Against Laws of Nature as Truthmakers for Presentists
Against Laws of Nature as Truthmakers for Presentists

Summary/Abstract: This paper addresses the so-called ‘truthmaker problem’ or ‘grounding problem’ for presentism. In section 1, I set the stage by introducing presentism and the truthmaker problem. In section 2, I consider a proposed solution to it, which I call the ‘laws of nature proposal’ (LNP), recently defended by Markosian (2013). I argue that LNP fails as a solution to the truthmaker problem because it does not meet a constraint that is generally taken as constitutive of it: that the entities doing truthmaker work should be categorical. Then, in section 3, I discuss the prospects of abandoning this ‘categoricity constraint’. The conclusion of this discussion is that the presentist should be allowed to such a move. This, however, is not completely good news for the friends of LNP, since the abandonment of the ‘categoricity constraint’ opens the door to simpler solutions, like what is often called ‘Lucretianism’.

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