State of affairs (philosophy)

In philosophy, a state of affairs (German: Sachverhalt),[1] also known as a situation, is a way the actual world must be in order to make some given proposition about the actual world true; in other words, a state of affairs is a truth-maker, whereas a proposition is a truth-bearer. Whereas states of affairs either obtain or fail-to-obtain, propositions are either true or false.[2] Some philosophers understand the term "states of affairs" in a more restricted sense as a synonym for "fact". In this sense, there are no states of affairs that do not obtain.[2]

The early Ludwig Wittgenstein and David Malet Armstrong are well known for their defence of a factualism, a position according to which the world is a world of facts and not a world of things.[3]

  1. ^ Padilla Gálvez, Jesús (2021). State of Affairs. Reconstructing the Controversy over Sachverhalt. Philosophia Verlag. Archived from the original on 2023-01-06. Retrieved 2023-06-26.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Textor was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ David Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 1.