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Title: Setting the facts straight
Related: Journal of philosophical logic, Vol. 40, No. 1, (2011), p.33-54
DOI: 10.1007/s10992-010-9141-7
Publisher: Springer
Date: 2011
Author/Creator: Jago, Mark
Description: Substantial facts (or states of affairs) are not well-understood entities. Many philosophers object to their existence on this basis. Yet facts, if they can be understood, promise to do a lot of philosophical work: they can be used to construct theories of property possession and truthmaking, for example. Here, I give a formal theory of facts, including negative and logically complex facts. I provide a theory of reduction similar to that of the typed λ-calculus and use it to provide identity conditions for facts. This theory validates truthmaker maximalism: it provides truthmakers for all truths. I then show how the usual truth-in-a-model relation can be replaced by two relations: one between models and facts, saying that a given fact obtains relative to the model, and the other between facts and propositions: the truthmaking relation.
Description: 22 page(s)
Subject Keyword: λ-calculus
Subject Keyword: Facts
Subject Keyword: Negative facts
Subject Keyword: Ontology
Subject Keyword: Properties
Subject Keyword: Reduction
Subject Keyword: States of affairs
Subject Keyword: Truthmaking
Resource Type: journal article
Organisation: Macquarie University. Dept. of Philosophy

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