Results for 'Abstract Objects'

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  1. Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language.Friederike Moltmann - 2012 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This book pursues the question of how and whether natural language allows for reference to abstract objects in a fully systematic way. By making full use of contemporary linguistic semantics, it presents a much greater range of linguistic generalizations than has previously been taken into consideration in philosophical discussions, and it argues for an ontological picture is very different from that generally taken for granted by philosophers and semanticists alike. Reference to abstract objects such as properties, (...)
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  2. Abstract Objects: An Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics.Edward N. Zalta - 1983 - Dordrecht, Netherland: D. Reidel.
    In this book, Zalta attempts to lay the axiomatic foundations of metaphysics by developing and applying a (formal) theory of abstract objects. The cornerstones include a principle which presents precise conditions under which there are abstract objects and a principle which says when apparently distinct such objects are in fact identical. The principles are constructed out of a basic set of primitive notions, which are identified at the end of the Introduction, just before the theorizing (...)
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  3. Abstract Objects and the Core-Periphery Distinction in the Ontological and the Conceptual Domain of Natural Language.Friederike Moltmann - 2020 - In José Luis Falguera & Concha Martínez-Vida, Abstract Objects: For and Against. Springer. pp. 255-276.
    This paper elaborates distinctions between a core and a periphery in the ontological and the conceptual domain associated with natural language. The ontological core-periphery distinction is essential for natural language ontology and is the basis for the central thesis of my 2013 book Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language, namely that natural language permits reference to abstract objects in its periphery, but not its core.
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  4.  79
    Abstract Objects.David Liggins - 2024 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Philosophers often debate the existence of such things as numbers and propositions, and say that if these objects exist, they are abstract. But what does it mean to call something 'abstract'? And do we have good reason to believe in the existence of abstract objects? This Element addresses those questions, putting newcomers to these debates in a position to understand what they concern and what are the most influential considerations at work in this area of (...)
  5. Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse.Nicholas Asher - 1993 - Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer.
    This volume is about abstract objects and the ways we refer to them in natural language. Asher develops a semantical and metaphysical analysis of these entities in two stages. The first reflects the rich ontology of abstract objects necessitated by the forms of language in which we think and speak. A second level of analysis maps the ontology of natural language metaphysics onto a sparser domain--a more systematic realm of abstract objects that are fully (...)
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  6. Abstract Objects, Causal Efficacy, and Causal Exclusion.Tim Juvshik - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (4):805-827.
    objects are standardly taken to be causally inert, but this claim is rarely explicitly argued for. In the context of his platonism about musical works, in order for musical works to be audible, Julian Dodd argues that abstracta are causally efficacious in virtue of their concrete tokens participating in events. I attempt to provide a principled argument for the causal inertness of abstracta by first rejecting Dodd’s arguments from events, and then extending and generalizing the causal exclusion argument to (...)
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  7. Art & Abstract Objects.Christy Mag Uidhir (ed.) - 2013 - Oxford University Press.
    Art and Abstract Objects presents a lively philosophical exchange between the philosophy of art and the core areas of philosophy. The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete (i.e., material, causally efficacious, located in space and time). Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is currently located in Paris. Richard Serra's Tilted Arc is 73 tonnes of solid steel. Johannes Vermeer's The Concert was stolen in 1990 and remains (...)
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  8. Creating abstract objects.David Friedell - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (10):e12783.
    Beach's Gaelic Symphony is plausibly an abstract object that Beach created. The view that people create some abstract objects is called abstract creationism. There are abstract creationists about many kinds of objects, including musical works, fictional characters, arguments, words, internet memes, installation artworks, bitcoins, and restaurants. Alternative theories include materialism and Platonism. This paper discusses some of the most serious objections against abstract creationism. Arguably, these objections have ramifications for questions in metaphysics pertaining (...)
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  9.  78
    Abstract Objects and Causation: Bringing Causation Back Into Contemporary Platonism.Charles Taliaferro - 2015 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 71 (4):769-780.
    Resumo O autor defenderá, por um lado, a existência dos objectos abstractos e, por outro, o seu papel causal, numa ontologia platónica, tal como enquadrada por Roderick Chisholm. Se plausível, a natureza e o papel dos abstracta sob a forma de estados de coisas, oferecem-nos razões para acreditar em uma descrição bem-sucedida e explicativa da intencionalidade humana e animal que não está encerrada no mundo físico. Palavras-chave : causalidade, encerramento causal, fisicalismo, objectos abstractos, platonismo, Roderick ChisholmA defense of the existence (...)
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  10. Abstract objects? Who cares!Graham Oppy - 2014 - London UK: Bloomsbury Academic.
    This is my main contribution to P. Gould (ed.) Beyond the Control of God?: Six Views on the Problem of God and Abstract Objects Bloomsbury. (The other contibutors to this work are: Keith Yandell; Paul Gould and Rich Davis; Greg Welty; William Lane Craig; and Scott Shalkowski.) I argue that, when it comes to a comparative assessment of the merits of theism and atheism, it makes no difference whether one opts for realism or fictionalism concerning abstract (...). (shrink)
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  11.  73
    Explicit Abstract Objects in Predicative Settings.Sean Ebels-Duggan & Francesca Boccuni - 2024 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 53 (5):1347-1382.
    Abstractionist programs in the philosophy of mathematics have focused on abstraction principles, taken as implicit definitions of the objects in the range of their operators. In second-order logic (SOL) with predicative comprehension, such principles are consistent but also (individually) mathematically weak. This paper, inspired by the work of Boolos (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 87, 137–151, 1986) and Zalta (Abstract Objects, vol. 160 of Synthese Library, 1983), examines explicit definitions of abstract objects. These axioms state (...)
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  12. Abstract objects.Bob Hale - 1987 - New York, NY, USA: Blackwell.
  13. Abstract Objects: an Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics by Edward N. Zalta.John Bacon - 1986 - Critical Philosophy 3 (3):218.
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  14. God and Abstract Objects: The Coherence of Theism: Aseity.William Lane Craig - 2017 - Cham: Springer.
    This book is an exploration and defense of the coherence of classical theism’s doctrine of divine aseity in the face of the challenge posed by Platonism with respect to abstract objects. A synoptic work in analytic philosophy of religion, the book engages discussions in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaontology. It addresses absolute creationism, non-Platonic realism, fictionalism, neutralism, and alternative logics and semantics, among other topics. The book offers a helpful taxonomy of the wide range (...)
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  15. "Abstract Objects", by Bob Hale.Wolfgang KÜnne - 1989 - Ratio:89.
     
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  16. Awareness of Abstract Objects.Elijah Chudnoff - 2012 - Noûs 47 (4):706-726.
    Awareness is a two-place determinable relation some determinates of which are seeing, hearing, etc. Abstract objects are items such as universals and functions, which contrast with concrete objects such as solids and liquids. It is uncontroversial that we are sometimes aware of concrete objects. In this paper I explore the more controversial topic of awareness of abstract objects. I distinguish two questions. First, the Existence Question: are there any experiences that make their subjects aware (...)
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  17. Could Abstract Objects Depend upon God?Scott A. Davison - 1991 - Religious Studies 27 (4):485 - 497.
    What sorts of things are there in the world? Clearly enough, there are concrete, material things; but are there other things too, perhaps nonconcrete or non-material things? Some people believe that there are such things, which are often called abstract ; purported examples of such objects include numbers, properties, possible but non-actual states of affairs, propositions, and sets. Following a long-standing tradition, I shall describe persons who believe that there are abstract objects as ‘platonists’. In this (...)
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  18. Abstract Objects.Edward N. Zalta - 1983 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 90 (1):135-137.
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  19. I am no abstract object: a novel challenge to mind uploading.Xinyi Zhan - 2024 - Synthese 204 (3):1-17.
    Mind uploading—the transference of mind from a biological brain to a computer— offers the alluring possibility of immortality. This paper provides a novel challenge to mind uploading, focusing on the distinction between abstract objects and concrete individuals. Uploads are abstract objects, while currently, persons are concrete indi- viduals. This presents a dilemma: if the mind is concrete, uploading it to a computer is impossible. Alternatively, if mind uploading is feasible, the resulting abstract upload cannot be (...)
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  20. Arguments as Abstract Objects.Paul L. Simard Smith & Andrei Moldovan - 2011 - Informal Logic 31 (3):230-261.
    In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambigu-ity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argu-ment’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?
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  21. Relativity and the Causal Efficacy of Abstract Objects.Tim Juvshik - 2020 - American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (3):269-282.
    Abstract objects are standardly taken to be causally inert, however principled arguments for this claim are rarely given. As a result, a number of recent authors have claimed that abstract objects are causally efficacious. These authors take abstracta to be temporally located in order to enter into causal relations but lack a spatial location. In this paper, I argue that such a position is untenable by showing first that causation requires its relata to have a temporal (...)
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  22. On the Varieties of Abstract Objects.James E. Davies - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (4):809-823.
    I reconcile the spatiotemporal location of repeatable artworks and impure sets with the non-location of natural numbers despite all three being varieties of abstract objects. This is possible because, while the identity conditions for all three can be given by abstraction principles, in the former two cases spatiotemporal location is a congruence for the equivalence relation featuring in the relevant principle, whereas in the latter it is not. I then generalize this to other ‘physical’ properties like shape, mass, (...)
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  23. Abstract Objects.Bob Hale - 1987 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 179 (1):109-109.
     
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  24.  23
    698 philosophical abstracts.Objectivity Gender & Alan Realism - 1994 - The Monist 77 (4).
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  25. (1 other version)Abstract objects.Gideon Rosen - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  26. The ontology of concepts: Abstract objects or mental representations?Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence - 2007 - Noûs 41 (4):561-593.
    What is a concept? Philosophers have given many different answers to this question, reflecting a wide variety of approaches to the study of mind and language. Nonetheless, at the most general level, there are two dominant frameworks in contemporary philosophy. One proposes that concepts are mental representations, while the other proposes that they are abstract objects. This paper looks at the differences between these two approaches, the prospects for combining them, and the issues that are involved in the (...)
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  27. Can Emotions Have Abstract Objects? The Example of Awe.Fredericks Rachel - 2017 - Philosophia 46 (3):733-746.
    Can we feel emotions about abstract objects, assuming that abstract objects exist? I argue that at least some emotions can have abstract objects as their intentional objects and discuss why this conclusion is not just trivially true. Through critical engagement with the work of Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I devote special attention to awe, an emotion that is particularly well suited to show that some emotions can be about either concrete or (...) objects. In responding to a possible objection, according to which we can only feel emotions about things that we take to matter to our flourishing, and thus cannot feel emotions about causally inefficacious abstract objects, I explore how abstract objects can be relevant to human flourishing and discuss someemotions other than awe that can be about abstract objects. I finish by explaining somereasons why my conclusion matters, including the fact that it presents a challenge to perceptual theories of emotion and causal theories of intentionality. (shrink)
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    Abstract Objects, by Bob Hale. [REVIEW]Harold W. Noonan - 1989 - Philosophical Quarterly 39 (156):354-357.
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  29.  66
    Abstract Objects.John P. Burgess - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (2):414.
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  30. Types and tokens: on abstract objects.Linda Wetzel - 2009 - Cambridge: MIT Press.
    In this book, Linda Wetzel examines the distinction between types and tokens and argues that types exist (as abstract objects, since they lack a unique ...
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  31. Is there reference to abstract objects?Friederike Moltmann - forthcoming - In Ana Poliakoff, Linguistic and Philosophical Thought about Reference. Lexington Books.
    Philosophers frequently draw on natural language to motivate properties, numbers, and propositions as objects, and it is generally taken for granted that abstract objects of this sort are well-reflected in natural language and in fact that reference to them in natural language is pervasive In this paper, I will review and modify in a certain way the view I had advanced in Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language (Moltmann 2013a). This is the view (...)
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  32. (1 other version)Abstract Objects: A Case Study.Stephen Yablo - 2002 - Noûs 36 (s1):220 - 240.
  33.  50
    How Abstract Objects Strike Us.Michael Liston - 1994 - Dialectica 48 (1):3-27.
    SummaryBenacerraf challenges us to account for the reliability of our mathematical beliefs given that there appear to be no natural connections between mathematical believers and mathematical ontology. In this paper I try to do two things. I argue that the interactionist view underlying this challenge renders inexplicable not only the reliability of our mathematical beliefs, construed either platonistically or naturalistically , but also the reliability of most of our beliefs in physics. I attempt to counter Benacerraf's challenge by sketching an (...)
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  34. Is God an abstract object?Brian Leftow - 1990 - Noûs 24 (4):581-598.
    Before Duns Scotus, most philosophers agreed that God is identical with His necessary intrinsic attributes--omnipotence, omniscience, etc. This Identity Thesis was a component of widely held doctrines of divine simplicity, which stated that God exemplifies no metaphysical distinctions, including that between subject and attribute. The Identity Thesis seems to render God an attribute, an abstract object. This paper shows that the Identity Thesis follows from a basic theistic belief and does not render God abstract. If also discusses how (...)
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  35. Can God Create Abstract Objects? A Reply to Peter van Inwagen.Paul Gould - 2014 - Sophia 53 (1):99-112.
    The Platonic theist Peter van Inwagen argues that God cannot create abstract objects. Thus, the quantifier ‘everything’ in traditional statements of the doctrine of creation should be appropriately restricted to things that can enter into causal relations and abstract objects cannot: ‘God is the creator of everything distinct from himself…that can enter into causal relations.’ I respond to van Inwagen arguing that he has provided no good reason for thinking abstract objects must be uncreated. (...)
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    Arguments as abstract objects.Paul Simard Smith, Andrei Moldovan & G. C. Goddu - unknown
    In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambi-guity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argument’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?
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  37. The Existence (and Non-existence) of Abstract Objects.Richard Heck - 2011 - In Richard G. Heck, Frege's Theorem. New York: Clarendon Press.
    This paper is concerned with neo-Fregean accounts of reference to abstract objects. It develops an objection to the most familiar such accounts, due to Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, based upon what I call the 'proliferation problem': Hale and Wright's account makes reference to abstract objects seem too easy, as is shown by the fact that any equivalence relation seems as good as any other. The paper then develops a response to this objection, and offers an (...)
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  38.  51
    Dummett on abstract objects.George Duke - 2012 - New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    This book offers an historically-informed critical assessment of Dummett's account of abstract objects, examining in detail some of the Fregean presuppositions whilst also engaging with recent work on the problem of abstract entities.
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  39. Moral responsibility for concepts, continued: Concepts as abstract objects.Rachel Fredericks - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (4):1029-1043.
    In Fredericks (2018b), I argued that we can be morally responsible for our concepts if they are mental representations. Here, I make a complementary argument for the claim that even if concepts are abstract objects, we can be morally responsible for coming to grasp and for thinking (or not thinking) in terms of them. As before, I take for granted Angela Smith's (2005) rational relations account of moral responsibility, though I think the same conclusion follows from various other (...)
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  40.  52
    Review of "Abstract Objects: An Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics".Francesco Orilia - 1987 - Noûs 21 (2):270-276.
    This is Francesco Orilia's book review of Edward N. Zalta's 1983 book, Abstract Objects: An Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics.
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  41.  83
    Abstract Objectivity: Richard J. Bernstein's critique of Hilary Putnam.Brendan Hogan & Lawrence Marcelle - 2014 - In Judith M. Green, Richard J. Bernstein and the pragmatist turn in contemporary philosophy: rekindling pragmatism's fire. New York, NY: Palgrave-Macmillan.
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    Knowledge, Cause, and Abstract Objects: Causal Objections to Platonism.C. Cheyne - 2010 - Springer.
    According to platonists, entities such as numbers, sets, propositions and properties are abstract objects. But abstract objects lack causal powers and a location in space and time, so how could we ever come to know of the existence of such impotent and remote objects? In Knowledge, Cause, and Abstract Objects, Colin Cheyne presents the first systematic and detailed account of this epistemological objection to the platonist doctrine that abstract objects exist and (...)
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  43.  48
    Abstract Objects[REVIEW]Albert Sweet - 1989 - Review of Metaphysics 43 (1):166-168.
    What are abstract objects? Do they exist independently of the mind? Can they be known? These questions, and related ones, are addressed in this book, and are given Platonistic answers of a "broadly Fregean kind." These answers emerge, for the most part, from discussion and criticism of the writings of other philosophers.
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  44. Knowledge of Abstract Objects in Physics and Mathematics.Michael J. Shaffer - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (4):397-409.
    In this paper a parallel is drawn between the problem of epistemic access to abstract objects in mathematics and the problem of epistemic access to idealized systems in the physical sciences. On this basis it is argued that some recent and more traditional approaches to solving these problems are problematic.
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  45. A Generic Russellian Elimination of Abstract Objects.Kevin C. Klement - 2017 - Philosophia Mathematica 25 (1):91-115.
    In this paper I explore a position on which it is possible to eliminate the need for postulating abstract objects through abstraction principles by treating terms for abstracta as ‘incomplete symbols’, using Russell's no-classes theory as a template from which to generalize. I defend views of this stripe against objections, most notably Richard Heck's charge that syntactic forms of nominalism cannot correctly deal with non-first-orderizable quantifcation over apparent abstracta. I further discuss how number theory may be developed in (...)
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  46. Language and Other Abstract Objects.Jerrold J. Katz - 1980 - Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
    To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
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  47. The Problem of God and Abstract Objects: A Reassessment.Joshua Sijuwade - forthcoming - Metaphysica.
    This article aims to provide a reassessment of the relationship between God and abstract objects. This reassessment will provide a new conceptualisation of this important relationship and will be formulated, first, within the theoretical framework of ‘Theistic Aspectivalism’, which is grounded on the notion of an aspect, proposed by Donald L.M. Baxter, which provides a means to ward off the ‘Bootstrapping Problem’. Second, within the theoretical framework of ‘Theistic Essentialism’, which is based on the notion of essence and (...)
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  48. Approaching the abstract: Building blocks for an epistemology of abstract objects.Søren Harnow Klausen - 2013 - Semiotica 2013 (194):3-20.
    Abstract objects are widely held to pose a formidable epistemological challenge. It has seemed mysterious to many how we can have access to such strange and intangible entities. The article considers five influential ways to meet the challenge: Transcendental arguments, the indispensability argument, insisting that we just are able to grasp abstract objects and that no further explanation is needed, abstractionist accounts, and ontological reduction. None of these approaches is by itself sufficient or completely convincing, but (...)
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    God with or without Abstract Objects.S. A. Shalkowski - unknown
    In this contribution, I defend two claims. First, theological problems do not arise, because there are insufficient grounds for thinking that there are abstract objects. Second, theological problems do not arise because even if abstract objects do exist as platonists think they do, they pose no problem for God’s sovereignty or aseity. The argument for the second has two components. First, there are limits and then there are limits. The so-called limits platonism would place upon God (...)
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    Placing Abstract Objects in Naturalism.Bernard Linsky - 2001 - Philosophical Inquiry 23 (1-2):73-85.
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