TY - JOUR
T1 - The construction of logical space and the structure of facts
AU - Turner, Jason
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2015/10/7
Y1 - 2015/10/7
N2 - In The Construction of Logical Space, Agustín Rayo defends trivialism, according to which number-involving truths are trivially equivalent to other, non-number-involving truths; picturesquely, ‘I have five fingers on my hand’ and ‘the number of fingers on my hand is five’ express the same fact, but carved up in different ways. A single fact thus has multiple structures. I distinguish two ways this might go: on the deflationary picture, facts get their structures from our linguistic practices, while on an inflationary picture, facts have multiple structures independently of language. I argue that Rayo’s view is best interpreted as deflationary. Thus interpreted, it blocks off an attractive solution to the old problems of intensionality. I further argue a that a semi-deflationary variant of Rayo’s view can make use of the attractive solution—but it thereby sacrifices the supposed mathematical benefits of trivialism.
AB - In The Construction of Logical Space, Agustín Rayo defends trivialism, according to which number-involving truths are trivially equivalent to other, non-number-involving truths; picturesquely, ‘I have five fingers on my hand’ and ‘the number of fingers on my hand is five’ express the same fact, but carved up in different ways. A single fact thus has multiple structures. I distinguish two ways this might go: on the deflationary picture, facts get their structures from our linguistic practices, while on an inflationary picture, facts have multiple structures independently of language. I argue that Rayo’s view is best interpreted as deflationary. Thus interpreted, it blocks off an attractive solution to the old problems of intensionality. I further argue a that a semi-deflationary variant of Rayo’s view can make use of the attractive solution—but it thereby sacrifices the supposed mathematical benefits of trivialism.
KW - Acts
KW - Language
KW - Neo-fregeanism
KW - Nominalism
KW - Stipulation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84941024158&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84941024158&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11098-014-0427-4
DO - 10.1007/s11098-014-0427-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84941024158
SN - 0031-8116
VL - 172
SP - 2609
EP - 2616
JO - Philosophical Studies
JF - Philosophical Studies
IS - 10
ER -