more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
Abstraction principles purport to introduce fundamental means of reference to a range of objects, to which there is accordingly no presumption that we have any prior or independent means of reference.
Gist of Idea
Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp
Source
B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §8)
Book Ref
'Metametaphysics', ed/tr. Chalmers/Manley/Wasserman [OUP 2009], p.195
A Reaction
There's the rub! They make it sound like a virtue, that we open up yet another heaven of abstract toys to play with. As fictions, they are indeed exciting new fun. As platonic discoveries they strike me as Cloud-Cuckoo Land.
| 12223 | It is a fallacy to explain the obscure with the even more obscure [Hale/Wright] |
| 12224 | Are neo-Fregeans 'maximalists' - that everything which can exist does exist? [Hale/Wright] |
| 12225 | Neo-Fregeanism might be better with truth-makers, rather than quantifier commitment [Hale/Wright] |
| 12226 | The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence [Hale/Wright] |
| 12227 | Abstractionism needs existential commitment and uniform truth-conditions [Hale/Wright] |
| 12228 | Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp [Hale/Wright] |
| 12231 | Reference needs truth as well as sense [Hale/Wright] |
| 12230 | Singular terms refer if they make certain atomic statements true [Hale/Wright] |
| 12229 | Maybe we have abundant properties for semantics, and sparse properties for ontology [Hale/Wright] |
| 18443 | A successful predicate guarantees the existence of a property - the way of being it expresses [Hale/Wright] |