Truth And Being:A Study On Truthmaker Theory

In the world,there are things of the following two kinds.On the one hand,there are roses,tables and other things that are just there;and these things are not true or false,but simply exist.On the other hand,there are also such things as written statements in a news,sentences in a book and these things not only exist in the world but are also saying something and so can be either true or false.Truthmaker theorists hold that in order for any truth bearer to be true there must be something outside the text that makes it true.This kind of antisymmetrical relation of dependency between truth and being motivates the truthmaker theory which attracts broad attention in contemporary metaphysics.The dissertation offers a whole research on truthmaker theory and replies to three core questions.The first one is how to understand the truthmaking relation,the second one is the scope of truthmaker theory,the third one is the orientation of the truthmaker theory.There are four dominant understanding of truthmaking relation:axiomatic truthmaking,truthmaking within entailment,Armstrong's cross-category truthmaking,truthmaking as grounding relation.The most orthodox and influential understanding which achieves the initial goal is from Armstrong who has long advocated the use of truthmakers.The cross-category account is superior to the other three accounts because it captures the intuition that truth depend on being not the other way around best.As truthmaking is a relation between truth and being,truth belong to language while being belong to the world,they can not be in the same category.Axiomatic truthmaking and truthmaking within entailment are faced with the problem of irrelevant truthmakers which is hard to solve.The grounding account which takes world as the only one truthmaker for all truth is counterintuitive,because it erases the difference of various kinds of truth.Truthmaker maximalism claims that every truth has a truthmaker.It is an untenable position for it is incompatible with formal necessary truth which are true in all possible worlds.With respect to the scope of truthmaker theory,a weakened principle that every contingent truth has a truthmaker is suggested.It is generally recognized that positive facts can be accepted but negative facts should be rejected.It seems unreasonable to regard negative facts as truthmakers for negative truth.Russell was an forerunner of negative facts during his logical atomism who thought the rejection of negative facts was human prejudice.But when Russell turned into neutral monism,he discarded negative facts.The change of Russell's position is unsatisfactory and need a revaluation.Many philosophers are suspicious of negative faces for their infinite numbers.However,this worry is unnecessary because negative facts are not floating as they are restrained by positive facts.Besides,negative actions are important causes of negative facts.The view that negative facts are truthmakers for negative truth is defended.Armstrong contends that truthmaker theory is a sophisticated version of correspondence theory of truth.In fact,this straightforward position is wrong for he identifies the truthmaking relation with correspondence.Truthmaker theory says that if T makes<p>true,then<p>cannot make T true.However,if<p>corresponded to a fact,then the fact also corresponded to<p>.The former is antisymmetrical,while the latter is symmetrical.There are fundamental differences between truth making and correspondence.More generally,truthmaker theory is not a theory of truth in any sense.The former says that truth have an ontological ground which really deal with the issue of what exit while the latter seeks to find a definition of truth such as the correspondence theory,the coherence theory,deflationary theory or sematic theory.In a word,truthmaker theory is a branch of metaphysics.Finally,truthmaker theory is not the only way to understand the relation between truth and being.