Consider the truthmaker theory, which claims that “for every truth there is a truthmaker” (Fox 1987, 189). In some cases truthmakers are individuals. Peyton Manning is the truthmaker for the claim that Peyton Manning exists. In other cases, truthmakers are events, like falling on a football in the end zone. The primary question of this essay is, What are the truthmakers for touchdown truths, that is, truths about touchdowns?
According to the NFL definition of “touchdown,” a touchdown occurs “when any part of the ball, legally in possession of a player inbounds, breaks the plane of the opponent's goal line, provided it is not a touchback” (NFL 2007). Thus, truthmakers for touchdown truths appear to be worldly events, like Devin Hester's crossing the goal line after a ninety-two-yard kickoff return to open Super Bowl XLI.1 Call this view, which combines the NFL definition of a touchdown with the truthmaker theory, the “traditional theory of touchdown truths.” In this chapter, I show that the traditional theory is incorrect.
In the first half of this chapter, I develop the traditional theory of touchdown truths. I also draw distinctions between some key metaphysical concepts and dispel a fatalistic worry about the truthmaker theory. In the second half, I argue that, given the traditional theory, NFL touchdowns are not real touchdowns. Referees miss plays and make bad calls, yet ultimately something is or is not a touchdown only if it is registered in the final score. The NFL definition is fine as a guide for referees, but it fails as an indicator of the truthmakers for touchdown truths, which are events involving referees, not football players. In the final section, I explore the consequences of this observation and show that they are not as dire as one might think.
Truthmakers for Touchdown Truths
Given the NFL definition of a touchdown, what are the truthmakers for touchdown truths? First, let's distinguish between truthmakers and truthbearers. Truthbearers are the ultimate bearers of truth-value, the things that are true or false.2 Truthbearers appear to be sentences like
(D) Devin scored a touchdown.
I won't deny that (D) has a truth-value. On the other hand, as (D) stands, it is incomplete. What game? Which Devin? Given our context, things seem clear enough. Above I indicated that Devin Hester scored the first touchdown in Super Bowl XLI, and that has a lot to do with how one understands (D). Given this context, anyone who remembers the game correctly would say that (D) is true.
The truth or falsity of (D), though, appears to be independent of our ability to determine its truth-value. Provisionally, at least, we want to be realists about touchdowns and accept that
Touchdowns are a part of the world and are independent of our thoughts about the world. Touchdown truths should be similarly independent of our thoughts and descriptions.
If this is the case, then (D) is not the ultimate bearer of truth-value. At most, (D) is true in a context and its truth is dependent upon something else. Perhaps it is dependent upon the truth of another sentence.
(D’) Devin Hester scored a touchdown in Super Bowl XLI.
Even here, context plays a role. It distinguishes, for instance, Devin Hester, the return specialist for the Chicago Bears, from anyone else who happens to have the same name. In order to find the ultimate bearer of truth, we'll need to go to further. Consider:
(D”) Devin Hester, the return specialist for the Chicago Bears, scored a touchdown in Super Bowl XLI.
Context still plays a role, though, for when assessing the truth of (D”) we wouldn't consider football games played in another country or galaxy that happened to be called the “Super Bowl.” It seems that no matter how much information we include in a sentence, context always plays a role in how we understand it. Our judgments about (D), (D’), and (D”) depend on something more than the mere words on the page together with linguistic conventions. Sentences are not the ultimate bearers of truth-value.
I find the above argument compelling. For this reason, I believe that propositions are the ultimate bearers of truth-value. Propositions are abstract entities like numbers, as opposed to concrete entities like sentences or numerals. However, it is not essential that the reader agree with me on this point. One may think of propositions as eternalized sentences—what you get once you record all of the salient information provided by context (Quine 1960)—if such a thing is possible. Or one might think of propositions as declarative sentences in a context. Or one might regard the term proposition as synonymous with “truthbearer.” What is important is that propositions are something more than the mere words that I use to express them.
Propositions are truthbearers, but what are truthmakers; that is, what are the things that make truthbearers true (or false)? We're concerned with only a subset of true propositions, namely, those that express contingent facts about the world. A contingent fact about the world is one that is true but could have been false: for instance, that Devin exists or that Devin scored a touchdown. We're not interested in what makes it the case that all bachelors are men or that 7 + 5 = 12. These latter claims are necessarily true and could not have been false. Thus, the truthmaker thesis is the claim that every contingent proposition has a truthmaker. What are the truthmakers for touchdown truths?
There are, potentially, three kinds of truthmakers. First, individuals, like Devin Hester, seem to be the truthmakers for certain propositions. Devin Hester is an obvious choice as the truthmaker for the proposition that Devin Hester exists. On the other hand, Devin is not the truthmaker for the proposition that Devin Hester was the first person to score a touch-down in Super Bowl XLI. Scoring a touchdown is not something Devin can do alone. This is a metaphysical point, not a mere cliché like “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team’!” Truthmakers are usually something more than mere individuals. Additional candidates for truthmakers are events and facts.
Events come in all sizes. There is an event for every touchdown, for example, Logan Mankins recovering a Tom Brady fumble, Asante Samuel intercepting a Peyton Manning pass. On the other hand, Super Bowl XLI was itself an event. Events are like individuals in that both are “concrete, temporally and spatially located entities organized into part-whole hierarchies. Both can be counted, compared, quantified over, referred to, and variously described and re-described” (Casati and Varzi 2006). One can count the number of scorings just as one can count the number of individual players who score.
Events are appropriate candidates for truthmakers of touchdown truths, given the NFL definition. Consider these true propositions.
According to the truthmaker theory, corresponding to each proposition is some worldly event that was its truthmaker. For instance:
These examples lend support to the traditional theory of touchdown truths.
One might just as easily say that facts are the truthmakers for touchdown truths: the fact that Jeff Saturday recovered a fumble in the end zone, or the fact that Joseph Addai crossed the plane of the goal line while possessing the football. Facts are not events. For one thing, the event of Jeff Saturday's scoring a touchdown during Super Bowl XLI occurred at a particular time in the past, whereas that he scored the touchdown is just as much a fact today as it was then.
As I see it, touchdowns are things that happen and are more closely linked to events than they are to facts. For this reason, I take events to be the truthmakers for touchdown truths. I remain neutral as to whether events are more fundamental constituents of reality than individuals or facts. I merely recognize the need for events in our final story about the world, for in the final story we'll need to talk about football.3
The truthmaker theory sketched above is a version of the correspondence theory of truth, which claims that truth is a matter of correspondence between propositions and the world. According to our version, what makes a contingent proposition true is its correspondence with some worldly event. I am not going to argue for the truthmaker theory or explain what I mean by “correspondence.” Nor do I wish to discount competitors to the truthmaker theory, or even claim that it is always easy to distinguish the truthmaker theory from its competitors (Lewis 2001). I'm more interested in exploring the consequences of applying the truthmaker theory given the NFL definition.
Making Propositions True
An NFL touchdown occurs “when any part of the ball, legally in possession of a player inbounds, breaks the plane of the opponent's goal line, provided it is not a touchback” (NFL 2007). Applying this to the truthmaker theory, we get the traditional theory of touchdown truth: the truthmakers for touchdown truths are events, like a running back's crossing the goal line with the ball, or a wide receiver's catching the ball with both feet in the end zone. Certain events occur, and that's what makes some claim about a touchdown true.
Of course, individual players like Devin Hester, Jeff Saturday, and Peyton Manning play a significant role in scoring touchdowns. Doesn't Devin make it the case that Devin scores a touchdown? Aren't playmakers the real truthmakers for touchdown truths? These questions reveal an ambiguity with the word “make.” According to the truthmaker view, events are truthmakers for propositions. We might also recognize that some agents—who are kinds of individuals—make it the case that a proposition is true. There are two different senses of “make” noted here.
The primary influence of agents is through their actions and the consequences of those actions. Actions are types of events, so the consequences of our actions often come in the form of other events. For instance, Devin runs back the opening kickoff, and that causes the crowd to burst into cheers. Since events are truthmakers for propositions, our influence on the world may be extended to propositions (van Inwagen 1983; Perry 2004). By scoring the touchdown, Devin made it the case that the Bears had an early lead.
There is a difference, though, between Devin's making it the case that a touchdown is scored and Devin's being a truthmaker for the proposition that Devin exists. In the latter case, Devin doesn't do anything. His mere existence makes it the case that he exists. Following John Fox, we say that truthmakers necessitate propositions. In other words, when an individual is a truthmaker for a proposition, then that the person exists entails that the proposition is true (see Fox 1987, 189).
Yet individuals rarely necessitate propositions. There are unusual examples, like claims about an individual's existence, but in most cases, truthmakers are larger portions of the world, like events. Barry Smith puts it nicely: “There are parts of reality which necessitate the truth of corresponding judgments. Thus if ‘John is kissing Mary’ is true, then a certain process, a kissing event k, necessitates this truth. John himself is not a necessitator for the given judgment, though he is a necessitator for the judgment ‘John exists’” (Smith 1999, 276). In general, when a person makes it the case that some proposition is true, he is not the necessitator for the proposition. For example, Devin made it the case that the Chicago Bears had an early lead in Super Bowl XLI. Devin performed an action, and that action had as a consequence the truth of a certain proposition: that Chicago scored the first touchdown of Super Bowl XLI. Yet Devin was not the proposition's truthmaker. He scored the touchdown, to be sure, but the necessitator was some larger part of reality, like the event of Devin's crossing the goal line.
Philosophers often use the phrase “make it the case that” in an effort to capture the notion of an action's being genuinely up to an agent. This way of speaking is especially helpful in clarifying debates about free will and moral responsibility (Campbell 2005). Devin made it the case that Chicago had an early lead in Super Bowl XLI. Many would agree that Devin is praiseworthy for his action precisely because it had that consequence. Yet this is not the same thing as Devin's being the necessitator for the proposition, even if his control over the event was absolute. Smith writes: “Suppose God wills that John kiss Mary now…. God's act is not a truthmaker for this judgment” (Smith 1999, 278). Truthmakers are the parts of the world that correspond to true propositions, thereby making them true. Even if we admit that God plays a causal role in every event, it does not follow that he is the truthmaker for all propositions. Perhaps God made it the case that John kisses Mary. Nonetheless, he does not correspond to that proposition.4
We may summarize the traditional theory of touchdown truths as follows:
Other important results from this section include the following:
Some Provisional Worries about Time and Truth
How does time fit into this picture? Events occur at times, whereas propositions are timeless, or so it seems. The event of Devin's scoring the first touchdown of Super Bowl XLI is past, but that Devin scored the touchdown is just as true today as it was then.5 Did the proposition become true once the event occurred? Or was it always true that Devin would score the first touchdown of Super Bowl XLI? Does the admission that the proposition was always true commit us to fatalism about football?6
There are a variety of worries noted in the above paragraph, but I think that they may be dealt with rather easily. Consider first the following view about time and truth: the tenseless view of semantics. According to this view:
1. Propositions have truth values simpliciter rather than having truth values at times.
2. The fundamental semantic locution is “p is v” (where the expression in place of “p” refers to a proposition and the expression in place of “v” refers to a truth value).
3. It is not possible for a proposition to have different truth values at different times. (Markosian 2002)
This theory may be explained rather easily with an example. Consider this proposition:
(F) Devin Hester scored the first touchdown of Super Bowl XLI.
(F) is true. Note, corresponding to (2), that “(F) is true” has the same form as “p is v,” where p is the proposition (F) and v is the truth-value “true.” According to (3), if (F) is true, then it was always true. Thus, in keeping with (1), we can't say that (F) didn't have a truth-value until Devin made it the case by crossing the goal line.
According to the tenseless view of semantics, (F) has no time of truth; that is, there is no time that the proposition became true, for propositions cannot change their truth-values: if it is true, then it was always true and will always be true. Does this mean that (F) was fated, up to neither Devin nor anyone else? Following John Perry (2004), we may distinguish between a proposition's being true—which is a timeless property of the proposition—and the property of a proposition's being made true—which occurs at a time. According to the tenseless view, propositions have the property of being true timelessly. There is no time of truth for (F), no time that the proposition became true.
Still, there was a time that (F) was made the case. According to the traditional theory, (F) was made the case by the event of Devin's crossing the plane of the goal line after running back the opening kickoff of Super Bowl XLI. This event occurred at a specific time, fourteen seconds into the game. Since propositions are eternally true or false, this is not the time of truth for (F). Rather it is the time of event for (F), the time of the occurrence of the truthmaking event.
Given Perry's distinction, we cannot immediately conclude that (F) was fated even if (F) was eternally true. Presumably, (F) was up to Devin, for he made it the case that (F). Note that I'm not claiming that (F) was not fated, nor am I claiming that (F) was up to Devin. I don't see any reason to deny these claims, but my point is simply that we cannot conclude that (F) was fated given the tenseless view of semantics.7 It might be that the tenseless view together with some other consideration entails fatalism. That is a different matter.
NFL Touchdowns Are Not Real Touchdowns
The problem of fatalism is not a serious problem for the traditional theory of touchdown truth. Yet in this section, I argue that the traditional theory is false since NFL touchdowns are not real touchdowns. In the final section, I show that this is not a substantive worry.
The main argument of this section concludes that NFL touchdowns are not real touchdowns, given the truthmaker view. The argument rests on this assumption:
(R) Real touchdowns are reflected in the final score.
(R) is grounded on the intuition that saying “The New York Giants scored five touchdowns but still lost to the Dallas Cowboys 30–0” conveys a failure to deal with reality. It is the final score that settles issues about touchdown truths. If the final score reveals that your team did not score any touchdowns, then they did not score any real touchdowns. If your team lost even though they scored NFL touchdowns that were not reflected in the final score, then they still lost. Sometimes NFL touchdowns are not reflected in the final score, so NFL touchdowns are not real touchdowns, given (R).
I'm not suggesting the NFL definition is irrelevant. Certainly referees make use of it when determining whether something is a real touchdown. But referees often make mistakes. Perhaps Philip Rivers completed a pass to Vincent Jackson in a 2007 AFC playoff game between the San Diego Chargers and the New England Patriots. The event might have been the truthmaker for an NFL touchdown truth, one that would have entailed that the Chargers won were it recorded in the final score. Yet the final score remains the same, and the Chargers lost in part because this alleged NFL touchdown did not count as a real touchdown. As long as something is not reflected in the final score, it is not a real touchdown, whether it is an NFL touchdown or not.
Note that we need not give up the truthmaker theory. We may agree that the truthmakers for touchdown truths are events involving individuals. What we must reject is that the relevant individuals are football players. Rather, they are referees. More specifically, events involving the beliefs of referees play the role of truthmaker for touchdown truths.8
Antirealism about Touchdown Truths
Recall our provisional acceptance of realism, the view that
This definition specifies two considerations: independence and existence (cf. Miller 2005). There is no reason to doubt that touchdowns exist or happen, given that they are events. Yet real touchdowns are not independent of the ways that people think about the world. Real touchdowns depend upon the ways that referees think about the world. Real touchdowns violate the independence condition of realism.
Let me explain this point in another way. Consider first the following realist view of touchdown truth:
It appears that Touchdown Realism is false. This leaves us with two alternatives:
I move that we accept Modest Touchdown Antirealism.
It is not as if something is a touchdown if you are a Chargers fan yet not if you are a Patriots fan. Something is a real touchdown if it is registered in the final score. Thus, the truthmakers for real touchdowns are not relative to individual belief. There is only one set of beliefs that matters: the beliefs of the referee. You may argue about NFL touchdowns all you want, but the final score is the final arbiter for real touchdowns, and this matter depends on the beliefs of referees.
Finally, consider the semantic realism of Michael Dummett. Miller (2005) discusses an unknown principle of mathematics, the truth of which “we have no guaranteed method of ascertaining”:
(G) Every even number is the sum of two primes.
He then writes:
A semantic realist, in Dummett's sense, is one who holds that our understanding of a sentence like (G) consists in knowledge of its truth-condition, where the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent or bivalent. To say that the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent is to say that (G) may be true (or false) even though there is no guarantee that we will be able, in principle, to recognise that that is so. To say that the notion of truth involved is bivalent is to accept the unrestricted applicability of the law of bivalence, that every meaningful sentence is determinately either true or false. Thus the semantic realist is prepared to assert that (G) is determinately either true or false, regardless of the fact that we have no guaranteed method of ascertaining which.
Bivalence is the thesis that there are only two truth-values: true and false. Semantic realists believe that every proposition has a truth-value, independent of our ability to determine whether or not it does. We've been accepting bivalence from the very beginning, and thus far it hasn't been problematic. There is no reason to reject semantic realism about touchdown truths.
Realism about touchdowns has taken a blow, for touchdowns are not independent of human reflection. Yet this is no reason to believe that touchdowns do not exist in the mind-independent world. Nor is it a reason to be a relativist about touchdown truth or to reject all forms of realism. To put it another way, Devin Hester scored a real touchdown on the first play of Super Bowl XLI, as reflected in the game's final score.
Notes
1. Or facts about the world, like the fact that Logan Mankins recovered a fumble in the end zone during the 2007 AFC Championship. See below.
2. Bivalence is the view that there are only two truth-values—true and false—and that every proposition is either true or false.
3. Note that, for any event that occurs, there is a corresponding fact, namely, the fact that the event occurred. For this reason, one may just as easily say that facts are the truthmakers for touchdown truths.
4. I'm not claiming that the makes-it-the-case-that relation is a causal relation. Maybe it is. Maybe it is merely an explanatory relation. Maybe it is something else altogether. This is a topic for another paper.
5. Notice the similar point about the difference between events and facts above.
6. A proposition is fated if it is not up to anyone.
7. See Markosian 2002 for a different view.
8. One might argue that the truthmakers for touchdown truths are certain actions of referees, for example, the event of one referee's holding up both hands. In the end, I don't think that this view holds up either, since not all of these results are reflected in the final score.
References
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