Obvious-looking claims about abstracta

Reality week 7: Some marriages are happy

Abstract and 1. Are there abstract entities?

There is an itch in my foot
Beethoven wrote nine symphonies
composite entities 2. Arguments for abstract entities
3. What composite entities are there?
Many scales contain more than four notes
Some governments last for many years
28 February 2012
Cian Dorr
4. Arguments for composite entities There are many holes in this piece of cheese
5. Two kinds of quantification? Some numbers between 100 and 110 are prime
Some sets have an even number of members
Gödel proved two important theorems
Spiders and insects share many properties

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Reactions

1. Concede defeat:
• ‘So much the worse for that particular comprehensive 1. Are there abstract entities? 1. Are there abstract entities?
world-picture. Let’s look for the minimal addition that
will allow us to make room for Fs. 2. Arguments for abstract entities 2. Arguments for abstract entities
2. ‘There are Fs, but they are regions of spacetime’ 3. What composite entities are there? 3. What composite entities are there?
3. Nominalism: ‘There are no Fs’ 4. Arguments for composite entities 4. Arguments for composite entities
4. Clarification: 5. Two kinds of quantification? 5. Two kinds of quantification?
• ‘When properly understood, the comprehensive world-
picture I am defending is compatible with the obvious
facts about Fs.’

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Arguments we’ll consider: 1. Something-from-nothing arguments 2.The paraphrase challenge

X and Y are happily married – ‘You say there are no Fs, but you go around talking
So X and Y have a happy marriage about Fs. What are you up to? Are you merely
So there is at least one marriage contradicting yourself?’
1.“Something from nothing” arguments There are seven planets
2.The paraphrase challenge So the number of planets is seven
– Response: ‘No. When I utter this sentence about
Fs, I am speaking loosely.’
3.The appeal to direct perception So there are numbers
4.The appeal to science Mars is red – Challenge: ‘How can you say what you are trying to
5.The argument from truthmakers
So Mars has the property of being red say without speaking loosely?’
So there are properties
6.The argument from charity
Barbara believes that Mars is red
– Standard form of response: produce a systematic
mapping from the problematic sentences onto
So Barbara believes the proposition
that Mars is red sentences that don’t logically entail that there are
So there are propositions Fs.
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In some cases, paraphrases are easy to come by:
• Mars has the property of being red
‘Mars is red’
• ‘The number of moons of Mars is two’
‘There are two moons of Mars’
Or: ‘There is a moon of Mars, and there is another moon
of Mars, and those are the only moons of Mars’.
• ‘At least two marriages are happy’
‘For some a, b, c, d: a and b are happily married,
and c and d are happily married, and a≠c and
a≠d’.
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3. The appeal to direct perception
‘I can just feel that there is an itch in my foot!’
‘I can just see that there is a dance taking place’
...etc.
• Objection: How would things look/feel if there were no
such entities?
• Reply: Maybe things would look/feel the same if I were a
brain in a vat. That doesn’t prevent me from acquiring
perceptual knowledge of things that entail I’m not!
• Rejoinder: but nominalism isn’t just some cooked-up
sceptical hypothesis—it is simple, elegant, etc.
• Analogy to pre-Copernicans who claim to see that the
sun goes round the earth.
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5. The argument from truthmakers
Truthmaker: For every truth, there is an object that
makes it true.
Truthmaker necessitarianism: if x makes it true that P,
then necessarily, if x exists, then P.
Upshot: if a certain apple a is red, then there must be
an object x such that necessarily, if x exists, a is red.
What could it be?
• Not a itself, if a could have failed to be red...
• Idea: it must be the fact or state of affairs, “a’s being red”
or “a’s redness”.
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A cheap way with the hard cases?
‘...<claim about numbers>...’
‘If there were numbers, it would be the case
But there are hard cases:
that ...<claim about numbers>...’
• ‘Spiders and insects share several important
properties’ or: ‘If there were numbers obeying axioms A1, A2,
A3, then it would be that ...<claim about
• ‘The number of moons of Mars is prime’ numbers>...’
• ‘Most marriages are happy’ or: ‘According to the number-fiction, ...<claim about
numbers>...’
• cf. Yablo, ‘Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?’
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4.The appeal to scientific explanation
Our best scientific theories entail that there are
numbers, and do a pretty amazing job of explaining Responses:
all manner of phenomena.
• By honest toil: Hartry Field, Science Without
Challenge to nominalist: produce a theory that does Numbers.
as good a job of explaining those phenomena
• By theft: ‘I explain these phenomena by appealing
without entailing that there are numbers!
to the following theory: “If there were numbers, it
• Suggestion: If this can’t be done, the existence of would be the case that T”’
numbers is supported by inference to the best
explanation, just like the existence of anything else
posited by good scientific theories.
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6. The argument from charity
Questions about the argument from truthmakers:
• Why believe Truthmaker?
• Especially in view of hard cases, e.g. ‘there are no arctic 1. The principle of charity: unless there is some
penguins’? strong countervailing reason, the correct
• Why believe that the entities that do the interpretation of a community of speakers is one
truthmaking are anything like facts/states of affairs? on which the sentences they “treat as obvious”
• Couldn’t we get by with just one truthmaker which are true
makes everything true — perhaps ‘the World’? 2. English speakers “treat S as obvious”
• Is there any prospect here of an argument for the 3. There is no strong countervailing reason
existence of properties and relations (like redness
and betweenness)—entities that can be
4. So S is true (in English)
instantiated many times over?
5. S
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1. Are there abstract entities?
2. Arguments for abstract entities
3. What composite entities are there?
4. Arguments for composite entities
5. Two kinds of quantification?
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1. Are there abstract entities?
2. Arguments for abstract entities
3. What composite entities are there?
4. Arguments for composite entities
5. Two kinds of quantification?
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Why believe in composite objects?
1.“Something from nothing” arguments
2.The paraphrase challenge
3.The appeal to direct perception
4.The appeal to science
5.The argument from truthmakers
6.The argument from charity
7. The argument from one’s own case
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‘this thing is a fusion of these things’ =df Some answers:
• each of them is part of it, and • ‘Whenever they are stuck together in the right
• every part of it shares a part with one of them. kinds of way’.
• Always: ‘Mereological Universalism’.
The Special Composition Question: • Never: ‘Mereological Nihilism’
Under what circumstances do some things have a • Van Inwagen’s view: ‘When their activity
fusion? constitutes a life’.
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Why believe in composite objects? Paraphrasing away composite objects?
These atoms are clustered together
So, there is a cluster of atoms
1.“Something from nothing” arguments
2.The paraphrase challenge
‘There are at least two chairs’
3.The appeal to direct perception
‘There are some things arranged chairwise, and there
4.The appeal to science
are some other things arranged chairwise’
5.The argument from truthmakers
6.The argument from charity
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The argument from one’s own case
I exist
If I exist, I am composite 1. Are there abstract entities?
Therefore, there is at least one composite object 2. Arguments for abstract entities
• A relevant question: does it make sense to suppose that 3. What composite entities are there?
some simples collectively think and feel, without
composing any composite object? 4. Arguments for composite entities
• If so, would these simples be mistaken when they 5. Two kinds of quantification?
(collectively) say to themselves, ‘I exist’?
• If so, should that do anything to undermine our
confidence in the judgments we make in these words?
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 A way to split the difference?
• According to some philosophers, quantifiers like
‘something’ have multiple uses/senses, among which one
can be distinguished as “fundamental”.
• Truths involving non-fundamental quantification in some
sense reduce to truths involving fundamental
quantification.
• Claims like ‘there are marriages’, ‘there are properties’,
‘there are sets’, ‘there are chairs’, ‘there are people’ are all
true, and obviously true, when the quantifiers are
understood in an appropriate non-fundamental way.
• But these obvious truths do not settle the question whether
‘there are abstract objects’ and ‘there are composite
objects’ are true on a fundamental reading.
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First challenge: explain how claims made using non-
fundamental quantifiers reduce to claims involving
only fundamental quantifiers.
Second challenge: explain what the fundamental uses
of the quantifiers to people who don’t (won’t?)
understand them.
• One thought: part of what’s distinctive about this
use of the quantifiers is that it vindicates the idea
that ‘there are Fs’ is never necessary.
• Cf. Hume and Kant on purported a priori proofs of God’s
exitence.
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