Talk:State of affairs (philosophy)

Interwiki

Please, add a link to https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_rzeczy Vikom ^talk 23:00, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Two notions of state of affairs

The article State of affairs in SEP, the main reference for this article, says that "According to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the totality of states of affairs exhausts the space of possibilities; the totality of states of affairs that obtain are the (actual) world. More recently, Alvin Plantinga (1974, 44) and Pollock (1984, 52) have posited in their metaphysics of possible worlds states of affairs that exists whether they obtain or not." The SEP article focuses mainly on this subtle concept of state of affairs, but explains that state of affairs to mean facts is actually more common. The current article is also about the more subtle concept. That's great, but the existence of the less subtle but more common concept should also be mentioned in the article to make the distinction clear. Also, I see a serious problem in the existence of sitelink from this article to fr:État de choses in French, because the latter is only about the more common concept. It should not be presented as the equivalent in French of this article. This is very confusing. Actually, the French article is also confusing, because it does mention Wittgenstein, but yet does not say a word about this important distinction and only discusses states of affairs as facts. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:53, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I added a corresponding clarification. As for the link to the French version, I think we should keep it nonetheless. They also have a different article for fact that is linked to our fact-article, implying a difference between the two terms also in French. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:18, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

This is a good clarification. I still feel the French article is misleading, but we should try to improve the French article instead of removing the wikilink. If it is not possible to get a consensus to have the French article be about the same subject, then I really think we should remove the wikilink. I suspect that common sense will prevail and there will be no need to remove the wikilink. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. This section might come in handy. But my French is too basic to be of much help here. Phlsph7 (talk) 06:45, 7 October 2021 (UTC)