Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...) Internet search engine queries for expressions of interest have become quite popular. Apparently, philosophers attempt to surpass the limits of their own linguistic intuitions by appealing to experts or to factual uses of language. I argue that this attempt is commendable but that its execution is wanting. Instead of appealing to dictionaries or Internet queries, philosophers should employ computer-based linguistic corpora in order to confirm or falsify hypotheses about the factual use of language. This approach also has some advantages over methods employed by experimental philosophers. If the importance of ordinary language is stressed, the use of linguistic corpora is hardly avoidable. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, that if it is metaphysically possible for it to have been the case that nothing existed, then it follows that the right modal logic cannot extend D, ruling out popular modal logics S4 and S5. I provisionally defend the claim that it is possible for nothing to have existed. I then consider the various ways of resisting the conclusion that the right modal logic is weaker than D.

Universalist and nihilist answers to philosophical questions may be extreme, but they are clear enough. Aliquidist answers, by contrast, are typically caught between the Scylla of vagueness and indeterminacy and the Charybdis of ungroundedness and arbitrariness, and steering a proper middle course—saying exactly where in the middle one is going to settle—demands exceptional navigating powers. I myself tend to favor extreme answers precisely for this reason. Here, however, I consider one sense in which Something may claim superiority over its polar (...) competitors, Everything and Nothing, when it comes to answerting the ontological question, “What is there?”. (shrink)

La critique du nihilisme par Lowe est soumise à une évaluation. Le nihilisme semble impliquer un engagement à l'existence d'entités abstraites et Lowe utilise le principe de dépendance (PD) — les abstraits dépendent des concrets — pour bloquer la référence à des entités abstraites : les nombres sont dits dépendre de concrets. On défendra l'idée que cette forme de fictionnalisme n'est pas innocente et que nous devons sérieusement envisager l'alternative que constitue le platonisme. On défendra une forme de platonisme, le (...) platonisme particularisé. En conclusion on proposera de renoncer au PD. (shrink)

In this dissertation I suggest an answer to the famous question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ I argue that there is something because there could not have been nothing. The focus of my discussion is the empty possible world of metaphysical nihilism, and the first chapter is a rejection of the only prominent argument for that position; the subtraction argument. In the second part of my discussion I construct a positive argument against metaphysical nihilism, I assume, as is (...) common in the literature, that inconceivability provides evidence of impossibility. I establish the inconceivability of nothingness taking propositional imagining to be the core of conceivability, claiming that we have no experience of nothingness in the relevant sense and are unable to imagine it. Finally, I suggest that a distinction should be made between everyday use of the term ‘nothing’, and the sense under discussion here. The inconceivability of nothingness applies only in the latter case. Given that nothingness is inconceivable, we have prima facie reason to suppose that the empty world is impossible. I conclude that given the failure of the subtraction argument and in light of my argument against metaphysical nihilism, that position should be rejected. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation of metaphysical nihilism: the view that there could have been no contingent or concrete objects. I begin by showing the connections of the nihilistic theses to other philosophical doctrines. I then go on to look at the arguments for and against metaphysical nihilism in the literature and find both to be flawed. In doing so I will look at the nature of abstract objects, the nature of spacetime and mereological simples, the existence of the empty (...) set, the dependence of universals on particulars, and other general questions of ontology. (shrink)

Could an object have only mass and no other property? In giving an affirmative answer to this question, Jonathan Schaffer (2003, pp. 136-8) proposes what he calls ‘the subtraction argument’ for ‘the possibility of free mass’. In what follows, we aim to assess the cogency of this argument in comparison with an argument of the same general form which has also been termed a subtraction argument, namely, Thomas Baldwin’s (1996) subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism, which is the claim that there (...) might have been no concrete objects. The comparison will be instructive because Baldwin’s argument has been the subject of considerable recent debate (of particular relevance for current purposes are Paseau 2002, Authors 2005, and Paseau 2006), and the lesson of this debate seems to be that subtraction arguments, such as Baldwin’s and Schaffer’s, are faced with a dilemma: either they are invalid or they fail to be suasive. We outline how Baldwin’s argument can be reformulated so as to avoid both horns of this dilemma, and we then argue that Schaffer’s argument cannot so avoid the dilemma. (shrink)

Metaphysical nihilism is the thesis that there could have been no concrete objects. Thomas Baldwin (1996) offers an argument for metaphysical nihilism. The premisses of the argument purport to provide a procedure of subtraction that can be iterated until we reach a world where no concrete objects exist. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (1997) finds fault with Baldwin’s argument, modifies it, and claims to have proved metaphysical nihilism. My primary aim is to show that Rodriguez-Pereyra’s alleged proof rests on a false assumption. The (...) assumption is that, necessarily, if there are no concrete* objects (in the sense Rodriguez-Pereyra defines), then there are no concrete objects. My secondary aim, with which I begin, is to formulate and then strengthen a succinct version of the subtraction argument. (shrink)

The subtraction argument aims to show that there is an empty world, in the sense of a possible world with no concrete objects. The argument has been endorsed by several philosophers. I show that there are currently two versions of the argument around, and that only one of them is valid. I then sketch the main problem for the valid version of the argument.

Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 16-24, March 2022.

The answer to the question of why there is Something rather than Nothing is that there has to be Something and that Nothing is impossible. There cannot not be Something so there cannot be Nothing. The paper justifies this conclusion, while also explaining why we might believe there may be Nothing. In the course of this, the so-called subtraction-argument is shown to be inadequate and question-begging.

I consider David Efird and Tom Stoneham's recent version of the subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism, the view that there could have been no concrete objects at all. I argue that the two premises of their argument are only jointly acceptable if the quantifiers in one range over a different set of objects from those which the quantifiers in the other range over, in which case the argument is invalid. So either the argument is invalid or we should not accept (...) both its premises. (shrink)