A Uniform, Concretist Metaphysics for Linguistic Types
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Giorgio Lando
Abstract
I argue that it is not acceptable to restrict the claim that linguistic types are concrete entities (type-concretism) to some categories of linguistic types (such as words or proper names), while at the same time conceding that other categories of linguistic types (such as sentence types) are abstract entities. Moreover, I suggest a way in which type-concretism can be extended to every linguistic type, thereby responding to the so-called productivity objection to type-concretism, according to which, whenever tokens of a type t are produced in different, causally isolated circumstances, then t needs to be identified by a certain form or structure. This extension of type-concretism detaches type-concretism from so-called originalism and gives rules a prominent role in type-concretism.
Acknowledgements
A preliminary version of this paper had been presented in 2018 at the 4th Philosophy of Language and Mind Conference in Bochum (Germany) and at the 13th conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy in Novara (Italy). I would like to thank the participants to both the conferences for their patience and for their questions. I would also like to thank Giulia Felappi, Simone Gozzano, Nicholas Tasker and Anna Maria Thornton for their useful and stimulating comments on a subsequent draft.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- A Reply to Mellor’s “Propensities and Possibilities”
- The Aristotelian Context of the Existence-Essence Distinction in De Ente Et Essentia
- Maximality, Function, and the Many
- A Uniform, Concretist Metaphysics for Linguistic Types
- Tropes and Some Ontological Prerequisites for Knowledge
- Neutralism, Naturalism and Emergence: A Critical Examination of Cumpa’s Theory of Instantiation
- Book Review
- R. D. Ingthorsson: McTaggart’s Paradox
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- A Reply to Mellor’s “Propensities and Possibilities”
- The Aristotelian Context of the Existence-Essence Distinction in De Ente Et Essentia
- Maximality, Function, and the Many
- A Uniform, Concretist Metaphysics for Linguistic Types
- Tropes and Some Ontological Prerequisites for Knowledge
- Neutralism, Naturalism and Emergence: A Critical Examination of Cumpa’s Theory of Instantiation
- Book Review
- R. D. Ingthorsson: McTaggart’s Paradox
