In this chapter I shall reply to a pair of articles in which the main contention of my “Why truth-makers” – namely, that an important class of synthetic true propositions have entities as truth-makers – is rejected. In §§1–5 I reply to Jennifer Hornsby's “Truth without Truthmaking Entities” (2005) and in §§6–7 I reply to Julian Dodd's “Negative Truths and Truthmaker Principles” (2007).

In §1 of her paper Hornsby writes that I express my premise that truth is grounded in various ways. One of these, which she calls ‘(G2)’, is this:

When she later on refers to (G2), she refers mainly to the formulation in terms of ‘explained by’. In a footnote Hornsby writes that she is quoting almost verbatim as far as possible (2005: 34 n.3). Now although I said that one explains the truth of <the rose is red> in terms of the rose's being red, I did not mean this to be a way of expressing the idea that truth is grounded. Indeed I made this claim about explanation in the paragraph preceding the one where I say there are many ways of expressing the idea that truth is grounded (this vol., Ch. 13, 231). What I had in mind is that this fact about explanation is a consequence of the fact that the truth of <the rose is red> is determined by the rose's being red.