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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Abstract objects posited by Mīmāṃsā linguistic realism do not really exist

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Real existence requires the capacity to interact causally with other particulars
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    • 2.Abstract objects posited to make sense of language cannot have causal efficacy
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Benacerraf's epistemological challenge shows that if abstract objects lack causal power, we cannot have reliable knowledge of them.
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    • 2.Mīmāṃsā sphoṭa and universal-word entities (ākṛti) are posited precisely to ground linguistic knowledge, yet resist any epistemic access pathway.
      ?

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    • 3.A theory that requires entities inaccessible to any pramāṇa (valid epistemic instrument) violates Mīmāṃsā's own methodological commitment to verifiable sources of knowledge.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Quine's criterion of ontological commitment entails that entities are real only if quantification over them is indispensable to our best explanatory theories.
      ?

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    • 2.Nominalist programs (Goodman, Field) demonstrate that linguistic and mathematical practice can be reconstructed without positing abstract universals.
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    • 3.If abstract Mīmāṃsā entities like word-universals are eliminable from a complete semantic explanation, Occam's razor demands their rejection as genuine existents.
      ?

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    Strongest counterpoint
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