Title:
The Metaphysics of Truthmaker Semantics
Abstract:
Philosophers have postulated the existence of truthmakers and developed a semantics in which these entities can verify and falsify the statements of languages having various expressive capacities. In this paper, I examine the foundations of one such research agenda and show that they can be formally represented and derived in a general metaphysical framework. In particular, I shall focus on the philosophical foundations of truthmaker semantics, as laid down in Part I, Section 4 of Fine 2017 (“Truthmaker Semantice”). I show that the primitive notions that Fine uses to describe truthmaker states can be defined in object theory and that the principles he stipulates for truthmaker states (in terms of his primitive notions) can be derived as theorems of object theory.