In this paper I first worry that Rorty’s attack on various conceptions of “the world” has an alarming tendency to veer from opposition to the kind of realism that he associates with various philosophers, such as Plato, Descartes, or even Kant, into skepticism about ordinary activities including those of observing things and referring to them. I try to uncover the roots of this slide in various semantic doctrines, and explore the distinction between minimalist or deflationist theories of truth, and any wider, and less plausible general doctrine of semantic minimalism.

How ontologically committal is common sense? Is the common-sense philosopher beholden to a florid ontology in which all manner of objects, substances, and processes exist and are as they appear to be to common sense, or can she remain neutral on questions about the existence and nature of many things because common sense is largely non-committal? This chapter explores and tentatively evaluates three different approaches to answering these questions. The first applies standard accounts of ontological commitment to common-sense claims. This leads to the surprising and counter-intuitive result that common sense has metaphysically heavyweight commitments. The second approach emphasizes the superficiality and locality of common-sense claims. On this approach, however, common sense comes out as almost entirely non-committal. The third approach questions the seriousness of ontological commitment as such. If ontological commitment is cheap, it becomes possible both to accept the commitments of common sense at face value and to avoid the counter-intuitive consequences of heavyweight metaphysical commitments.

The chapter begins by delineating the separate tasks of truthmaker theory and theories of truth. The two kinds of theories can be separated, and so are in principle distinct. However, history has not always treated them that way. It is proposed that one way of understanding the distinction between substantive and deflationary theories of truth is in terms of their contrasting relationship to truthmaking. It is then argued that truthmaking cannot be put to work in a theory of truth. Consequently, truthmaking motivates the rejection of substantive accounts of the property of truth. (It ultimately remains neutral regarding the substance of the concept of truth.) As a result, it is shown how correspondence theorists – traditional allies of the notion of truthmaking – are threatened by this book’s approach to truthmaking, whereas deflationists – who frequently see an opponent in the truthmaker theorist – have found a friend.

It has long been thought that presentists face a difficulty squaring their ontological view with respectable truthmaker theory. Presentists either fall foul of the requirements of truthmaking or must commit to unfortunate ontological posits in order to satisfy them, thereby spoiling the supposed advantages of their view. Given the enormity of responses that have been generated to this objection, one could be forgiven for thinking that there must be some palatable response available to presentists. This book inclines toward the view that presentists, as compared to eternalists, have only inferior options available to them when it comes to the accounting of truths involving the past. The available replies to legitimate questions about truthmaking favor eternalism over presentism. What is offered in this chapter is a perspective on the presentism debate that applies a conception of truthmaking as ontological accounting. It poses a dilemma to presentism. Either the view fails to do justice to the task of ontological accountability, or – if it succeeds – it results in a view that is less ontologically satisfying than eternalism.

This chapter meets several of the objections that have been offered against truthmaker theory being a worthy metaphysical enterprise. It counters the charges that truthmaker theory is maximalist or nothing, and that it requires up-front contentious ontological posits. It also rebuts challenges from Timothy Williamson and Kit Fine that truthmaker theory is an inferior if not pointless endeavor. It identifies and argues against “truthmaker deflationists” who believe that the point of truthmaker theory can be accomplished without resort to any ontological investigation whatsoever. Finally, it considers challenges from those who might take the relation of grounding to be a competing and superior metaphysical notion.