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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Nominalists can reject the One Over Many argument regardless of which nominalist view they adopt

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The One Over Many argument claims that (P) explains (N)
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    • 2.The Platonist explanation (P) is uninformative as an explanation of (N) on any nominalist view
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    • 3.Even fictionalist nominalists who deny that (P) is equivalent to (N) can still charge the explanation with being uninformative
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Quine and Goodman's nominalist program shows predicate application can be explained purely through syntactic and mereological relations without abstract entities.
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    • 2.If nominalists can give a complete account of predicate-sharing through physical or linguistic structure alone, the Platonist explanatory appeal to universals becomes redundant rather than informative.
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    • 3.An explanation is uninformative precisely when it posits entities whose explanatory role can be fully discharged by the explanandum's own structural features, as Occam's razor demands.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Rodriguez-Pereyra's resemblance nominalism demonstrates that the One Over Many can be dissolved by grounding predicate application in primitive resemblance relations among particulars.
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    • 2.If primitive resemblance among concrete particulars is itself no more mysterious than the primitive instantiation relation Platonists must posit, the Platonist explanation offers no genuine explanatory gain.
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    • 3.Any nominalist view that identifies an equally fundamental but ontologically cheaper base for predication thereby removes the explanatory asymmetry the One Over Many argument requires.
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