Truth-makers, entailment and necessity

Definitions of the truth-making relation that appeal to the notion of metaphysical necessity are notoriously prone to problems, because they seem to be incapable of discriminating sufficiently finely between the truth-makers of different propositions, thus threatening to undermine or trivialize the very notion of a truth-maker. In this chapter, another approach is developed that appeals instead to a primitive notion of essence and explicates the truth-making relation in terms of a relationship of essential dependence between a proposition and its truth-maker. An advantage of this approach is that it draws on a theory of essence that is, very arguably, needed in any case to provide a satisfactory general account of modal truth and modal knowledge. As such, it is arguably superior to an account of truth-making that appeals merely to the unanalysed notion of a true propositions being true in virtue of its truth-maker.