AAP2010 Abstracts
Use the form below to search abstracts by Author, Institue or Keyword.
| Title | Prof |
| First Name | Jonathan |
| Surname | Schaffer |
| Institution | ANU |
| Title of Paper | There's No Fact Like Totality |
| Select a Stream | Metaphysics |
| Abstract | The logical atomist thinks that the world is a world of atomic facts, and faces a well-known problem grounding the negative truths. Perhaps the leading atomist style response to this problem is Armstrong¹s response, which adds a totality fact along with the atomic facts. The totality fact says that there are no more atomic facts. I argue that a totality fact raises a problem of redundancy. The problem--which extends arguments from Lewis and Cameron--is that the totality fact of a given world entails all of its atomic facts, and so renders the atomic facts otiose. I articulate the problem of redundancy for totality facts, and consider a number of related atomist style responses to the problem of grounding negative truths, concluding that this problem remains without satisfactory solution. |
