Abstract

Most contemporary analytic philosophers hold some sort of correspondence theory of truth, but there is no consensus among such philosophers as to what makes false atomic statements false, and their true negations true. In this work I develop and defend a particular version of the minority view that false atomic statements are made false by negative facts. While such positions have never been popular, I argue that their unpopularity is largely due to common misunderstandings of negative fact theories in general; and that the basic assumptions common to all correspondence theories of truth require correspondence theorists to recognize that special, negative features of reality make false atomic statements false. In particular I argue that a correspondence theorist cannot consistently maintain that nothing makes false atomic statements false; nor can the falsity of such statements be accounted for by supposing that there are facts about the incompatibility of some positive state of affairs with others, or by supposing that their are facts about the incompatibility of certain pairs of positive properties . ;Very briefly summarized, the theory I defend is as follows: A false atomic statement is made false by the non-obtaining of a positive state of affairs, and the non-obtaining of a positive state of affairs constitutes a negative fact. Such a fact consists of the negative exemplification of a property by an individual . The non-obtaining of a positive state of affairs is not a non-existent positive complex, but rather an existent negative complex. In short, to say that a fact is negative is not to say that it is existentially negative , but only to say that it is exemplificationally negative. Negative facts are exemplificationally negative in the sense that their constituents are united into a fact via a special, negative fact-structuring tie. This tie, negative exemplification, unites an individual and a property into a fact without that individual exemplifying that property