Abstract
The article provides an example of how detailed work on language may have an impact on one's metaphysical views. It introduces three metaphysical views (and associated notions), namely facts, factlike propositions, and modality/causation/temporality. It then surveys the linguistic phenomenon of substitution salva veritate, including the various subvarieties of substitution. Taking the metaphysical views and the linguistic phenomenon of substitution as background, the article then presents the ‘slingshot argument,’ a deceptively simple argument which has been used against the metaphysical views here described. Specifically, the three views which are called into question by the slingshot are (a) that there are facts, made up of objects, properties, and relations; (b) that sentences stand for factlike propositions; and (c) that operators like ‘necessarily,’ ‘possibly,’ ‘before,’ and ‘because’ are blind to what an object is called, yet do not apply equally to all true sentences.
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