Abstract:

Among truthmaker theorists it is generally thought that we are not able to use the Entailment Principle (i.e. the principle according to which truthmaking distributes across entailment) to ground negative truths. But these theorists usually only discuss truthmakers for truth-functional complexes, thereby overlooking the fact that there are non-truth-functional complexes whose truth values are not solely determined by the truth or falsity of their atomic propositions. And once we expand the class of truths that require their own bespoke truthmakers to also include these, there is no reason to exempt negative truths from grounding. For given that truthmaking is closed under entailment and every negative truths is entailed by some non-truth-functional complex or other, any resources rich enough to ground the truth of the latter will do the same job for the former. In the present paper I discuss Hugh Mellor’s non-relational view of causation and argue that it provides us with an elegant and economical solution to the problem of negative truths.

Organised by the Research Unit for Epistemology, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Cognition

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