Linguistique de l’écrit

Revue internationale en libre accès

Revue | Volume | Article

235156

How negative truths are made true

Aaron M. Griffith

pp. 317-335

Résumé

Identifying plausible truthmakers for negative truths has been a serious and perennial problem for truthmaker theory. I argue here that negative truths (in particular contingent negative existential truths) are indeed made true but not in the way that positive truths are. I rely on a distinction between “existence-independence” and “variation-independence” drawn by Hoffman and Horvath (2008) to characterize the unique form of dependence negative truths exhibit on reality. The notion of variation-independence is then used to motivate a principle of truthmaking for contingent negative truths.

Détails de la publication

Publié dans:

(2015) Synthese 192 (1).

Pages: 317-335

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0570-7

Citation complète:

Griffith Aaron M., 2015, How negative truths are made true. Synthese 192 (1), 317-335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0570-7.