Abstract
In Metaphysics of States of Affairs, Bo Meinertsen reviews and works out several underdeveloped points in the existing scholarly debate on states of affairs, and presents his own original account in detail. In this paper, we raise three problems for Meinertsen’s account and draw attention to an alternative view that, though not discussed in the book, is not beset by these problems.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Change history
02 June 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00529-5
Notes
Note that we slightly paraphrased Meinertsen’s definition of TM-reducibility. Strictly speaking, his own formulation sounds as if TM-reducibility was a relational notion, relativized to a particular proposition. On such a notion, an entity might be TM-reducible with respect to one proposition while not to another. But this sort of relativity would seem problematic for Meinertsen’s way of relating TM-reducibility to ontological fundamentality and non-fundamentality, which are non-relative notions, and for the way he contrasts TM-reducible entities with those that exist at truthmaker level (pp. 34, 36, et passim). This is why in the text above, we stated a non-relational notion of TM-reducibility.
A referee notes that Meinertsen actually does not say very much about the notion of fundamentality and might have a non-standard understanding of it in mind, although he should then have made this explicit. – We agree.
For a different version of factalism see Rayo (2017).
Note that talk of relations serves expository purposes only. It should not mislead one into thinking that the factalist must countenance relations as entities in themselves. In the official formal factalist theory, no reference is made to relations; rather, facts are ordered using primitive predicates (see below), which as such carry no ontological commitment. See Turner 2016, pp. 22, 57.
Turner argues at length against a simpler version of factalism couched solely in terms of similarity relations between states. See Turner 2016, pp. 57 ff.
References
Correia, F. (2008). Ontological Dependence. Philosophy Compass, 3, 1013–1032
Fine, K. (1995). Ontological Dependence. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 95, 269–90
Meinertsen, B. (2018). Metaphysics of States of Affairs. Singapore: Springer
Rayo, A. (2017). The World is the Totality of Facts, Not of Things. Philosophical Issues, 27, 250 – 78
Restall, G. (1996). Truthmakers, entailment and necessity. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74(2), 331–340
Schnieder, B. (2020). Dependence. In R. Michael (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding (pp. 107–120). London: Routledge
Simons, P. (1987). Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Turner, J. (2016). The Facts in Logical Space. Oxford: OUP
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
De Rizzo, J., Schnieder, B.S. States of Affairs and Fundamentality. Philosophia 51, 411–421 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00496-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00496-x