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This chapter, the longest in the book, presents the Representational Level of FDG, which is a layered structure indicating the part-whole relations among semantic categories. After a discussion of the hierarchically related categories, the chapter progresses to those that enter into equipollent relations, and finally to reflexive language.

If physicalism is true, all property instances must be realized in microphysical states of affairs. Microphysical states of affairs will fall into types having causal profiles, and when a property instance is realized by a microphysical state of affairs, there will be an isomorphism between the causal profile of the property and that of a type to which the microphysical state of affairs belongs. Corresponding to every type of microphysical state of affairs realizer there will be a property — an MSE property — that something has, just in case its career embeds such a state of affairs. So every case of microphysical realization will be a case of property instantiation in which the realizer is an MSE property. Instantiations of higher-order properties will have microphysical realizers that are parts of the microphysical realizers of instantiations of the lower-order properties, that are their property realizers.

This chapter focuses on the notion of a state of affairs as fundamentally primitive, which serves as a basis for the following discussion of ontological categories. It argues for the centrality of states of affairs from both an epistemological and a semantic perspective. States of affairs constitute the first point of cognitive contact with the world and also play an important role in semantical theories. Thus, they constitute a suitable starting-point for philosophical investigations. The second part of this chapter examines the relationship between states of affairs and their constituents. It becomes evident that arguments for the centrality of states of affairs entail that states of affairs should be conceived of as prior to their constituents, at least in the order of cognition. A state of affairs is first shown as a whole, and only afterwards analysed into the different items it is made up of. This priority of states of affairs has important implications for the account of ontological categories developed.

A realist approach to metaphysics and ontology is defended in the face of some antirealist tendencies in contemporary philosophical thought. The general notion of an ontological category is explained and justified. Different systems of ontological categories are compared and contrasted with the four-category ontology: a one-category ontology of modes or tropes, a two-category ontology of particulars and universals, and a two-category ontology of substantial particulars and modes. The ontological status of states of affairs and natural laws, and the ontological implications of the truthmaker principle as advocated by D. M. Armstrong are discussed.

This chapter focuses on a particularly important set of philosophical implications of the account of ontological categories. This account is fundamentally structuralist: it tries to get at information about the different constituents of states of affairs not by any direct information about them but by considering specific relations between them, that is information about which of them can go together to form states of affairs. It is interesting to note that a certain distinction between constituents of states of affairs, which would normally be regarded as clearly structural, cannot in fact be structural at all given that they cannot be distinguished by the structuralist account of ontological categories. This chapter shows why this is so and what wider philosophical implications it has.

This chapter argues that, if every truth has a truthmaker, then some of those truthmakers are states of affairs or, in other words, events or Russellian facts. Moreover, some of those truthmaking states of affairs must have certain of their constituents essentially. Furthermore, if Truthmaker is to rule out those theories typically taken to violate truth's dependence on being, it must exclude some alleged properties from truthmaking states of affairs. Truthmaker's thus excluding some properties is one reason that it is not a metaphysically neutral litmus test for philosophical theories. This chapter argues that Truthmaker requires that a truth be ‘about’ its truthmaker.

This chapter argues that Truthmaker should not be scaled back to allow truths such as that hobbits do not exist to lack truthmakers. It argues that the best truthmaker for all such truths is a single totality state of affairs, even though this truthmaker is subject to serious objections. The chapter shows that Truthmaker implies that each true negative existential is really about the positive existence of something, namely, its truthmaker. It argues that these results are good reasons to doubt Truthmaker.

This chapter provides an overview of the development of Armstrong’s metaphysics, with special reference to his contributions to Ontology proper, and to the place that ontology now commands in Anglophone philosophy. Armstrong was among the most influential philosophers in the transformation of philosophy away from the linguistic and positivist stance of the mid-20th century. After beginning with realist excursions into epistemology, he returned to the classic program of western philosophy, presenting a Materialist theory of mind. This was followed by, first, the development of an Aristotelian Realism, the application of this theory to accounts of Laws of Nature and of Possible Worlds, then, the presentation of an ontology of States of Affairs which embraces modality, the objects of mathematics, and an account of truth. While the treatment is sympathetic, questions are raised over the need for properties to be Universals, and whether his system of higher-order properties is fully consistent.

Many rationales are offered in support of the consequentialist theory of moral standards. This chapter harnesses the challenge to consequentialism mounted in prior chapters in order to demonstrate that the pull of many of these rationales is illusory. They do not provide a path of theoretical reflection that leads to consequentialism. They appear to result from what can profitably be seen as a misappropriation of general intuitions concerning the relationship between good/bad and right/wrong as properties of action and their misguided deployment as general intuitions concerning the relationship between good/bad as a property of states of affairs impersonally considered, and right/wrong as a property of actions. It is this misappropriation which underwrites the claim that consequentialism provides the most plausible interpretation of the general intuition that it is always right to do what is best. With this misappropriation in view, a return to the rationales that appear to favour consequentialism, reveals that their apparent support collapses.

This chapter sets out the genesis of secular modal status as a sequence, though in this context being earlier only means being presupposed by what follows. The steps are: God thinks up secular states of affairs. God notes any good-making or bad-making features they would have. If they would have good-making or bad-making features, God takes attitudes toward their obtaining. (If a state of affairs would have no such features, He takes no attitude.) Given His approval, disapproval, or neutrality, God decides whether to prevent these states of affairs. Finally, God prevents or permits, and perhaps also forms, dispositions to do so. The chapter argues that there are no temporal gaps between these steps.

This chapter examines the contemporary debate in China over whether Confucianism should be classified as a religion. It begins by introducing the formation of the official religious classification, the Five Major Religions, in the 1950s in socialist China. The chapter then turns to the contemporary Confucianism as a religion controversy in 2000–2004, an important debate among Chinese intellectuals with significant academic, social, and political implications. It argues that ideas are shaped by their social situations, and that the ideas about Confucianism, like many other bodies of knowledge, were shaped by and yet succeeded in transcending their specific environments of origin. The chapter draws on interviews with officials from the State Administration of Religious Affairs, with members of the Department of Confucianism, and with the current head of the Institute of World Religions.

A connection between metaphysical realism and the idea that truth is single and indivisible (alethic monism) is proposed. It is argued that propositions are the primary bearers of truth and truth itself is ineliminable. It is urged that truthmakers are many and do not all belong to the same ontological category. The need to posit facts or states of affairs as truthmakers, as proposed by D. M. Armstrong, is questioned. The unity of truth is related to the principle of non-contradiction, and the unpalatable ontological implications of relativism are examined.

This chapter seeks to lay out a taxonomy of the sorts of things that may plausibly be thought to be related by causation, things like events, facts, states of affairs, objects, persons, tropes, properties, etc. It begins with the law's framing of this issue, both because there is wisdom in the law's simplified taxonomy of these possibilities and because the law is our ultimate interest here. The thesis of the chapter is that all plausible causal relata can be reduced either to coarse-grained things (events under the Davidsonian conception of them) or to relatively fine-grained things (either tropes, states of affairs, or facts).

It is argued that the fundamental realities that constitute the world and are capable of independent existence are states of affairs (Russell and Wittgenstein's ‘facts’). They are particulars instantiating universal properties, and relations instantiating two or more particulars. They are all positive, the status of negative truths being left for further discussion. States of affairs are themselves particulars, as argued by Russell. Conjunctive states of affairs are accepted, but disjunctive states of affairs rejected. Particulars demand universals, universals demand particulars. It is suggested, tentatively, that this fundamental necessity is an irreducible feature of reality.