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Full Idea
Unfortunately for the fate of realist philosophy, modern logic's treatment of 'exists' is resolutely inhospitable to facts as referents of phrases of the form 'the existence or non-existence of φ'.
Gist of Idea
Unfortunately for realists, modern logic cannot say that some fact exists
Source
Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Realism')
Book Ref
'The Old New Logic', ed/tr. Oderberg,David S. [MIT 2005], p.17
A Reaction
Predicate logic has to talk about objects, and then attribute predicates to them. It tends to treat a fact as 'Fa' - this object has this predicate, but that's not really how we understand facts.
| 18904 | 'Predicable' terms come in charged pairs, with one the negation of the other [Sommers, by Engelbretsen] |
| 18903 | Sommers promotes the old idea that negation basically refers to terms [Sommers, by Engelbretsen] |
| 18893 | Translating into quantificational idiom offers no clues as to how ordinary thinkers reason [Sommers] |
| 18894 | Predicates form a hierarchy, from the most general, down to names at the bottom [Sommers] |
| 18901 | Truthmakers are facts 'of' a domain, not something 'in' the domain [Sommers] |
| 18895 | Logic which maps ordinary reasoning must be transparent, and free of variables [Sommers] |
| 18900 | Unfortunately for realists, modern logic cannot say that some fact exists [Sommers] |
| 18898 | In standard logic, names are the only way to refer [Sommers] |
| 18897 | Predicate logic has to spell out that its identity relation '=' is an equivalent relation [Sommers] |
| 13127 | Categories can't overlap; they are either disjoint, or inclusive [Sommers, by Westerhoff] |