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2 ideas
| 13133 | The world is facts, not things. Facts determine the world, and the world divides into facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. The totality of facts determines what is the case, and what is not the case. ..The world divides into facts. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1 - 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is said to be a radical new ontology, because the facts are held to be prior to the things and their properties, which are presumably abstractions from the primitive facts. The modern heir of this is Armstrong's 'states of affairs'. |
| 4239 | Nominalists deny abstract objects, because we can have no reason to believe in their existence [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Nominalists tend to deny the existence of abstract objects since, given their purported nature (non-causal), we can have no reason to believe in their existence. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (A Survey of Metaphysics [2002], p.372) | |
| A reaction: A good point. Aristotle worried about the causal inadequacy of the Forms. My mind can conceive of a 'thing' with no causal powers, just sitting there. |