Category: Facts
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Working Draft: The Case Against Facts
Comments appreciated if you are en rapport with the subject matter. The Case Against Facts Arianna Betti, Against Facts, The MIT Press, 2015, pp. 296 + xxvii If Buridan's contribution to the bestiarum philosophorum was the ass, and David Armstrong's the ostrich, Arianna Betti's is the hedgehog bristling with spines. The hedgehog…
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Facts and States of Affairs: Terminological and Substantive Questions
Bo Meinertsen writes, Do you prefer the term 'facts' to 'states of affairs'? I take it you do — you certainly used the former most. But why, actually, did you use the latter in your Nous article? Personally, I used 'facts' in my Ph.D. dissertation, but afterwards started using 'state of affairs', very much to…
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On J. P. Moreland’s Theory of Existence
What follows is largely a summary and restatement of points I make in "The Moreland-Willard-Lotze Thesis on Being," Philosophia Christi, vol. 6, no. 1, 2004, pp. 27-58. It is a 'popular' or 'bloggity-blog' version of a part of that lengthy technical article. First I summarize my agreements with J. P. Moreland. Then I explain…
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Butchvarov on Semirealism about Facts
Facts are the logical objects corresponding to whole declarative sentences, or rather to some of them. When it comes to facts, Butchvarov appreciates the strengths and weaknesses of both realism and anti-realism. For the realist, there are facts. For the anti-realist, there are no facts. Let us briefly review why both positions are attractive yet…
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Facts, Opinions, and Common Core
Justin P. McBrayer, in a NYT Opinionator piece, writes, When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read: Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven. Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.…
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Will the Real Truth-Maker of ‘Al is Fat’ Please Stand up?
From a comment thread: Me to Josh: "Could Al be the truth-maker of 'Al is fat'? Arguably not. What is needed is a state of affairs, Al's being fat." Josh to me: Yes, I think Al is the truth-maker of "Al is fat," but could be persuaded otherwise. I'm not sure what objections you have…
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Tropes as Truth-Makers? Or Do We Need Facts?
Here is a white cube. Call it 'Carl.' 'Carl is white' is true. But Carl, though white, might not have been white. (He would not have been white had I painted him red.) So 'Carl is white' is contingently true. There is no necessity that Carl be white. By contrast, 'Carl is three-dimensional' is necessarily…
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The Ramsey Problem and the Problem of the Intrinsically Unpropertied Particular
What exactly is the distinction between a universal and a particular? Universals are often said to be repeatable entities, ones-over-many or ones-in-many. Particulars, then, are unrepeatable entities. Now suppose the following: there are universals; there are particulars; particulars instantiate universals; first-order facts are instantiations of universals by particulars. One and the same universal, F-ness, is…
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Fused Participles and Ontology
Let's begin by reviewing some grammar. 'Walking' is the present participle of the infinitive 'to walk.' Present participles are formed by adding -ing to the verb stem, in our example, walk. Participles can be used either nominally or adjectivally. A participle used nominally is called a gerund. A gerund is a verbal noun that shares…
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Against Ostrich Nominalism
As magnificent a subject as philosophy is, grappling as it does with the ultimate concerns of human existence, and thus surpassing in nobility any other human pursuit, it is also miserable in that nothing goes uncontested, and nothing ever gets established to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners. (This is true of other disciplines as well,…
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Metaphysical Grounding I: True Of
(Note to Peter L: This begins our discussion of metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation, topics of common interest. We need, over a series of posts, to uncover and discuss as many examples as we can find. My aim, and perhaps yours as well, is to demonstrate that metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation are legitimate topics,…
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The Problems of Order and Unity and Their Difference
Last Thursday, Steven N. and I had a very enjoyable three-hour conversation with ASU philosophy emeritus Ted Guleserian on Tempe's Mill Avenue. We covered a lot of ground, but the most focused part of the discussion concerned the subject matter of this post. If I understood Guleserian correctly, he was questioning whether there is any…
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Are There Indexical Facts? Are They a Threat to Materialism?
1. Ernst Mach Spies a Shabby Pedagogue. In The Analysis of Sensations (Dover, 1959, p. 4, n. 1) Ernst Mach (1838-1916) offers the following anecdote: Not long ago, after a trying railway journey by night, when I was very tired, I got into an omnibus, just as another man appeared at the other end.…
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Reinhardt Grossmann (1931-2010)
An obituary by his Indiana University colleague, Nino Cocchiarella. "Grossmann was well known among his colleagues for his eagerness to discuss philosophical problems and to engage in sustained debate on fundamental positions." Sounds right. When I, a stranger, wrote Grossmann sometime in the '80s and posed some questions for him, he responded in a thorough…
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Butchvarov on Semi-Realism about Facts
This post takes up where Butchvarov Against Facts left off. See the latter post for bibliographical data concerning the essay "Facts" which I presently have under my logical microscope. And if you are a fan of Butch's work, all of my Butchvarov posts are collected in the aptly entitled Butchvarov category. (The following is also…