The Nominalist’s Gambit and the Structure of Predication

Abstract

Call the realist thesis that the truth of statements of the form "a is F" entails the existence of properties only via the schema "a is F iff a instantiates F-ness" introductionism; call the nominalist thesis that the schema "a is F iff a instantiates F-ness" doesn't really introduce properties into the domain of discourse anti-introductionism. I'll show that both introductionism and anti-introductionism presuppose two crucial assumptions concerning abstract singular terms and predicates, that in turn constitute the pivots of an (allegedly) cogent argument against realism, that is the socalled nominalist's gambit. Moreover, moving from the phenomenon that I'll call property-anaphora, I hold that these presuppositions are reciprocally incompatible. I'll conclude that introductionism and anti-introductionism are positions based on an inconsistent ground, and that the nominalist's gambit is without force.

ZF-Class Nominalism and the Küng-Armstrong Trilemma

“…In(Calemi, 2014) I argued that the realist can make explicit the ontological commitment of terms occupying the predicative position within sentences of the form "a is F " without the aid of morphological transformations.…”