State of affairs (philosophy)

In philosophy, a state of affairs, also known as a situation, is a way the actual world must be in order to make some given proposition about the actual world true; in other words, a state of affairs (situation) is a truth-maker, whereas a proposition is a truth-bearer. Whereas states of affairs (situations) either obtain or fail-to-obtain, propositions are either true or false. In a sense of "state of affairs" favored by Ernest Sosa, states of affairs are situational conditions. In fact, in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Sosa defines a condition to be a state of affairs, "way things are" or situation—most commonly referred to by a nominalization of a sentence. The expression "Snow's being white", which refers to the condition snow's being white, is a nominalization of the sentence "Snow is white". "The truth of the proposition that snow is white" is a nominalization of the sentence "the proposition that snow is white is true". Snow's being white is a necessary and sufficient condition for the truth of the proposition that snow is white. Conditions in this sense may be called situational.