Home > Events > Proceedings > Abstracts > Hermeneutic nominalism and the language of ontology

Hermeneutic nominalism and the language of ontology

David Liggins, University of Sheffield (13 Dec 2003)

SPPA 2003 Winter Conference, University of St Andrews

This is a non-technical paper in the philosophy of mathematics. It considers an objection to hermeneutic nominalism that has been levelled by John Burgess and Gideon Rosen. Hermeneutic nominalists deny that there are abstract mathematical objects, but claim that sentences such as '2+2=4', which seem to imply their existence, are true. Burgess and Rosen argue that hermeneutic nominalists are committed to endorsing the sentence 'There are numbers', and they conclude that hermeneutic nominalists must therefore believe in the existence of abstract objects after all. Thus Burgess and Rosen contend that hermeneutic nominalism is self-contradictory.

This paper argues that Burgess and Rosen's case is not proven: it suggests that hermeneutic nominalists will be able to defeat the argument, provided that a certain claim about the nature of language used in ontological discussions is correct. (Roughly, the claim is that when ontologists use the sentence 'There are numbers' to declare their philosophical opinions, the proposition they are communicating is not the literal meaning that the sentence has in non-philosophical contexts.)

[Event programme]

To return to the page from which you came, use your browser's "Back" function