Repository | Journal | Volume | Articles
(2015) Synthese 192 (1).
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.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0570-7
Full citation:
Griffith, A. M. (2015). How negative truths are made true. Synthese 192 (1), pp. 317-335.