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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Trains, under the simple account using abstraction principles, are abstract entities rather than concrete physical objects.

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

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Abstraction principles define equivalence classes over concrete relata, but equivalence classes can themselves be spatiotemporally located where their members are located.
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    • 2.The train of x, defined as the maximal connected string containing x, inherits causal and spatiotemporal properties from its concrete carriages, satisfying paradigm criteria for concreteness.
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    • 3.Hale and Wright's own neo-logicist framework distinguishes between logical abstracts like numbers and sortal abstracts grounded in physical relations, where the latter retain concrete status.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The form of an abstraction principle alone is insufficient to determine the ontological category of its output, as Frege's own Grundlagen distinguishes directions (abstract) from aggregates (concrete) despite both being definable by abstraction.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Trains, unlike numbers or directions, admit of physical destruction, occupy determinate regions of spacetime, and exert gravitational force, which are criteria Kit Fine and Michael Dummett treat as definitive of concreteness regardless of definitional method.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.A train is defined as a maximal string of railroad carriages all connected to one another.
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    • 2.The expression 'the train of x' is defined via an abstraction principle: the train of x equals the train of y if and only if x and y are connected carriages.
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    • 3.x is a train if and only if for some carriage y, x is the train of y.
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