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Full Idea
Fictionalism takes an epistemology of the concrete to be more promising than concrete-and-abstract, but fictionalism requires an epistemology of the actual and possible, secured without the benefits of model theory.
Gist of Idea
Fictionalism eschews the abstract, but it still needs the possible (without model theory)
Source
Stewart Shapiro (Philosophy of Mathematics [1997], 7.2)
Book Ref
Shapiro,Stewart: 'Philosophy of Mathematics:structure and ontology' [OUP 1997], p.223
A Reaction
The idea that possibilities (logical, natural and metaphysical) should be understood as features of the concrete world has always struck me as appealing, so I have (unlike Shapiro) no intuitive problems with this proposal.
| 14429 | Classes are logical fictions, made from defining characteristics [Russell] |
| 9497 | Without modality, Armstrong falls back on fictionalism to support counterfactual laws [Bird on Armstrong] |
| 8909 | Abstractions may well be verbal fictions, in which we ignore some features of an object [Lewis] |
| 10023 | Talk of mirror images is 'encoded fictions' about real facts [Hodes] |
| 8864 | We quantify over events, worlds, etc. in order to make logical possibilities clearer [Yablo] |
| 19494 | Fictionalism allows that simulated beliefs may be tracking real facts [Yablo] |
| 19489 | For me, fictions are internally true, without a significant internal or external truth-value [Yablo] |
| 19490 | Make-believe can help us to reason about facts and scientific procedures [Yablo] |
| 19491 | 'The clouds are angry' can only mean '...if one were attributing emotions to clouds' [Yablo] |
| 10262 | Fictionalism eschews the abstract, but it still needs the possible (without model theory) [Shapiro] |
| 10277 | Structuralism blurs the distinction between mathematical and ordinary objects [Shapiro] |
| 12445 | If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni] |