No normative free lunch: relevance and the autonomy of the normative domain

The autonomy thesis is the claim that one cannot get a normative statement from purely descriptive statements. But despite its intuitive appeal a precise formulation of the thesis has remained elusive. In a recent paper, Maguire (2015) makes the promising suggestion that the thesis should be understood in terms of ground. But Maguire’s formulation, I argue, is based on controversial taxonomic assumptions that make the autonomy thesis into a non-substantive claim. I develop an alternative ground-based formulation of the autonomy thesis that appeals to the notion of normative relevance, which is in turn understood using the tools of truthmaker semantics. This formulation of the autonomy thesis avoids well-known counterexamples to other formulations and has significant advantages over Maguire’s formulation.

Towards a Logic of Value and Disagreement via Imprecise Measures

After putting forward a formal account of value disagreement via imprecise measures, I develop a logic of value attribution and of (dis)agreement based on (exact) truthmaker semantics.

Truthmaker semantics for natural language: Attitude verbs, modals, and intensional transitive verbs

This paper gives an outline of truthmaker semantics for natural language against the background of standard possible-worlds semantics. It develops a truthmaker semantics for attitude reports and deontic modals based on an ontology of attitudinal and modal objects and on a semantic function of clauses as predicates of such objects. The semantics is applied to factive verbs and response-stance verbs as well as to cases of modal concord. The paper also presents new motivations for ‘object-based truthmaker semantics’ from intensional transitive verbs such as need, look for, own, and buy and gives an outline of their semantics based on a further development of truthmaker semantics.

Disagreement lost

This paper develops a puzzle about non-merely-verbal disputes. At first sight, it would seem that a dispute over the truth of an utterance is not merely verbal only if there is a proposition that the parties to the dispute take the utterance under dispute to express, which one of the parties accepts and the other rejects. Yet, as I argue, it is extremely rare for ordinary disputes over an utterance’s truth to satisfy this condition, in which case non-merely verbal disputes are extremely rare. After examining various responses to the puzzle, I outline a solution using the framework of truthmaker semantics.

Exact Truthmakers, Modality, and Essence

Non-reductive essentialist explanations of necessities and possibilities in general locate their source in a special, basic or fundamental kind of necessities—those directly arising from the essences of things. All remaining necessities and possibilities can be seen as grounded, more or less indirectly, in these basic necessities. If this idea is on the right lines, it ought to be possible to distinguish clearly between those necessities which are directly grounded in the natures of things, and those which are indirectly so grounded. Special interest is shown in this question, treated within the framework of Fine’s version of truthmaker semantics. We might expect that within this framework, it would be possible to capture the distinction between what is directly true in virtue of essence, and what is only indirectly true.

What Makes True Universal Statements True?

What makes true universal statements true? For example, what makes the statement that all aardvarks are insectivorous true? In addressing this question, this chapter focuses especially on how it is to be answered within the framework of what Kit Fine calls exact truthmaker semantics. The main aim is to promote an alternative account of the truthmakers for quantified propositions. This chapter also gives some attention to two closely-related questions: first, when, and why, we should favour an alternative to the standard account, and second, whether the alternative account proposed can be accommodated within the framework of exact truthmaker semantics, in Fine’s sense.

Truthmaker Semantics for Relevant Logic

I develop and defend a truthmaker semantics for the relevant logic R. The approach begins with a simple philosophical idea and develops it in various directions, so as to build a technically adequate relevant semantics. The central philosophical idea is that truths are true in virtue of specific states. Developing the idea formally results in a semantics on which truthmakers are relevant to what they make true. A very natural notion of conditionality is added, giving us relevant implication. I then investigate ways to add conjunction, disjunction, and negation; and I discuss how to justify contraposition and excluded middle within a truthmaker semantics.