States of Affairs, Facts, Propositions

The paper argues for the applicability of the notion of collective truth as opposed to distributive truth, that is, truth at times or possibilia taken in groups rather than individually. The underlying reasoning is that there are transtemporal and transworld relationships, e.g., those involving the relations of <being a descendant of> and <thinking about>. Relationships are (one type of) truth-makers. Hence, there are transtemporal and transworld truth-makers. Therefore, there is transtemporal and transworld truth, i.e., collective truth. A semantics is developed (formalized in the appendix) which embodies the notion of collective truth, and which thereby, it is argued, has various advantages over standard intensional semantics. For example, it avoids a commitment to certain impossible entities.

ABSTRACT: Minimalists about truth contend that traditional inflationary theories systematically fail to explain certain facts about truth, and that this failure licenses a 'reversal of explanatory direction'. Once reversed, they purport that their own minimal theory adequately explains all of the facts involving truth. But minimalists' main objection to inflationism seems to misfire, and the subsequent reversal of explanatory direction, if it can be made sense of, leaves minimalism in no better explanatory position; and even if the objection were serviceable and the reversal legitimate, minimalists' adequacy thesis is still implausible.

Wittgenstein’s discussion of the colour exclusion problem in ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’ led to a series of papers by Lewy, von Wright and others on Entailment. Central to this stream of thought was concern with C.I. Lewis’ discussion of the so-called ‘Paradoxes of Strict Implication’.  Lewy and the rest were concerned to avoid Lewis’ entailments to necessary consequents, and from impossible antecedents, for instance.  Later, Anderson and Belnap took up the issue of Entailment in a different way.  Indeed, it was not until Anderson and Belnap’s work that a thorough study of the distinctive grammar of remarks like ‘That something is red all over entails that it is not green’ was undertaken. Nevertheless followers of this second train of thought were happy to take ‘entails’ as a sort of propositional connective, although naturally everyone realised that the plain hook of standard propositional logic would not suffice to express the relation, because of the so-called ‘Paradoxes of Material Implication’.  The problem for both of these traditions, however, was that they had no way of formalising ‘that’-clauses as referential phrases, allowing the relation to be formalised in predicate logic terms.  Indeed that would have brought up for them difficult philosophical questions to do with Realism.  But now that we are moving out of the Empiricism of those times it is easier for us to see just what it was that Wittgenstein had in mind.

This book pursues the question: In what way, if any, does natural language allow for reference to abstract objects? What distinguishes its approach from ordinary language philosophy is the way it makes systematic use of contemporary research in linguistic semantics as well as syntax and explores a much greater range of data and linguistic generalizations than are generally taken into account in philosophy. This book thus explores “descriptive metaphysics” (as opposed to “revisionary metaphysics”) in a fully systematic way,to use Stawson’s terms. The result is an ontological picture that differs greatly from the one taken for granted by philosophers as regards natural language.

Reviews:
"In Moltmanns work, linguistic, metaphysical and more general philosophical insight and theory are expertly woven together in an exceptionally original and rewarding way. This book is essential reading for philosophers, linguists and cognitive scientists." - Mark Sainsbury, University of Texas at Austin

"This book is important for its hypotheses and conclusions, but even more so for its methodology: Moltmanns thorough and careful examination of linguistic (and crosslinguistic) data has raised so-called descriptive metaphysics, the analysis of the categories of being implicitly recognized by ordinary language and commonsense thought, to a new level." - John P Burgess, Princeton University

La realtà si presenta strutturata sulla base di enti classificabili come oggetti particolari, proprietà, relazioni e stati di cose (fatti). Secondo un punto di vista che potremmo chiamare universalismo, difeso autorevolmente negli ultimi decenni da D. M. Armstrong, le proprietà e le relazioni sono universali, ossia sono capaci di essere oggettivamente condivise, a differenza dei particolari, da enti distinti e quindi di occorrere in un certo senso in luoghi diversi nello stesso momento. Inoltre, esse sono capaci di combinarsi con oggetti in modo da generare stati di cose, intesi come enti complessi. Secondo un approccio rivale, il tropismo, difeso in tempi recenti da filosofi quali K. Mulligan, P. Simons, B. Smith e K. Campbell, le proprietà e le relazioni sono invece enti particolari, semplici e astratti, detti tropi, che possono essere condivisi solo nel senso che alcuni di essi, pur appartenendo a oggetti diversi, possono somigliarsi. I tropi sono considerati in grado di svolgere la funzione attribuita nell'universalismo agli stati di cose intesi come enti complessi. Entrambi gli approcci possono sposarsi a due diverse teorie sulla natura dei particolari concreti (quali tavoli, sedie o anche atomi ed elettroni). La prima li vede come sostrati irriducibili alle loro proprietà e la seconda come fastelli di proprietà. Senza la pretesa di avanzare argomentazioni decisive, verranno addotti alcuni motivi che inducono a propendere per l'universalismo e la corrispondente teoria sostratista dei particolari concreti, per poi concentrarsi su uno specifico problema che l'universalismo deve affrontare, quello dell'unità dei complessi, dal quale emerge il famoso regresso di Bradley. Verrà infine prospettata una soluzione a questo problema, l'infinitismo dei fatti, che verrà difesa da alcune possibili obiezioni.

The book State of Affairs reconstructs the controversy over Sachverhalt in the German and Austria tradition. The author offers an overview of the different proposals made regarding the meaning of “Sachverhalt”. The aim is to present various approaches and show different perspectives and methods in studying its meaning. Each of these proposals provides a new definition of the concept. The main theme of these pages it to reproduce the debate about a concept that, finally, has come to be used efficiently in the legal field. The discussion reveals numerous aspects by which philosophy has contributed to this development.

Acknowledgements / Preface / Contributors / Abbreviations
ATTILA BADÓ (Szeged) & MÁTYÁS BENCZE (Debrecen) ‘Reforming the Hungarian Lay Justice System’ 1–13 // CHONGKO CHOI (Seoul) ‘East Asian Encounter with Western Law and Emergence of Asian Jurisprudence’ 15–26 // LAJOS CS. KISS (Budapest) ‘Karl Mannheims Rezeption in Ungarn’ 27–65 // PÉTER CSERNE (Budapest) ‘How to Use Philosophy, Economics and Psychology in Jurisprudence: The Case of Paternalism in Contract Law’ 67–91 // JØRGEN DALBERG-LARSEN (Aarhus) ‘Policy of Law and Codifications’ 93–106 // PÉTER ERDŐ (Budapest) ‘Kirchenrechtliche Aspekte der Bischofssynode’ 107–121 // CARLA FARALLI (Bologna) ‘Challenges in Contemporary Legal Philosophy’ 123–130 // BALÁZS FEKETE (Budapest) ‘In the Matrix of Global Governance: Reflections on the Transformation of Statehood in the Age of Global Governance’ 131–145 // VOLKMAR GESSNER (Bremen) ‘Regulation and Support: International Business in a Global Legal Culture’ 147–159 // CHRISTOPHER BERRY GRAY (Montréal) ‘Kelsen’s Kairos: The Secessinary Moment and Its Validation’ 161–174 // TAMÁS GYŐRFI (Miskolc) ‘Jurisprudence of Reasons? The Dworkin–Schauer Debate’ 175–188 // ISTVÁN H. SZILÁGYI (Budapest) ‘Barna Horváth’s Genius’ 189–202 // ANDRÁS JAKAB (Liverpool) ‘Critical Remarks on Alexy’s Theory of Principles’ 203–219 // JÁNOS JANY (Piliscsaba) ‘Legal Pluralism in Islamic and Jewish Law during their Formative and Classical Period’ 221–242 // ANDRÁS KARÁCSONY (Budapest) ‘Legal Hermeneutics in German Jurisprudence’ 243–254 // KEZIBAN KILIÇ (Lyon) & MÁTÉ PAKSY (Budapest) ‘À la recherche du meilleur droit possible: Trois aspects de l’ontologie juridique leibnizienne’ 255–273 // PETER KOLLER (Graz) ‘Die Idee sozialer Gleichheit’ 275–287 // MIKLÓS KÖNCZÖL (Budapest) ‘Justice to Future Generations and the Problem of Uncertainty: Some Communitarian Approaches’ 289–301 // DAVID NELKEN (Macerata) ‘Legal Culture, Transnational Legal Processes and Conformity’ 303–320 // VITTORIO OLGIATI (Urbino) ‘The Preamble of the Treaty that Institutes a Constitution for Europe: A Question of Virtual Reality’ 321–337 // ESIN ÖRÜCÜ (Glasgow) ‘Some Problems and Pitfalls in Researching Law in Foreign Jurisdictions’ 339–359 // MARIJAN PAVČNIK (Ljubljana) ‘The Rule of Law Arguments: Its Elements and Some Open Questions and Cases’ 361–375 // ZOLTÁN PÉTERI (Budapest) ‘Droit et culture: Aux origines de la comparaison des cultures juridiques’ 377–392 // BÉLA POKOL (Budapest) ‘Einbeziehung der Herrschaftsdimension in die Luhmannsche Systemtheorie’ 393–413 // JIRI PRIBAN (Cardiff) ‘From the Spirit of the Laws to the Politics of Identity: A Critique of Ethno-nationalist Fantasies and their Legalisations’ 415–437 // NIKOLAS H. M. ROOS (Maastricht) ‘Theodicee: God Guilty as Charged?’ 439– 455 // JUAN IGARTUA SALAVERRÍA (Bilbao) ‘Some Cautionary Observations with Regard to the Judicial Evaluation of »Scientific Evidence«’ 457–468 // MIHÁLY SAMU (Budapest) ‘Collective Rights of Minorities and their Quality as Constituent of the State’ 469–474 // MARIE SANDSTRÖM (Stockholm) ‘The Swedish Model: Three Aspects of Legal Methodology’ 475–484 // JÓZSEF SZABADFALVI (Miskolc) ‘»Prima Philosophia Iuris«: A Sketch of Bódog Somló’s Legal Philosophical Oeuvre’ 485–498 // MIKLÓS SZABÓ (Miskolc) ‘Propositions in Law’ 499–515 // PÉTER SZILÁGYI (Budapest) ‘Zum Verhältnis der Rechtstheorie und der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit in Ungarn’ 517–526 // PÉTER TAKÁCS (Budapest) ‘Der Begriff des Gemeinwohls’ 527–537 // SZILÁRD TATTAY (Budapest) ‘»Ius« and »Dominium« in Thomas Aquinas’ /539–551 / JEAN-MARIE TRIGEAUD (Bordeaux) ‘Immutabilité et changement dans le politique et le droit’ 553–577 // ANTAL VISEGRÁDY (Pécs) ‘The Developmental Tendencies of the National Legal Systems in the European Union’ 579–587 // GORDANA VUKADINOVIĆ (Novi Sad) & ÁGNES KARTAG-ÓDRI (Novi Sad) ‘Tendencies in the Contemporary Theory of Law in Serbia’ 589–598 // JÁNOS ZLINSZKY (Budapest) ‘Römisches Recht: Beispielsammlung für Rechtsphilosophie’ 599–607 // ‘Bibliography of Csaba Varga’s Works’ 609–674

This paper argues that constructions with the noun 'case' are of considerable interest for philosophy of language and linguistic semantics (and syntax) and elaborates the overall view that noun phrases with 'case' as head noun stand for situations in their role as truthmakers within a space of alternatives, determined by a sentence or an epistemic state. It shows how the semantics of 'case'-constructions bears on a range of central issues in semantics and philosophy of language, such as the ontology of situations, truthmaker semantics, alternative semantics, kind reference, lexical actuality entailments, the semantics of  relative clauses, truth predicates, and conditionals.

The aim of natural language ontology is to uncover the ontological categories and structures that are implicit in the use of natural language. This paper aims to clarify what exactly the subject matter of natural language ontology is, what sorts of linguistic data it should take into account, how natural language ontology relates to other sorts of projects in metaphysics, in what ways natural language ontology is important, and in what ways the ontology of natural language may be driven by the use of natural language itself.

David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926–13 May 2014) has been one of the most influential contemporary metaphysicians working in the analytic tradition and surely the greatest 20th century Australian philosopher. His main merit is to have reestablished metaphysics as a respectable branch of philosophy placing it at the centre of the philosophical debate, and giving it the status of an authoritative and competent interlocutor of both rational and empirical sciences. By means of a rigorously argumentative approach and a sharp prose, Armstrong has built a whole metaphysical system, that is, a comprehensive and unified picture of the fundamental structure of the world. The various chapters of the book address the key issues concerning Armstrong's view about the problem of universals, the nature of states of affairs, the ontological ground of possibility, nomic necessity, and dispositions, the truthmaker theory, and the theory of mind. This volume aims to celebrate Armstrong’s memory bringing new understanding, and hopefully stimulating more work, on his philosophy, with the conviction that it constitutes an invaluable heritage for contemporary research in metaphysics.

ARTÍCULOS

1) Fabrizio Desideri (Università degli Studi di Firenze)

Otra deducción de los juicios estéticos. Por una superación de la dicotomía entre hechos y valores

Resumen

El artículo parte de una reconsideración, del importante ensayo de Hilary Putnam “The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy” desde el punto de vista de la estética. El primer paso consiste en un análisis de las propiedades estéticas y de los juicios relacionados como caso paradigmático para la superación de esta vieja dicotomía. La tesis es que los juicios estéticos son cognitivos de una manera no conceptual, así como normativos sin presuponer normas definidas. Al unificar niveles de descriptividad (negativa) con niveles de evaluación (positiva) en una sola instancia, los juicios estéticos socavan irreparablemente la solidaridad del fisicalismo y el emocionalismo. Por lo tanto, el presente artículo tiene como objetivo una deducción de los juicios estéticos, en el sentido kantiano, que conecte no obstante dos niveles de análisis estratégicamente diferenciados por el mismo Kant, i.e., los niveles de exposición empírica (fisiológica) y de deducción (trascendental) de los juicios estéticos. El núcleo teórico de la deducción consiste en la idea de un “mecanismo estético” subyacente en tanto fundamento de la epigénesis de la estética.


2) Daniele Petrella (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba)

Sobre la estética de Benedetto Croce

Resumen

El propósito de este artículo es trazar los lineamientos fundamentales de la estética filosófica de Benedetto Croce y mostrar cómo la palabra “estética” no indica un ámbito de estudio específico de objetos que solemos llamar artísticos. Hace referencia, más bien, a la filosofía misma como pensamiento crítico. En este sentido y en los términos kantianos de la Crítica de la facultad de juzgar, vinculamos la estética de Croce a una reflexión sobre la originariedad de la sensibilidad y del sentir como condición de posibilidad del conocimiento. Al mismo tiempo hacemos hincapié en que la influencia de Giambattista Vico es central para que Croce pueda definir la poesía como la lengua materna de la humanidad y caracterizarla como producción que exhibe ejemplarmente la originariedad del sentir en relación con la razón.

NOTA CRÍTICA

Pablo E. Pavesi
(Universidad de Buenos Aires Universidad Torcuato Di Tella)

A Real Eye Opener. La fotografía de Vivian Maier

Resumen

La fotografía callejera de Vivian Maier nos hace ver una súbita transfiguración de la realidad por la cual las personas, las escenas y las cosas devienen féricas, neologismo que nos permitimos para recoger del inglés el universo de las faeries y traducir a la vez uno de los sentidos del francés féerie, pieza de teatro en la que aparecen seres sobrenaturales (o, en este caso, infranaturales). Esa transfiguración, proponemos, es en rigor una verdadera aparición: una epifanía feérica (siempre carnal) que se despliega en dos direcciones, solar y subterránea. Nos detendremos en el cuerpo de Maier, reflejado en sus autorretratos, para proponer, finalmente, que su mirada es un daimon, intermediaria entre éste y otros mundos.


COMENTARIOS BIBLIOGRÁFICOS

María Jimena Vignati (UMSA-UADE): José María González García. La mirada de la justicia. Madrid: La balsa de la medusa, 2016.

Yanina Benítez Ocampo (UNSAM), Diana Pérez y Ricardo Ibarlucía (comps.), Hechos y valores en filosofía teórica, filosofía práctica y filosofía del arte, Buenos Aires: CIF-SADAF, 2016

Russell's notion of an incomplete symbol has become a standard against which philosophers compare their views on the relationship between language and the world. But Russell's exact characterization of incomplete symbols and the role they play in his philosophy are still disputed. In this paper, I trace the development of the notion of an incomplete symbol in Russell's philosophy. I suggest – against Kaplan, Evans, and others – that Russell's many characterizations of the notion of an incomplete symbol are compatible. To this end, I examine and reject arguments for the purported incompatibility between declaring an expression to be incomplete and incorporating that symbol into a compositional semantic theory. I then examine how Russell puts the notion of an incomplete symbol to use in metaphysics.

This paper explores the ambiguities in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that result from the conceptualization of the picture as a middle term in between the translations between language and the world. The picture is an odd inclusion that cannot help suggesting the work of the cognitive mind, odd because the analytic tendency in the Tractatus is to foreground the logical structure of the correspondences between language and the world that should not necessitate the mediation of the picturing mind. In my close reading of the statements in the Tractatus that refer to the picture, I show how ‘the picture theory of language’ cannot produce a plausible account of the truth or reality mainly because the concept of the picture in the Tractatus is not developed adequately and therefore cannot explain how linguistic propositions can ever correspond to any reality. In following Wittgenstein’s thinking on the Tractatus picture, I show that this inability results from the theory itself since it does not allow the picture and hence the picturing mind to deal with any sense of ambiguity and to exist in a sufficiently independent way from the facts of language and the world.

In Reinach’s works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs. Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Now in spite of this claim of the “ontological equality” of positive and negative states of affairs there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs could be directly “extracted” from our experience while to acquire a negative belief we must pass a quite complicated process starting with certain positive beliefs. A possible and reasonable explanation of this discrepancy would be a theory to the effect that these epistemological differences have their basis in the ontology of the entities in question. Our knowledge of the negative states of affairs is essentially dependent on our knowledge of the positive ones precisely because the negative states of affairs are ontologically dependent on the positive ones. Such a theory has been in fact formulated by Roman Ingarden. According to him negative states of affairs supervene on some positive ones and on certain mental acts of the conscious subjects.

I want to join Dummett in saying that the reality of the past (and, by analogy, the reality of the future) is an issue of realism versus anti-realism: If you affirm the reality of the past, you are a realist about the past. If you deny the reality of the past, you are an anti-realist about the past. (And likewise, in each case, for the future). It makes sense to think of these issues by analogy with realism about the external world, unobservable objects, mathematical objects, universals, and so on. These are all properly described as ontological issues....

Abstract

The basic principle of all realist theories of truth developed in the 13th and 14th centuries was that a proposition is true if and only if it tells us how things are in reality. Walter Burley (1275-1344) interpreted this principle in a more radical way than 13th-century realists did. Burley, in fact, proposed a strong correspondence theory, in which there is a strict biunique correspondence between linguistic and extra-linguistic elements. Now, if the principle of correspondence can be applied to Burley unconditionally to all affirmative statements (both for accidental and essential predications), it cannot be applied in the case of negative propositions, since in reality there can be no negative state of affairs. In order to solve this problem, Burley uses the strategy of introducing a complex mental object or objective entity as the significatum adequatum of negative sentences. It is an object which, although it exists only in the mind, is completely independent of our mental operations and which ultimately refers to the extra-mental world, composed exclusively of positive objects and states of affairs. In fact, the truth of a negative sentence does not depend on it corresponding to some negative fact, but rather on the opposite affirmative sentence failing to correspond to some positive extramental fact. Thus, extramental reality, which is only composed of positive objects, recovers its role as a yardstick for verifying the truth or falsity of all particular sentences, both affirmative and negative.

Wie denken und sprechen wir eigentlich über einzelne Objekte in Raum und Zeit? Diese Frage rührt gleichermaßen an Grundprobleme der neueren sprachanalytischen Philosophie und der transzendentalen Phänomenologie Husserls. Unter dem Titel 'Konstitutionsproblem' begegnet sie uns dort in folgendem Gewand: Wie bringen wir es zuwege, ein raumzeitliches Objekt über eine Zeitspanne und über eine Reihe von kognitiven Perspektivenwechseln hinweg 'im Sinn' zu behalten? Der Autor unternimmt den Versuch, das Konstitutionsproblem in einer Art und Weise zu verfolgen, die methodisch sowohl für Sprachanalytiker als auch für Phänomenologen akzeptabel ist.

1 This paper develops ideas presented for the first time in our 2001 and (in press), which present a detailed history of the act-content-object distinction in relation to the concepts of truthmakers and truthbearers. The first stresses developments in our understanding of those special objects of judgments called states of affairs. The second concerns mainly the general development of theories of judgment at the turn of the last century. The present paper concerns especially the development of the concept of the objectivity of truth.

INTRODUCTION 1 // 1. PRESUPPOSITIONS OF LEGAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 17 // 2. THE FACT AND ITS APPROACH IN PHILOSOPHY AND IN LAW 25  2.1. The Understanding of Facts 26 / 2.2. The Cognition of Facts 31 / 2.3. Brute Fact and Institutional Fact 36 [2.3.1. Process-like Development 37/ 2.3.2. Graduality 39 / 2.3.3. Being Attached to Objectivisation or Self-generation 41 / 2.3.4. Indeterminateness 44 / 2.3.5. Relativity 46 / 2.3.6. Historicity and the Methodological Dilemma of Cognition 48] 2.4. The Particularity of the Appearance of Fact in Law 50 // 3. THE IMPUTATIVE CHARATER OF THE JUDICIAL ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS  3.1. Logic of Problem Solving and Logic of Justification 56 / 3.2. The Difference between Cognition and Judging 62 / 3.3. The Selective Role of Relevancy 67 / 3.4. Fact and Case: a Mental Transformation 70 / 3.5. The Practical Dependency and Context of Qualification 77 / 3.6. Descriptivity Excluded from the Normative Sphere 81 [3.6.1. Concept and Type, Subsumption and Subordination 88] 3.7. The Unity of Fact and Value 93 / 3.8. The Unity of Fact and Law 97 [3.8.1. “Question of Fact” and “Question of Law” 99 / 3.8.2. The Question of “Ordinary Words” 106] 3.9. The Reflexivity of Factual and Normative Operations 108 / 3.10. The Limited Natur of Cognition and the Indefinability of Language 115 / 3.11. The Non-cognitive Dialectic of Normative Classification 123 / 3.12. Ascriptivity as End Result 126 //  4. THE JUDICIAL ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS AND ITS PROCEDURALITY 130  4.1. The Constitutive Nature of the Establishment of Facts 131 / 4.2. Evidence and Procedurality 137 [4.2.1. The Question of “Certainty” 141] 4.3. The Role of the Force of Law 144 // 5. THE NATURE OF THE JUDICIAL ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS  5.1. As the Play of a Game 147 / 5.2. As the Precondition to Mete out a Legal Sanction150 / 5.3. As a Non-cognitively Homogeneous Activity 153 / 5.4. As the Reproduction of the Law as a System [5.4.1. The Claim for Normative Closedness 157 / 5.4.2. The Openness of the Communication about Facts 161]
APPENDIX I: KELSEN’S THEORY OF LAW-APPLICATION: EVOLUTION, AMBIGUITIES, OPEN QUESTIONS [1994] 165–201: 1. „Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre” 166 / 2. „Allgemeine Staatslehre” 169 / 3. „Reine Rechtslehre” 173 [3.1. Theory of Gradation 176 / 3.2. The Constitutive Character of Law-application 181 / 3.3. Theoretical Question Marks 184 / 3.4. The Theory of Interpretation 186 / 3.5. A Procedural View of Law? 189 / 3.6. Self-transcendence of the Pure Theory? 195 / 3.7. Who Watches the Watchman? 199
APPENDIX II: JUDICIAL REPRODUCTION OF THE LAW IN AN AUTOPOIETICAL SYSTEM? [1990] 203–213
Bibliography 215 / Index of Names 237 / Index of Normative Materials 241 / Subject Indes 243
POSTFACE I: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE NATURE OF THE JUDICIAL ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS [2009] 251–270: The Investigation 251 / What Kind of Path has been Covered? 253 / How can we Get Closer to a Feasible Answer? 256 / The Range of Problems in Connection with Facts 262 / Theoretical Advance 165
POSTFACE II: WHAT IS TO COME AFTER LEGAL POSITIVISM IS OVER? DEBATES REVOLVING AROUND THE TOPIC OF »THE JUDICIAL ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS« [2003] 271–301: Natural Law and Legal Positivism 272 / Legal Positivism and its Logic 273 / Autopoiesis in Praxis 278 / Formalism and Antiformalism in Kelsen-interpretation 279 / On Facts 286 / Fact and Law 290 / Inseparability within the Prevailing Totality 293 / Answers in Deconstructionism 299
Index 303 / Index of Normative Materials 306 / Index of Names 307

The book State of Affairs reconstructs the controversy over Sachverhalt in the German and Austria tradition. The author offers an overview of the different proposals made regarding the meaning of “Sachverhalt”. The aim is to present various approaches and show different perspectives and methods in studying its meaning. Each of these proposals provides a new definition of the concept. The main theme of these pages it to reproduce the debate about a concept that, finally, has come to be used efficiently in the legal field. The discussion reveals numerous aspects by which philosophy has contributed to this development.

In Marty’s writings one can find two theories of truth making. The first one is deeply rooted in Brentano’s picture of intentionality as put forward in his unpublished lectures and operates with both immanent and transcendent propositional entities. Marty’s second theory was formulated under the influence of Brentano’s late criticism of his own theory of immanent objects. It rejects all immanent entities, but differs significantly from Brentano’s late, “reist” position. I begin this paper with few words about the general idea of truth making. Then, in section 2, I sketch Brentano’s official theory of intentionality and describe a simple theory of truth-making that can be based on it. Section 3 contains an analysis of Marty’s first theory, employing the ontology of intentionality from Brentano’s unpublished lectures, and section 4 concerns Marty’s late theory, in which he rejected all immanent entities, but retained a rich ontology of external states of affairs.

This paper provides my earliest defense of fact infinitism, which exploits Bradley’s regress to provide an account of the unity of states of affairs. I wrote this paper in March 2003. It was never published, but was posted in my university internet site for a while and attracted some attention. Some people have even cited it in their publications. I have thus decided to make it available again.

In diesem Aufsatz besprechen wir die Ontologie der Sachverhalte, die Carl Stumpf vorgeschlagen hat. Wie viele Vertreter der Brentano-Schule stützt sich hier Stumpf auf die reiche Ontologie der intentionalen Beziehung, die Brentano in seinen Vorlesungen aus der so genannten „mittleren“ Periode vorgeschlagen hat. Stumpf modifiziert jedoch die übernommene Lehre in einer unerwarteten Weise. Brentano sprach nämlich sowohl von immanenten als auch transzendenten propositionalen Entitäten. Stumpf hingegen führt nur die immanenten, aber keine transzendenten Sachverhalte ein, was alle potentiellen Vorteile einer derartigen Erweiterung der Ontologie zunichte zu machen scheint. Wir zeigen jedoch, dass sich die Position Stumpfs erklären lässt, wenn man zwei wichtige Punkte beachtet. Zum einen sind die Brentanoschen Objekte (der nominalen Form) bereits höchst komplizierte Entitäten, die in vielen Aspekten Sachverhalte ersetzen können. Zum anderen verwendet hier Stumpf, wie es scheint, einen konzeptualistischen Erklärungsmuster, den man auch bei dem frühen Brentano oft findet.

In this paper I argue that in order to properly account for group speech acts, we need to fundamentally reconceptualize, the force-content opposition. This is because in a group speech act, a group presents itself as taking a position such as an assertion, a promise or an order, that is, it presents itself as the subject of such a position. But on the received understanding of the force / mode of speech acts and so-called propositional attitudes and their propositional content, only the latter is representational, so that only what the subject is e.g. asserting is represented, not the subject and the position it takes. Against this I argue for a representationalist account of mode / force, according to which they are to be understood in terms of the self-awareness of subjects. Individual and collective subjects are aware of whether they take a theoretical or practical position towards the reality of a state of affairs and indicate this position in their speech. This often involves pre-conceptual and grammaticalized content, which is importantly different from the conceptual content philosophers have usually focused on. I show that the ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received force-content dualism and that, on the contrary, the view that force is representational allows a satisfactory response to the puzzles the ‘Frege point’ is based on. In the final section of the paper, I show how on the basis of the account developed we can give a more satisfactory analysis of the speech act of inviting a joint commitment and answer two important questions Bernhard Schmid has raised about group speech acts, namely whether there are 1st person plural Moore-sentences and a 1st person plural form of 1st person authority. I argue that the singular and plural cases can be treated in parallel.

Die offizielle Urteilstheorie Brentanos war eine nicht-propositionale Theorie. Die These, dass man, um die in einem Urteilsakt involvierten intentionalen Beziehungen zu erklären, keine propositionalen Entitäten einführen muss, war in der Tat eine seiner interessantesten Ideen. Brentano hat aber im Laufe seiner Lehrtätigkeit sehr viele neue Wege ausprobiert und so finden wir in seinen Vorlesungen aus den späten achtziger Jahren auch eine Urteilstheorie, die jedem Urteilsakt eine propositionale Entität zuordnet. Gerade diese Lehre war für Brentanos Studenten besonders inspirierend. Vor allem Anton Marty und Carl Stumpf haben sehr interessante Theorien von solchen, wie sie es nannten, Inhalten entwickelt. 1888 hat Stumpf in seinen Vorlesungen für derartige Entitäten den Ausdruck "Sachverhalt" eingeführt. 1 Da sich vor allem diese Bezeichnung als terminus technicus durchgesetzt hat, werden wir sie in diesem Aufsatz auch in Bezug auf diejenigen Philosophen verwenden, die ihre propositionalen Entitäte anders nannten. Unter den treuen Brentanisten war es Anton Marty, der am konsequentesten an der Unentbehrlichkeit solcher Sachverhalte als Wahrmacher für richtige Urteile bestand. Seine Theorie hat jedoch einen etwas merkwürdigen Charakter. Die Sachverhalte werden einerseits als unverzichtbare Elemente des ontologischen Mobiliars angesehen, andererseits finden wir aber bei Marty eine deutliche Tendenz, sie als Strukturen zu interpretieren, die auf den Dingen (der nominalen Form), wie man es heutzutage gerne sagt, supervenieren. Der Sinn, in dem sie dann noch als unreduzierbar zu bezeichnen sind, ist nicht einfach zu eruieren. Der Philosoph, der sich von diesem, an sich sehr attraktiven, Supervenienzgedanken endgültig verabschiedet hat, war Alexius Meinong. Wir besprechen die Hauptpunkte seiner Kritik, untersuchen mögliche Auswege und versuchen die innere * Die Arbeit an diesem Aufsatz wurde vom Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) unterstützt. 1 Er berichtet darüber in Stumpf 1907, S. 30. Vgl. auch Rojszczak/Smith 2001, S. 23. In den siebziger und achtziger Jahren haben auch Hermann Lotze und Julius Bergmann den Namen "Sachverhalt" für die propositionalen Urteilskorrelate verwendet. Vgl. dazu Rojszczak/Smith 2001, S. 22. 2 Spannung Martys Sachverhaltsbegriffs zwischen der Supervenienz und Unreduzierbarkeit ein wenig zu klären. 1. Brentanos zwei Urteilstheorien Die erste Information, die man in einem Einführungskurs über Brentano bekommt, ist, dass er in seiner Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874) den Begriff der Intentionalität für die zeitgenössische Philosophie neu entdeckt hat. Danach folgt garantiert seine Theorie des immanenten Objekts und das dritte worüber man hört, ist normalerweise seine nichtpropositionale Urteilslehre und die damit zusammenhängende Reform der Logik. Diese Theorie sieht folgendermaßen aus: Die psychischen Akte zerfallen in drei Gruppen: Vorstellungen, Urteile und Gemütsbeziehungen. Eine Vorstellung besteht darin, dass ein Subjekt einen Gegenstand einfach "vor seinem geistigen Auge" hat. "Wir reden von einem Vorstellen," schreibt Brentano, "wo immer uns etwas erscheint." (Brentano 1874/1925, S. 34) Was uns in dieser Weise in der Vorstellung erscheint, ist nach der Lehre der Psychologie ein immanenter Gegenstand. Wir können hier auf die Einzelheiten dieser schwierigen Lehre nicht näher eingehen. 2 Es muss genügen, dass die Entität, die als Ziel eines Vorstellungsakts fungiert, in ihrer Existenz von dem betreffenden psychischen Akt abhängig ist. Sie ist etwas, was von dem entsprechenden psychischen Akt buchstäblich "erzeugt" wird. Die Urteile und Gemütsbeziehungen bauen sich nach Brentano auf die Vorstellungen in der Weise auf, dass der vorgestellte Gegenstand entweder (in einem Urteil) bejaht oder verneint (bzw. angenommen oder verworfen) wird oder (in einer Gemütsbeziehung) mit einer positiven oder negativen emotionalen Einstellung aufgefasst wird. Im Folgenden lassen wir die Gemütsbeziehungen beiseite und konzentrieren uns ausschließlich auf die Urteile. Was für diese Urteilslehre wichtig ist, ist die Tatsache, dass die Urteile keine neuen gegenständlichen Strukturen erzeugen. Die urteilsmäßige Bejahung / Verneinung (wie auch die positive oder negative emotionale Einstellung) sind psychische Modi, denen auf der gegenständlichen Seite keine neuen Elemente entsprechen. Alles was wir in unserer Ontologie der Intentionalität brauchen, sind also nach dem Brentano anno domini 1874 (außer den psychischen Subjekten) nur die immanenten Gegenstände. Diese These wirkt auf den ersten Blick etwas befremdlich, denn die Frage, die sich sofort stellt, lautet: "Was macht ein bestimmtes Urteil wahr bzw. falsch?". Der immanente Gegenstand kann es kaum sein, denn diesen gibt es immer, wenn es einen betreffenden 2 Vgl. dazu Chrudzimski 2001 und Chrudzimski 2004.

Over the course of the past ten-plus years, Peter Hanks and Scott Soames have developed detailed versions of Act-Based views of propositions which operate with the notions of reference to objects, indicating properties, predication, and judgment (or entertaining). In this paper I discuss certain foundational aspects of the Act-Based approach having to do with the relations between these notions. In particular, I argue for the following three points. First, that the approach needs both an atomistically understood thin notion of reference, a bare act of thinking of o, as well as a more involved notion, something like making o a target of predication. Second, that the acts of thinking of o and indication of the property of being F are in no sense parts of the acts of predication of being F of o and judgment that o is F. Rather, the former are simply necessary preconditions for the performance of the latter. The acts of predication or judgment are emphatically not structured sequences of separate acts but unities in and of themselves. Finally, that we should understand the Act-Based theorists’ claim that to predicate is to judge as the claim that judgment can be reductively analyzed in terms of predication. Furthermore, while predication is metaphysically a multiple relation between a predicator, a target, and the property predicated, judgment is a monadic property, just one that has propositional content.

Commentators have long agreed that Wodeham’s account of objects of judgment is highly innovative, but they have continued to disagree about its proper interpretation. Some read him as introducing items that are merely supervenient on (and nothing in addition to) Aristotelian substances and accidents; others take him to be introducing a new type of entity in addition to substances and accidents—namely, abstract states of affairs. In this paper, I argue that both interpretations are mistaken: the entities Wodeham introduces are really distinct from substances and accidents, but, like substances and accidents, they are concrete (rather than abstract). Moreover, the key to understanding the significance of his theory, I contend, lies in a proper understanding of the theoretical role these entities play in his theory of judgment.

Frege argued for the force-content distinction not only by appealing to the logical and fictional contexts which are most closely associated with the "Frege point", but also based on the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. Supposedly this is only intelligible if the question contains a forceless thought or proposition which an affirmative answer then asserts. Against this I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on assertions and other forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher-level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed and present assertoric or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge.

This paper emphasises that there is a deep unity underlying Pierre-Yves Raccah’s theory of argumentation, ethics, moral epistemology, general epistemology, philosophy of science and cognitive psychology. First I show that – on the background of his argumentative conception of justifications – Raccah’s moral antifoundationalism is a consequence of the importance he assigns to responsibility in ethics, and in particular to the meta-ethical requirement that we are fully responsible of the moral positions we hold and of the actions we perform in observance to them. Then I explain why his anticonventionalism, as well as his account of how humans can form higher-order effective metapreferences, play a very important role in achieving the target of safeguarding our full responsibility in the prescriptive realm. Finally, I argue that also Raccah’s general epistemology is aimed at supporting the thesis that we are morally responsible of both the scientific theories and the empirical statements we do accept as true. I show how Raccah can successfully assign such a key role to responsibility also in the descriptive realm without abandoning empiricism.

This paper discusses three approaches to the semantics of event nominalizations and adverbial modification: the  Davidsonian account, the Kimian account, and the truthmaker account. It argues that a combination of all three accounts is needed for the semantics of the full range of event, trope, and state nominalizations in English.

The paper investigates the role played by ethical deliberation and ethical judgment in Wittgenstein's early thought in the light of twentieth-century German legal philosophy. In particular the theories of the phenomenologists Adolf Reinach, Wilhelm Schapp, and Gerhart Husserl are singled out, as resting on ontologies which are structurally similar to that of the Tractatus: in each case it is actual and possible Sachverhalte which constitute the prime ontological category.