Paper: Why There Are No States of Affairs

[Veritas Aequitas]

Peter Holmes [PH] argued there is no Moral Objective on the basis
there are no moral fact, i.e. states of affairs, etc.

PH's arguments against no moral facts has no grounding because there are no states of affairs in the first place,
What PH take as fact are merely illusions and meaningless mind-independent entities.

Here is a paper on
Why there are no states of affairs
Peter Simons


1 What States of Affairs are

2 What States of Affairs are supposed to do
2.1 Truth-makers
2.2 Objects of Propositional Attitudes
2.3 Significates of Sentences
2.4 Terms of the Causal Relation
2.5 Connections between these Roles

3 Inherent Problems with States of Affairs
3.1 Ontological Chimeras
3.2 Threats of Regress

4 Derivative Problems about States of Affairs
4.1 Universals
4.2 Identity Conditions for States of Affairs

5 Managing without States of Affairs
5.1 Truth-makers
5.2 Objects of Propositional Attitudes
5.3 Significates of Sentences
5.4 Terms of the Causal Relation
6 Conclusion

[Veritas Aequitas]

Another counter to why States of Affairs are Problematic and not real.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32030

[FlashDangerpants]

It's easy to casually dimiss this call out as yet another case of the Vegetable Ambulance not bothering to read or understand the source materials and just assume from the title that it supports his position - which is true, here's a snippet from that paper and I am fairly certain Pete would find it quite untroubling....

This comes from .... 5 Managing without States of Affairs

Not_A_Conflict.PNG (65.12 KiB) Viewed 691 times

So yeah, I reckon Pete can already Manage without States of Affairs quite easily tbh.

But I think it is more illuminating to consider how VA ended up needing Pete to hold some brittle truth theory that postulates any particular ontological status for something as awkward as a state of affairs?

The problem is this: VA has a very silly bandwagon based theory of truth in which any random group of people who make up any random nonsense can, if they assert that this nonsense is "knowledge" initiate an FSK thing which has more or less the same status as a science if as many people agree with it as agree with a "science-FSK" statement.

VA wishes it was complicated to dismiss his FSK theory. So when we point out that there are facts about the world and scientific data relates to such facts, he wishes we would need a cumberson theory that relates states of affairs to propositions about them via impractical relations of correspondence between distinct object categories.

But nobody needs any of that shit to dismiss something as lame as his FSK theory.

[Iwannaplato]

It's easy to casually dimiss this call out as yet another case of the Vegetable Ambulance not bothering to read or understand the source materials and just assume from the title that it supports his position....

And also that even if it did support his own view...he's making an appeal to authority. Hey, I found some guy's paper on the internet who says your position is false.

[Impenitent]

no states of affairs?

Nevada is a state of affairs... well Las Vegas anyway... what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas or something like that...

-Imp

[Veritas Aequitas]

we should, with a clear conscience, exile states of affairs from our ontology.

Farewell To States of Affairs
Julian Dodd
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 9912348901

The world, so D. M. Armstrong has told us recently, is a world of states of affairs [4, p. 1).
Reality has, he says, a 'propositional structure' [4, p. 3]; it is not made up of things, but of things-having-properties and things-related-to-other-things [3, p. 190].
If a is F, then we are thereby ontologically committed not only to a and, although some might deny it, to the universal F, but to the state of affairs of a's being F: a complex which exists just in case a has F, and which has a and F as constituents.
The outline of such a picture is, of course, not new: Armstrong freely acknowledges his intellectual debt to the logical atomism of Wittgenstein and Russell [4, p. 3].
His own states of affairs are direct descendants of the early Wittgenstein's Sachverhalte [36] and Russell's facts [30].
What is unique about Armstrong's exposition, however, is its clarity and crispness.
Such qualities, though, constitute a double-edged sword.
For the pleasure gained by seeing the case for states of affairs put so well is accompanied by an appreciation of how weak that case really is.
In order to convince a sceptic that states of affairs exist, their proponent must argue that only their existence can meet what is a genuine theoretical need.
The central claim of this paper is that no genuine theoretical need has been uncovered which can only be satisfied by positing states of affairs.

Consequently, until such time as a new and convincing argument for their existence is formulated, we should, with a clear conscience, exile states of affairs from our ontology.

[Peter Holmes]

The modifier propositional, as in 'propositional knowledge' and 'propositional state-of-affairs' demonstrates one of the most stupid and misleading of philosophical mistakes.

We express beliefs and knowledge-claims by means of assertions, such as declarative clauses and sentences. But we don't dream of calling those 'declarative beliefs' or 'sentential knowledge'. So, wtf is 'propositional knowledge'?

Ah - but a proposition is an abstract thing manifested magically by a token sentence! Ah, but a proposition embodies a thought!

Codswallop. Residual dualist superstition. To the bonfire with it.

[Veritas Aequitas]

The modifier propositional, as in 'propositional knowledge' and 'propositional state-of-affairs' demonstrates one of the most stupid and misleading of philosophical mistakes.

We express beliefs and knowledge-claims by means of assertions, such as declarative clauses and sentences. But we don't dream of calling those 'declarative beliefs' or 'sentential knowledge'. So, wtf is 'propositional knowledge'?

Ah - but a proposition is an abstract thing manifested magically by a token sentence! Ah, but a proposition embodies a thought!

Codswallop. Residual dualist superstition. To the bonfire with it.

There are many version of state-of-affairs.

You had claimed your independent fact is represented by a state-of-affairs.
Whichever state of affairs [truth-makers] you cling on, they are illusory.

If not, show your argument with references why your 'state of affairs' [truth-maker] is real?

[Peter Holmes]

The modifier propositional, as in 'propositional knowledge' and 'propositional state-of-affairs' demonstrates one of the most stupid and misleading of philosophical mistakes.

We express beliefs and knowledge-claims by means of assertions, such as declarative clauses and sentences. But we don't dream of calling those 'declarative beliefs' or 'sentential knowledge'. So, wtf is 'propositional knowledge'?

Ah - but a proposition is an abstract thing manifested magically by a token sentence! Ah, but a proposition embodies a thought!

Codswallop. Residual dualist superstition. To the bonfire with it.

There are many version of state-of-affairs.

You had claimed your independent fact is represented by a state-of-affairs.
Whichever state of affairs [truth-makers] you cling on, they are illusory.

If not, show your argument with references why your 'state of affairs' [truth-maker] is real?

No. Pay attention. There are features of reality that are or were the case. And we call them facts. And some philosophers call them states of affairs. So your claim - 'You had claimed your independent fact is represented by a state-of-affairs' is incoherent nonsense. You don't understand the words you're using.

Your claim is that facts or states of affairs or features of reality that are or were the case don't exist. That they only come to exist because humans perceive and describe them. And that is an ontological claim for which there's no evidence whatsoever.

Your appeal to quantum mechanics doesn't help your case, because the reality that quantum mechanics describes doesn't exist simply because we observe and describe it.

And, if we invent or create what we call reality, then we invent or create our selves - human beings - because we are part of that reality. So then, reality is the invention or creation of an invention or creation - and so on down the rabbit hole.

And meanwhile, none of this has anything to do with morality.

[Veritas Aequitas]

The modifier propositional, as in 'propositional knowledge' and 'propositional state-of-affairs' demonstrates one of the most stupid and misleading of philosophical mistakes.

We express beliefs and knowledge-claims by means of assertions, such as declarative clauses and sentences. But we don't dream of calling those 'declarative beliefs' or 'sentential knowledge'. So, wtf is 'propositional knowledge'?

Ah - but a proposition is an abstract thing manifested magically by a token sentence! Ah, but a proposition embodies a thought!

Codswallop. Residual dualist superstition. To the bonfire with it.

There are many version of state-of-affairs.

You had claimed your independent fact is represented by a state-of-affairs.
Whichever state of affairs [truth-makers] you cling on, they are illusory.

If not, show your argument with references why your 'state of affairs' [truth-maker] is real?

No. Pay attention.
There are features of reality "that are or were the case".
And we call them facts.
And some philosophers call them states of affairs.

This is meaningless and non-sense.

So your claim - 'You had claimed your independent fact is represented by a state-of-affairs' is incoherent nonsense. You don't understand the words you're using.

You have claimed 'what is fact' is objective and independent of human opinions, beliefs and judgment.
That 'snow is white' is a fact is a truth-maker that enable propositions and truth-bearers to be made by humans.

So what is wrong with my statement that your fact is an entity that is [exists as] independent of the truth-maker, i.e. "independent fact".
What is incoherent about that in that sense?

Your claim is that facts or states of affairs or features of reality that are or were the case don't exist. That they only come to exist because humans perceive and describe them. And that is an ontological claim for which there's no evidence whatsoever.

Strawman again.
I never said, "they only come to exist because humans perceive and describe them."
I have always state whatever is reality is always entangled with the human conditions and cognition [involve the whole human self, not just perceptions].

Whatever is reality is an emergence where humans are intricately part and parcel of.

Btw, whatever is an ontological conclusion is nonsense, meaningless and illusory.
There is no ontological thing that exists in itself, i.e. no thing-in-itself.
The dogmatic idea that there is an ontological thing-in-itself is purely driven by a psychological impulse of desperation from within the subject.

Your appeal to quantum mechanics doesn't help your case, because the reality that quantum mechanics describes doesn't exist simply because we observe and describe it.

If you are right, then you can appeal to the Nobel Prize Committee to cancel the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics to argue your case that the thesis that won the award is false.

It is your ignorance that you think you are right. It is because you are operating at a very low level of intelligence of reality being stuck with common sense, Newtonian and Einsteinian Physics.

Note: You are infected with the Dunning–Kruger-Effect virus.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.

And, if we invent or create what we call reality, then we invent or create our selves - human beings - because we are part of that reality. So then, reality is the invention or creation of an invention or creation - and so on down the rabbit hole.

We don't literally invent or create reality like we invent or create things.
The point is whatever we recognized as reality, you cannot exclude the human factor from it.

And meanwhile, none of this has anything to do with morality.

Why not?
You argue and insist Morality is not objective because there are not moral facts.
I say, your argument is baseless because there are no 'facts' as defined by you; your 'independent facts' are meaningless, groundless, and illusory.
Note this:
There are no Mind [brain, human]-Independent Facts
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39502

Meanwhile I argue there are facts that are conditioned with a specific FSK, e.g. scientific facts, thus empirically based moral facts which are objective.
In this sense morality is objective.

Btw, when you respond to my posts, be mindful of creating strawmen.