Chris, (01)
I agree that Quine admitted sets into his ontology. (02)
CM> If, however, you mean someone who rejects the existence
> of all abstract entities across the board, then Quine was
> no nominalist, as he argued that quantification over
> mathematical objects (specifically, sets) is indispensable
> to science. (03)
But Alonzo Church, who allowed much richer abstract objects
into his ontology, delivered a wonderful talk at Harvard with
the explicit intention of annoying Quine and Nelson Goodman: (04)
http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/church.htm
The ontological status of women and abstract entities (05)
Following is the opening paragraph. (06)
John
_____________________________________________________________ (07)
Goodman says somewhere that he finds abstract entities difficult to
understand. And from a psychological viewpoint it is certainly his
dislike and distrust of abstract entities which leads him to propose an
ontology from which they are omitted. Now a misogynist is a man who
finds women difficult to understand, and who in fact considers them
objectionable incongruities in an otherwise matter-of-fact and
hard-headed world. Suppose then that in analogy with nominalism the
misogynist is led by his dislike and distrust of women to omit them from
his ontology. Women are not real, he tells himself, and derives great
comfort from the thought -- there are no such things. This doctrine let
us call ontological misogyny. (08)
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