Technical Report TR-ARP-10-94

Automated Reasoning Project
Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering and Centre for Information Science Research
Australian National University

September, 27, 1994

TRUTHMAKERS, ENTAILMENT AND

NECESSITY

Greg Restall

Abstract Australian Realist analytic philosophy is full of claims about truthmakers and truthmaking. In this paper, I seek to show that a number of intuitions about truthmaking are jointly inconsistent, and that some common attempts at resolving the inconsistency are unsatisfying. Finally, I propose an account of truthmaking which resolves the tensions as best as possible. This account has great affinities with both relevant entailment and situation semantics. This note can be seen as an apologetic for relevant entailment for those who are familiar with truthmaking, or as an introduction to truthmaking for those familiar with logic. Either way, it is an attempt to apply modern logical methods and insights to a philosophical problem.