Truthmaker and negation: Investigations of nonbeing, negative events, and counterfactual conditionals

Li, Mingyuan

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122098 Copy

Description

Title

Truthmaker and negation: Investigations of nonbeing, negative events, and counterfactual conditionals

Author(s)

Li, Mingyuan

Issue Date

2023-10-25

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Saenz, Noël

Committee Member(s)

• Del Pinal, Guillermo
• Lasersohn, Peter
• Kishida, Kohei
• Livengood, Jonathan

Department of Study

Philosophy

Discipline

Philosophy

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Truthmaker
• Negation
• Counterfactuals
• Meinongianism
• Event Semantics
• Intuitionistic Logic

Abstract

The three mutually independent essays of my dissertation are unified by two key words: truthmaker and negation. The first and second chapters concern mainly the interplay between the two concepts; the third chapter uses truthmaker to provide semantic explanations for linguistic phenomena involving negation. Chapter 1 aims to answer the following question. Suppose that you are a truthmaker theorist who (i) follow the Armstrongian conception of truthmaking and regard truthmakers as entities in the world that necessitate their corresponding truths; (ii) are dissatisfied with the incompatibility solution to the problem of negative truths; and (iii) hold that every truth must have a truthmaker. How will you account for the truthmakers for negative truths? I suggest that an appropriate answer lies in Meinongian nonexistent entities. First, I argue that a plausible way to look for the truthmaker for a truth is to infer what the world should be like according to the best semantic theory of this truth. I then show that what is demanded by the best semantic account of negative sentences, especially negative existential sentences about fictional individuals, leads us to posit Meinongian nonexistent entities. Chapter 2 discusses the definition of negative events in Neo-Davidsonian event semantics. In Neo-Davidsonian event semantics, the conventional analysis of not places the negation sign above the event quantifier. However, such a wide-scope reading of negation yields problematic results when embedded in perception reports and causal sentences, which prompts us to instead interpret the not in action sentences in terms of negative events. I discuss in this chapter the way negative events should be appropriately defined. I challenge the definitions given by Krifka and Higginbotham: while both try to define negative events as events that exist positively but are described negatively, I show that they face problems in both linguistic and metaphysical aspects. I then give my own account which defines negative events as entities that exist negatively in space and time; I argue that this alternative account is able to both give a satisfactory interpretation of negation in action sentences and avoid the problems faced by Krifka’s and Higginbotham’s accounts. The third chapter concerns the interplay between truthmaker semantics and counterfactual conditional sentences. While the similarity approach is the galactic empire that dominates the semantic analyses of counterfactual conditionals, it has been fighting a long battle with the logical principle SDA (Simplification of Disjunctive Antecedents). On the one hand, the similarity account does not validate SDA whereas intuition tells us that counterfactual sentences should observe it. On the other hand, there exist counterexamples to SDA, which prompts us to doubt its validity. Two recent empirical studies by Khoo (2021) and Ciardelli et al. (2018) pose additional challenges on both sides of the battle. This paper tries to find a middle ground for this battle by promoting a revised similarity semantics. While my account still adopts the notion of similarity, it differs from the traditional Lewisian similarity account in that (i) it evaluates counterfactuals in terms of truthmakers, which I understand as partial worlds that exactly verify the corresponding sentences; (ii) it drops classical logic and adopts intuitionistic logic instead.

Graduation Semester

2023-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2023 Mingyuan Li

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