There is growing debate about what is the correct methodology for research in the ontology of artworks. In the first part of this essay, I introduce my view: I argue that semantic descriptivism is a semantic approach that has an impact on meta-ontological views and can be linked with a hermeneutic fictionalist proposal on the meta-ontology of artworks such as works of music. In the second part, I offer a synthetic presentation of the four main positive meta-ontological views that have (...) been defended in philosophical literature about artworks and of some criticisms that can be lodged against them: Amie Thomasson’s global descriptivism, Andrew Kania’s local descriptivism, Julian Dodd’s folk-theoretic modesty, and David Davies’ rational accountability view. In the conclusion, I show the advantages of my view. (shrink)

Consider the following causal exclusion principle: For all distinct properties F and F* such that F* supervenes on F, F and F* do not both cause a property G. Peter Menzies and Christian List have proven that it follows from a natural conception of causation as difference-making that this exclusion principle is not generally true. Rather, it turns out that whether the principle is true is a contingent matter. In addition, they have shown that in a wide range of empirically (...) ordinary cases, it follows that F* causes G and F does not. These cases plausibly include instances where F* is a mental property and F and G are physical properties. If this is the right conception of causation, it therefore turns out that the physical world is not causally closed. In this paper I show that there is an alternative conception of causation as difference-making that does not have the same consequences. Whether the physical world is causally closed therefore turns out to depend, inter alia, on which conception of difference-making is correct. I give a number of arguments for the alternative conception of difference-making. (shrink)

I will contrast two conceptions of the nature of mathematical objects: the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects, and heavy duty platonism. I will argue that friends of the indispensability argument are committed to some metaphysical theses and that one promising way to motivate such theses is to adopt heavy duty platonism. On the other hand, combining the indispensability argument with the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects yields an unstable position. The conclusion is that the metaphysical commitments (...) of the indispensability argument should be carefully scrutinized. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of language attempts to elucidate the elusive notion of aboutness. A natural question concerning such a project has to do with its motivation: why is the notion of aboutness important? Stephen Yablo offers an interesting answer: taking into consideration not only the conditions under which a sentence is true, but also what a sentence is about opens the door to a new style of criticism of certain philosophical analyses. We might criticize the analysis of a (...) given notion not because it fails to assign the right truth conditions to a class of sentences, but because it characterizes those sentences as being about something they are not about. In this paper, I apply Yablo’s suggestion to a case study. I consider meta-fictionalism, the view that the content of a mathematical claim S is ‘according to standard mathematics, S’. I argue, following Woodward, that, on certain assumptions, meta-fictionalism assigns the right truth-conditions to typical assertoric utterances of mathematical statements. However, I also argue that meta-fictionalism assigns the wrong aboutness conditions to typical assertoric utterances of mathematical statements. (shrink)

‘Grounding and the indispensability argument’ presents a number of ways in which nominalists can use the notion of grounding to rebut the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects. I will begin by considering the strategy that puts grounding to the service of easy-road nominalists. I will give some support to this strategy by addressing a worry some may have about it. I will then consider a problem for the fast-lane strategy and a problem for easy-road nominalists willing to (...) accept Liggins’ grounding strategy. Both are related to the problem of formulating nominalistic explanations at the right level of generality. I will then consider a problem that Liggins only hints at. This problem has to do with mathematics’ function of providing the sort of covering generalizations we need in scientific explanations. (shrink)

In the recent literature there has been some debate between advocates of deflationist and fictionalist positions in metaontology. The purpose of this paper is to advance the debate by reconsidering one objection presented by Amie Thomasson against fictionalist strategies in metaontology. The objection can be reconstructed in the following way. Fictionalists need to distinguish between the literal and the real content of sentences belonging to certain areas of discourse. In order to make that distinction, they need to assign different truth-conditions (...) to the real and the literal content. But it is hard to see what more is required for the literal content to be true than for the real content to be true. So, fictionalism is an unsatisfactory position. Here I offer a novel reply to Thomasson’s challenge. I argue that the literal and the real content need not be distinguished in terms of their truth-conditions; rather, they can be distinguished in terms of their different subject-matters, leaving it open whether their truth-conditions coincide or not. I explain how replying to Thomasson’s objection is crucial for deepening our understanding of fictionalist strategies in metaontology. (shrink)