Jamin Asay

According to the familiar Quinean understanding of ontological commitment, (1) one undertakes ontological commitments only via theoretical regimentations, and (2) ontological commitments are to be identified with the domain of a theory’s quantifiers. Jody Azzouni accepts (1), but rejects (2). Azzouni accepts (1) because he believes that no vernacular expression carries ontological commitments. He rejects (2) by locating a theory’s commitments with the extension of an existence predicate. I argue that Azzouni’s two theses undermine each other. If ontological commitments follow from predications of existence, then ontological commitments can be expressed in the vernacular via negative existential sentences.

Truthmaker theory is the branch of metaphysics that explores the relationships between what is true and what exists. Discussions of truthmakers and truthmaking typically start with the idea that truth depends on being, and not vice versa. For example, if the sentence ‘Kangaroos live in Australia’ is true, then there are kangaroos living in Australia. And if there are kangaroos living in Australia, then the sentence ‘Kangaroos live in Australia’ is true. But we can ask whether the sentence is true because of the way the world is, or whether the world is the way it is because the sentence is true. Truthmaker theorists make the former claim that the sentence is true because of what exists in the world; it is not the case that the world is the way it is because of which sentences are true. Truthmaker theorists use this fundamental idea as a starting point for clarifying the nature of truth and its relationship to ontology, and to advance various views in metaphysics concerning the nature of the past and future, counterfactual conditionals, modality, and many others. Because truthmaker theorists end up with differing views concerning all these matters, what ultimately unites them is not any single thesis but rather a commitment to thinking that the idea of truthmaking is a useful one for pursuing metaphysical inquiry. Others might conceive of ‘truthmaker theory’ more strictly (such as by requiring a commitment to all truths having truthmakers, or all truthmakers being of a particular ontological variety), though defining the enterprise in this way will inevitably fail to capture all those earnestly pursuing investigation into truthmaking.

Constructive empiricists claim to offer a reconstruction of the aim and practice of science without adopting all the metaphysical commitments of scientific realism. Deflationists about truth boast of the ability to offer a full account of the nature of truth without adopting the metaphysical commitments accompanying substantive accounts. Though the two views would form an attractive package, I argue that the pairing is not possible: constructive empiricism requires a substantive account of truth. I articulate what sort of account of truth and empirical adequacy the constructive empiricist must offer and then show why deflationists cannot uphold such an account.

Jamin Asay's book offers a fresh and daring perspective on the age-old question 'What is truth?', with a comprehensive articulation and defence of primitivism, the view that truth is a fundamental and indefinable concept. Often associated with Frege and the early Russell and Moore, primitivism has been largely absent from the larger conversation surrounding the nature of truth. Asay defends primitivism by drawing on a range of arguments from metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of logic, and navigates between correspondence theory and deflationism by reviving analytic philosophy's first theory of truth. In its exploration of the role that truth plays in our cognitive and linguistic lives, The Primitivist Theory of Truth offers an account of not just the nature of truth, but the foundational role that truth plays in our conceptual scheme. It will be valuable for students and scholars of philosophy of language and of metaphysics.

Conceptual engineers are always on the lookout for concepts that can be improved upon or replaced. Kevin Scharp has argued that the concept truth is inconsistent, and that this inconsistency thwarts its ability to serve in philosophical and scientific explanatory projects, such as developing linguistic theories of meaning. In this paper I present Scharp’s view about what makes a concept inconsistent, and why he believes that truth in particular is inconsistent. Then I examine the concepts that he suggests should replace truth for various explanatory and expressive duties. I argue that those concepts are not up to the tasks for which they are posited, and so Scharp’s replacement methodology itself needs to be reengineered.

The theory of truthmaking has long aroused skepticism from philosophers who believe it to be tangled up in contentious ontological commitments and unnecessary theoretical baggage. In this book, Jamin Asay shows why that suspicion is unfounded. Challenging the current orthodoxy that truthmaking's fundamental purpose is to be a tool for explaining why truths are true, Asay revives the conception of truthmaking as fundamentally an exercise in ontology: a means for coordinating one's beliefs about what is true and one's ontological commitments. He goes on to show how truthmaking connects to analyticity, truth, and realism, and how it contributes to debates over nominalism, presentism, mathematical objects, and fictional characters. His book is the most comprehensive exploration to date into what truthmaking is and how it contributes to metaphysical debates across philosophy, and will interest a wide range of readers in metaphysics and beyond.

In the last decade Robert Barnard and Joseph Ulatowski have conducted a number of experimental studies in order to better understand the ordinary notion of truth. In this paper I critically engage their ecological approach to the study of truth, and argue for a wider perspective on how truth should be empirically studied: in addition to the experimental data that they emphasize and collect, there should also be a substantial observational element to conceptual ecology. I then critically evaluate the conclusions they draw from their data, as they relate to correspondence, pluralism, and objectivity. Along the way, I offer suggestions for future lines of research for a more expansive and effective ecological exploration of truth.

Truthmaking is the metaphysical exploration of the idea that what is true depends upon what exists. Truthmaker theorists argue about what the truthmaking relation involves, which truths require truthmakers, and what those truthmakers are. This Element covers the dominant views on these core issues in truthmaking. It also explores some key metaphysical topics and debates that are usefully approached by employing the tools of truthmaker theory: the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of entities from the past, and the debate between actualists and possibilists over merely possible states of affairs. In the final section, the Element explores how to think about truthmakers for truths involving social constructions.

A common account of the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths is that while the former are true solely in virtue of meaning, the latter are true also in virtue of the way of the world. Quine famously disputed this characterization, and his skepticism over the analytic/synthetic distinction has cast a long shadow. Against this skepticism, I argue that the common account comes close to the truth, and that truthmaker theory in particular offers the resources for providing a compelling account of the distinction that preserves the basic ideas behind it, and avoids the standard criticisms facing the distinction. In particular, I argue that analytic truths are truths that ontologically depend in no way whatsoever upon what exists.