| There Are No Abstract Objects |
| Cian Dorr |
| Area 1 Metaphysics |
| Area 2 Philosophy of Mathematics |
| Keywords ontology nominalism indispensability universals |
| http://www.pitt.edu/~csd6/papers/NoAbstractObjects.pdf |
| I explicate and defend the claim that, fundamentally speaking, there are no numbers, sets, properties or relations. The clarification consists in some remarks on the relevant sense of ‘fundamentally speaking’ and the contrasting sense of ‘superficially speaking’. The defence consists in an attempt to rebut two arguments for the existence of such entities. The first is a version of the indispensability argument, which purports to show that certain mathematical entities are required for good scientific explanations. The second is a speculative reconstruction of Armstrong's version of the One Over Many argument, which purports to show that properties and relations are required for good philosophical explanations, e.g. of what it is for one thing to be a duplicate of another. |
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