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  1. Correctness conditions for property nominalists.Arvid Båve - forthcoming - Synthese 201 (6):1-12.
    Nominalists need some account of correctness for sentences committed to the existence of abstract objects. This paper proposes a new statement of such conditions specifically for properties. The account builds on an earlier proposal of mine, but avoids the counter-examples against the latter pointed out by Thomas Schindler, particularly, the sentence ‘There are inexpressible properties’. I argue that the new proposal is independently motivated and more faithful to the spirit of the kind of error-theoretic nominalism that the original proposal was (...)
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  2. Higher-Order Quantification and the Elimination of Abstract Objects.Cian Dorr - forthcoming - Disputatio.
    There is a common practice of providing natural-language ‘glosses’ on sentences in the language of higher order logic: for example, the higher-order sentence ∃X(X Socrates) might be glossed using the English sentence ‘Socrates has some property’. It is widely held that such glosses cannot be strictly correct, on the grounds that the word ‘property’ is a noun and thus, if meaningful at all, should be meaningful in the same way as any other noun. Against this view, this paper argues that (...)
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  3. Against Instantiation.Christopher Frugé - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    According to traditional universalism, properties are instantiated by objects, where instantiation is a ‘tie’ that binds objects and properties into facts. I offer two arguments against this view. I then develop an alternative higher-order account which holds that properties are primitively predicated of objects yet, unlike traditional nominalism, are nevertheless genuinely real. When it’s a fact that Fo, it’s not because object o instantiates F-ness, but just that Fo – where F still exists. Against orthodox higher-order approaches, however, my arguments (...)
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  4. A Sellarsian Argument for Nonlinguistic Conceptual Capabilities.Erik Nelson - forthcoming - Synthese.
    While it is philosophically contested whether nonlinguistic animals can have conceptual capabilities, it is also philosophically contested whether one can even empirically test for such capabilities. I draw from Sellars’ work on psychological nominalism to develop an empirically tractable means of distinguishing between tasks that require conceptual capabilities and those that do not. Tasks that require conceptual capabilities are those that require awareness of abstract relations, whereas tasks that can be solved merely through Sellarsian picturing do not. I argue that (...)
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  5. A fictionalist theory of universals.Tim Button & Robert Trueman - 2024 - In Peter Fritz & Nicholas K. Jones (eds.), Higher-Order Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    Universals are putative objects like wisdom, morality, redness, etc. Although we believe in properties (which, we argue, are not a kind of object), we do not believe in universals. However, a number of ordinary, natural language constructions seem to commit us to their existence. In this paper, we provide a fictionalist theory of universals, which allows us to speak as if universals existed, whilst denying that any really do.
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  6. Platonic Realism.Chad Carmichael - 2024 - In A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties. London: Routledge. pp. 127-137.
    In this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but (...)
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  7. Types of tropes : modifier and module.Robert K. Garcia - 2024 - In A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties. London: Routledge. pp. 229-38.
    The general concept of a trope – that of a non-shareable character-grounder – admits of a distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. Roughly, a module trope is self-exemplifying whereas a modifier trope is not. This distinction has wide-ranging implications. Modifier tropes are uniquely eligible to be powers and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes are uniquely eligible to play a direct role in perception and causation. Moreover, each type of trope theory faces unique challenges concerning character- grounding. Modifier trope theory (...)
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  8. Higher-order logic as metaphysics.Jeremy Goodman - 2024 - In Peter Fritz & Nicholas K. Jones (eds.), Higher-Order Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    This chapter offers an opinionated introduction to higher-order formal languages with an eye towards their applications in metaphysics. A simply relationally typed higher-order language is introduced in four stages: starting with first-order logic, adding first-order predicate abstraction, generalizing to higher-order predicate abstraction, and finally adding higher-order quantification. It is argued that both β-conversion and Universal Instantiation are valid on the intended interpretation of this language. Given these two principles, it is then shown how we can use pure higher-order logic to (...)
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  9. (1 other version)Quantification and ontological commitment.Nicholas K. Jones - 2024 - In Anna Sofia Maurin & Anthony Fisher (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Properties.
    This chapter discusses ontological commitment to properties, understood as ontological correlates of predicates. We examine the issue in four metaontological settings, beginning with an influential Quinean paradigm on which ontology concerns what there is. We argue that this naturally but not inevitably avoids ontological commitment to properties. Our remaining three settings correspond to the most prominent departures from the Quinean paradigm. Firstly, we enrich the Quinean paradigm with a primitive, non-quantificational notion of existence. Ontology then concerns what exists. We argue (...)
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  10. The Metaphysics of Puns.James Miller - 2024 - Synthese (5):1-17.
    In this paper, I aim to discuss what puns, metaphysically, are. I argue that the type-token view of words leads to an indeterminacy problem when we consider puns. I then outline an alternative account of puns, based on recent nominalist views of words, that does not suffer from this indeterminacy.
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  11. Metaethics and the Nature of Properties.Jussi Suikkanen - 2024 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 98 (1):113-131.
    This paper explores the connection between two philosophical debates concerning the nature of properties. The first metaethical debate is about whether normative properties are ordinary natural properties or some unique kind of non-natural properties. The second metaphysical debate is about whether properties are sets of objects, transcendent or immanent universals, or sets of tropes. I argue that nominalism, transcendent realism, and immanent realism are not neutral frameworks for the metaethical debate but instead lead to either metaethical naturalism or non-naturalism. We (...)
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  12. A Lewisian Argument Against Platonism, or Why Theses About Abstract Objects Are Unintelligible.Jack Himelright - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (7):3037–3057.
    In this paper, I argue that all expressions for abstract objects are meaningless. My argument closely follows David Lewis’ argument against the intelligibility of certain theories of possible worlds, but modifies it in order to yield a general conclusion about language pertaining to abstract objects. If my Lewisian argument is sound, not only can we not know that abstract objects exist, we cannot even refer to or think about them. However, while the Lewisian argument strongly motivates nominalism, it also undermines (...)
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  13. Defense of Emergent Effects in Astrology Research: Rebuttal of Dean and Kelly (2023).Kenneth McRitchie - 2023 - Journal of Scientific Exploration 37 (3):576-579.
    The article I wrote on the astrology research program (2022) has drawn criticism from G. Dean and I. Kelly (2023) that scarcely touches on my topics of effect sizes in single-factor, multi-factor, and automated whole-chart experimentation. They ignore the meta-analysis of current research and my explanation of emergent effects. Instead they try to impugn all of astrology by arguments that date from the time of Cicero and Augustine.
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  14. How to Think about the Astrology Research Program: An Essay Considering Emergent Effects.Kenneth Douglas McRitchie - 2023 - Journal of Scientific Exploration 36 (4):706-716.
    As it has been shaped by improvements in its tools and methods, and by its discourse with critics, I describe how the astrological research program has advanced through three stages of modelling and design limitations. Single-factor tests (for example, the many Sun-sign–only experiments that have been published) are typically underdeterministic. Multi-factor tests, unless they are very well designed, can easily become overdeterministic. Chart-matching tests have been vulnerable to confirmation bias errors until the development of a machine-based, whole-chart matching protocol that (...)
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  15. Ontology Generator.Alik Pelman - 2023 - Metaphysica 24 (1):109-128.
    The paper proposes a simple method for constructing ontological theories—an ‘ontology generator’. It shows that such a generator manages to produce major existing ontological theories, e.g., Realism, Nominalism, Trope theory, Bundle theory, Perdurantism, Endurantism, Possibilism, Actualism and more. It thus turns out, surprisingly, that all these seemingly unrelated different ontological theories that were designed by thinkers hundreds of years apart, can all be generated using the same simple mechanism. Moreover, this same generator manages to produce entirely novel ontological theories, that (...)
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  16. The «One over Many» Argument for Propositions.Esteban Withrington - 2023 - Contrastes: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 28 (1):61-79.
    The meanings of utterances and thoughts are commonly regarded in philosophical semantics as abstract objects, called «propositions», which account for how different utterances and thoughts can be synonymous and which constitute the primary truth-bearers. I argue that meanings are instead natural properties that play causal roles in the world, that the kind of «One over Many» thinking underlying the characterization of shared meanings as abstract objects is misguided and that utterances and thoughts having truth-values in virtue of their meanings does (...)
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  17. Teogonia technologiczna. Nominalistyczna koncepcja bóstwa dla transhumanizmu i posthumanizmu.Rachel 'Preppikoma' Palm - 2022 - In Kamila Grabowska-Derlatka, Jakub Gomułka & Rachel 'Preppikoma' Palm (eds.), PhilosophyPulp: Vol. 2. Kraków, Poland: Wydawnictwo Libron. pp. 129–143.
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  18. Does everything resemble everything else to the same degree?Ben Blumson - 2022 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1):1-21.
    According to Satosi Watanabe's "theorem of the ugly duckling", the number of predicates satisfied by any two different particulars is a constant, which does not depend on the choice of the two particulars. If the number of predicates satisfied by two particulars is their number of properties in common, and the degree of resemblance between two particulars is a function of their number of properties in common, then it follows that the degree of resemblance between any two different particulars is (...)
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  19. Naturalness, Arbitrariness, and Serious Ontology.A. R. J. Fisher - 2022 - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 134-53.
    David Lewis is typically interpreted as a class nominalist. One consequence of class nominalism, which he embraced, is that the reduction of ordered pairs, triples, etc to unordered sets of sets is conventional. The reaction by his Australian counterparts D.M. Armstrong and Peter Forrest was that Lewis was not being ontologically serious. This chapter evaluates this debate over serious ontology. It is argued that in one sense Lewis is ontologically serious, but that his additional commitment to structuralism about classes should (...)
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  20. Safety first: making property talk safe for nominalists.Jack Himelright - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-26.
    Nominalists are confronted with a grave difficulty: if abstract objects do not exist, what explains the success of theories that invoke them? In this paper, I make headway on this problem. I develop a formal language in which certain platonistic claims about properties and certain nominalistic claims can be expressed, develop a formal language in which only certain nominalistic claims can be expressed, describe a function mapping sentences of the first language to sentences of the second language, and prove some (...)
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  21. Review of Tropes, by Douglas Ehring. [REVIEW]Jessica M. Wilson - 2022 - Mind 131 (521):369-379.
    Tropes is a systematic investigation into the metaphysics of properties, aiming to motivate and defend trope theory, and more specifically Natural Class Trope Nominalism (NCTN). Ehring’s book treats an impressive span of relevant positions, considerations, debates and objections with charity and clarity; it’s also a real page-turner, at least if one has (as I do) a taste for analytic twists and turns.
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  22. Nominalism and Material Plenitude.Uriah Kriegel - 2021 - Res Philosophica 98 (1):89-112.
    The idea of “material plenitude” has been gaining traction in recent discussions of the metaphysics of material objects. My main goal here is to show that this idea may have important dialectical implications for the metaphysics of properties – more specifically, that it provides nominalists with new resources in their attempt to reject an ontology of universals. I will recapitulate one of the main arguments against nominalism – due to David Armstrong – and show how plenitude helps the nominalist overcome (...)
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  23. (1 other version)Deflationary theories of properties and their ontology.Thomas Schindler - 2021 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy:1-16.
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  24. Paraphrasing away properties with pluriverse counterfactuals.Jack Himelright - 2020 - Synthese 198 (11):10883-10902.
    In this paper, I argue that for the purposes of ordinary reasoning, sentences about properties of concrete objects can be replaced with sentences concerning how things in our universe would be related to inscriptions were there a pluriverse. Speaking loosely, pluriverses are composites of universes that collectively realize every way a universe could possibly be. As such, pluriverses exhaust all possible meanings that inscriptions could take. Moreover, because universes necessarily do not influence one another, our universe would not be any (...)
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  25. Naturalness and Convex Class Nominalism.Ben Blumson - 2019 - Dialectica 73 (1-2):65-81.
    In this paper I argue that the analysis of natural properties as convex subsets of a metric space in which the distances are degrees of dissimilarity is incompatible with both the definition of degree of dissimilarity as number of natural properties not in common and the definition of degree of dissimilarity as proportion of natural properties not in common, since in combination with either of these definitions it entails that every property is a natural property, which is absurd. I suggest (...)
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  26. Nominalism.Ghislain Guigon - 2019 - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    ‘Nominalism’ refers to a family of views about what there is. The objects we are familiar with (e.g. hands, laptops, cookies, and trees) can be characterized as concrete and particular. Nominalists agree that there are such things. But one group of nominalists denies that anything is non-particular and another group denies that anything is non-concrete. These two sorts of nominalism, referred to as ‘nominalism about universals’ and ‘nominalism about abstract objects’, have common motivations in contemporary philosophy.
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  27. (1 other version)Repeatable Artworks and the Relevant Similarity Relation.Sherri Irvin - 2018 - Journal of Aesthetic Education 52 (2):30.
    Repeatable artworks, such as novels and musical works, have often been construed as universals whose instances are particular printings or performances. In Art and Art-Attempts, Christy Mag Uidhir offers a nominalist account of repeatable artworks, eschewing talk of universals. Mag Uidhir argues that all artworks are concrete, and artworks that we regard as repeatable are simply unified by a relevant similarity relation: we use the name Beloved to refer to two concrete printed novels because they are relevantly similar to each (...)
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  28. It was the 15th of December.James Bardis - 2016 - Jpeg Cover-Dubai2016 ISSN: 2189-1036 – The IAFOR International Conference on Education – Dubai – 2016 Official Conference Proceedings:87-93.
    A reflection on the merits of an a priori poeto-epistemology in relation to tacitly held assumptions about the a fortiori validity of computational logic to transcend the limits of contradiction and infinite regression and establish a valid ontology.
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  29. (1 other version)Aquinas on the Problem of Universals.Jeffrey E. Brower - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2):715-735.
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  30. ‘Comments on Robert Brandom’s From Empiricism to Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars’.James O'Shea - 2016 - In David Pereplyotchik & Deborah R. Barnbaum (eds.), Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 232-243.
    These comments, which include informal offhand asides made during delivery, derive from an ‘Author Meets Critics’ session on Robert Brandom’s book, From Empiricism to Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars’ (2015), held at Kent State University and published subsequently in Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy (2017).
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  31. The Bradleyan Regress, Non-Relational Realism, and the Quinean Semantic Strategy.Jonathan Reid Surovell - 2016 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 93 (1):63-79.
    Non-Relational Realism is a popular solution to the Bradleyan regress of facts or truths. It denies that there is a relational universal of exemplification; for an object a to exemplify a universal F-ness, on this view, is not for a relation to subsist between a and F-ness. An influential objection to Non-Relational Realism is that it is unacceptably obscure. The author argues that Non-Relational Realism can be understood as a selective application of satisfaction semantics to predicates like ‘exemplify’, and that (...)
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  32. Is Trope Theory a Divided House?Robert K. Garcia - 2015 - In Gabriele Galluzzo Michael Loux (ed.), The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 133-155.
    In this paper I explore Michael Loux’s important distinction between “tropes” and “tropers”. First, I argue that the distinction throws into relief an ambiguity and discrepancy in the literature, revealing two fundamentally different versions of trope theory. Second, I argue that the distinction brings into focus unique challenges facing each of the resulting trope theories, thus calling into question an alleged advantage of trope theory—that by uniquely occupying the middle ground between its rivals, trope theory is able to recover and (...)
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  33. Two Ways to Particularize a Property.Robert K. Garcia - 2015 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (4):635-652.
    Trope theory is an increasingly prominent contender in contemporary debates about the existence and nature of properties. But it suffers from ambiguity concerning the nature of a trope. Disambiguation reveals two fundamentally different concepts of a trope: modifier tropes and module tropes. These types of tropes are unequally suited for metaphysical work. Modifier tropes have advantages concerning powers, relations, and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes have advantages concerning perception, causation, character-grounding, and the ontology of substance. Thus, the choice between modifier (...)
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  34. Coextension and Identity.Ghislain Guigon - 2015 - In Ghislain Guigon & Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (eds.), Nominalism About Properties: New Essays. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 135-155.
    This chapter is concerned with the coextension difficulty for nominalist theories of properties that reject tropes alongside universals. After carefully explaining the coextension difficulty and describing the theories it targets, the chapter describes different solutions to the difficulty. These solutions differ with respect to how much involved they are into a dualist approach to coextension. A dualist approach to a case of coextension consists in agreeing with the realist that the relevant ascriptions of properties are numerically distinct. A monist approach (...)
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  35. Thought and Thing: Brentano's Reism as Truthmaker Nominalism.Uriah Kriegel - 2015 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (3):153-180.
    The ontological theory of the later Franz Brentano is often referred to as ‘reism.’ But what exactly is reism, and how is it related to modern-day nominalism? In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Brentano’s reism as a specific variety of nominalism. This variety, although motivated by distinctly modern concerns about truthmakers, adopts a strategy for providing such truthmakers that is completely foreign to modern nominalism. The strategy rests on proliferation of coincident concrete particulars. For example, ‘Socrates is wise’ (...)
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  36. The Problem of Trope Individuation: A Reply to Lowe.Markku Keinänen & Jani Hakkarainen - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (1):65-79.
    This paper is the first trope-theoretical reply to E. J. Lowe’s serious dilemma against trope nominalism in print. The first horn of this dilemma is that if tropes are identity dependent on substances, a vicious circularity threatens trope theories because they must admit that substances are identity dependent on their constituent tropes. According to the second horn, if the trope theorist claims that tropes are identity independent, she faces two insurmountable difficulties. (1) It is hard to understand the ontological dependence (...)
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  37. (1 other version)Determinables and Brute Similarities.Olivier Massin - 2013 - In Christer Svennerlind, Almäng Jan & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations: Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday. Ontos Verlag.
    Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinate properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. I suggest that determinables are better understood as maximal disjunctions of (...)
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  38. Nominalismo e Mundos Possíveis.Renato Rocha - 2013 - Coleção XV Encontro ANPOF.
    Essa comunicação possui dois objetivos. Em primeiro lugar, pretendo esboçar as diferentes alternativas teóricas contemporâneas que procuram responder ao conhecido “ problema dos universais”. Para isso, apresentamos os nominalismos de predicados, classes, semelhanças e a teoria de tropos. Em segundo lugar, pretendo mostrar, inspirado no trabalho de David Lewis, como o nominalismo de classes, a noção de propriedade natural e uma teoria de mundos possíveis prometem resolver o problema em questão.
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  39. II—Resemblance Nominalism, Conjunctions and Truthmakers.Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra - 2013 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 113 (1pt1):21-38.
    The resemblance nominalist says that the truthmaker of 〈Socrates is white〉 ultimately involves only concrete particulars that resemble each other. Furthermore he also says that Socrates and Plato are the truthmakers of 〈Socrates resembles Plato〉, and Socrates and Aristotle those of 〈Socrates resembles Aristotle〉. But this, combined with a principle about the truthmakers of conjunctions, leads to the apparently implausible conclusion that 〈Socrates resembles Plato and Socrates resembles Aristotle〉 and 〈Socrates resembles Plato and Plato resembles Aristotle〉 have the same truthmakers, (...)
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  40. Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language.Friederike Moltmann - 2012 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This book pursues the question of how and whether natural language allows for reference to abstract objects in a fully systematic way. By making full use of contemporary linguistic semantics, it presents a much greater range of linguistic generalizations than has previously been taken into consideration in philosophical discussions, and it argues for an ontological picture is very different from that generally taken for granted by philosophers and semanticists alike. Reference to abstract objects such as properties, numbers, propositions, and degrees (...)
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  41. Sellarsian Particulars.Matteo Morganti - 2012 - Acta Analytica 27 (3):293-306.
    Abstract In this article, a critical assessment is carried out of the two available forms of nominalism with respect to the ontological constitution of material objects: resemblance nominalism and trope theory. It is argued that these two nominalistic ontologies naturally converge towards each other when the problems they have to face are identified and plausible solutions to these problems are sought. This suggests a synthesis between the two perspectives along lines first proposed by Sellars, whereby, at least at the level (...)
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  42. The 'Properties' of Leibnizian Space: Whither Relationism?Edward Slowik - 2012 - Intellectual History Review 22 (1):107-129.
    This essay examines the metaphysical foundation of Leibniz’s theory of space against the backdrop of the subtantivalism/relationism debate and at the ontological level of material bodies and properties. As will be demonstrated, the details of Leibniz’ theory defy a straightforward categorization employing the standard relationism often attributed to his views. Rather, a more careful analysis of his metaphysical doctrines related to bodies and space will reveal the importance of a host of concepts, such as the foundational role of God, the (...)
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  43. (1 other version)Metafizički minimalizam.Fritz J. McDonald - 2011 - Prolegomena 10 (1):39-52.
    Properties and facts play a central role within metaphysics, yet there is no widely accepted account of what constitutes a property or a fact. Traditional conceptions of these metaphysical notions raise serious philosophical puzzles, making the existence of each seem dubious. Drawing on the minimalist theory of truth, I argue in favor of a minimalist conception of properties and facts. A minimalist theory of properties and facts explains these matters in terms of the acceptance of trivial schemas. To make the (...)
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  44. Population thinking as trope nominalism.Bence Nanay - 2010 - Synthese 177 (1):91 - 109.
    The concept of population thinking was introduced by Ernst Mayr as the right way of thinking about the biological domain, but it is difficult to find an interpretation of this notion that is both unproblematic and does the theoretical work it was intended to do. I argue that, properly conceived, Mayr’s population thinking is a version of trope nominalism: the view that biological property-types do not exist or at least they play no explanatory role. Further, although population thinking has been (...)
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  45. The Metaphysics of Resemblance.Ghislain Guigon - 2009 - Dissertation, University of Geneva
    The topic of this study is the resemblance of individuals. The underlying contention of this dissertation is that the resemblance of individuals is a taxing and challenging philosophical topic. Two main claims are defended in this study to support this contention. The first of these claims is that resemblance is not a binary relation but a monadic multigrade property. The second of these claims is that the metaphysics of resemblance and the metaphysics of properties are distinct, although not independent, philosophical (...)
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  46. Resembling Particulars: What Nominalism?Matteo Morganti - 2007 - Metaphysica 8 (2):165-178.
    This paper examines a recent proposal for reviving so-called resemblance nominalism. It is argued that, although consistent, it naturally leads to trope theory upon examination for reasons having to do with the appeal of neutrality as regards certain non-trivial ontological theses.
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  47. On the Phases of Reism.Barry Smith - 2006 - In Arkadiusz Chrudzimski & Dariusz Łukasiewicz (eds.), Actions, products, and things: Brentano and Polish philosophy. Lancaster: Ontos. pp. 137--183.
    Kotarbiński is one of the leading figures in the Lvov-Warsaw school of Polish philosophy. We summarize the development of Kotarbiński’s thought from his early nominalism and ‘pansomatistic reism’ to the later doctrine of ‘temporal phases’. We show that the surface clarity and simplicity of Kotarbiński’s writings mask a number of profound philosophical difficulties, connected above all with the problem of giving an adequate account of the truth of contingent (tensed) predications. The paper will examine in particular the attempts to resolve (...)
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  48. Paradigms and Russell's Resemblance Regress.Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra - 2004 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (4):644 – 651.
    Resemblance Nominalism is the view that denies universals and tropes and claims that what makes F-things F is their resemblances. A famous argument against Resemblance Nominalism is Russell's regress of resemblances, according to which the resemblance nominalist falls into a vicious infinite regress. Aristocratic Resemblance Nominalism, as opposed to Egalitarian Resemblance Nominalism, is the version of Resemblance Nominalism that claims that what makes F-things F is that they resemble the F-paradigms. In this paper I attempt to show that a recently (...)
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  49. Resemblance Nominalism and counterparts: reply to Bird.Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra - 2003 - Analysis 63 (3):229-237.
    In my book *Resemblance Nominalism* I argued that the truthmakers of ´a and b resemble each other´ are just a and b. In his "Resemblance Nominalism and counterparts" Alexander Bird objects to my claim that the truthmakers of ´a and b resemble each other´ are just a and b. In this paper I respond to Bird´s objections.
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  50. (2 other versions)Nominalism.Zoltan Szabo - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press.
    …entities? 2. How to be a nominalist 2.1. “Speak with the vulgar …” 2.2. “…think with the learned” 3. Arguments for nominalism 3.1. Intelligibility, physicalism, and economy 3.2. Causal..
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