Being Positive About Negative Facts

Barker, Stephen; Jago, Mark

doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00479.x

Cited by 70 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…67 "I will maintain my opposition to negative and general facts, but give an improved account of how to do without them" (Pendlebury 2010 negative facts are mysterious and metaphysically weird entities … Positing their existence is to be avoided if at all possible (Cheyne and Pigden 2008: §2) which is difficult to understand without a certain amount of 'representationalism'. Not even Barker and Jago (2012), despite their unwavering acceptance of negative facts, contemplate the possibility that negativeness has something to do with the contingency of our ways of representing them. They make indeed a most valuable effort to counter the general trend, showing the ease with which negative facts can be logically and ontologically handled in their formal theory.…”

Section: The Search For Minimal Truthmakersmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…… It is not difficult to argue that existential facts are not really required. … I will argue in addition that provided we allow ourselves general facts then no further negative facts are needed among our truthmakers" (Armstrong 2004: §5.2: 54). negative facts 77 ; and Barker and Jago (2012) apply their formal treatment to conjunctive, existential, negative existential and universal facts, but reject disjunctive facts, 78 which Jago (2011) admits. 79 What passes unnoticed again is the extent to which the apparent logical form of facts is dependent on our linguistic representation -in turn dependent on the history of our cognitive evolution.…”

Section: The Search For Minimal Truthmakersmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Truths and Processes: A Critical Approach to Truthmaker Theory

Picazo

2014

Philosophia

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The starting point of this paper is the idea that linguistic representation is the result of a global process: a process of interaction of a community of cognitivelinguistic agents, with one another and with the environment. I maintain that the study of truth, meaning and related notions should be addressed without losing perspective of this process, and I oppose the 'static' or 'analytic' approach, which is fundamentally based on our own knowledge of the conventional meaning of words and sentences, and the ability of using them that we have as competent speakers. I argue that the analytic perspective is responsible for five recurring difficulties in truthmaker theory: (1) the lack of attention to the difference of explanatory role between the distinct notions proposed as primary truthbearer; (2) the adscription of purely extra-linguistic truthmakers to 'synthetic truths', ignoring the contribution of the linguistic factor; (3) the adscription of purely linguistic truthmakers to 'logical' and 'analytic truths', ignoring the contribution of the worldly factor; (4) the difficulties in the search for minimal truthmakers; (5) the problems in the treatment of 'negative facts' and of other 'logically complex facts'. I do not provide an account of how to solve these difficulties, but I do show how the 'process model' helps to clear up confusion regarding them.

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Section: The Search For Minimal Truthmakersmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: The Search For Minimal Truthmakersmentioning

confidence: 97%

Truths and Processes: A Critical Approach to Truthmaker Theory

Picazo

2014

Philosophia

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“…9 In the next section, I consider this anticipated objection in more detail and offer a principled reply. 7 For the sake of simplicity, I ignore Barker and Jago's (2012) defence of a kind of anti-instantiation relation, e.g. that a isn't G, which they propose to try to rehabilitate negative facts.…”

Section: Modal Instantiation Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Platonism, Alienation, and Negativity

Ingram

2015

Erkenn

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A platonic theory of possibility states that truths about what's possible are determined by facts about properties not being instantiated (or being 'uninstantiated'). Recently, Matthew Tugby has argued in favour of this sort of theory, arguing that adopting a platonic theory of possibility allows us to solve a paradox concerning alien properties: properties that might have been instantiated, but aren't actually. In this paper, I raise a worry for Tugby's proposal (and the platonic theory, more generally)-that it commits us to negative facts playing an important truthmaking role-and offer a strategy to avoid the objectionable negativity.

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“…Let e name the event of writing the Psalms and n name the event of writing Ezra's name. Barker and Jago suggest in a recent paper that we can take omissions to be e and n tied together by the relation of noninstantiation (Barker and Jago 2012). Thus, Ben Sira's omission is the entity composed of e, n, and the relation of noninstantiation.…”

Section: The Identification Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reference fiction, and omission

Murray

2016

Synthese

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In this paper, I argue that sentences that contain 'omission' tokens that appear to function as singular terms are meaningful while maintaining the view that omissions are nothing at all or mere absences. I take omissions to be fictional entities and claim that the way in which sentences about fictional characters are true parallels the way in which sentences about omissions are true. I develop a pragmatic account of fictional reference and argue that my fictionalist account of omissions implies a plausible account of the metaphysics of omissions.

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Being Positive About Negative Facts

Cited by 70 publications

References 32 publications

Truths and Processes: A Critical Approach to Truthmaker Theory

Truths and Processes: A Critical Approach to Truthmaker Theory

Platonism, Alienation, and Negativity

Reference fiction, and omission

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