Modelado para la determinación de la huella de carbono en cadena de

The standard accounts of the truthmaking relation that we have now canvassed are formulated with an eye toward solving the problem of malignant necessitators. In the

remainder of section 1.2, I raise and resolve a different worry. The worry is that accounts like

TM1 through TM5 hold as a consequence that analytic truths have truthmakers. But

in virtue of the existence of objects, and so any account that suggests otherwise is mistaken. Hence, I argue for an account of the truthmaking relation that explicitly forbids analytic truths from entering into it.

Not much has been written on the subject of truthmakers for analytic truths.31 But a common observation to make about analytic truths is that they are true solely in virtue of their meaning, while synthetic truths are true in virtue of that and something more. Indeed, that suggestion is the first candidate that Quine (1951) considers (and dismisses) for drawing the analytic/synthetic distinction. The appearance of the phrase ‘in virtue of’ should catch the eye of anyone interested in truthmaker theory. Truthmakers are the objects in virtue of which truths are true. A natural thought, then, is that analytic truths are made true by their

meanings.32 Let us take the following as our example of an analytic truth: (R) All red things are colored.

It is no uncontroversial matter saying what meanings are.33 To give us something to work with, suppose that the meaning of R is given by the concepts that constitute it.34 We could

then say, which seems plausible, that R is true in virtue of the concepts RED and COLOR. Our

concept COLOR is contained inside our concept RED, such that one cannot think that

something is red without thereby thinking of it as being colored, and so R is true.35

To evaluate the claim that R is made true by RED and COLOR, we must return to the

basic insights that drive truthmaker theory. Truthmakers are objects that provide the requisite

31_{For what little there is, see Armstrong 2004: 109-111, Simons 2007b, Hofmann and Horvath 2008, and}

Schulte Forthcoming: 16-17. For skepticism about any sort of “metaphysical analyticity” see Boghossian 1996.

32_{This is the view that Armstrong recommends (2004: 109-110).}

33_{Armstrong (2004: 109) hopes for a naturalistic account, as do Peter Simons (2007b: 69) and I.} 34_{It is no uncontroversial matter what concepts are, either. I shall be assuming that they are contingent}

psychological entities, dependent for their existence on the mental activities of concept users.

ontological grounds for truths. If R is made true by its constitutive concepts, then R is

ontologically grounded by RED and COLOR, such that its truth depends upon the existence of

those concepts. But while it may seem correct to say that R is true in virtue of the two

concepts, I do not think that it is true because the two concepts provide for it any ontological ground. R does not owe its truth to the existence of the two concepts. To see why, consider a

possible world in which the concepts do not exist, such as a world with no concept users. It is true of such a world that red things are colored. After all, it is true of every world that red

things are colored. R is true regardless of whether anyone has the concepts it employs. Now,

the fact that R is true of worlds where its putative actual world truthmakers do not exist does

not show that its putative truthmakers are not its truthmakers in the actual world. I make it true that there are humans, even though there are worlds without me where it remains true. Still, humans are the kind of thing that make it true that there are humans. That claim is true of all and only those worlds where humans exist. If concepts are what make analytic truths true, then, by parity of reasoning, they should be true of all and only those worlds where the relevant concepts exist. But that is false. Concepts are contingent existences; analyticities are necessary truths. If analytic truths are true in virtue of the existence of their constitutive

concepts, then we lose the ability to account for what would have made analyticities true had the world been without any concepts.36Our concepts cannot make them true in such

36_{One might, in response, conclude that concepts are, after all, not psychologically contingent entities, but rather}

Platonic or ersatz objects. If so, then they might exist necessarily, and so will be around to serve as truthmakers for analyticities. Perhaps there are such things, but notice that to think that analytic truths are grounded in such entities is to think that analytic truths are deeply ontologically loaded (as Platonists think of mathematical truths). This is not an appealing view of what are supposed to be the most ontologically innocuous of claims. But for those who do take on views of concepts that are Fregean (1951), or otherwise take concepts to be necessary beings, they need not automatically conclude that analyticities are made true by them, in the sense

that their truth depends upon the existence of such concepts. The suggestion, explored below, is that concepts

may help to explain the truth of analyticities despite not making them true. If they do take their necessarily existing concepts to be truthmakers for analyticities, they will run into a paradox. (See footnote 63 of this chapter.)

possibilities, for ex hypothesi they do not exist in such scenarios. For something to be a

truthmaker, it must at the least exist.

The right conclusion to draw is that analytic truths are not true in virtue of the

existence of the concepts that give them their meaning. May we still maintain that analytic

truths are true in virtue of the concepts that give them meaning? I believe that we can. To do so, we need to recognize that the ‘in virtue of’ phraseology need not indicate only one relation. Truthmaker theorists reject the idea that truth can be a fundamental constituent of reality. Truths require grounds; their truth is owed to something in the world. The truth that there are penguins, for example, owes its truth to the various penguins populating the planet. Focusing on cases like this, we see that truths often require ontological grounds. Certain

things have to exist in order for certain truths to be true. But not all truths require ontological grounds; ontological positing is not the only means of avoiding brute truths.

Suppose, then, that there are two distinct kinds of truths. For both kinds, their truth is not taken to be fundamental, but rather to be derivative. One kind includes truths like the truth that there are penguins that are true in virtue of the world containing certain kinds of things. The second kind of truths are ontologically vacuous; their truth is not dependent upon the existence or non-existence of anything. Hence, they are necessarily true, true regardless of how the world is. Still, their truth is not a brute, fundamental feature of reality; they owe their truth not to the existence of the citizens of the world, but to (something in the

neighborhood of) the meanings of words. ‘All red things are colored’ is true in virtue of the concepts RED and COLOR. The sentence is not true in virtue of the existence of the concepts,

Here, now, is the proposal. Truthmaker theory is a metaphysical enterprise that gives an ontological accounting of the truths that we accept. The search for ontological grounds— the search for truthmakers—is a helpful way of understanding ontological investigation. But we should not automatically conclude that all truths require ontological ground. Armstrong often recounts how he and Charlie Martin were persuaded that what was wrong with phenomenalism and behaviorism was that they appealed to counterfactual truths without offering any ontological grounds for them (e.g., 2004: 1-3). Perhaps, though, ontological grounds are not the only kind of grounding that truths may have. An ontologically

ungrounded counterfactual is one thing; an ontologically ungrounded analyticity may well be quite another. My view is that truthmaking ambitions are misplaced when applied to analytic truths. Analytic truths are ontologically empty; their truth does not depend upon the existence of anything whatsoever. Their truth still needs to be accounted for; it’s just that their truth admits of a distinctly non-ontologicalaccounting. Synthetic truths, by contrast, are true in

virtue of the way the world; their truth must admit of a distinctly ontological accounting.37

On the present suggestion, there are two senses of ‘being true in virtue of’, each attaching to one side of the analytic/synthetic divide. Only one involves a kind of ontological dependence. That notion is the one central to traditional truthmaker theory. Analytic truths are also true in virtue of something, but here we are not employing a relation that involves ontological dependence; instead, what seems to be involved is some sort of conceptual dependence. Thus, even if analyticities are true in virtue of their constitutive concepts, they are not made true by them, in the way those words are usually meant. Unfortunately, giving a

full analysis of analyticity in terms of this suggestion of conceptual dependence is beyond the

37_{The view originally considered by Armstrong in his first explicit explorations of truthmaking was that all}

contingent truths have truthmakers (1969: 23, 1989a, 1989b: 88). Rodriguez-Pereyra prefers to restrict truthmaking to “an important class of synthetic true propositions”, but doesn’t say why (2005: 18).

scope of this project.38 What is crucial for our project—giving an account of the truthmaking

relation and the truths that stand in it—is to see that analytic truths are not made true in this

ontological sense, and so must be restricted from the truthmaking relation.

1.2.4. Troubles for truthmaking

If the foregoing is on the right track, it is mistaken to look for truthmakers for analytic truths. Hence, any account of the truthmaking relation that holds as a consequence that analyticities do have truthmakers must be mistaken. As I shall now argue, all of the going accounts of the truthmaking relation in the literature have precisely this consequence, and so we need a different account of what the relation is that holds between a truth and its

truthmaker.

Let us begin with TM2, the bare necessitation account of truthmaking. As we saw

above, many have argued that necessitation is insufficient for truthmaking because it leads to trivial truthmakers for necessary truths. According to TM2, every object is a truthmaker for

every necessary truth. Since analytic truths are necessary truths, TM2 holds that analyticities

are made true many times over. If analytic truths do not have truthmakers, then truthmaking cannot be necessitation.

It might be more. Hence, Merricks (2007) adopts TM3 and its additional aboutness

constraint, thereby avoiding the problem of trivial truthmakers for necessities. But TM3 fares

no better than its predecessor at handling analyticities. Consider, for example: (S) All sentences are sentences.

S is an analytic truth. It is also a necessary truth, and so is a self-necessitator: it’s impossible

for S to exist and not be true.39 But S is also about itself; S is about all sentences, S included.

Hence, S is about itself and necessitates itself, and so, according to TM3, makes itself true.

But S has no truthmaker, since it is analytic. TM3 is false.

Turn now to Lowe’s essential dependence account of truthmaking (2007). When it comes to (interpreted) sentences, it is their meaning that makes them the sentences they are, that constitutes their essence. The problem for TM4 is that it holds that all analytic truths

make themselves true. It is of the essence of analytic truths that they are true regardless of what exists; S, being the sentence that it is, is such that, if it exists, it is guaranteed to be true.

Analytic truths need nothing else around in order to be true; it is their very vacuity that makes them analytic. So while I might not make S true, since I do not figure into its essence, S does figure into its own essence, such that, according to TM4, it makes itself true. But that

cannot be, for S has no truthmaker.

Next consider Jonathan Schaffer’s (2010) view of truthmaking as grounding. Schaffer takes grounding to be a primitive notion, but does hold that it is a hyperintensional relation that holds between substances and truth. Since grounding is taken as a primitive, it’s hard to evaluate definitively whether analyticities provide their own grounds. But we have just established that an analyticity’s essence guarantees its truth. Simply in virtue of being S, for

example, S is true. Further, there doesn’t seem to be anything else that grounds the truth of S.

As a necessary truth, S would still have been true even if all contingent existences had never

existed. So S looks to be grounded either in itself (or perhaps its meaning, however

construed). But that cannot be, since S has no truthmaker, and so by TM5 has no grounds.

Finally we come to the view that the truthmaking relation is primitive (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2005). Rodriguez-Pereyra adopts primitivism because, like Merricks, he thinks that

39_{Here I am taking}

S to be not just a sentence token, but an interpreted sentence token. After all, S is an example

truthmaking is stronger than necessitation. So Rodriguez-Pereyra might be thinking of truthmaking exactly along the lines that Merricks does. If so, then it offers no escape from our current problem. If he understands it differently, then we need a principled account of how it turns out that analyticities are not made true. To give that sort of account, as we shall below, we need to reject primitivism and offer in its place an acceptable analysis of the truthmaking relation that avoids the problems facing TM2 through TM5.