Abstract
Meinertsen has recently put forward three arguments against disjunctive properties: the arguments from truthmaking, commonality, and causation. In this paper, I argue that all three arguments fail. The argument from truthmaking rests on the problematic notion of different types of truthmakers and is therefore itself problematic. The argument from commonality may hold but only at the cost of losing much of the philosophical significance of its conclusion. The argument from causation essentially collapses into the argument from truthmaking and is therefore problematic for the same reason as the latter is. I conclude that Meinertsen has not made a case against disjunctive properties.
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15 November 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00434-3
Notes
In his paper, Meinertsen assumes the second interpretation of disjunctive properties.
I take it that ‘E make(s) 〈p〉 true’ in (TR) and ‘Entity E is a truthmaker of 〈p〉’ in (T) are semantically identical.
This deviates slightly from Meinertsen’s original choice of predicate. In the place of ‘D’, Meinertsen puts ‘F∨G’ as the predicate. So for him, 〈a is F∨G〉 ‘states’ the property F∨G. But this is mere notational variance and should not affect anything in the following arguments.
The following discussion in this section will be centered on the singular case (D as ‘stated’ in 〈Da〉), but the remarks should apply, mutatis mutandis, to the plural case (D as ‘stated’ in 〈Da&Db〉) equally well.
If you are like me, you will probably find it a bit odd to speak of some property’s being reducible (even though in a special sense) to some state of affairs. They just do not seem to belong to the right categories for any reduction relation to hold in between. But this is exactly what Meinertsen is proposing, given the text (p. 98). To be fair, Meinertsen seems to allow truthmakers other than states of affairs, in which case the TM-reduction relation may appear more natural. However, since TM-reducibility is a technical stipulation in the first place so a bit of oddity can be tolerated and even expected, and since my argument can be easily adapted to cases where truthmakers are of different kinds, I will not press further on this point.
Note, however, that it is not necessary for Meinertsen to insist that [Dx] is not a legitimate truthmaker. There are two ways I can think of that he can get the desired results even when [Dx] is accepted as legitimate. First, he could accept [Dx] but reject [Cx], which would yield the result that D, but not F, is TM-reducible to more than one form of state of affairs, hence by (~ S**), F sparse but D not. But I assume it is highly implausible to argue for disjunctive properties while arguing against conjunctive ones, and so will not pursue this line further. Second, he could introduce different ‘types’ into truthmakers, so that there will be atomic truthmakers and non-atomic truthmakers, such as disjunctive ones. Further he could revise the equivalence test as something like
(~ S***) A property is not sparse iff it is TM-reducible to more than one form of atomic truthmaking state of affairs.
So even if D is equally TM-reducible to [Fx], [Gx], [Dx], and F equally TM-reducible to [Fx], [Cx], since only D, but not F, is TM-reducible to more than one form of atomic truthmaker, (~ S***) should rule in F as sparse and rule out D as not. However, I do not think this move works. I will argue in the following that the idea of introducing different types into truthmakers is misguided in the first place.
I say ‘in the present case’ because there are other factors than the constituent properties that may contribute to the dispute of whether a state of affairs belongs to a distinct type than atomic. For example, [Fa&Ga] might be said to be of a non-atomic type of state of affairs (a conjunctive type), though F and G are both atomic properties. However, I should point out that what I say below against the type talk about properties can be extended to type talk about states of affairs in general as well.
I wish to thank an anonymous referee for raising this point.
Let me also briefly add that if one argues it is because of the requirement of semantics that we need to posit such abundant properties (to serve as the semantic values of predicates including disjunctive ones), I think it is rather this kind of semantics, not metaphysics, that needs to be reconsidered, especially with its commitment to the structural isomorphism between language and reality.
Meinertsen attributes this requirement to Armstrong. I do not find it entirely convincing but at any rate I leave open exegetical issues and will continue to treat the argument as Meinertsen’s.
Meintertsen excludes Audi (2013), and for that matter, the criticism from Skiles (2016), from the scope of his discussion on grounds that Audi’s account focus on non-Armstrongian issues (p. 101, fn8). I do not see why because it seems that although Audi’s account of what he calls ‘inherence realism’ is not defending Armstrong’s specific version of argument, it is perfectly in line with the idea behind that deserves the title ‘Armstrongian’.
This scenario is not officially stated by Audi in the dilemma, but only earlier in his definition of similarity-in-a-respect (2013, p. 759).
I thank an anonymous referee for raising this concern.
References
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Acknowledgements
I thank an anonymous referee of this journal for valuable comments and suggestions, which have helped greatly with the improvement of this paper.
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Zhao, X. No Case Against Disjunctive Properties. Philosophia 49, 2293–2305 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00346-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00346-2