ABSTRACT
A fact is a constitutive property of the world. Facts, then, are the way the world is. True propositions are true because the world is the way it is. Related to the criticism that correspondence theories cannot deal with the so-called negative facts that make negative propositions true is the criticism that such theories also fail to account for the truth of hypothetical propositions. Correlating positive propositions with presences and negative propositions with absences, one can say that any true proposition (including negative and compound propositions) is made so by the presences or absences of specified individuals or kinds of individuals in or from the world. Philosophers such as Strawson and Davidson have decried facts since they fail to find them in the world. The challenge, presented clearly by Quine is to give an account of facts that recognizes that they are not in the world and that they do play a role in accounting for truth, they are truth-makers.
