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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The Linsky-Zalta view that concreteness is a contingent property should be rejected.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • We are very reluctant to accept that concreteness is a contingent property of objects.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Kripke's modal semantics establishes that essential properties are those an object possesses across all possible worlds in which it exists.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Concrete existence—occupying spacetime, having causal powers—is not merely accidental but constitutive of what it is to be a physical particular.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.If concreteness were contingent, abstract objects like numbers could become concrete, collapsing the fundamental ontological distinction Frege required between Sinn and object.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Linsky and Zalta's view requires that merely possible objects are actually existing abstracta that contingently lack concreteness, inflating ontology beyond parsimony.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Williamson's necessitism, which Linsky-Zalta resembles, faces the decisive objection that it cannot explain why some necessitist entities have modal profiles radically unlike any concrete thing.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.A view that treats concreteness as contingent cannot ground the asymmetric explanatory priority of concrete objects over abstract ones that causal theories of knowledge require.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

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