Can We Do Without Fundamental Individuals? No∗

A theory is individualist if it says there are fundamental 'individual facts'. And a fact is an 'individual fact' if it can be expressed by a sentence that uses an individual's name—such as 'Fa' or 'Pa & Qa', where 'a' names an individual. According to qualitativism, individuals aren't 'primitive', or fundamental; all fundamental facts are purely qualitative. Some reasons to believe it are narrowly scientific, stemming from concerns about quantum probabilities. The good news for algebraic generalism is that every first-order sentence can be 'translated' into a corresponding zero-placed relation. So each individualist theory has an algebraic generalist counterpart Q, vindicating premise. The individualist has idlers that the algebraic generalist lacks. Avoiding those idlers may be worth the price of some logical double-counting. Fair enough. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as they say: the individualist may well think that it's worth paying the cost of idlers to avoid this sort of logical duplication.