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Full Idea
Objects, as distinct from entities of other types (properties, relations or, more generally, functions of different types and levels), just are what (actual or possible) singular terms refer to.
Gist of Idea
Objects just are what singular terms refer to
Source
B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.1)
Book Ref
Hale,B/Wright,C: 'The Reason's Proper Study' [OUP 2003], p.8
A Reaction
I find this view very bizarre and hard to cope with. It seems either to preposterously accept the implications of the way we speak into our ontology ('sakes'?), or preposterously bend the word 'object' away from its normal meaning.
| 10622 | The neo-Fregean is more optimistic than Frege about contextual definitions of numbers [Hale/Wright] |
| 10624 | The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals that logic also cannot be completely characterized [Hale/Wright] |
| 10626 | Objects just are what singular terms refer to [Hale/Wright] |
| 10630 | Abstracted objects are not mental creations, but depend on equivalence between given entities [Hale/Wright] |
| 10627 | Many conceptual truths ('yellow is extended') are not analytic, as derived from logic and definitions [Hale/Wright] |
| 10631 | If 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, then 'heterological' is heterological if it isn't heterological [Hale/Wright] |
| 10629 | If structures are relative, this undermines truth-value and objectivity [Hale/Wright] |
| 10628 | The structural view of numbers doesn't fit their usage outside arithmetical contexts [Hale/Wright] |