Abstract
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 together they make out a strong cumulative case for the accessibility of abstract objects.
About the author
Søren Harnow Klausen (b. 1966) is a professor at the University of Southern Denmark 〈harnow@ifpr.sdu.dk〉. His research interests include epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. His publications include “Two notions of epistemic normativity” (2009); and “The notion of creativity revisited” (2010).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
