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Is there a dilemma for the truthmaker non-maximalist?

Alexander Skiles

pp. 3649-3659

Abstract

Mark Jago has presented a dilemma for truthmaker non-maximalism—the thesis that some but not all truths require truthmakers. The dilemma arises because some truths that do not require truthmakers by the non-maximalist’s lights (e.g., that Santa Claus does not exist) are necessitated by truths that do (e.g., that Barack Obama knows that Santa Claus does not exist). According to Jago, the non-maximalist can supply a truthmaker for such a truth only by conceding the primary motivation for the view: that it allows one to avoid positing strange ‘negative’ entities without adopting a non-standard account of the necessary features of ordinary things. In this paper, I sketch out and defend two plausible non-maximalist proposals that evade Jago’s dilemma.

Publication details

Published in:

(2014) Synthese 191 (15).

Pages: 3649-3659

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0485-3

Full citation:

Skiles Alexander (2014) „Is there a dilemma for the truthmaker non-maximalist?“. Synthese 191 (15), 3649–3659.