its explanatory ambitions, drawing the distinction brings benefits to philosophical theorizing. Other items to be liked are the idea that taking truthmaking seriously is compatible with denying that truth should be analyzed in terms of truthmaking (11), the view that truthmaking can be expressed by means of a “prenective” (as in ‘x makes it true that p’) and accordingly need not be understood as a relation (21), the arguments against the claim that truthmaker theory is by its nature committed to the existence or nonexistence of certain kinds of entities (25, 183ff), or again the observation that realism about domain X is not secured by the claim that the truths of X are made true (154ff).On the other hand, I am skeptical about some of Asay’s key claims and arguments. Let me here develop three critical points. All directly relate to “foundational” aspects his views.(1) The correct methodology of truthmaker theory according Asay is clearly formulated in the following quote: “That methodology says: start with the truths we accept, and then build an ontology by way of figuring out what’s needed to make those truths true” (245). Asay argues that some truths we accept do not need truthmakers. He argues in particular that negative existentials (for instance, the proposition that there are no unicorns) provide good counterexamples to truthmaker maximalism (80–81). Call those truths we accept that do need truthmakers the target truths. The distinction between the ontological accounting and the alethic explanation conceptions of the truthmaking project concerns specifically these truths. For friends of the former conception, truthmaker theory aims at building a correct ontology, and the idea is that by providing truthmakers for the target truths, one achieves this aim—or at least, one makes an important step in that direction. For friends of the latter conception, truthmaker theory aims at explaining why the target truths are true, and the idea is of course that a truthmaker, or at least its existence, explains why what it makes true is true. These two conceptions of the truthmaking project need not be incompatible, as Asay notices (33). Yet he argues that the alethic explanation conception must be abandoned because it faces “formidable objections” (32).I am not impressed by the objections he raises. Let me here focus on the central objection (36–43). Reduced to its bare bones, it goes as follows. The alethic explanation project focuses on the question of why (target) truths are true. Now, there are many candidate answers to the question which are less ontologically costly than the candidate answers that rely on truthmaking. So, if the project is to be motivated, it must be because it is after a special sort of explanation. The natural suggestion is that the project is after an explanation of what truth is. An account of what truth is in terms of truthmaking must take the form ‘To be true is to be made true’, and accordingly must commit one to truthmaker maximalism. Yet truthmaker maximalism is false.There are two obvious weak points in the argument. One is the claim about the form that a definition of truth in terms of truthmaking must take. Why could not such a definition take another form? The other weak point is the claim about the special sort of explanation the project is after. Even if it is natural to suggest that the truthmaking project aims at explaining what truth is, this is not the only natural suggestion. And indeed, there is another natural suggestion that comes to mind when one reflects on the informal glosses that are usually given on truthmaker theory, one that looks even more natural to me. The opening sentences of the book give such a gloss: “Truth depends on reality. When something is true, its truth depends upon the world. Its truth is not some brute, inexplicable feature of reality. Truths are true in virtue of reality, and not vice versa” (1). Taken seriously, these sentences motivate the view that the special sort of explanation the alethic project is after is the one provided by the now popular notion of grounding: the project is at bottom to find, for every target truth P, some thing(s) whose existence grounds the truth of P. And this project, of course, is compatible with the view that there is no account of what truth is in terms of truthmaking. Later, Asay argues that there is no good reason to understand truthmaking as being more fine-grained than necessitation (chap. 3). Yet even if this is granted (but see below), at the stage of the dialectics under consideration appeal to grounding is a live option.(2) Asay argues that for the purposes of the ontological accounting project as he understands it, truthmaking can be understood as necessitation: x makes proposition P true just in case the existence of x necessarily implies the truth of P—or more officially: just in case necessarily, if x exists, then P is true. I doubt it.He starts by claiming that the account is good enough at least when the focus is on contingent truths (60). Is it? Suppose, with Asay, that the proposition that Socrates exists is among the target truths. Friends of the ontological accounting project must then put a truthmaker for that proposition in the ontology box. Socrates is the obvious candidate. But if the necessitation account of truthmaking is correct, then there are lots of other candidates, for instance {Socrates}, the fusion of Socrates and the Eiffel Tower, and the whole world. Would they do a good job if they added one of these entities instead of Socrates to take care of the proposition under consideration? If the instruction is “add something to the ontology box, whatever it is, that makes the proposition true,” as it is most natural to suppose and as, so far as I can see, Asay seems to assume, then the answer must surely be that they would.Yet, as many parts of the book illustrate, this does not appear to conform to how Asay understands ontological accounting. Let me just illustrate the point starting from Asay’s reply to an objection against the necessitation account of truthmaking (62–63). Assuming the necessity of biological origins, Barack Obama Jr. necessitates the proposition that Barack Obama Sr. exists. Hence, by the account of truthmaking as necessitation, Barack Obama Jr. makes the proposition true. Is it OK then to put Barack Obama Jr. in the ontology box to take care of this proposition? Asay anticipates the objection that it is rather Barack Obama Sr. that should be added for that purpose. But he then replies that it is not a problem to add the son, since there are other propositions, such that the proposition that Barack Obama Sr. married Ann Dunham in 1961, for which the father will have to be added. But why think that the father has to be added to take care of this latter proposition? Why not add instead the marriage? Or the biggest event of all, the history of the whole world? On the necessitation account of truthmaking, all these entities make the proposition true, and so they should be acceptable candidates. Despite what he officially contends, thus, Asay takes truthmaking to be more fine-grained than necessitation—or so it seems to me.(3) Consider the following two claims, where Greg is the greenness trope that inheres in Tom the tomato:(a) Greg makes it true that Tom is green(b) Greg makes Tom be greenThey differ in an important way. Whereas (a) involves the notion of truth, (b) does not. Both involve the idea of “making,” but only (a) involves the notion of truthmaking. Let me use ‘plain making’ for the notion of making at work in (b). We may take the general form of plain making claims to be ‘x makes it that p’. On that account, it is natural to view truthmaking claims like (a) as special cases of plain making claims: it is natural indeed to hold that x makes it true that p just in case x makes it that it is true that p. (Plain making is a notion which friends of grounding would naturally take to be definable in terms of their favorite notion, along the following lines: x makes it that p just in case the fact that x exists grounds the fact that p—or, in operator terms: just in case p because x exists.) Be that as it may, I suspect that what Asay is primarily interested in the book is plain making rather than truthmaking. (I say ‘primarily’ because at some places, most particularly in the chapter entitled “Truth,” he is definitely concerned with truthmaking.) Here are three pieces of evidence that substantiate my claim.First, at many places he describes certain questions and claims as being about truthmaking while they are, on the face of it, about mere plain making. Some nice examples are given by quotes from other authors which Asay discusses: “What can make me one of them rather than the other?” (7; in a discussion on Derek Parfit on personal identity); “What makes it wrong to kick dogs is that it causes them pain” (162; in a discussion on Simon Blackburn on projectivism in ethics); “We have nothing to say about what makes a F, it just is F; that is a basic and inexplicable fact about the universe” (190; in a discussion on Michael Devitt against David Armstrong). Second, he insists throughout the book that truthmaker theory is part of metaphysics and denies the notion of truthmaking the status of a semantic notion—despite the fact that truth is a semantic notion (see especially 150). Finally, there is a direct claim: “Our topic, at bottom, concerns what it is for an object to have a property” (199).Failing to properly distinguish between truthmaking and plain making is not uncommon in truthmaker theory, and so the blame cannot be put (only) on Asay. Be that as it may, one is free to read the book with the distinction in mind and try to figure out which issues concern specifically truthmaking and which concern mere plain making. Doing so is, I believe, especially rewarding

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