Abstract
When the meta-philosophies of Nominalism and Realism are compared, it is often said that Nominalism is motivated by a methodology of ontological economy, while Realism would be motivated by an appeal to Common Sense. In this paper, I argue that this association is misguided. After briefly comparing the meta-philosophy of Common Sense and the meta-philosophy of economy, I show that the core motivation in favour of Realism relies in fact in a principle of economy which violates the methodology of Common Sense. I conclude that Common Sense philosophers should endorse Nominalism (and more precisely Ostrich Nominalism).
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Notes
However, my reasons for thinking that the realist is motivated by economy are different from Imaguire’s reasons. Imaguire shows that Plato’s motivation was reductionist in that he wanted to reduce the plurality and multiplicity of the sensible to the unity of the pure Forms. My argument in Sections 5 and 6 has more to do with Armstrong’s Truthmaking motivation for realism, which I interpret as an attempt to reduce the plurality of predicative facts to the unique kind of existence facts. Another significant difference with Imaguire’s paper is my presentation of the metaphilosophy of common sense as an alternative to the metaphilosophy of economy.
It is also important to notice that many philosophers who give an importance to common sense, or the common sense “tradition”, consider “common sense” as primarily an epistemological claim rather than a “metaphilosophy” (See Lemos 2004).
“Philosophy as Underpinning Common Sense sees philosophy’s role as protecting common sense from radical philosophy and radical science. […] The key behind this metaphilosophy is its view that what is being underpinned, although subject to criticism at its borders, is not open to wholesale criticism by philosophy. Thus, philosophy is assigned a subordinate role to the underpinned area.” (Double 1996, 27).
“If a common sense belief clashes with a philosophical theory or argument, the common sense belief is always given the benefit of the doubt. That is, it is always the philosophical theory or argument which must give way, and the common sense belief preserved. […] The authority of philosophy is of a decidedly inferior rank to that of common sense, because any claim that a philosophical theory or argument might have upon us arises from its usefulness in solving aporia […] derived from the sciences, the truth-directed subjects of the humanities, and our pre-theoretical intuitions. Common sense beliefs, on the other hand, do not have to establish a claim upon us; their claim is felt immediately.” (Boulter 2007, 21–22)
Of course, Thomas Reid has many other things to say about the nature and defence of common sense. I am willingly restricting myself here to a very limited and specific line of argument, i.e. the one I need in order to establish a modest meta-philosophy of Common Sense.
See also Harman’s book Change in View (Harman 1986).
Armstrong himself defines truthmakers by use of the “in virtue of” operator: “it is that in the world in virtue of which the truth is true.” (Armstrong 1989, 88).
This is not the place to offer a longer defence of this interpretation. For a more substantial argument in favour of this interpretation, see (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2005).
Imaguire’s immediate purpose in (2018, sec. 5.2) is a bit different from our purpose here: Imaguire is looking for the more fundamental facts in order to determine which facts will bear the ontological commitment (since he has argued earlier that only fundamental facts bear ontological commitments). Our discussion doesn’t involve the question of the ontological commitments of (fundamental) predicative facts like (5) because, as I have said in proposition (c), I interpret the realist’s motivation to be a search for grounding, not a search for ontological commitment.
To compare with Imaguire’s helpful classification of questions (Imaguire 2018, 2), I take his question (II) to hold centre stage in the debate on Universals. Question (I) (are there Universals?) is the upshot of responding to question (II). Questions (III) to (V), when they are interpreted in terms of grounding, lead to question (II) as the fundamental and difficult problem (in virtue of what a and b are both F? In virtue of what a is both F and G? In virtue of what a and b are both F, but not both G? All these “in virtue of” questions will be answered, according to my Devittian interpretation, by fundamental predicative facts: a is F, b is F, a is G, b is not G.)
See for instance (Armstrong 1997, 26): “A predicate that is one, semantically one, may apply to different particulars in virtue of different universals. […] The predicate ‘e’, however, […] may apply to the particulars it applies to in virtue of a single universal.” (my emphasis).
Some readers may think here that the existence of a and the existence of F are not sufficient to ground the predicative fact “a is F”, because a and F could exist without a’s being F. I will respond to this worry in Section 6, objection 1. In short, the main response is that we may have to add a further ground, namely the existence of the state of affairs ‘a’s being F’, but that this wouldn’t change the main argument of this section, which relies on the idea that the realist wants to ground all facts (ultimately) in existence facts alone. Readers who dislike the presentation here given can consider it as a temporary simplification that will be eliminated later on.
See also (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2005, secs. 4–5) for the same interpretation of the uncontroversial core element of the truthmaker intuition. Rodriguez-Pereyra formulates it as follows: “the root of the idea of truthmakers is the very plausible and compelling idea that the truth of a proposition is a function of, or is determined by, reality. […] Thus the insight behind the idea of truthmakers is that truth is grounded.” (idem, p.20–21).
See also (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2005, secs. 6–7) for a defence of Truthmaking which is explicitly a move from “grounding in reality” (or in how things are) to “grounding in existence” (or in whether things are).
For this distinction between the “Strong Truthmaker Principle” and the “weaker version of the principle”, see also (Peacock 2009, 189).
Or, to follow a reviewer’s suggestion, we can also interpret Armstrong as grounding predicative facts in the existence of states of affairs alone, but adding that the existence of states of affairs necessitates the existence of particulars and the existence of universals, because the former fact (existence of the state of affairs ‘a’s being F’) ontologically depends on the latter two facts (existence of a, and existence of F). I am tempted to resist this interpretation because it entails that ‘a is F’ is not grounded – not even partly – in the existence of some universal, which means that the existence of universals does not in itself contribute to a metaphysical explanation of predicative facts (nor of resemblance facts for that matter). This goes against my understanding that universals are supposed to offer (or to contribute to) a metaphysical explanation (in the sense of grounding), as I mentioned in Section 3 of this paper. But even if this alternative interpretation is true, the conclusion I want to establish here still follows, namely that the realist’s fundamental motivation is to ground predicative facts in existence facts alone – in that case the existence of states of affairs (alone). Therefore this alternative interpretation could be integrated to this paper’s central argument.
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Acknowledgements
This work was first presented at the conference “The Problem of Universals”, organized by Javier Cumpa at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. I am very thankful to Javier Cumpa who organized this wonderful conference, and to all participants in the conference, who offered very helpful comments to improve my reflexions, especially Javier Cumpa himself, Alexandre Declos, Bo Meinertsen, Nikk Effingham and Donnchadh O’Conaill. I am also thankful to professor Claudine Tiercelin, of the chaire de Métaphysique et Philosophie de la Connaissance at Collège de France: this work wouldn't have been possible without the scientific collaboration between her chaire and the Physis group at Universidad Complutense. Finally, I thank Cyrille Michon, who also helped me clarify my views on Universals.
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Guillon, JB. A Common Sense Defence of Ostrich Nominalism. Philosophia 49, 71–93 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00214-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00214-5