 This line of argument can be strengthened by noting the following point about explanation. Correspondence theorists have typically wanted the relation of correspondence to explain truth: they have usually wanted to say that it is because the proposition that Socrates is wise corresponds to a fact that it is true, and because the proposition that Socrates is foolish—or rather: It is not the case that Socrates is wise (after all, his merely being foolish is not enough to guarantee that he is not wise, for he might, like James I and VI, be both wise and foolish)—does not correspond to a fact that it is false. But the distance between the true proposition that Socrates is wise and the fact that Socrates is wise seems to be too small to provide for explanatory leverage. Indeed the identity theorist’s claim is that there is no distance at all. Suppose we ask: Why is the proposition that Socrates is wise true? If we reply by saying that it is true because it is a fact that Socrates is wise, we seem to have explained nothing, but merely repeated ourselves (cf. Strawson 1971: 197; Anscombe 2000: 8; Rasmussen 2014: 39–43). So correspondence apparently gives way to identity as the relation which must hold or fail to hold between a proposition and a state of affairs if the proposition is to be true or false: the proposition is true just if it is identical with an obtaining state of affairs and false if it is not (cf. Horwich 1998: 106). And it would seem that, if the identity theorist is right about this disposition, explanatory pretensions will have to be abandoned: for while it will be correct to say that a proposition is true just if it is identical with a fact, false otherwise, it is hard to see that much of substance has thereby been said about truth (cf. Hornsby 1997; 2; Dodd 2008a; 135).