More Grounds for Grounding Nominalism
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More Grounds for Grounding Nominalism Alexandre Declos 1 Received: 25 September 2019 / Revised: 2 April 2020 / Accepted: 22 April 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In this paper, I examine Peter Schulte’s “Grounding Nominalism” (Schulte, 2018), understood as the claim that first-order properties and relations are grounded in the concrete particulars which instantiate them. While Schulte offered reasons to think that this view is consistent, along with answers to a number of objections, a more straightforward argument for GN is still needed. I take on this task here, by discussing and defending what I call the “argument from abstraction”. The latter, I suggest, offers more grounds to Grounding Nominalism. Keywords Metaphysics . Grounding . Nominalism . Universals . Abstraction
Peter Schulte recently introduced and advocated “Grounding Nominalism” (GN), understood as the claim that first-order properties and relations are grounded in the concrete particulars which instantiate them (Schulte, 2018). This view is attractive, being one of the first attempts to bring together the recent literature on grounding with more traditional issues surrounding nominalism and realism. Yet, I think that more has to be said in order to get at a full defence of GN. Schulte, so far, has provided what is essentially a negative case for the view, as he mainly argued for its consistency and its ability to meet various objections. While this is promising, there is yet more to do. A direct argument for GN is much needed. The intent of this article is to supplement and reinforce Schulte’s account by taking on this task. After presenting the core principles of GN (section 1), I shall introduce a novel argument to support the view (the argument from abstraction) and examine how it can be defended (section 2). Lastly, I will consider and attempt to answer some objections to this argument (section 3).
* Alexandre Declos [email protected]
1
Collège de France, Paris, France
Philosophia
1 The Core Principles of GN To a first approximation, GN presents itself as the claim that properties and relations are grounded in the concrete particular things that instantiate them (Schulte, 2018, 4).1 Whenever particulars have a property or enter into a relation, that is, these particulars would be the ground and the property/relation the grounded entity. But this is only a rough and preliminary picture. A number of clarifications are needed in order to understand GN more precisely. 1.1 The Grounding Apparatus First, and as the name indicates, GN is a ground-theoretic brand of nominalism. Grounding will here be understood along the usual lines, i.e. as a type of non-causal ontological dependence or determination.2 Although I shall not defend any of these assumptions, note that Schulte takes grounding to be primitive, unitary, explanatory, factive, and hyperintensional. This, if anything, is an orthodox account.3 It shall also be assumed here, no less standardly, that grounding is a strict partial order. This point is particularly importa
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