Three Senses of 'Fact'

Ed Feser has a very useful post which clears up some unfortunately common confusions with respect to talk about facts and opinions.  I agree with what he says but would like to add a nuance.  Feser distinguishes two senses of 'fact,' one metaphysical (I prefer the term 'ontological') the other epistemological:

Fact (1): an objective state of affairs

Fact (2): a state of affairs known via conclusive arguments, airtight evidence, etc.

 

I suggest that we distinguish within the metaphysical Fact(1) between facts-that, which are true propositions, and facts-of, which are worldly states of affairs that function as the truth-makers of true propositions.  If I say that table salt is NaCl, what I say is a fact in the epistemological sense of being something known to be the case, but it is also a fact in two further senses.  Uttering 'Table salt is NaCl' I express a true proposition.  (I take a Fregean line on propositions: they are the senses of context-free declarative sentences.) Clearly, the proposition expressed by my utterance is true whether or not anyone knows it.  So this is an ontological use of 'fact.'  But it is arguable that (contingent) propositions, which are truth-bearers, have need of truth-makers.  Truth-makers are plausibly taken to be worldly (concrete) states of affairs.  (Not to be confused with the abstract states of affairs of Chisholm and Plantinga.)  Thus the proposition expressed by 'Table salt is NaCl' is made-true by the concrete state of affairs, the fact-of, table salt's being sodium chloride.

 

One way to see the difference between a proposition, a truth-bearer,  and its truth-maker is by noting that Tom himself, all 200 lbs of him, is not a constituent of the Fregean proposition expressed by 'Tom is tired,' whereas Tom himself is a constituent of the fact-of Tom' s being tired.  More fundamentally, if you have realist intuitions, it should seem self-evident that a true proposition cannot just be true; it is in need of an ontological ground of its truth.  It is true that my desk is littered with books, but this truth (true proposition) doesn''t hang in the air so to speak, it is grounded in a truth-making fact involving concrete books and a desk.

 

Many, many questions can be raised about truth-bearers, truth-makers, and so on, but all that comes later.  For now, the point is merely to sketch a prima facie three-fold distinction that one ought to be aware of even if, later down the theoretical road one decides that facts-that can be identified with facts-of, or that a conflation of  facts in the epistemological sense with facts-that can be justified, or whatever.  Such theoretical identifications and conflations presuppose for their very sense such preliminary prima facie distinctions as I have just made.