Are truthbearers sentences or propositions?

Many philosophers take propositions — the abstract contents expressed by sentences — to be the primary truthbearers, because the same proposition can be expressed by different sentences in different languages. Sentences and beliefs are then said to be true derivatively, in virtue of the proposition they express or believe.

Truthmakers and Truthbearers

What kinds of thing are true or false, and what in the world makes them so? Truthbearer and truthmaker theory address the two ends of the truth relation.

Definition

A truthbearer is an entity capable of being true or false (paradigmatically a proposition); a truthmaker is an entity in the world whose existence necessitates the truth of a given truthbearer.

Scope

This topic covers two adjacent questions in the metaphysics of truth. The truthbearer question asks which entities — sentences, statements, beliefs, or propositions — are the primary bearers of truth values. The truthmaker question asks what, if anything, in reality grounds a truth: states of affairs, facts, tropes, or objects. It treats the truthmaker principle (every truth has a truthmaker), truthmaker maximalism and its problems (negative existentials, universals), and the relation between truthmaking and the correspondence theory.

Core questions

What are the primary bearers of truth value?
Does every truth require a truthmaker, and what kind?
How can negative and general truths have truthmakers?
Is truthmaking just correspondence under a new name, or a distinct relation?

Key concepts

truthbearers (propositions, sentences, beliefs)
truthmakers (facts, states of affairs, tropes)
truthmaker principle and maximalism
necessitation
negative existentials
supervenience of truth on being

Key theories

Truthmaker theory: Armstrong defends truthmaker maximalism — every truth has a truthmaker — and argues that truthmakers are states of affairs whose existence necessitates the relevant truths, providing an ontological ground for truth.
Truthmaking as necessitation vs. relevance: Lewis questions strict necessitation accounts, proposing that truthmaking is better understood via difference-making or counterpart-theoretic resources to avoid trivializing problems for necessary truths.

History

Truthmaker theory grew from Russell's logical atomism and Husserlian work, was named and systematized by Mulligan, Simons, and Smith in 1984, and given a sustained defence by Armstrong in 2004. Debates over negative existentials and necessary truths, and Lewis's difference-making proposal, refined the truthmaker relation.

Debates

Truthmaker maximalism and negative truths: Whether every truth, including negative existentials such as 'there are no unicorns', requires a truthmaker, and if so what could make a negative truth true without positing dubious negative facts or totality states of affairs.

Key figures

D. M. Armstrong
Kevin Mulligan
Peter Simons
Barry Smith
David Lewis

Seminal works

mulligan1984
armstrong2004

Frequently asked questions

Are truthbearers sentences or propositions?: Many philosophers take propositions — the abstract contents expressed by sentences — to be the primary truthbearers, because the same proposition can be expressed by different sentences in different languages. Sentences and beliefs are then said to be true derivatively, in virtue of the proposition they express or believe.