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Chapter 3 shows in what way the Unity Problem can be not only solved, but dissolved. The second and last step is taken here towards dismissing Armstrong’s facts as ad hoc entities, by showing that superior alternatives are available. If a common assumption that relations are relata unspecific is dropped (where relata specificity is neither externality or particularity), and it is instead assumed that relations are relata specific, then mereological complexes of relations and their relata alone suffice to provide unity in the world, and the unity problem does not arise. If the acknowledgement of relations (and properties) is deemed non-negotiable, then a world of mereological complexes where all relations are relata specific (and properties all bearer-specific) is preferable to one of Armstrongian facts, because the former is least ad hoc, or, in any case presents the fewest costs and most benefits. Within a discussion of criteria of theory choice in metaphysics it is also critically argued that, although mereological complexes can take up the truthmaker role, they do so only by sharing with facts certain modal characteristics that enable truthmaking as necessitation.

The Conclusion sums up Against Facts’ main findings: in part I and II Armstrong’s truthmaker argument and the argument from nominal reference have been shown to be unsound. The two kinds of methodology used in the two parts of the book are highlighted, and certain enterprises in language-based descriptive metaphysics are criticised, namely enterprises that pretends to discover something about metaphysical entities by citing natural language analyses. It is argued that at least in case of technical philosophical terms like ‘fact’, ‘proposition’, ‘event’, and the like, reference collapses into fixing by stipulation a semantic value for those terms. The methodological proposal is made that we are entitled to take certain (categories of) entities as semantic value of certain expressions only if these entities are best-explanation players for the theoretical roles we deemed must indispensably be played, where indispensability is decided by criteria of theory choice agreed upon by the largest scientific community. It is concluded that defenders of facts have so far failed to show that facts should be given any place in metaphysics.