Truthmakers and the Converse Barcan Formula

Abstract

The paper criticizes the truthmaker principle that every truth is made true by something. If we interpret ‘something’ as quantifying into sentence position, we can interpret the principle as a harmless logical truth, but that is not what advocates of the principle intend. They interpret ‘something’ as quantifying into name position, and the principle as requiring the existence of truthmaking individuals. The paper argues that we have no reason to believe the principle on this interpretation. Moreover, the converse Barcan formula is inconsistent with the existence of truthmaking individuals for contingent truths. Considerations about our ability to count possible truthmaking individuals are used to argue that we should prefer the converse Barcan formula.