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Ideas for 'works', 'The Spirit of the Laws (rev. 1757)' and 'Our Knowledge of the External World'

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7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / d. Negative facts

22316	A positive and negative fact have the same constituents; their difference is primitive [Russell]
	Full Idea: It must not be supposed that a negative fact contains a constituent corresponding to the word 'not'. It contains no more constituents than a positive fact of the correlative positive form. The differenece between the two forms is ultimate and irreducible.
	From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], VIII.279), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 41 'Neg'
	A reaction: ['Harvard Lectures'] The audience disliked this. How does one fact exclude the other fact? Potter asks whether absence is a fact, and whether an absence can be a truthmaker.