A Theory of Truthmaking
Metaphysics, Ontology, and Reality

Demonstrates how truthmaking can be used to make progress all across philosophy, but without its usual theoretical baggage.

Jamin Asay (Author)

9781108499880, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 April 2020

306 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'This is an engaging read: brisk, direct, and thoroughly enjoyable, with interesting and challenging arguments throughout. If you're interested in the philosophy of truth, you should read it.' Mark Jago, University of Nottingham

The theory of truthmaking has long aroused skepticism from philosophers who believe it to be tangled up in contentious ontological commitments and unnecessary theoretical baggage. In this book, Jamin Asay shows why that suspicion is unfounded. Challenging the current orthodoxy that truthmaking's fundamental purpose is to be a tool for explaining why truths are true, Asay revives the conception of truthmaking as fundamentally an exercise in ontology: a means for coordinating one's beliefs about what is true and one's ontological commitments. He goes on to show how truthmaking connects to analyticity, truth, and realism, and how it contributes to debates over nominalism, presentism, mathematical objects, and fictional characters. His book is the most comprehensive exploration to date into what truthmaking is and how it contributes to metaphysical debates across philosophy, and will interest a wide range of readers in metaphysics and beyond.

Introduction. A manifesto for truthmaking
Part I. Foundations: 1. A methodology for truthmaking
2. Truthmaking, accounting, and explanation
3. The truthmaking relation
4. Truthmaker maximalism and the scope of truthmaking
5. A catalog of objections
Part II. Applications: 6. Truth
7. Analyticity
8. Realism
Part III. Metaphysics: 9. Nominalism
10. Presentism
11. Mathematics
12. Fiction
Conclusion. Building an ontology.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK], Philosophy [HP], Humanities [H]