more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Armstrong offers 'totality facts' (complete states of affairs) as truthmakers for negative existentials, and for negated predications.
Clarification
A 'negative existential' denies the existence of something
Gist of Idea
Negative existentials have 'totality facts' as truthmakers
Source
report of David M. Armstrong (A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility [1989]) by David Lewis - Armstrong on combinatorial possibility 'The demand'
Book Ref
Lewis,David: 'Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology' [CUP 1999], p.205
| 21544 | It seems that when a proposition is false, something must fail to subsist [Russell] |
| 15547 | Negative existentials have 'totality facts' as truthmakers [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| 18377 | Negative truths have as truthmakers all states of affairs relevant to the truth [Armstrong] |
| 18382 | The nature of arctic animals is truthmaker for the absence of penguins there [Armstrong] |
| 15549 | If it were true that nothing at all existed, would that have a truthmaker? [Lewis] |
| 9139 | If nothing exists, no truthmakers could make 'Nothing exists' true [Sorensen] |
| 14394 | It is implausible that claims about non-existence are about existing things [Merricks] |
| 18479 | There are different types of truthmakers for different types of negative truth [MacBride] |
| 18477 | There aren't enough positive states out there to support all the negative truths [MacBride] |
| 18869 | Without truthmakers, negative truths must be ungrounded [Cameron] |