From humean truthmaker theory to priority monism

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Volumn 44, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 178-198

  Cameron, Ross P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77949997778     PISSN: 00294624     EISSN: 14680068     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2009.00736.x     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Jonathan Schaffer, 'The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker', forthcoming in The Philosophical Quarterly
2. See, inter alia, D.M. Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1997)
3. See, inter alia, John Heil, From an Ontological Point of View, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (2003)
4. As, e.g., Peter Simons thinks. Simons, 'Farewell to Substance: A Differentiated Leavetaking', Ratio Vol. XI No. 3, p. 235-252, (1998)
5. David Lewis, 'A World of Truthmakers?', in Lewis, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1999), p. 215-220, at p. 215
6. Fraser MacBride, 'Lewis' Animadversions on the Truthmaker Principle', in Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds) Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2005), p. 117-40
7. Richard Fumerton, Review of Beebee and Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, http://ndpr.nd.edu/ review.cfm?id=5921
8. Roderick Chisholm, Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., (1976)
9. Lewis's complaint against an ontology of states of affairs is precisely that it needs 'non-mereological composition', which he finds mysterious as mereology is meant to be the general theory of composition. See David Lewis, Parts of Classes, Oxford: Blackwell, (1991), p. 57
10. For discussion see Kris McDaniel, 'Structure Making', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 87 No. 2, (2009), p. 251-274
11. Theodore Sider, Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2001), p. 121-132
12. See, inter alia, D. M. Armstrong, 'Classes Are States of Affairs', Mind, Vol. 100, No. 2, (1991), p. 189-200
13. Kit Fine, 'Essence and Modality', Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 8, (1994), p. 1-16
14. See Ben Caplan and Kris McDaniel, 'Mereological Myths', ms, for a dissolution of the tendency of philosophers to draw fallacious de re modal conclusions from this de dicto necessity
15. See my 'The Contingency of Composition', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 136, No. 1, (2007), p. 99-121, for an argument that the compositional facts do not hold of necessity
16. Ross Cameron, 'Truthmakers and Ontological Commitment', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 140, No. 1, p. 1-18, (2008)
17. An earlier version of the idea received discussion in my 'Truthmakers and Necessary Connections', Synthese, Vol. 16, No. 1, (2008), p. 27-45, but resulted in quite different conclusions
18. See Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs, p. 12
19. Lewis, Parts of Classes, p. 80
20. There are exceptions of course. Some of them tell us that what it meant was that complex objects are identical to their parts. But if many-one identity is the price to pay, then it really does seem that there's no such thing as a free lunch. For a defence of composition as identity see in particular Donald Baxter, 'Many-One Identity', Philosophical Papers, Vol. 17, No. 3, (1988), p. 193-216
21. and Baxter, 'Identity in the Loose and Popular Sense', Mind, Vol. 97, No. 388, (1988), p. 575-582
22. and Theodore Sider, 'Parthood', The Philosophical Review, Vol. 116, (2007), p. 51-91
23. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Tr̈ubner, (1922). Although I'm noWittgenstein scholar, and make no pretensions to be engaging in exegesis here
24. See Heil, From an Ontological Point of View and C.B. Martin, 'Substance Substantiated', The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 58, (1980), p. 3-10
25. F.H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1983)
26. There's no need to go any higher; the higher-order state of affairs is sufficient to make it true that it's the only the higher-order state of affairs. See my 'Truthmaker Necessitarianism and Maximalism', Logique et Analyse, Vol. 48, Nos. 189-192, (2005), p. 43-56