Something is the case. This is the most primitive philosophical starting point available: prior to the *Cogito*, prior to the possibility of change, prior to any specific claim about the world. Its denial (the claim that nothing is the case) is not merely false but performatively self-refuting: the claim *nothing is the case* is itself something being the case. From that single fact, the structural Conditions follow.

For a state of affairs to be real rather than a static description, there must be a before in which it was not yet the case and a now in which it is, or a now in which it obtains and an after in which it either persists or gives way to another. The inference runs on a premise stated here outright rather than carried as a gloss: real obtaining is tensed obtaining — to obtain is to obtain *now*, not merely to be the case in some timeless sense. The Platonist who holds that abstract truths obtain timelessly without being mere descriptions denies exactly that premise; that engagement is carried at [§4.2.4](<4.2.4 Platonism.md>), and the premise is used here for the concrete register the facthood line runs in. That asymmetric ordering is what Temporality consists in.

Any state of affairs has identity: it is this rather than that. For the concrete states of affairs this line runs on, that distinctness is positional rather than merely qualitative: there must be a structural fact that distinguishes it — a real interval that makes two things two rather than one thing described twice — where a bare qualitative difference is one description replacing another and marks no interval. That interval is what Spatiality consists in.

For any state of affairs to be causally connected to what produced it and what it produces (for it to be part of a world rather than an isolated label) there must be a medium through which that connection travels. That persistence medium is what Physicality consists in.

The three Conditions are therefore not stipulations about our universe or assumptions imported into the argument. They are what any state of affairs requires in order to be a state of affairs at all, derived from the most undeniable premise available.

Three challenges to the scope of that claim are taken up downstream. Whether an abstract truth like *2 + 2 = 4* requires the Conditions is engaged at [§4.2.4](<4.2.4 Platonism.md>). The Leibnizian demand for a reason *why there is something rather than nothing* is dissolved rather than answered: *nothing* lacks the Conditions that would let it be a state of affairs at all, including the state of affairs that nothing is the case; the formal version is the ∅ Reductio at [§2.7](<2.7 Nothing to Consider.md>). And the modal contrast space (possible worlds, counterfactual alternatives, unrealized possibilities) does not float free of the Conditions but presupposes them; [§4.4](<4.4 Modal Variants and Extensions.md>) carries that engagement.

Each word arrives after the last (T). Each word is not the same as the last (S). A medium carries the first to the second to the third (Φ). Something is the case. This is one such thing.[^2-4-4-facthood-ch4]

[^2-4-4-facthood-ch4]: The facthood line (the claim that anything's being the case requires T, S, and Φ at the abstract level, that the Null Hypothesis dissolves at the level of content, and that the modal contrast space presupposes the structural Conditions) is engaged in Chapter 4. The abstract-truth case is taken up directly under Mathematical Platonism ([§4.2.4](<4.2.4 Platonism.md>)), and Pizzi's impossibility of nothingness runs the same nothingness-impossibility argument by truth-maker, semantic, and Kripke-frame reductios to a strictly weaker bare-existential terminus ([§4.1.11](<4.1.11 Pizzi's Impossibility of Nothingness.md>)). On the modal contrast space, Lewis's modal realism turns plurality-of-worlds into plurality-of-concrete-existents ([§4.4.1](<4.4.1 Modal Realism.md>)), linguistic ersatzism makes worlds abstract proposition-sets whose distinctness presupposes the structural conditions ([§4.4.2](<4.4.2 Linguistic Ersatzism.md>)), and Armstrong's combinatorialism generates the modal contrast space within the conditions of recombination ([§4.4.3](<4.4.3 Combinatorialism.md>)).


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← [2.4.3 Demand Instantiation](<2.4.3 Demand Instantiation.md>) | [2.4.5 Forward Conditional](<2.4.5 Forward Conditional.md>) →
