I realize this is a small thing, but this essay appears to use “fact” to mean “a statement sufficiently well-formed to be either true or false” rather than “a statement which is true” and that kept distracting me from its actual point. Can some other word be found?
He is saying that that is a fact, but not merely because it is “a statement sufficiently well-formed to be either true or false”. For example, he would say that “If Oswald hadn’t shot Kennedy, somebody else would’ve” is not a fact, even though it is equally well formed. The point of the article is to explain how some counterfactuals can be facts while others are not.
I realize this is a small thing, but this essay appears to use “fact” to mean “a statement sufficiently well-formed to be either true or false” rather than “a statement which is true” and that kept distracting me from its actual point. Can some other word be found?
Has the post been edited since you made this comment? I couldn’t find any examples of this.
He is saying that that is a fact, but not merely because it is “a statement sufficiently well-formed to be either true or false”. For example, he would say that “If Oswald hadn’t shot Kennedy, somebody else would’ve” is not a fact, even though it is equally well formed. The point of the article is to explain how some counterfactuals can be facts while others are not.