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.
?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
No one has weighed in yet. Be the first to share reasons for or against this statement.
Sign in or register to share your perspective on this statement.
Spacetime(as one criterion for whether something is physically real)
A physics concept combining space (location) and time into one continuous system—basically, every physical object exists somewhere at some moment in time.
abstract(in Zalta's definition, contrasted with primitivism)
Not merely the negation of being concrete; rather, abstract objects are those that could not possibly be concrete (e.g., numbers, sets)
concreteness(Invoked to explain the intuition of contingent existence: an object necessarily exists but may fail to be concrete in some worlds, which we interpret as non-existence.)
A contingent property that an object may or may not have across possible worlds, on the Linsky-Zalta view.