What makes the proposition 'Either it is raining or it is sunny' true, according to truthmaker theory?
ABoth the fact that it is raining AND the fact that it is sunny must exist as truthmakers
BA special 'disjunction fact' — the fact of there being a disjunction — must exist as a distinct entity
CThe proposition is self-certifying and needs no external truthmaker
DThe fact that it is raining (or the fact that it is sunny) is sufficient — a truthmaker for either disjunct makes the whole disjunction true
A disjunction is made true by a truthmaker for either disjunct — you only need one of them. This illustrates a key insight: truthmakers need not mirror the logical complexity of the propositions they make true. You don't need a 'disjunction fact'; the existence of rain (or the existence of sunshine) is sufficient. Truthmaker theory maps the structure of reality onto the structure of propositions, but this mapping need not be one-to-one.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
A philosopher argues: 'The proposition There are no unicorns is made true by all the actual animals in existence — each of which is not a unicorn.' A truthmaker maximalist would most likely respond:
AThis is correct — the collection of non-unicorn animals constitutes a sufficient positive truthmaker
BNo collection of positive facts about what exists can rule out the existence of additional things, like unicorns, without a totality fact
CNegative truths do not require truthmakers, so the question is irrelevant
DThe proposition is not meaningful because it refers to non-existent objects
The maximalist problem with negative truths is that no collection of positive facts about what exists rules out the existence of unicorns — you could always add unicorns to the world alongside all the actual animals. A totality fact — the fact that the existing things are all the existing things — is needed to close off this possibility. Without it, the positive facts about actual animals are compatible with unicorns also existing. This is why negative truths are the hardest case for truthmaker theory.
Question 3 True / False
Truthmakers are the causes or explanations of why a proposition is true — to know the truthmaker is to understand why the proposition came to be true.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Truthmakers are entities in virtue of which a proposition is true — a metaphysical grounding relation, not a causal one. The ball's redness is what makes 'this ball is red' true; the redness is not the cause of the truth in any temporal sense. Causes involve time and processes; truthmaking is a synchronic relation of ontological dependence. Confusing truthmakers with causes or explanations is a listed misconception — the two notions are logically distinct.
Question 4 True / False
A universal proposition like 'All emeralds are green' might require, as truthmakers, individual facts about each emerald being green — rather than a single unified truthmaker that mirrors the universal logical form.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
Truthmakers need not mirror the logical form of the propositions they make true, and the search for minimal adequate truthmakers is part of the project. For a universal claim, one view is that it is made true by all the relevant individual facts (each emerald's greenness) plus a totality fact (these are all the emeralds). Another view posits a general fact or law as a truthmaker for the universal. The point is that the logical structure of the proposition does not dictate the ontological structure of its truthmakers.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why are negative truths the hardest case for truthmaker theory, and what are two competing strategies philosophers use to handle them?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Negative truths like 'There are no unicorns' cannot be made true by any positive entity — a unicorn is precisely what's absent, and any collection of actual things is compatible with unicorns also existing. Two strategies: (1) Truthmaker maximalism posits totality facts — the fact that the existing things are all the existing things — as a positive entity that rules out absences. But totality facts are metaphysically suspicious because they seem to quantify over everything that doesn't exist. (2) An alternative denies that negative truths require positive truthmakers, holding they hold in virtue of the absence of false-makers rather than the presence of truth-makers.
This debate reveals a deep tension in truthmaker theory between the intuition that all truths should be grounded in positive reality and the difficulty of providing positive grounds for facts about what doesn't exist. The maximalist position generates controversial ontological commitments (totality facts, perhaps absences as entities); the minimalist position must explain what grounds negative truths if not positive entities. Neither solution is fully satisfying, which is why negative truths remain a live research problem in analytic metaphysics.