The term"obtain" has misled you here. Try re-working this in terms of possible worlds.

w₀ : The apple is not on the table
w₆ : The apple is on the table
w₉ : The apple is on the table
w₁₂ : The apple is on the table

Notice that each of these refers to an individual apple. Part of the problem here is moving between the apple, with talk of an individual, and an apple, with talk of a kind.

We could have

w₀ : No apple is on the table. (no individual apple is specified)
w₆ : Some apple is on the table (an individual apple is specified)
w₉ : The apple is not on the table (an individual apple is specified - this could be true even if some other apple is on the table)
w₁₂ : The apple is on the table (an individual is specified).

What we don't need here is the idea that the apple can exist yet not obtain. It might be that at w₀ the apple is elsewhere, or never grew, or event that there are no apples whatsoever. Talk of "obtaining" adds nothing to the logic. Nor do we need haecceity, unless you have an overwhelming need to prove that there is a god.

The reason why "a state of affairs" cannot list "the positions" some object occupies over time, is because this is explicitly a compilation of a multitude of states. Therefore it is not "a state". — Metaphysician Undercover

Nonsense. A state of affairs can set out what happens over time.

The term "state of affairs" is perhaps first found in the Tractatus, or in Russell. There is no indication in either Russell or Tractatus-Wittgenstein that a state of affairs must occur only at an instant, or that it cannot encompass temporal extension or change. The idea that states of affairs are instantaneous is your own addition.

:roll:

It's unfortunate that we have now gone back to some really basic stuff.

The "spectre" of the possible-but-not-actual appears to upset some folk. States of affairs are introduced as a way to deal with this discomfort. I don't share that discomfort. But if we take it seriously, it helps explain what is happening in 2.2.3 Actuality and Actualism

States of affairs are perhaps the descendent of the "logical space" of the Tractatus. There, Wittgenstein described a space in which objects could be arranged in any logical way - the apple on the table, or under it, or falling towards it, or whatever; of these various ways things might be arranged, one set is the way they are actually arranged. That arrangement is set out in his proto- first order language.

The actualist idea seems to be that possible worlds are different arrangements of the very same sorts of things we find in the actual world, and so those possible-but-not-actual things are in effect just rearrangements of actual things. Hence the puzzling suggestion in SEP that they hold that "Everything that exists in any world exists in the actual world". This by way of ameliorating the fear of the possible-but-not-actual.

That's why exotics are such a problem here. By their very nature they cannot be a mere rearrangement of the stuff in the actual world.

So Plantiga introduces haecceities in part as a way of explaining exotics. It's haecceities that get rearranged, rather than the objects of the actual world. And as a bonus he gets to prove to his own satisfaction that there is a god.

But for my part this is far too complex to be considered viable, in order to answer a problem that isn't really a problem.

How dose that sit with you as an explanation of 2.2.3?

@frank, the danger now becomes confusing abstractionism with combinatorialism. But were abstractionism posits only individuals in the actual world, combinatorialism allows any individuals; were abstractiomism has alternate arrangements of that actual stuff, combinatorialism is more a construction set which might build that actual stuff, but also might not, and so more easily allows for exotics; and for combinatorialism the actual world once again becomes indexical, as it should be.

So onward?

Going back to Possible World entry, it starts with the following:

“Anne is working at her desk. While she is directly aware only of her immediate situation — her being seated in front of her computer, the music playing in the background, the sound of her husband's voice on the phone in the next room, and so on — she is quite certain that this situation is only part of a series of increasingly more inclusive, albeit less immediate, situations: the situation in her house as a whole, the one in her neighborhood, the city she lives in, the state, the North American continent, the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and so on. On the face of it, anyway, it seems quite reasonable to believe that this series has a limit, that is, that there is a maximally inclusive situation encompassing all others: things, as a whole or, more succinctly, the actual world.”

Is this not a fallacy of thinking, specifically, the fallacy of composition. Thoughts?

Yeah, increasingly I take it that the common error here is the "maximally inclusive situation". At its heart it's the idea that we might list every sentence and whether it is true, or it is false, exclusively.

As I suggested earlier to @Ludwig V, there's no good reason to suppose this sort of completion.

And indeed, we have good reason to think that a formal system (at least, the ones that count) can be consistent, or it can be complete, but not both.

So I'd take it that what has gone wrong here is not the fallacy of composition so much as an assumption of conceptual completion.

Put simply, we do not need a description of the whole world in order to say that Anne might not have been at her desk.

But the three theories of Possible Words discussed in the article presume just this.

Your only direct and immediate knowledge of time is that of the present, the present moment in time. — RussellA

As I said, the present, as we experience it, exists as a continuous duration within which activity is occurring. The representation of the present as a "moment in time" is completely inconsistent with empirical observation, therefore a falsity.

Are you referring to concretism?("for the concretist, there is no special property of the actual world — actuality — that distinguishes it, in any absolute sense, from all of the others; it is simply the world that we inhabit.")

I agree that is a problem with concretism. — Relativist

It's not only concretism but abstractionism as well. You are referring to the world we inhabit, (which I take as the independent physical world) as "the actual world". But this is not what "the actual world" refers to in possible worlds semantics. Look at the difference between "actual" and "concrete" in the SEP's account of abstractionism. SOAs may be actual or non-actual. "Actrual" means that it has been judged to obtain in the concrete world.

Importantly, SOAs constitute a primitive ontological category for the abstractionist; they are not defined in terms of possible worlds in the manner that propositions are in §1.3. Just as some propositions are true and others are not, some SOAs are actual and others are not.[28] Note, then, that to say an SOA is non-actual is not to say that it does not actually exist. It is simply to say that it is not, in fact, a condition, or state, that the concrete world is actually in. However, because ‘____ is actual’ is often used simply to mean ‘____ exists’, there is considerable potential for confusion here. So, henceforth, to express that an SOA is actual we will usually say that it obtains.

...

Note also that, for the abstractionist, as for the concretist, the actual world is no different in kind from any other possible world; all possible worlds exist, and in precisely the same sense as the actual world. The actual world is simply the total possible SOA that, in fact, obtains. And non-actual worlds are simply those total possible SOAs that do not. — SEP

The term "state of affairs" is perhaps first found in the Tractatus, or in Russell. There is no indication in either Russell or Tractatus-Wittgenstein that a state of affairs must occur only at an instant, or that it cannot encompass temporal extension or change. The idea that states of affairs are instantaneous is your own addition. — Banno

I agree that there is nothing to indicate that a state of affairs must be a moment in time, and I think that this is a false representation of "state of affairs", like what RussellA is proposing, the present consists of moments. A state of affairs may have a long or short duration in time. I dismiss "a moment" if this implies a point with no time passage, (RussellA's apparent approach) as fictitious. I do not dismiss "state of affairs" as fictitious, only as incapable of capturing the totality of reality.

Contrary to what you say here "a state of affairs" cannot encompass "change" without self-contradiction. The stated "state" must be unchanged for the specified, or unspecified period of time. If it changes then it is not the stated state. Therefore the state of affairs cannot encompass change. That the SOA could change, and still be the same SOA would imply contradiction.

So, we might try to avoid this and allow change within the SOA, with the most general statement about change, and say that a thing is in "a state of change". But that doesn't describe anything, and would be a useless SOA. And, once we identify a specific activity, and say that the thing is in the state of having this activity ("The ball rolled east at 2m/s"), then it cannot "change" from this without moving out of the descriptive capacity of the SOA. If anything about the ball's movement changes, the SOA no longer obtains and a new SOA would be required.

We might then describe a new SOA to match the changed situation (the ball rolled northeast at 1.5m/s), but that does not describe the change itself, how it passes from one SOA to the next. That is why SOAs are insufficient for describing the reality of change. Change is what happens between SOAs, and positing another SOA as intermediary (the ball was struck by another) still leaves change as what occurs between those SOAs. Looking for further intermediary SOAs implies infinite regress without ever describing change itself.

The important, and significant thing to notice is that "possibility" is a feature of the change itself, not the SOA. So if we want to understand the mode of "possibility" we need to look at what is intermediary to SOAs, and attribute "possibility" to that, rather than to SOAs. That's what the concept of energy does. As "the capacity to do work", "the energy" of a thing, or system, refers to the possibility that thing or system has, to effect change to an SOA.

It's not only concretism but abstractionism as well. You are referring to the world we inhabit, (which I take as the independent physical world) as "the actual world". But this is not what "the actual world" refers to in possible worlds semantics. Look at the difference between "actual" and "concrete" in the SEP's account of abstractionism. SOAs may be actual or non-actual. "Actrual" means that it has been judged to obtain in the concrete world. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree, although I think that concretism could be salavaged by appending a commitment to the existence of the actual world.

So onward? — Banno

Sounds good.

We should look at combinatorialism. It's a bit more complicated, but I think it may provide the best approach out of the three. The problem which jumps out at me, is the issue with substantiating the proposed "simples". This idea of simples is similar to the ancient atomists. That the concrete world could actually be composed of such simples as the fundamental elements, is shown by Aristotle to be problematic. In the SEP, it looks like the combinatorialist can actually assume fictitious simples, and in a way, that would solve the problem, but then we wouldn't have a distinction between real simples and fictitious simples. And since the real simples can't be substantiated, we'd have to conclude that all simples are fictitious, leaving no substance to the physical world.

You’re importing a picture that does most of the work for you, then blaming states of affairs for its consequences.

First, the idea that a ‘state’ must be unchanging is a stipulation, not a truth. A state of affairs can include change. ‘The ball rolled east at 2 m/s for five seconds’ is a perfectly ordinary state of affairs.

You keep treating a state of affairs as a snapshot, not a way things are. A way things are can be extended in time and internally structured. Saying a state of affairs can’t include change because it would no longer be that state assumes that the relevant description must be momentary or static. That assumption hasn’t been argued for. You have yet to make your case.

Second, your complaint that states of affairs don’t ‘describe the change itself’ is misleading. A description doesn’t re-enact what it describes. A trajectory doesn’t move; a sentence about change doesn’t change. That’s not a deficiency. A state of affairs specifies what’s the case, it doesn't bring it about.

Finally, the move to energy doesn’t do the work you want it to. Energy isn’t a metaphysical substitute for possibility; it’s a parameter in physical theory. Saying energy is ‘the possibility of change’ is a metaphorical gloss, not an ontological insight. Physics already quantifies change in terms of states—states with energies, including their transitions and the laws governing those transitions.

So, the problem isn’t with states of affairs, but with a picture that insists they must be instantaneous, static, and incapable of internal temporal structure. Once that picture is dropped, the alleged contradiction disappears, and the need to relocate possibility somewhere ‘between’ states goes away.

Combinatorialism entails modal truths in the world (Lewis denied this): the actual configuration of simples is a contingent fact. Earlier, you seemed to have a problem with that.
Personally I'm fine with it.

Sounds good. — frank

Well, the core criticism here might be much the same as Wittgenstein levelled at his own work, the Tractaus.

But better to set out what the combinators are proposing first...

First, the idea that a ‘state’ must be unchanging is a stipulation, not a truth. A state of affairs can include change. ‘The ball rolled east at 2 m/s for five seconds’ is a perfectly ordinary state of affairs. — Banno

As I explained, there is no change in that state of affairs. The ball is rolling east for the entire time. And if that changes, it's not the same state of affairs.

You keep treating a state of affairs as a snapshot, not a way things are. — Banno

This is false, you are making a straw man. As I said, I do not accept snapshots. A state of affairs must last for a duration of time, whether long or short. In no way does the fact that a state of affairs cannot be changed without becoming a different, separate state of affairs imply that a state of affairs must be instantaneous. The ball rolling east, or any other state of affairs can persist indefinitely, but if the situation changes, a new descriptive state of affairs is required.

Second, your complaint that states of affairs don’t ‘describe the change itself’ is misleading. A description doesn’t re-enact what it describes. A trajectory doesn’t move; a sentence about change doesn’t change. That’s not a deficiency. A state of affairs specifies what’s the case, it doesn't bring it about. — Banno

The point is that the state of affairs, nor any state of affairs, can describe what brings about a state of affairs. This is because there will always be a "change" which occurs in between, intermediary between, any two successive states of affairs. Therefore no state of affairs can satisfactorily describe what brings about any specific state of affairs. That is the incompatibility between being and becoming demonstrated by Aristotle. But what brings about a state of affairs is a very real aspect of the world. Because of this, states of affairs are insufficient for describing the totality of reality.

So, the problem isn’t with states of affairs, but with a picture that insists they must be instantaneous, static, and incapable of internal temporal structure. — Banno

Why insist on this faulty straw man representation? Did you not read my last post? I very explicitly explained that I did not accept instantaneous states of affairs. I said they were fictional. But I allow for very true states of affairs, ones with temporal extension. To be true, a state of affairs must have temporal extension. However, the problem is that "states of affairs" cannot explain the totality of reality because no state of affairs can adequately describe what brings about one state of affairs from another.

Furthermore, it is not the case that I believe there is a problem with "states of affairs". As stated above, a state of affairs can provide a true representation, of what it is designed for. The problem is with the assumption that states of affairs can provide a complete representation of reality. The description which consists only of states of affairs is necessarily incomplete, and that's why abstractionism fails.