Comments Elsewhere

Let’s say you have a glass vase, and one day when dusting the mantle you knock it off. As it turns out—thank the Good—you’d left a cushion from the couch on the floor earlier when you were vacuuming, and the vase lands on that instead of the hardwood floor. You’re relieved because your vase didn’t break, even though it very well could have.

So, you say, (1) “My vase could have shattered (although it didn’t)!” You’ve just said something true. But if I’m not misunderstanding you (and I fear that I am) it seems as though you’re worried that (1)’s truth makes trouble for somebody who believes that true statements need truth-making facts. But why? Because claiming that there actually exists some fact to the effect that there is possible shattered glass all over the floor or that there are possible worlds in which the vase (or vase-counterpart) is shattered which exist in the actual world, requires you to utter some pretty queer things? Well, maybe.

But if this is the way you are arguing, aren’t you skipping over some pretty commonsensical candidates for the fact that makes (1) true? Here’s one: “My vase could have broken” is true because my vase is fragile. You hardly need a philosopher’s armchair to find out that that’s a fact; you can do it by examining, or dropping, a glass vase. The most plausible candidate for a truth-maker for this particular modal claim is not a part of metaphysics, but rather mechanics.

(I imagine you could do the same thing, mutatis mutandis, for “It was possible for me not to be reading this post right now” and the fact that I have free will.)

So where’s the problem for somebody who believes both in truth-makers and in simple explanations for simple phenomena?