Theory Of Armstrong Make True Person Limited In The Theory Of Yan Principle

Truthmaker theory intends to capture the intuition that a proposition is made true by a portion of reality. In this case, we call the portion of reality a truthmaker for the truth in question.Part1illustrates David Armstrong’s truthmaker theory by explaining his strategy in locating truthmakers for negative truths. In this part, I make a careful distinction among four solutions for negative truths:Russell’s negative fact solution, Raphael Demos’incompatibility solution, Wittgenstein’s solution, and Armstrong’s second-order totality state of affair solution. Through this discussion, I demonstrate the critical role played by the Entailment Principle in Armstrong’s truthmaker theory, that is, deriving a new truthmaking relation from an established truthmaking relation.Part2focuses on the philosophical debate over the Entailment Principle. If, according to classic interpretation, entailment is understood as strict implication, then the Entailment Principle will produce "irrelevant truthmakers", an unacceptable upshot for most truthmaker theorists except Stephen Read. In order to avoid "irrelevant truthmakers", there are two resolutions proposed:one is to restrict the Entailment Principle; the other is to abandon classical interpretation of entailment. While Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra and Greg Restall take the second resolution, Armstrong adopts the first, adhering to strict implication interpretation and restricting application of the Entailment Principle to the scope of pure contingent truths.However, in Part3, I argue that Armstrong’s restriction is not strong enough to guard against "irrelevant truthmakers" with three premises:Armstrong’s treatment of negative truths, his treatment of truths of possibility and his restricted Entailment Principle. After weighing the pros and cons, I consider inappropriate to revise or abandon Armstrong’s treatments of negative truths and truths of possibility, and hence propose to further restrict Armstrong’s Entailment Principle.In Part4, I first define the notion of "immediate truthmaker" and describe three sufficient conditions of entailment, that is, Containment Condition, Incompatibility Condition and Contingency Condition. Then I proceed to consider nine conceivable situations of repeated entailment. And I conclude that Armstrong’s restricted Entailment Principle produces "irrelevant truthmakers", if and only if, a non-immediate truthmaking relation is derived from at least twice applying on an immediate truthmaking relation the Entailment Principle based on Incompatibility Condition or Contingency Condition; in this case, the non-immediate truthmaking relation at issue degrades into "irrelevant truthmaking relation"(in other words, truthmaking relation does not hold). In order to avoid this unfavorable situation, I propose to place a ban on repeated application of the Entailment Principle based on Incompatibility Condition or Contingency Condition. In Part5, I discuss other issues over the concept of "immediate truthmaker".