The essays collected in this volume concern the general question of truthmaking. Most of them also bear upon the metaphysical nature of truthmakers (moments, tropes, property-instances, Aristotelian substances, states of affairs, meanings or essences ? ). Taking as their starting point a famous seminal paper by K. Mulligan, P. Simons and B. Smith, as well as D. Armstrong’s outstanding contribution to the subject, they offer a fresh assay of the main concepts involved, in order to assess the explanatory value of truthmakers and truthmaker necessitarianism, and explore such delicate issues as contingent truth, bare possibility, tensed propositions, the ontological irreducibility of relations, the subsistence of facts and the epistemic role of negative truths. The collection as a whole provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking survey of the current debate about truthmaking theory and deserves to be read carefully by anyone interested in the relationship between language, thought and reality.

With contributions from David ARMSTRONG, Stefano CAPUTO, François CLEMENTZ, Pascal ENGEL, Herbert HOCHBERG, Philipp KELLER , Jonathan LOWE, Jean-Maurice MONNOYER, Kevin MULLIGAN, Stephen MUMFORD, Frederic NEF, Peter SIMONS, Barry SMITH, Jonathan SIMON ,

About the editor: Jean-Maurice Monnoyer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Provence (Aix-Marseille 1). He is the editor of Quine : Logique et Ontologie (L’Eclat, Paris 2006), La structure du monde : objets, propriétés, états de choses (Vrin, Paris 2004) and « Métaphysique et ontologie contemporaines », Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (Paris, 2002, with F. Nef).

Table of Contents

Jean-Maurice MONNOYER :   “Vingt ans après”

Kevin MULLIGAN, Peter SIMONS & Barry SMITH :  Truth-Makers (1984)

Kevin MULLIGAN : Two Dogmas of Truthmaking

Peter SIMONS : Truth in virtue of Meaning

Barry SMITH & Jonathan SIMON : Truthmaker Explanations

David ARMSTRONG : Truthmakers for Negative Truths and for truths of mere possibility

Philipp KELLER : A World of Truthmakers

David ARMSTRONG : Reply to Keller

François CLEMENTZ : Relational Truthmakers

Herbert HOCHBERG : “Is True” and “Makes true”, Two predicates without properties

Frederic NEF : Senex erit puer. Truthmakers for tensed sentences

Jonathan LOWE : Truthmaking as Essential Dependance

Pascal ENGEL : Identity Makers

Stefano CAPUTO : Truth-Making : what it is not and what it could be

Stephen MUMFORD : A new Solution to the Problem of Negative Truths

Peter SIMONS : The Price of Positivity : Mumford and Negatives