Content Extraction, Ontological Mootness and Nominalism: Difficulties on the Easy Road
Abstract
In his latest bookAboutness, Stephen Yablo has proposed a new 'easy road' nominalist strategy: instead of engaging in the hard work of paraphrasing a scientific theory which presupposes numbers in a nominalistically acceptable way, nominalists are, according to Yablo, entitled to accept the theory as true, while rejecting the existence of numbers, if from the theory's content the presupposition that there are numbers can be subtracted away, yielding thus a number-free content remainder. Perfect extricability, i.e. extricability in every possible world, of the presupposition that there are numbers from any content apparently involving them is, in Yablo's view, sufficient to make the existence of numbers moot. In this paper I will argue that perfect extricability fails as a criterion of ontological mootness.
Source:
Erkenntnis, 2021Publisher:
- Springer, Dordrecht
Funding / projects:
- Logical-epistemological basis of metaphysics (RS-179067)
- University of Rijeka, Croatia [uniri-human-18-239]
DOI: 10.1007/s10670-020-00304-6
ISSN: 0165-0106
WoS: 000556162200002
Scopus: 2-s2.0-85089021988
Institution/Community
Filozofija / PhilosophyTY - JOUR AU - Jandrić, Andrej PY - 2021 UR - http://reff.f.bg.ac.rs/handle/123456789/3317 AB - In his latest bookAboutness, Stephen Yablo has proposed a new 'easy road' nominalist strategy: instead of engaging in the hard work of paraphrasing a scientific theory which presupposes numbers in a nominalistically acceptable way, nominalists are, according to Yablo, entitled to accept the theory as true, while rejecting the existence of numbers, if from the theory's content the presupposition that there are numbers can be subtracted away, yielding thus a number-free content remainder. Perfect extricability, i.e. extricability in every possible world, of the presupposition that there are numbers from any content apparently involving them is, in Yablo's view, sufficient to make the existence of numbers moot. In this paper I will argue that perfect extricability fails as a criterion of ontological mootness. PB - Springer, Dordrecht T2 - Erkenntnis T1 - Content Extraction, Ontological Mootness and Nominalism: Difficulties on the Easy Road DO - 10.1007/s10670-020-00304-6 ER -
@article{ author = "Jandrić, Andrej", year = "2021", abstract = "In his latest bookAboutness, Stephen Yablo has proposed a new 'easy road' nominalist strategy: instead of engaging in the hard work of paraphrasing a scientific theory which presupposes numbers in a nominalistically acceptable way, nominalists are, according to Yablo, entitled to accept the theory as true, while rejecting the existence of numbers, if from the theory's content the presupposition that there are numbers can be subtracted away, yielding thus a number-free content remainder. Perfect extricability, i.e. extricability in every possible world, of the presupposition that there are numbers from any content apparently involving them is, in Yablo's view, sufficient to make the existence of numbers moot. In this paper I will argue that perfect extricability fails as a criterion of ontological mootness.", publisher = "Springer, Dordrecht", journal = "Erkenntnis", title = "Content Extraction, Ontological Mootness and Nominalism: Difficulties on the Easy Road", doi = "10.1007/s10670-020-00304-6" }
Jandrić, A.. (2021). Content Extraction, Ontological Mootness and Nominalism: Difficulties on the Easy Road. in Erkenntnis Springer, Dordrecht.. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00304-6
Jandrić A. Content Extraction, Ontological Mootness and Nominalism: Difficulties on the Easy Road. in Erkenntnis. 2021;. doi:10.1007/s10670-020-00304-6 .
Jandrić, Andrej, "Content Extraction, Ontological Mootness and Nominalism: Difficulties on the Easy Road" in Erkenntnis (2021), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00304-6 . .