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Full Idea
Chrysippus says there are two classes of facts, simple and complex. An instance of a simple fact is 'Socrates will die at a given date', ...but 'Milo will wrestle at Olympia' is a complex statement, because there can be no wrestling without an opponent.
Gist of Idea
There are simple and complex facts; the latter depend on further facts
Source
report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 13.30
Book Ref
Cicero: 'On Fate, Stoic Paradoxes, Oratory', ed/tr. Rackham,H. [Harvard Loeb 1942], p.227
A Reaction
We might say that there are atomic and complex facts, but our atomic facts tend to be much simpler, usually just saying some object has some property.
| 21673 | There are simple and complex facts; the latter depend on further facts [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| 18376 | Russell asserts atomic, existential, negative and general facts [Russell, by Armstrong] |
| 18737 | There are no positive or negative facts; these are just the forms of propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| 15201 | That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN] |
| 17688 | Negative facts are supervenient on positive facts, suggesting they are positive facts [Armstrong] |
| 8163 | Since 'no bird here' and 'no squirrel here' seem the same, we must talk of 'atomic' facts [Dummett] |
| 6075 | Facts are object-plus-extension, or property-plus-set-of-properties, or object-plus-property [McGinn] |
| 19322 | Why can there not be disjunctive, conditional and negative facts? [Kirkham] |
| 15071 | Tensed and tenseless sentences state two sorts of fact, which belong to two different 'realms' of reality [Fine,K] |
| 10367 | There is only one fact - the True [Schaffer,J] |
| 15338 | We may believe in atomic facts, but surely not complex disjunctive ones? [Horsten] |
| 17293 | Worldly facts are obtaining states of affairs, with constituents; conceptual facts also depend on concepts [Audi,P] |