 Now facts may be nothing but states of affairs that obtain and events states of affairs that obtain at some times and not at others. If this were right, the gerund clauses above would refer to states of affairs. But we need to get an independent grip on the notion of states of affairs before settling the question whether facts and events are a kind of state of affairs. For this purpose we can neither pick out states of affairs as the things that obtain or nor say that they are the referents of gerund clauses of the kind considered above.