Facts and States of Affairs

John Searle, in several articles and books, has contended that institutions incorporating status functions with deontic powers are created by collective acceptance that is not analysable into individual acceptance. I point out three self-contradictions in Searle’s exposition.

According to perspectival realism, reality is (at least partially) constituted by “purely perspectival” facts, that is, facts that appear to describe reality only from a given “perspective”. Fragmentalism is a form of perspectival realism that maintains both that no perspective is privileged and that perspectival facts constitute reality absolutely. Assuming that reality is sufficiently variegated, fragmentalism entails that reality is absolutely constituted by incompatible facts. Given that incompatible facts can never obtain together, reality must be divided into a plurality of (...) “fragments” that never compose a coherent, unitary whole. The main aim of this paper is to provide the first rigorous, detailed map of fragmentalism and its rivals. First, we will argue that fragmentalism is best construed as having two “unitist” (that is, non-fragmentalist) boundaries, which we will call ‘coherent’ and ‘incoherent unitism’. Second, we will present what we take to be the six main viable versions of fragmentalism and show how they can be categorized according to whether they take the logical operations of conjunction and negation to be either “local” or “global”. (shrink)

If possible worlds are conjunctions of states of affairs, as in David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory, then is the empty world to be thought of as the null conjunction of states of affairs? The proposal seems plausible, and has received support from David Efird, Tom Stoneham, and Armstrong himself. However, in this paper, it is argued that the proposal faces a trilemma: either it leads to the absurd conclusion that the actual world is empty; or it reduces to a familiar representation (...) of the empty world in which the concept of a null conjunction plays no role; or it needs to make room for the null individual of certain non-classical mereologies. (shrink)

In this article, we pursue the definition of an ontological framework and a species of ontologies called “epistemic ontologies” by focusing on the complex entities, physical and mental, that populate the world. These entities unify other entities on which they unilaterally existentially depend. These complex entities include states of affairs (in the physical sphere) and propositions and events (in the mental sphere). To account for their unity, we appeal to the ontological figure of ‘connection’, in reference to Gustav Bergmann's notion (...) of nexus. On the physical side, we identify different kinds of connections, namely connections of particular qualities to their carrier object, and connections of objects and processes to each other. We conjecture that physical states of affairs are exclusively connections. On the mental side, we equate relations with the conceptual constituents of our knowledge of the world, whose role is to put together entities. We conjecture that there are no physical relations. (shrink)

This paper will propose a novel semantic and syntactic analysis of stative verbs, more specifically abstract state verbs like 'need', 'believe', 'know', 'own', 'owe', and 'lack'. On that analysis, such verbs have an underlying structure on which they are complex predicates consisting of the light verb HAVE and a noun for a trope-like thing (a trope or attitudinal, modal or intensional object), a structure that is also input to semantic interpretation. Thus, 'need a coat' is underlyingly 'have need (of) a (...) coat'. The analysis accounts for restrictions on adverbial modifiers of abstract states verbs and surprising constraints on explicit property-referring terms, NPs of the sort the property of needing a coat. The paper advocates a notion of a property that is fundamentally different from the notions familiar from the philosophical literature (natural, non-natural properties, abundant, sparse properties). It also suggests that that notion of a property is as innate as constraints of universal grammar, given a generative perspective. (shrink)

I explore how endurantists are to handle cases of synchronic bi-location, in which a thing bi-locates at a time (such as by time-travel). I argue that endurantists face significant pressure to posit distinct but structurally identical facts (DSIFs), and critique the fragmentalist approach to bi-location in Simon (2018). Both the positive argument and critique are animated by the observation that handling bi-location cases requires perspicuously describing their spatiotemporal and causal structure. Accordingly, the argument proceeds by considering how endurantists are to (...) think about the metaphysics of place and causation, two issues that are important independent of the thesis about DSIFs. (shrink)

Higher-order logic, with its type-theoretic apparatus known as the simple theory of types (STT), has increasingly come to be employed in theorizing about properties, relations, and states of affairs—or ‘intensional entities’ for short. This paper argues against this employment of STT and offers an alternative: ordinal type theory (OTT). Very roughly, STT and OTT can be regarded as complementary simplifications of the ‘ramified theory of types’ outlined in the Introduction to Principia Mathematica (on a realist reading). While STT, understood as (...) a theory of intensional entities, retains the Fregean division of properties and relations into a multiplicity of categories according to their adicities and ‘input types’ and discards the division of intensional entities into different ‘orders’, OTT takes the opposite approach: it retains the hierarchy of orders (though with some modifications) and discards the categorisation of properties and relations according to their adicities and input types. In contrast to STT, this latter approach avoids intensional counterparts of the Epimenides and related paradoxes. Fundamental intensional entities lie at the base of the proposed hierarchy and are also given a prominent part to play in the individuation of non-fundamental intensional entities. (shrink)

A modern and influential Aristotelian conception of universals combines two ideas: that a universal is immanent in its instantiations, and that its instantiations are partly constructed by this universal. I argue that these two ideas are inconsistent on weaker assumptions than previously recognized.

I first show that a growing body of literature about the phenomenological and epistemic role of the structural features of experience can be recruited in favour of the view that absence experience is non‐veridical. Then I argue that such literature is in fact amenable to the view that absence experience is veridical if we rethink our conception of absence, and presence, itself.

I shall present a new theory of the distinction between facts and events that is based on taking events as occurrent modes. Roughly, I shall argue that facts are the modes that are involved in events and that they are not further occurrent modes. First, I shall introduce some data concerning the distinction between facts and events. Later on, I shall recall the view of events as occurrent modes and some tools that may be exploited for the task of drawing (...) the distinction between facts and events. Finally, within this perspective, I shall account for data and motivate every relevant departure from them. (shrink)

According to orthodoxy, the most fundamental kind of causation involves one event causing another event. I argue against this event‐causal view. Instead, the most fundamental kind of causation is thing causation, which involves a thing causing a thing to do something. Event causation is reducible to thing causation, but thing causation is not reducible to event causation, because event causation cannot accommodate cases of fine‐grained causation. I defend my view from objections, including C. D. Broad's influential “timing” argument, and I (...) conclude with implications for agent‐causal theories of free will. (shrink)

The Aristotelian view of universals, according to which each universal generically depends for its existence on its instantiations, has recently come under attack by a series of ground-theoretic arguments. The last such arguments, presented by Raven, promises to offer several significant improvements over its predecessors, such as avoiding commitment to the transitivity of ground and offering new reasons for the metaphysical priority of universals over their instantiations. In this paper, we argue that Raven's argument does not effectively avoid said commitment (...) and that Raven's new reasons fail. Moreover, we present a novel ground-theoretic interpretation of the Aristotelian view, referred to as strong immanence, and introduce a new argument against the Aristotelian view, intended to sidestep any commitment to the transitivity of ground. (shrink)

Ontologiset kategoriateoriat pyrkivät vastaamaan metafysiikan klassiseen ongelmaan: kysymykseen siitä, mihin eri kategorioihin oliot eli entiteetit jakaantuvat. Olioilla tarkoitetaan tässä mitä tahansa, joka on olemassa. Olevan kategoriat eli ontologiset kategoriat (lyhyesti kategoriat) ovat alustavasti olioiden hyvin yleisiä lajeja. Jäsenyys olioiden kategoriassa ei niinkään kerro sitä, mitä piirteitä oliolla on, vaan sen olemisen tavan ¬– miten se esimerkiksi on tai voi olla maailman rakenneosa. Esimerkkejä mahdollisista kategorioista ovat konkreettiset partikulaariset yksilöoliot (substanssit), ominaisuudet, relaatiot, prosessit, tapahtumat ja joukot. -/- 1. Mitä ovat ontologiset (...) kategoriateoriat -/- 2. Uusaristoteelinen realismi -/- 3. Russellilainen realismi -/- 4. Universaalikimpputeoriat -/- 5. Nominalismi: substanssi-modus-teoriat -/- 6. Trooppiteoriat -/- 7. Jyrkkä nominalismi -/- 8. Tapahtuma- ja prosessiontologiat -/- 9. Ontologisten kategorioiden tutkimus Suomessa -/- 10. Suositeltavaa jatkolukemista -/- 11. Lähteet . (shrink)

This paper defines relational properties and argues for their reducibility in a, broadly speaking, Armstrongian framework of state of affairs ontology and truthmaking. While Armstrong’s own characterisation and reduction of them arguably is the best one available in the literature of this framework, it suffers from two main problems. As will be shown, it neither defines relational properties very clearly (if at all), nor provides an adequate conception of their reduction. This paper attempts to remedy this situation in four steps. (...) First, it introduces relational properties and why they matter in metaphysics in general. Second, by briefly comparing and contrasting them with extrinsic properties, and by briefly mapping them onto a tripartite division of relations, the particular kinds of relevant relational properties are identified. Third, it classifies relational properties and thereby makes possible an apt definition of them. Finally, using the notion of truthmaking, it outlines a more satisfactory case for their reduction. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a lot of skepticism about the existence of facts. It seems that one of the last places for their application is in truthmaking theory. In this paper I discuss two approaches to the use of facts in truthmaking. The first, categorial, holds that facts are entities that belong to one of three ontological categories (true propositions, truth of propositions, instantiations of universals).The second, deflationary, holds that a fact is merely a functional concept denoting any (...) entity that performs a truthmaking function. I argue that in the face of significant criticism of categorial facts as truthmakers, a defender of facts may resort to the deflationary concept. Nevertheless, even in this case we can do without facts as truthmakers. (shrink)

Abstractionists claim that the only bearers of intrinsic value are abstract, necessarily existing states of affairs. I argue that abstractionism cannot succeed. Though we can model concrete goods such as lives, projects, and outcomes with abstract states, conflating models of goods with the goods themselves has surprising and unattractive consequences. I suggest that concrete states of affairs or facts are the only bearers of intrinsic value. I show how this proposal can overcome the concerns lodged against abstractionism and, in the (...) process, reconnect us with the good. (shrink)

When and why does awareness of a belief's genealogy render it irrational to continue holding that belief? According to explanationism, awareness of a belief’s genealogy gives rise to an epistemic defeater when and because it reveals that the belief is not explanatorily connected to the relevant worldly facts. I argue that an influential recent version of explanationism, due to Korman and Locke, incorrectly implies that it is not rationally permissible to adopt a “sparse” ontology of worldly facts or states of (...) affairs. I then propose a new explanationist account of genealogical defeat capable of accommodating rational belief in ontological sparsity. According to my account, awareness of a belief’s genealogy gives rise to a defeater when and because it reveals that the belief is not explanatorily connected to its truthmaker. (shrink)

The scientific successes of the last 400 years strongly suggest a view on which things are organized into layers, with phenomena in higher layers dependent on and determined by what goes on below. Philosophers have recently explored the idea that we can make sense of this idea by appeal to a relation called grounding. This book develops the rudiments of a theory of grounding, and applies that theory to questions of independent interest. The theorizing consists in saying in more detail (...) what grounding is and how it relates to explanations of the relevant sort, discussing objections to the deployment of a notion of grounding, and drawing points of contrast between a grounding-centered approach to relative fundamentality and other approaches in the literature. The book then turns to a demonstration of how this theorizing bears fruit in the investigation of other interesting questions. The applications are to central questions concerning (i) how to distinguish between truths that say how objective reality is in itself, quite independently of us, and truths that do not; (ii) the nature of truth; and (iii) the relation between fundamental physical facts and the rich panoply of other facts that depend on and are determined by them, including facts concerning our own doings. The aim is to advance our understanding of one of the deepest and thorniest questions which the stunning scientific achievements of the last 400 years pose: how higher-level phenomena, including ourselves, fit into an ultimately physical world. (shrink)

Appeals to metaphysics have lately come to ascendancy in analytic legal philosophy. Over the last 20 years or so, a new discourse framework has emerged in analytic legal metaphysics that focusses on the explanatory question of how law is made. By any measure the most influential refinement of this question is to be found in Mark Greenberg's seminal 2004 article How Facts Make Law. This essay tries to exert some pressure on this familiar question by posing the categorial question of (...) what type of entities different theories of law take up as ontologically basic for their inquiry. The essay singles out four exemplary avenues for answering the categorial question. Introducing a categorial instead of explanatory lens is an overdue step in the process of updating the metaphysical toolbox of contemporary analytic theories of law. The categorial question of what kind of entity law is ismeant to complement the explanatory question of how law is made in a way that makes disagreements about the metaphysical-explanatory demands of theories of law more tractable or amenable to principled adjudication. (shrink)

This chapter considers the ‘hosting question’ of how immanent universals, in contrast to transcendent universals, are ‘brought down to earth’ from ‘Plato’s heaven’. It explores the thesis that the hosting amounts to their being constituents of the states of affairs that result from their instantiations. These states of affairs are concrete complexes consisting of particulars and universals, and perhaps something that links them together. The traditional view that immanent universals are concrete is briefly defended against a recent prominent objection. On (...) relationalism, states of affairs are unified by a relation of some sort; on non-relationalism they are unified non-relationally. Roughly, these two conceptions of states of affairs are equivalent to Armstrong’s relational and non-relational versions of immanent realism, respectively. Armstrong mostly criticises the former and defends the latter. It is argued, however, that relationalism, at least potentially, answers the hosting question, whereas non-relationalism realism does not. (shrink)

Armstrong famously argued in favour of introducing totality facts in our ontology. Contrary to fully negative (absence) facts, totality facts yield a theory of “moderate” or “partial” negativity, which allegedly provides an elegant solution to the truthmaking problem of negative claims and, at the same time, avoids postulating (many) first-order absences. Friends of totality facts argue that partial negativity is (i) tolerable vis-à-vis the Eleatic principle qua mark of the real, and (ii) achieves a significant advantage in terms of ontological (...) parsimony. But are totality facts, which are partially negative, really more ontologically acceptable than fully negative facts? In this paper, we argue that, comparatively, the case for totality facts is weaker than commonly assumed and that, ultimately, the answer is negative. (shrink)

Some facts are objective. Some facts are subjective. Subjective facts are personal facts about individuals. It is the purpose of this short note to suggest that subjective facts are in fact objective facts about us. This applies not just to facts involving relations to entities that are independent of us, but to our tastes. It is an objective fact about us that we have the tastes that we do though there may be no objective matter of fact that our tastes (...) reflect or fail to reflect. (shrink)

Truth in a correspondence sense is objective in two ways. It is objective because the relation of correspondence is objective and because the facts to which truths correspond are objective. Truth about artifacts is problematic because artifacts are intentionally designed to perform certain functions, and so are not entirely mind independent. Against this, it is argued in this paper that truth about artifacts is perfectly objective despite the role played by intention and purpose in the production of artifacts.

It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation.

In this paper, I propose a solution to an almost ignored problem in metaphysics and metametaphysics: what is categorial fundamentality and non-fundamentality? My proposal builds on E. J. Lowe’s view on the issue. By means of the newcomer notion of generic identity, I can give an account of something that Lowe did not explicate: the constitution of formal ontolog- ical relations. Formal ontological relations (e.g. instantiation) are internal relations that deter- mine ontological form and category-membership. I argue that categorial fundamentality (...) is hav- ing membership fully determined by a simple formal ontological relation or relations jointly in an order and categorial non-fundamentality is having membership at least partly determined by a derived formal ontological relation in an order. In contrast to Lowe, my proposal does not pre- suppose non-modal essentialism. (Please, ask for the penultimate draft.). (shrink)

Here, we defend the thesis whereby the event plays a main role of sense in the meaning of certain sentences. This thesis is based on the one hand on recent work in the metaphysics of so-called “happening” entities, which has led to a distinction between concrete physical processes and abstract events, the latter being conceived as psychological constructs accounting for stabilities or changes in the world. Furthermore, we look back at the work on intentionality carried out in the Brentanian school (...) at the turn of the 20th century and we relate abstract events to the mental states of affairs studied by Twardowski but which were then neglected by contemporary philosophers of language. Abstract events, thus characterized, have the contingent property of occurring, when facts obtain and realize them. We suggest that the facts in question correspond to Wittgensteinian states of affairs. (shrink)

This article (in Finnish) discusses Seppo Albert Kivinen's (1933-2021) views on identity and existence conditions of universals. Moreover, the article puts the views to larger context.

The collective monograph "Ontology of Stative Situations - Linguistic Modeling. A Contrastive Bulgarian-Russian Study" includes research carried out within the project of the same name "Ontology of stative situations – linguistic modeling. A contrastive Bulgarian-Russian study", supported by the "Scientific Research" Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science in Bulgaria (№ КП-06-РУСИЯ / 23) and from the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research (No. 20-512-18005).

This paper is about what I call the Question of Iterated Causation (QIC): for any instance of causation in which c1…ck cause effect e, what are the causes of c1…ck’s causing of e? In short: what causes instances of causation or, as I will refer to these instances, the “causal goings‐on”? A natural response (which I call “dismissivism”) is that this is a bad question because causal goings‐on aren’t apt to be caused. After rebutting several versions of dismissivism, I consider (...) the view that QIC, though not illegitimate, is easy to answer: the causal goings‐on are apt to be caused but are plainly uncaused (“brutism”). However, I will argue that brutism too has a serious problem: namely, it leads to a highly implausible kind of armchair indeterminism. Next I consider some substantive candidate answers to QIC, none of which, I argue, is particularly promising. The paper’s final conclusion is twofold: QIC is at least as difficult as the more well‐known Question of Iterated Grounding; moreover, the largely overlooked regress problem that it raises gives us at least some defeasible reason to avoid causation in theory‐building. (shrink)

Hossack's 'The Metaphysics of Knowledge' develops a theory of facts, entities in which universals are combined with universals or particulars, as the foundation of his metaphysics. While Hossack argues at length that there must be negative facts, facts in which the universal 'negation' is combined with universals or particulars, his conclusion that there are also general facts, facts in which the universal 'generality' is combined with universals, is reached rather more swiftly. In this paper I present Hossack with three arguments (...) for his conclusion. They all draw, as does Hossack's theory of facts, on views Russell expressed in various writings. Two arguments are based on Russell's explanation of universals as aspects of resemblance; the third on Russell's observation that general propositions do not follow logically from exclusively particular premises. Comparison with other metaphysics of generality show them to be wanting and Russell's and Hossack's accounts superior. (shrink)

The Introduction to "Knowledge, Number and Reality. Encounters with the Work of Keith Hossack" provides an overview over Hossack's work and the contributions to the volume.

This paper raises a problem for the pair of views that universals are immanent in their instantiations and that these instantiations, or states of affairs, are somehow constructed from the instantiated universals. It is argued that the pair is inconsistent. The first view implies that universals are prior to states of affairs, whereas the second view implies that states of affairs are prior to universals. This paper does not attempt to solve this problem, but rather to formulate it precisely. That (...) promises to illuminate how to solve the problem if it can be solved, or why it cannot be solved if it is unsolvable. (shrink)

There is a tension in Santayana's ontological system, one that is generated by the interactions of his doctrine of existence, doctrine of systematization, and critical agnosticism on the infinity of material substance. From and, in conjunction with what will be called the expansionist postulate, an infinite material expansion is generated, one that is in conflict with. This tension is remediated by a coherentist proposal regarding Santayanan existence, the relevant feature of which is that existents at distinct orders of organization are (...) in symmetrical dependence relations. "Metaphysical coherentism," which has recently been described as "one of the least explored areas in contemporary... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to take a fresh look at a discussion about the distinct existences argument that took place between David Armstrong and Frank Jackson more than fifty years ago. I will try to show that Armstrong’s argument can be successfully defended against Jackson’s objections (albeit at the price of certain concessions concerning Armstrong’s view on the meaning of psychological terms as well as his conception of universals). Focusing on two counterexamples that Jackson put forward against Hume’s (...) principle (which is central to Armstrong’s argument), I will argue that they are either compatible with Hume’s principle, or imply a false claim. I will also look at several other considerations that go against Hume’s principle, such as, for example, Kripke’s origin essentialism and counterexamples from aposteriori necessity. (shrink)

We can only know what determines us as being and by the fact that it determines us as being. Our knowledge is therefore logically limited to what determines us as being. Since representation is defined as the act that makes knowledge dicible, our representation is logically limited to what dynamically determines us as being. Our representation is included in our becoming. Nothing that we represent, no infinite, can exceed the mere necessity of our becoming. The world, my physical being and (...) my consciousness are subsumed by the necessity of my becoming. We know nothing but “we become” To the question "Is there anything else to know?" we can give no logical answer -/- Summary: Reality is pure logical interdependence, immanent, formless, unspeakable. Logos is a principle of order in this interdependence. Individuation is the necessary asymptote of any instance of the Logos. Each knowing subject is Individuation, a mode of order among infinites of infinites of possible modes of order. Everything that appears to the subject as Existing participates in his Individuation. This convergence into Individuation defines a perspective that gives meaning. The subject is representation. It is in this representation that exist the subject, objects and laws of the world. Without subject there are no objects, no laws, no framework. The representation is not isomorphism but morphogenesis. The physical world and the Spirit have the same logical nature: they are categories of representation. The representation is animated because meaning is an Act. Representation is limited by a horizon of meaning. Below this horizon the subject represents the universe and itself. Beyond this horizon there is no prevailing space, time or form. The predicate expresses, below the horizon of meaning, a necessity whose source is beyond this horizon, unfathomable. The OK is neither materialism nor idealism and frees itself from any psychological preconceptions. The OK does not propose an "other reality" than that described by common sense or science, but another mode of representation. The OK is compatible with the current state of science, while offering new interpretive avenues. The OK differs from ontic structural realism (OSR) in various ways: Just like being, the relationship is representation, The knowing subject is present in any representation, the real is non-founded. (shrink)

In a recent article, P. Roger Turner and Justin Capes argue that no one is, or ever was, even partly morally responsible for certain world-indexed truths. Here we present our reasons for thinking that their argument is unsound: It depends on the premise that possible worlds are maximally consistent states of affairs, which is, under plausible assumptions concerning states of affairs, demonstrably false. Our argument to show this is based on Bertrand Russell’s original ‘paradox of propositions’. We should then opt (...) for a different approach to explain world-indexed truths whose upshot is that we may be morally responsible for some of them. The result to the effect that there are no maximally consistent states of affairs is independently interesting though, since this notion motivates an account of the nature of possible worlds in the metaphysics of modality. We also register in this article, independently of our response to Turner and Capes, and in the spirit of Russell’s aforementioned paradox and many other versions thereof, a proof of the claim that there is no set of all true propositions one can render false. (shrink)

Subverting a once widely held Quinean paradigm, there is a growing consensus among philosophers of logic that higher-order quantifiers (which bind variables in the syntactic position of predicates and sentences) are a perfectly legitimate and useful instrument in the logico-philosophical toolbox, while neither being reducible to nor fully explicable in terms of first-order quantifiers (which bind variables in singular term position). This article discusses the impact of this quantificational paradigm shift on metaphysics, focussing on theories of properties, propositions, and identity, (...) as well as on the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

John Searle, in several articles and books, has contended that institutions incorporating status functions with deontic powers are created by collective acceptance. I argue that collective acceptance can create new status functions with deontic powers only if other status functions with deontic powers already exist, so that collective acceptance can create new institutions only if other institutions are presupposed. So, the claim that institutions depend upon collective acceptance involves a vicious infinite regress. I provide an example to show how an (...) institution of slavery could be created by individual acceptances plus mutual belief about those acceptances. I consider whether an institution could be created by individual acceptances without mutual belief about those acceptances; but my conclusion is largely negative. I contend that the emergence of a new institution presupposes an existing institutional context and I explain how infinite regress can be avoided. (shrink)

Here, I lay the foundations of a high-level ontology of particulars whose structuring principles differ radically from the 'continuant' vs. 'occurrent' distinction traditionally adopted in applied ontology. These principles are derived from a new analysis of the ontology of “occurring” or “happening” entities. Firstly, my analysis integrates recent work on the ontology of processes, which brings them closer to objects in their mode of existence and persistence by assimilating them to continuant particulars. Secondly, my analysis distinguishes clearly between processes and (...) events, in order to make the latter abstract objects of thought (alongside propositions). Lastly, I open my ontological inventory to properties and facts, the existence of which is commonly admitted. By giving specific roles to these primitives, the framework allows one to account for static and dynamic aspects of the physical world and for the way that subjects conceive its history: facts account for the life of substances (physical objects and processes), whereas events enable cognitive subjects to account for the life story of substances. (shrink)

If one takes seriously the idea that a scientific language must be extensional, and accepts Quine’s notion of truth-value-related extensionality, and also recognizes that a scientific language must allow for singular terms that do not refer to existing objects, then there is a problem, since this combination of assumptions must be inconsistent. I will argue for a particular solution to the problem, namely, changing what is meant by the word ‘extensionality’, so that it would not be the truth-value that had (...) to be preserved under the substitution of co-extensional expressions, but the state of affairs that the sentence described. The question is whether or not elementary sentences containing empty singular terms, such as ‘Vulcan rotates’, are extensional in the substitutivity sense. Five conditions are specified under which extensionality in the substitutivity sense of such sentences can be secured. It is demonstrated that such sentences are state-of-affairs-as-extension-related extensional. This implies that such sentences are also truth-value-related extensional in Quine’s sense, but not truth-value-as-extension-related extensional. (shrink)

Natural languages generally distinguishes among different existence predicates for different types of entities, such as English 'exist', 'occur', and 'obtain'. The paper gives an in-depth discussion and analysis of a range of existence predicates in natural language within the general project of descriptive metaphysics, or more specifically ‘natural language ontology’.

This work will focus on Józef Maria Bocheński’s inclination towards seeing the world and its logical structure from the point of view of ontology. In section 2, we shall discuss the perception of the world deriving from Bocheński, while in the third section – issues of its logical structure will be dealt with. In section 4, we will present a formal framework of the structure of the world.

Philosophers of perception frequently assume that we see actual states of affairs, or facts. Call this claim factualism. In his book, William Fish suggests that factualism is supported by phenomenological observation as well as by experimental studies on multiple object tracking and dynamic feature-object integration. In this paper, I examine the alleged evidence for factualism, focusing mainly on object detection and tracking. I argue that there is no scientific evidence for factualism. This conclusion has implications for studies on the phenomenology (...) and epistemology of visual perception. (shrink)

Many philosophers have shown sympathy to the thought that reality is fundamentally positive. Julio De Rizzo formulates this idea precisely by means of the notion of grounding, and examines how the resulting thesis fares with respect to three much discussed classes of negative truths, namely that of negative predications, that of negative causal reports, and that of negative existential truths. By shedding light on the issues advocates of the thesis have to deal with, this work shows the positivist account to (...) be a tenable position in metaphysics. (shrink)

A summary of Russell’s logical atomism, understood to include both a metaphysical view and a certain methodology for doing philosophy. The metaphysical view amounts to the claim that the world consists of a plurality of independently existing things exhibiting qualities and standing in relations. The methodological view recommends a process of analysis, whereby one attempts to define or reconstruct more complex notions or vocabularies in terms of simpler ones. The origins of this theory, and its influence and reception are also (...) discussed. (shrink)

In this article I defend a view according to which facts that express metaphysical grounding are grounded in essences of properties involved into a given grounding relationship. To justify this view, first, I present some reasons for a claim that metaphysical grounding is grounded. In the next step I discuss two theories that explain what are the grounds for grounding: a theory that involves a notion of a superinternal relation and a theory that uses a notion of essences of properties. (...) I argue that later theory is preferable over the former. (shrink)