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Full Idea
We do not believe in abstract entities..... We renounce them altogether.
Gist of Idea
We renounce all abstract entities
Source
Goodman,N/Quine,W (Steps Towards a Constructive Nominalism [1947], p.105), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Defending the Axioms
Book Ref
Maddy,Penelope: 'Defending the Axioms' [OUP 2013], p.97
A Reaction
Goodman always kept the faith here, but Quine decided to embrace sets, as a minimal commitment to abstracta needed for mathematics, which was needed for science. My sympathies are with Goodman. This is the modern form of 'nominalism'.
| 17619 | We renounce all abstract entities [Goodman/Quine] |
| 8529 | Deniers of properties and relations rely on either predicates or on classes [Armstrong] |
| 8501 | Quineans take predication about objects as basic, not reference to properties they may have [Devitt] |
| 8858 | Philosophers keep finding unexpected objects, like models, worlds, functions, numbers, events, sets, properties [Yablo] |
| 4478 | Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux] |
| 10310 | Objections to Frege: abstracta are unknowable, non-independent, unstatable, unindividuated [Hale] |
| 7971 | Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets [Macdonald,C] |
| 14596 | Call 'nominalism' the denial of numbers, properties, relations and sets [Dorr] |
| 19122 | Nominalists can reduce theories of properties or sets to harmless axiomatic truth theories [Halbach/Leigh] |