Open AccessJoseph Melia’s nominalism and the indexing theory of numbers
Author(s) -
Aleksa Cupic
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
theoria
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2406-081X
pISSN - 0351-2274
DOI - 10.2298/theo1901035c
Subject(s) - nominalism , quine , epistemology , monad (category theory) , fallacy , paraphrase , scientific theory , argument (complex analysis) , philosophy , mathematics , linguistics , biochemistry , chemistry , discrete mathematics , functor
According to the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument, we are committed to all the entities that are indispensable to our best scientific theory. John Melia argues contra Quine-Putnam by claiming that even though such entities as numbers are indispensable to our best science, there is reason to deny their existence. In order to defend Melia?s theory from criticism put forth by Mark Colyvan, who demands that Melia provide a nominalistically acceptable paraphrase of our best scientific theory, supporters of this view have argued for the stronger claim that numbers are not indispensable. They all claim that numbers have an indexing role in the scientific explanation. In this article, I will consider some of the arguments for the indexing theory and point out its inadequacies.