Questions: Truthmakers and Grounding

Question 1

Socrates exists. According to truthmaker theory, what is the relationship between this fact and the proposition 'Socrates exists'?

• A. The proposition being true is what brings Socrates into existence — truth is ontologically prior
• B. Socrates' existence necessitates the proposition's truth — the relation runs from world to proposition
• C. The proposition and the fact are logically equivalent but neither grounds the other
• D. Truthmaking is a linguistic convention with no genuine metaphysical implications

Answer: (B)

Truthmaker theory holds that truth is not free-floating: something in the world must make a proposition true. The relation runs from world to proposition — Socrates' existence necessitates the truth of 'Socrates exists,' not the other way around. This is a correspondence-based picture: reality determines truth. Options A and C reverse or neutralize the direction of the relation, which is exactly what truthmaker theory is designed to avoid.

Question 2

A philosopher argues: 'The moral wrongness of this deception is grounded in the natural facts about harm and broken trust — not the other way around.' This is an example of:

• A. A truthmaker claim, since it explains what makes propositions about wrongness true
• B. Grounding, since it specifies a dependence relation between facts at different levels of reality
• C. Causal explanation, since harm and deception stand in a cause-effect relationship to wrongness
• D. Truthmaker maximalism, since it implies every moral truth must have a physical truthmaker

Answer: (B)

Grounding is a broader relation than truthmaking — it can hold between facts, properties, or entities at different levels of reality, not only between the world and propositions. The wrongness is grounded in (depends on, is explained by) the natural properties. This is metaphysical explanation, not causal explanation — grounding is typically synchronic (the moral fact holds in virtue of the natural facts at the same time), while causation traces temporal sequences.

Question 3

Truthmaker theory holds that a proposition can be true without there being anything in the world that makes it true.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Truthmaker theory is precisely the denial of this claim. The core commitment is that truth is not free-floating: every true proposition must have a truthmaker — an entity whose existence necessitates the proposition's truth. Denying this leads to 'ontological free lunches,' truths that correspond to nothing real. The hard cases (negative truths, modal truths) reveal just how much work the theory does in forcing us to account for what must exist.

Question 4

Grounding differs from causation in that it is typically a synchronic dependence relation connecting levels of reality rather than a temporal sequence between events.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Grounding explains why water is H₂O in virtue of its atomic constituents — not over time, but at the same moment. Causation traces how earlier events bring about later ones. Grounding gives metaphysical 'because' explanations (wrongness is wrong because of harm), while causation gives scientific 'because' explanations (the glass broke because it fell). This distinction is essential: confusing them collapses the question of what makes something the case into the question of how it came about.

Question 5

What philosophical work does truthmaker theory do — what would be lost if we said propositions can simply be true without anything in the world making them true?

Model answer: Truthmaker theory enforces ontological discipline: it requires that any claim we take to be true must correspond to something that exists or obtains. Without it, truth becomes disconnected from reality — we could assert 'there are numbers,' 'there are no unicorns,' or 'it is possible that dragons exist' without being accountable for what entities those claims require. Truthmaker theory forces us to ask: what must exist for this to be true? Rejecting it allows free-floating truths with no worldly basis, undermining the correspondence picture of truth.

This is the core ontological motivation for truthmaker theory. It prevents a certain kind of metaphysical irresponsibility: asserting truths while dodging questions about what in the world backs them. The puzzles this generates (what is the truthmaker for 'there are no unicorns'?) reveal how demanding a full theory of truth must be — and why grounding theory emerged as a companion framework to explain the structure of what those worldly backing entities must look like.