States of Affairs
States of Affairs
The form of words “state of affairs” is a very odd phrase, and yet it is used primitively in metaphysical theories. What is an “affair” and what is a “state” of one of these?[1] People talk of their financial and romantic affairs, but do ordinary objects have affairs that are in a certain state? I might say that my affairs are in a terrible state, but does a tree or rock have affairs that are in a terrible state? Not in the usual sense, but philosophers speak of trees and rocks as “constituents” of states of affairs. The phrase is metaphorical, so what would be a literal paraphrase? Here we run into trouble—nothing satisfactory comes to mind. We might try “situation” or “circumstances”, but these don’t really help; again, these words are tied to human contexts (“He is in a bad situation”, “My circumstances are adequate”).[2] We might hope for clarity from the words “object” and “property”: is a state of affairs an object having a property? But this is too confining: what about events and higher-order properties and general states of affairs and the weather (“It’s raining”)? And what is this thing called “an object’s having a property”—isn’t it just something being red, say? There is an object, a property, and the instantiation relation; but there is nothing further denoted by “a’s being F”. There is no “complex object” here other than the object referred to. Is a state of affairs to be defined as “the way things are”? But ways are properties and things are objects, so that doesn’t get us any further. The phrase “state of affairs” is supposed to take us to another ontological level, over and above objects and properties, but we haven’t yet found that level. The usual synonyms, “situation” and “circumstances”, don’t improve matters, having the same defects as “state of affairs”. And does anyone want to say that the world consists of situations or circumstances? Is truth correctly defined as “denoting an existing situation” or “denoting the actual circumstances”? Is “snow is white” true in virtue of the existing situation that snow is white or the circumstance that snow is white? These formulations are arch and artificial; so, we prefer to use the opaque and technical expression “state of affairs”, because its meaning is more nebulous and hence open to charitable interpretation. We are trying to generalize but we mouth only metaphor and circumlocution. We really have no other way of saying what that phrase attempts to say, but it resists clear interpretation. The idea that each proposition “corresponds” to a state of affairs that makes it true or false receives so adequate elucidation. And what is this concept of obtaining that is often used in conjunction with the phrase? What is it for a state of affairs to “obtain”? It is meant as the worldly counterpart to “true”, but little is said to clarify it: does it mean the same as “actual” or “existing”? Then we have the complex phrases “actual state of affairs” and “existing state of affairs”? What do these add to the original phrase? Don’t we have, “The state of affairs of snow being white obtains if and only if snow is white”? We are just spinning our wheels, manufacturing verbiage. How about, “The situation of snow being white obtains/is actual/exists”—isn’t that just a cumbersome way to say that snow is white? There is no real ontology corresponding to these forced locutions; they are easily paraphrased away. The phrase “state of affairs” is metaphorical, incapable of literal paraphrase, and theoretically useless. I suspect that its philosophical use springs from a misguided desire to achieve metaphysical generality (“Reality consists of states of affairs”), but we should not succumb to this “craving for generality” (Wittgenstein’s phrase). Reality consists of many types of things. Talk of states of affairs is an empty and futile way of trying to capture the idea of a perfectly general category of things that includes everything there is—a metaphysical myth.[3]
[1] We have the phrase “affairs of state”, which makes perfect sense, but “state of affairs” appears to refer to a state of some activity or concern (an “affair”). What is that activity or concern supposed to be? Notice that we can’t say “an affair’s state”, as we can say “a state’s affairs”: and it would be bizarre to speak of the world as consisting of a totality of “affair’s states”. The phrase is semantically peculiar. Affairs in the ordinary sense don’t come into it. The OED defines “affair” as “an event or sequence of events of a specified kind” and “a matter that is a particular person’s concern or responsibility”—which have nothing to do with the philosopher’s use of the term.
[2] The OED defines “situation” as “the set of circumstances in which one finds oneself”: what has this got to do with the nature of reality generally? Can we say the world is composed of situations in this sense? Try substituting the dictionary definition of “situation” in “situation semantics”. For “circumstance” we have “a fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action”—again, quite useless for the purposes intended by “state of affairs”. It appears that the phrase’s meaning is not a function of the meaning of its parts as they are usually meant. So, what exactly is its meaning?
[3] I haven’t gone into the usual ontological critique of states of affairs, but restricted myself to the meaning of the phrase “state of affairs”, which is usually left to its own devices. But we can add such questions as whether there are negative and disjunctive states of affairs (e.g., is there a state of affairs of either snow being white or 2 + 2 not equaling 4?), or whether states of affairs are denoted by whole sentences, or how they are to be individuated, or whether they weigh anything, or whether they can act as causes, or whether they can be perceived, or divided, or bottled, or destroyed, or whether there are fictional states of affairs, or ethical ones, etc.
The Latin term is “status rerum”, so states of affairs are states of things (in the broad sense of “thing”). The German counterpart of “state of affairs” is “Sachverhalt”, which is a combination of the noun “Sache” and the noun “Verhalt”. A Sache is a Ding (thing, in the broad sense); and a Verhalt is a state or behavior/conduct of a thing, or a relationship between things.
There are three synonymous words in German: “Sachverhalt”, “Sachstand”, “Sachlage”, which all mean status/situs/condicio/dispositio rei/rerum—state/situation/condition/disposition of a thing/things.
(By the way, the English noun “sake” is etymologically related to the German noun “Sache”.)
States of affairs have been introduced by philosophers and logicians as semantic correlates or ontological counterparts of declarative sentences. They have been called contents or objects of judgements. (Meinong calls the objects of judgements “Objektive”/”objectives”, as opposed to “Objekte”/”objects”.)
States of affairs qua judgement-contents seem no different from abstract Fregean Gedanken/thoughts or propositions qua “combinations of (individual and general) concepts” (or as Frege would say, “combinations of name-senses and predicate-senses”, since Fregean concepts are property-universals rather than predicate-senses).
States of affairs qua judgement-objects are Wittgensteinian “combinations of objects” (in the broad ontological sense of “object”, in which they needn’t be substantial things or substances).
According to Armstrong, states of affairs qua combinations of objects (in the narrow ontological sense) and properties or relations are entities sui generis by being “additions of being”, because the sum a+F or a+b+…+R is different from the state of affairs Fa or Rab….
However, if properties and relations are regarded as non-multi-instantiatable and non-transferable particulars rather than as multi-instantiatable universals, then the states of affairs Fa and Rab… seem to be nothing over and above the sums a+F and a+b+…+R, such that they are ontologically reducible.
A “state of things” is best interpreted as a property that things have, but then we have not got beyond objects and properties. Also, this is too narrow unless we stretch “thing” and “property” beyond their natural sense: what about properties of properties (as in the Frege-Russell view of quantification)? The problem is really that not all true propositions report a “state of things” in any natural sense–that way lies Meinong etc. But these are complex and difficult issues on which philosophers are unlikely to reach agreement. We can’t even decide how widely to use “true”. It’s interesting that Wittgenstein drops all talk of “Sachverhalt” etc. by the time of the Investigations, and Tarski has no use for such concepts.
A couple of examples might help. I say “Negation is a truth function”: have I attributed a “state” to a “thing”? What about “Time has no end” or “2 is not mammalian” or “All men are mortal” or “Genocide is evil” or “Truth is beauty”? These are very far removed from my describing my study as in an untidy state.
In the broadest sense of “thing”, a state of affairs qua state of a thing is a state of something, no matter to which ontological category it belongs. A property having a property such as F-being-G would then be a state of the property F. Roderick Chisholm has introduced higher-order states, states of states such as (a-being-F)-being-G.
In English “state” (in the ontological sense relevant here) seems to be an abbreviation of “state of affairs”, whereas in German there are two totally different words: “Zustand” and “Sachverhalt”. Is this merely a linguistic difference, or are Zustände and Sachverhalte different ontological categories? A Zustand is always a Zustand einer Sache (state of a thing), a Sachzustand; and I see no ontological difference between a Sachzustand (= Zustand) and a Sachverhalt.
Notice how far we are straying from ordinary use into philosophical stipulation. Can we say a thing is an entity? Does it sound right to say that existence or universality is a state of a thing (a propositional function)? Do all words refer to things? Are there non-existent things and nonsensical things and contradictory things (we talk about them)? Is necessity a thing? Is the golden mountain a thing? Is it possible to think about something that isn’t a thing? Can things be counted? What is gained by introducing such a notion? Even Wittgenstein never supposed that “thing” covers all that is, since he denied that facts are things. It is a concept without a contrast class, necessarily.
By the way, here are two German 18th-century definitions of “Zustand” (“state”):
“Zustand eines Dinges. Die Art der Einschränkung ist dasjenige, welches wir den Zustand eines Dinges nennen. Geschieht nun die Einschränkung in dem, wodurch die Sache besteht; so heißt es der innere Zustand eines Dinges; geht sie aber dasjenige an, was außer einem Dinge ist, das ist, dasjenige, wodurch es sich auf andere Dinge bezieht, so heißt es der äußere Zustand desselben.”
—
“State of a thing. The mode of limitation is what we call the state of a thing. If the limitation occurs in that through which the thing consists, it is called the internal state of a thing; but if it pertains to what is external to a thing, that is, to that by which it relates to other things, it is called the external state thereof.”
[my translation from German]
(Wolff, Christian. Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen. 4. Aufl. Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1729. §121. p. 63)
“Was der Zustand eines Dinges ist. Wenn man die Wirklichkeit eines Dinges mit der Gegenwart gewisser Determinationen, die ihm zukommen, betrachtet: So heißt solches der Zustand des Dinges.”
—
“What the state of a thing is. When one regards the actuality of a thing with the presence of certain determinations belonging to it, such is called the state of the thing.”
[my translation from German]
(Crusius, Christian August, Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten. Leipzig, 1766. §25. p. 40)
A Zustand (state) of a thing consists in a Sachverhalt (state of affairs), viz. in a substance’s being determined/limited in some way by an attribute (property, relation).
In addition to Wolff’s distinction between internal and external states, one can also distinguish between total and partial states: A total state of a thing is the thing together with /all/ of its (intrinsic or extrinsic) properties (a-being-F&G&H&…), and a partial state is the thing together with /only some/ or /only one/ of its (intrinsic or extrinsic) properties (a-being-F).
Surely “substance” is narrower than “anything that is”. Frege’s “object” is wider than “substance” but still narrower than “anything that is” because it excludes concepts (though includes truth-values).
The German Dictionary by the Brothers Grimm lists the following Latin meanings of “Ding”: “ens, res, substantia, aliquid, causa [in the legal sense], judicium, forum, conventus, status, opes, persona.” (I would have added “corpus”.)
So, a thing can be
(i) something whatever (existent or nonexistent, possible or impossible—an item in Richard Routley/Sylvan’s sense, an object in Meinong’s sense),
(ii) something existent (an entity, a being),
(iii) an object (in the narrow ontological sense, in which objects are “non-attribute subjects of attributes” (D. W. Mertz), “property-bearing entities of order zero, having a certain kind of ontological priority over property-bearing entities of higher orders (if such there be), and are also individuals, having determinate identity and countability” (E. J. Lowe)
[Given these definitions, Davidsonian events seem to be objects too; so there is no clear distinction betweem them and objects thus defined.]
(iv) a substance (material or immaterial),
(v) a body, or
(vi) a material or mass of stuff. (Not all ontologists regard masses of stuff as things or objects—thing ontology vs. stuff ontology)
We could also use “entity”, “object”, “particular”, “object of thought”, “correlate”, “thingy’, and so on. Then we would need distinctions within this all-encompassing class. Same for “state”, “property”, “general”, “attribute”, “predicable”, “characteristic”, etc. I like this: “A thing being of a thing is a thing”–the first “thing” being a state and the last a fact. We could also try: “A value of a variable of a value of a variable gives a value of a variable”. Even better: “A what-is applied to another what-is gives a third what-is”. The world is the totality of what-is’s!