ABSTRACT
Facts, or states of a airs, were taken by Bertrand Russell to be entities that su ced to “make true” or be the “veri ers” for atomic sentences (judgements expressed by atomic sentences, propositions). Such truth-makers were atomic facts. e recognition of atomic facts led, in turn, to questions about what other kinds, if any, of facts there were. Such questions were o en raised in the context of considering what one need recognize as grounds of truth: reasons or causes for truths being true. us speci c issues arose about purported negative facts and general facts. While Russell, like G. E. Moore, appeared to recognize that propositions or “judgement contents” were linked to the existence and nonexistence of speci c facts, he did not raise a speci c question about a truth-making relation. Rather, his idea, at least for atomic facts, was that a de nite description of a purported fact would serve to characterize or de ne a truth-predicate for the atomic case along the following loose lines:
(R) For any atomic sentence (proposition) Fn(x1, …, xn): Fn(x1, …, xn) is true if and only if there is a fact with Fn as relation and x1, …, xn as terms in that order.
