How negative truths are made true

Synthese 192 (1):317-335 (2015)
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Abstract

Identifying plausible truthmakers for negative truths has been a serious and perennial problem for truthmaker theory. I argue here that negative truths are indeed made true but not in the way that positive truths are. I rely on a distinction between “existence-independence” and “variation-independence” drawn by Hoffman and Horvath to characterize the unique form of dependence negative truths exhibit on reality. The notion of variation-independence is then used to motivate a principle of truthmaking for contingent negative truths

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Aaron Griffith
William & Mary

Citations of this work

Grounding nonexistence.Daniel Muñoz - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (2):209-229.
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The best thing about the deflationary theory of truth.Jamin Asay - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (1):109-131.
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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Naming and Necessity: Lectures Given to the Princeton University Philosophy Colloquium.Saul A. Kripke - 1980 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edited by Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel.
A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Guide to Ground.Kit Fine - 2012 - In Fabrice Correia & Benjamin Schnieder, Metaphysical grounding: understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 37--80.
Naming and necessity.Saul Kripke - 2010 - In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel, Arguing about language. New York: Routledge. pp. 431-433.

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