Truthmakers and modality

This paper attempts to locate, within an actualist ontology, truthmakers for modal truths: truths of the form <Possibly, p> or <Necessarily, p>. In Sect. 1 I motivate the demand for substantial truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 2 I criticise Armstrong’s account of truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 3 I examine essentialism and defend an account of what makes essentialist attributions true, but I argue that this does not solve the problem of modal truth in general. In Sect. 4 I discuss, and dismiss, a theistic account of the source of modal truth proposed by Alexander Pruss. In Sect. 5 I offer a means of (dis)solving the problem.     

Truthmakers and Normative Conflicts

Studia Logica - By building on work by Kit Fine, we develop a sound and complete truthmaker semantics for Lou Goble’s conflict tolerant deontic logic $$\mathbf {BDL}$$.     

Truthmakers and necessary connections

In this paper I examine the objection to truthmaker theory, forcibly made by David Lewis and endorsed by many, that it violates the Humean denial of necessary connections between distinct existences. In Sect. 1 I present the argument that acceptance of truthmakers commits us to necessary connections. In Sect. 2 I examine Lewis’ ‘Things-qua-truthmakers’ theory which attempts to give truthmakers without such a commitment, and find it wanting. In Sects. 3–5 I discuss various formulations of the denial of necessary connections and argue that each of them is either false or compatible with truthmaker theory. In Sect. 6 I show how the truthmaker theorist can resist the charge that they are committed to necessary exclusions between possible existents. I conclude that there is no good objection to truthmaker theory on the grounds that it violates the Humean dictum.     

Truthmakers and the direct argument

The truthmaker literature has recently come to the consensus that the logic of truthmaking is distinct from classical propositional logic. This development has huge implications for the free will literature. Since free will and moral responsibility are primarily ontological concerns (and not semantic concerns) the logic of truthmaking ought to be central to the free will debate. I shall demonstrate that counterexamples to transfer principles employed in the direct argument occur precisely where a plausible logic of truthmaking diverges from classical logic. Further, restricted transfer principles (like the ones employed by McKenna, Stump, and Warfield) are as problematic as the original formulation of the direct argument.     

Truthmakers: a tale of two explanatory projects

Truthmakers are supposed to explain the truth of propositions, but it is unclear what kind of explanation truthmakers can provide. In this paper, I argue that ‘truthmaker explanations’ conflate two different explanatory projects. The first project is essentially concerned with truth, while the second project is concerned with reductive explanation. It is the latter project, I maintain, which is really central to truthmaking theory. On this basis, a general account of truthmaking can be formulated, which, when combined with a specific theory of reduction (the ‘conceptual entailment approach’), yields a new analysis of truthmaking. This analysis is intuitively appealing and avoids the problem of necessary truths, which poses a serious obstacle for standard accounts.     

Minimal Disagreement

Philosophia - In the recent debate about the semantics of perspectival expressions (predicates of taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral terms, epistemic modals, epistemic terms etc.), disagreement has...     

Minimal Anti-Humeanism

There is a tension in our theorizing about laws of nature: our practice of using and reasoning with laws of nature suggests that laws are universal generalizations, but if laws are universal generalizations then we face the problem of explanatory circularity. In this paper I elucidate this tension and show how it motivates a view of laws that I call Minimal Anti-Humeanism. This view says that the laws are the universal generalizations that are not grounded in their instances. I argue that this view has a variety of advantages that could make it attractive to people with both Humean and anti-Humean inclinations.     

Minimal majorities and minorities

This study is one of a series of experiments designed to examine how sociostructural factors such as group numbers, power and status affect intergroup behaviour. Using a variant of Tajfel's ‘minimal group’ paradigm the present study investigated the intergroup behaviour of college students categorized as numerical minority, majority or ‘equal’ group members. The effects of salient (S) versus non-salient (S?) group categorizations were also examined. These manipulations yielded a 3 × 2 design matrix consisting of majority/equal/minority × salient (S)/non-salient (S?) group conditions. Unlike most previous studies using this paradigm, subjects' responses on Tajfel's point distribution matrices were supplemented with subjects' report of their own and outgroup's point distribution strategies. As expected, minimal group results were replicated in the ‘equal’ group (S?) condition such that mere categorization into ingroup/outgroup was sufficient to foster intergroup discrimination. However salient (S) equal group members were more fair than discriminatory in their responses. Minorities (S/S?) were generally less fair than equal groups, showed high levels of absolute ingroup favouritism (S?) while simultaneously attempting to establish positive distinctiveness from majorities. Though majorities were generally fair (S/S?), they also appeared to be more concerned than minorities about maintaining positive differentials between themselves and minorities. Although, majority (S/S?) and equal group (S?) members accurately reported their actual distribution strategies, minorities (S/S?) and equal (S) group members were not as accurate in their self reports. Overall the present results are consistent with hypotheses derived from Social Identity Theory. But the results also show that sociostructural variables such as group numbers can have an important impact on intergroup behaviours.     

Minimal Empiricism Without Dogmas

John McDowell has defended a position called minimal empiricism, that aims to avoid the oscillation between traditional empiricism’s commitment to a set of contents working as external justifiers for our system of beliefs and a coherentist position where our thought receives no constraint from the world. We share McDowell’s dissatisfaction with both options, but find his minimal empiricism committed to the idea of a tribunal of experience where isolated contents are infused into our network of inferences. This commitment is prone to sceptical attacks and waters down McDowell’s holism. We propose to retain McDowell’s partial re-enchantment of nature—without appealing to McDowell’s Kantian conception of experience—, and argue that it is sufficient to avoid the oscillation and to make sense of the objectivity of thought.

Truthmakers and ontological commitment: or how to deal with complex objects and mathematical ontology without getting into trouble

What are the ontological commitments of a sentence? In this paper I offer an answer from the perspective of the truthmaker theorist that contrasts with the familiar Quinean criterion. I detail some of the benefits of thinking of things this way: they include making the composition debate tractable without appealing to a neo-Carnapian metaontology, making sense of neo-Fregeanism, and dispensing with some otherwise recalcitrant necessary connections.     

Learning from Minimal Economic Models

It is argued that one can learn from minimal economic models. Minimal models are models that are not similar to the real world, do not resemble some of its features, and do not adhere to accepted regularities. One learns from a model if constructing and analysing the model affects one’s confidence in hypotheses about the world. Economic models, I argue, are often assessed for their credibility. If a model is judged credible, it is considered to be a relevant possibility. Considering such relevant possibilities may affect one’s confidence in necessity or impossibility hypotheses. Thus, one can learn from minimal economic models.

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Prosodic Effects in Minimal Attachment

This experiment explores the role of prosodic cues in resolving temporary morphosyntactic ambiguities in spoken language comprehension. Using a cross-modal naming task, we find that prosodic cues are as effective as overt lexical cues in controlling how the listener resolves attachment ambiguities. This suggests that prosodic factors can affect the early stages of parsing and interpretation.     

Minimal Varieties of Involutive Residuated Lattices

We establish the existence uncountably many atoms in the subvariety lattice of the variety of involutive residuated lattices. The proof utilizes a construction used in the proof of the corresponding result for residuated lattices and is based on the fact that every residuated lattice with greatest element can be associated in a canonical way with an involutive residuated lattice. Dedicated to the memory of Willem Johannes Blok