The Research On The Existence Of Negative Facts

When philosophers are faced up with the same problem, they tend to put forward different views. When dealing with the puzzle of the existence of negative facts. Alexius Meinong, Russell and Wittgenstein take different solutions according to their own theoretical framework. In order to expand the scope of objects of knowledge, Alexius Meinong raised the UFA principle that no matter we use which way to depict a item (object), there will be a so characterized tern (object) and he held that negative facts were non-being. In the early period, Russell believed that we must find the corresponding negative fact in the objective world to determine the true value of a negative proposition (-p) thus the negative fact existed. But after Russell turned to neutral monism, he constructed another theory to explain the negative propositions and abandoned the opinion that negative facts existed. The inconsistence reflects the change of Russel’s theoretical background, in essence, Russell’s idea that negative facts existed at early stage was inspired by Wittgenstein.However Russell did not really understand Wittgenstein’s unique interpretation of the negative facts. Wittgenstein is undoubtedly a genius, he created the concept of state of affairs, the logical space, simple object and these formed a way to really understand the negative facts. By comparing three philosophers above, we can understand the thought of Rusell’s negative facts better.