How Many there Are Isn’t

Philosophia 48 (3):1037-1057 (2020)
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Abstract

A world where there exists n concrete things is a count-determinate world. The orthodox view is count-determinacy is necessary; if to be is to be the value of a variable and the domain of quantification is enumerable, count-determinacy follows. Yet I argue how many there are can be indeterminate; count-indeterminacy is metaphysically possible and even likely actual. Notably, my argument includes rebuttals of Evans’ reductio of indeterminate identity and the Lewis/Sider ‘argument from vagueness’. Count-indeterminacy should therefore be recognized as another basic form of genuine metaphysical indeterminacy, in addition to types recently defend by Barnes, Williams, and Wilson.

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Jonah Goldwater
William & Mary

Citations of this work

Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman & Jonathan Barker - 2025 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The Stuff That Matters.N. G. Laskowski - 2024 - In Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford Studies of Metaethics 19. Oxford University Press USA.

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
On what grounds what.Jonathan Schaffer - 2009 - In Ryan Wasserman, David Manley & David Chalmers, Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 347-383.
On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
Four Dimensionalism.Theodore Sider - 1997 - Philosophical Review 106 (2):197-231.

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