J. M.

DIETERLE

OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL

NATURALISM

Quine and Goodman’s 1947 paper “Steps Toward a Constructive Nom-

inalism” opens with the statement that they “renounce [abstract objects]
altogether.”1 A page later they tell us that this renunciation is founded on
“a philosophical intuition that cannot be justified by appeal to anything
more ultimate.”2 Although Quine has given up this view, it remains popu-
lar in the literature. The philosophy of mathematics abounds with attacks
on abstract mathematical objects, which are thought to be occult, exotic,
suspicious, and unknowable.
Despite the attacks, many mathematical realists remain. It thus seems
that not everyone shares the philosophical intuition of the early Quine
and Goodman. The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivations
for nominalism. Why would one want to do away with abstract objects
generally, and abstract mathematical objects in particular? Apart from the
philosophical intuition, are there reasons for renouncing the abstract? Are
there good arguments for nominalism?
Philosophers use the terms ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’ in various ways.
It will thus be helpful to explain how I will be using them. I will use
‘realism’ to mean the ontological thesis that abstract objects exist inde-
pendently of the mind. ‘Nominalism’ will be used to refer to the denial
of this thesis. While I recognize that the abstract/concrete distinction is
problematic,3 I will put this problem aside. Let us assume that we have a
principled and non-controversial way to draw the distinction between the
abstract and the concrete.
What, then, are the arguments for dispensing with the abstract? There
are three main types of arguments: (1) Ockham’s Razor arguments, (2) un-
encounterability arguments, and (3) arguments that depend on ontological
naturalism. I will examine these in parts 1–3 of the paper. In part 4, I will
consider whether an argument can be constructed that depends on the three
objections conjoined. Let me note at the outset that it is not my goal to offer
a positive defense of mathematical realism or abstract objects, but rather
to determine whether there are any cogent arguments against accepting
abstracta into one’s ontology. I begin with Ockham’s Razor arguments.

Erkenntnis 55: 51–72, 2001.

© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
52 J. M. DIETERLE

1. OCKHAM ’ S RAZOR ARGUMENTS

Ockham’s Razor cautions us not to multiply entities beyond necessity. This

principle can be interpreted in two ways: (1) as a principle about the num-
ber of particular entities; or (2) as a principle about the number of kinds of
entities. As a principle about the number of particular entities, Ockham’s
Razor wouldn’t necessarily dictate that we reject abstract objects alto-
gether. Rather, it would warn us that we shouldn’t accept lots of abstract
(or any) objects. But since the truth of classical mathematics requires a
non-denumerable infinity of particular objects, this version of Ockham’s
Razor does seem to spell trouble for mathematical realists. However, if
one is going to use this interpretation of Ockham’s Razor as a premise,
then one needs to address the “beyond necessity” part of the principle.4
The question is to what the “beyond necessity” refers. Necessity for
what? One could read it as “necessity for classical mathematics” and jus-
tify accepting the entire set theoretic hierarchy. Alternatively, and probably
more popularly, one could side with Quine and say that our principle of
ontological acceptance depends on what is necessary for science (broadly
construed). But even then at least some abstract mathematical objects
would seem to survive our ontological purge. The Quine/Putnam indis-
pensability argument tells us that if we accept the truth of natural science,
then we must accept the truth of at least some of mathematics – i.e., those
portions of mathematics that are indispensable for science. Since mathem-
atics has bound variables ranging over abstract objects, we are committed
to accepting those abstract objects into our ontology.5 Hence, an Ockham’s
Razor argument combined with Quinean considerations about science does
not give us the nominalist conclusion that we ought to dispense with the
abstract altogether.
Others may have different views concerning the “beyond necessity”
clause. Thus, Ockham’s Razor arguments about particular objects might
still tell against mathematical objects. Any such argument, though, must
spell out on what the principle for ontological acceptance depends. It will
involve a value claim and must include an argument for that value claim. In
other words, it must tell us (1) what the “x” in the ‘necessity for x’ clause
of Ockham’s Razor is, and (2) why we ought to accept x as the determiner
of our ontological commitments. Most importantly, it must tell us why x
overrides what is important or necessary for mathematics and for science.
Fortunately, we needn’t investigate this further, for this version of Ock-
ham’s Razor seems unpromising. Let us turn to the second interpretation
of the principle: Do not multiply kinds of entities without necessity.
In Science Without Numbers, Hartry Field writes:
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 53

[my] objection to using real numbers was not on the grounds of their uncountability or of
the structural assumptions . . . typically made about them. Rather, the objection was to their
abstractness: even postulating one real number would have been a violation of nominalism
as I’m conceiving it. Conversely, postulating uncountably many physical entities (e.g.,
uncountably many parts of a physical object, or of a light ray, or, as here, of physical
space itself) is not an objection to nominalism. . . .6

Field explicitly rejects the first interpretation of Ockham’s Razor. He

isn’t worried about how many particular objects there are – he assumes
a non-denumerable infinity of space-time points (i.e., physical objects) –
but rather about the kind of entity. Field accepts that the conclusion of
the Quine/Putnam indispensability argument follows from the premises –
namely, if quantification over mathematical entities were necessary for the
truth of science, he would be compelled to accept the existence of mathem-
atical objects. But Field rejects the relevant premise; he claims that one can
do “science without numbers.” Field’s program is fictionalist – he claims
that all mathematical statements are either literally false or vacuously true,
because there are no mathematical entities. However, one can do science
without mathematics, he argues, because mathematics added to a nom-
inalistic science is conservative over the nominalistic science alone. So,
although Field doesn’t put it like this, we can read him as endorsing the
second interpretation of Ockham’s Razor: Don’t multiply kinds of entities
without necessity. Since it isn’t necessary (for science) to accept abstract
mathematical entities, we need not accept them into our ontology.
However, notice that the rejection of the abstract doesn’t follow imme-
diately from the second interpretation of Ockham’s Razor. Even if Field’s
program were successful, we need an additional premise to reach the con-
clusion that we should banish the abstract from our ontology. The argument
would have to go something like this:

(1) Ockham’s Razor: Don’t multiply kinds of entities without

necessity.

(2) Field’s program: We can banish abstract mathematical objects

from our ontology (without denying the truth of science).7

(3) It is preferable to banish the abstract rather than the concrete.

(4) Therefore, we ought not to accept the abstract into our ontology.

Premise (3) is needed because it is equally possible to banish the con-

crete from our ontology and reinterpret all of our referring expressions so
that they refer to abstract objects. After all, any first order theory can be
modeled in the domain of natural numbers and any theory can be modeled
54 J. M. DIETERLE

in set theory. In “Mathematics, Science, and Ontology,” Thomas Tymoczko

argues that all objects are abstract on the grounds of ontological economy.8
If all we are worried about is how many kinds of objects we ought to
accept, we can go either way. We can accept only the abstract, or we can ac-
cept only the concrete. Thus, the second interpretation of Ockham’s Razor
does not give us an argument that automatically leads to the conclusion
that we ought to banish the abstract from our ontology, even if we can.
Interestingly, if premise (2) of the above argument (namely, that we can
banish abstract mathematical objects from our ontology without denying
the truth of science) is false, then this version of Ockham’s Razor may lead
us to follow Tymoczko and embrace an ontology of only abstract objects.
If we accept the indispensability argument and we cannot banish abstract
mathematical objects from our ontology, then, given the Razor advice not
to multiply kinds of entities without necessity conjoined with the claim
that we can banish the concrete, we end up with abstract objects only.9
I suspect, however, that most philosophers will resist this implication
of the Razor. Few will want to banish the concrete from their ontology
and accept only the abstract. But the point is that Ockham’s Razor alone
does not give us an argument against the abstract.10 Thus far, objections
to abstracta remain dependent on the sort of philosophical intuition cited
by the early Quine and Goodman. I will now turn to other objections to
abstract objects to see if we can find an argument that shows us why
abstract objects are suspicious and ought to be dispensed with. Perhaps
these other objections can lend support to premise (3), and show us why it
is preferable to banish the abstract rather than the concrete.

2. ENCOUNTERABILITY

One common complaint about abstract objects is traceable back to Paul

Benacerraf’s paper “Mathematical Truth”.11 Benacerraf argued that if
mathematical reality is as the realist says it is, then we can never know
anything about mathematical objects. His argument assumed the causal
theory of knowledge but the conclusion does not necessarily depend
on it – a similar argument has been run with more current externalist
epistemologies.12
There is an enormous literature on the problem of mathematical know-
ledge. Some philosophers have attempted to give a naturalistic account
of knowledge of mathematical objects while others have rejected the ex-
ternalist assumptions from which the problem arises.13 (After all, one
philosopher’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens.) A similar ar-
gument has also been given concerning the reference of mathematical
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 55

constants – assuming the causal theory of reference, it seems that we can-

not refer to mathematical objects.14 However, I won’t say much about the
knowledge and reference problems here, for two reasons. First, I suspect
that even if satisfactory naturalistic accounts of mathematical knowledge
and reference were forthcoming, those who are suspicious of abstract ob-
jects would remain so. I doubt that nominalists would welcome abstract
objects into their ontology even if the knowledge and reference prob-
lems could be solved, because I suspect that the Quine/Goodman intuition
would remain even if there were no compelling arguments to support the
rejection of the abstract. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the root
of both the knowledge problem and its cousin, the reference problem, is
the fact that abstract objects are unencounterable. Since we cannot come
into contact with abstract objects – and hence, we cannot causally interact
with them – we supposedly can neither know about them nor use words to
refer to them.
In “Nominalism and the Substitutional Quantifier,” Ruth Barcan Mar-
cus writes:
The nominalists’ individuals are of a kind that can be confronted or that, in the least,
make up such confrontable or encounterable individuals. They can, so to speak, put in an
appearance. Encounterability by the mind’s eye is not generally counted in the spirit of
nominalism.15

But what does ‘encounterability’ mean? What does it mean to say that
an object is encounterable, and not just encounterable “by the mind’s eye”?
Of course, one can give paradigmatic examples. Tables and chairs are
encounterable; they can “make an appearance” and hence are nominalistic-
ally acceptable. But although paradigmatic examples may help explain the
notion of encounterability, they are not sufficient for doing ontology. En-
counterability is a modal notion. The traditional ways of explicating modal
discourse tend to appeal to objects that are themselves not acceptable to
a nominalist. Can a nominalist cash out the notion in a nominalistically
acceptable way?
A nominalist cannot say that an object is encounterable if and only if
it has been encountered because many objects have not been encountered
although they might be in the future. Perhaps a nominalist could say that
an object is encounterable if and only if it has been or will be encountered.
Again, this won’t do. Intuitively, it seems possible for a nominalistically
acceptable object never to be actually encountered.
Consider two different objects. The first is on a planet very similar
to earth in both climate and vegetation. Suppose that this planet is part
of a solar system far away from any conscious life. Suppose further that
right now there is a rose bush on that planet. Now, the rose bush isn’t
56 J. M. DIETERLE

very healthy – it has black spot – and it will only be a matter of days
before it dies. Soon it will decompose and turn into soil. Eventually, a
heavy rain will wash away all traces of the rose bush. Now, even if some
conscious being discovers this faraway planet someday, the rose bush will
never be encountered. It will be gone and no evidence that it existed will
remain. Now consider a second object: an object that comes into existence
after the last conscious mind had ceased to exist.16 Neither of these ob-
jects will be encountered. Nonetheless, I presume that nominalists would
welcome them into their ontology with open arms. It is metaphysically pos-
sible to encounter these objects, whereas it is metaphysically impossible
to encounter those objects to which a nominalist objects. So the question
remains: can nominalists explicate this modality? An answer to this ques-
tion requires a brief excursion into the metaphysics of modality. I ask my
readers to be patient; the excursion is unavoidable.
At least some who are not bound by nominalistic scruples would have
no problem spelling out the aforementioned modality. They would be free
to make use of possible worlds to explicate the metaphysical possibility
inherent in the notion of encounterability: an object is encounterable if
and only if there is a possible world where it is encountered. Nominalists
are not, however, entitled to use possible worlds, at least not if they take
“possible world” in the robust sense of David Lewis’s modal realism.17
For Lewis, other possible worlds are worlds just like our own, but are
spatially and causally removed. Since there are no transworld telescopes,
these other worlds are unencounterable. Nominalists cannot appeal to an
unencounterable object (i.e., an unencounterable world) to explicate the
objectionable notion of unencounterability.
But, of course, nominalists are not the only ones who object to David
Lewis’s bulging ontology. Many philosophers have attempted to explicate
the notion of metaphysical possibility without committing themselves to
the existence of many other possible worlds just like this one. One prom-
ising strategy is to attempt to spell out the notion of “possible world”
using only an actualist ontology; that is, an ontology that countenances
only the actual world and its contents. If this can be done, then one could
use possible worlds talk without accepting the ontological burden of modal
realism.
Alvin Plantinga and Robert Stalnaker are two theorists who have
attempted an actualist explication of modality.18 Plantinga argues that pos-
sible worlds are obtainable states of affairs. All obtainable states of affairs
exist, but only certain states of affairs actually obtain. In other words, only
some obtainable states of affairs are instantiated. Others exist uninstanti-
ated. An object would be encounterable on this approach if and only if
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 57

there is an obtainable state of affairs wherein it is encountered. (Of course,

‘obtainable’ is itself modal, but we’ll put that aside.) On Stalnaker’s view,
possible worlds are kinds of properties: total ways things might be. Like
Plantinga, Stalnaker claims that all of these “total ways things might be”
exist, but only one is instantiated. An object would be encounterable on
Stalnaker’s view if and only if there is a total way things might be in which
it is encountered. (Again, ‘ways things might be’ is modal, but I won’t
worry about that here.)
Some philosophers might find Plantinga’s and Stalnaker’s views attract-
ive. Nominalists, however, would not, for both views appeal to existent but
uninstantiated objects to explicate the notion of possibility. In other words,
both views appeal to nominalistically objectionable and presumably un-
encounterable objects (unencounterable states of affairs and ways things
might be). And, again, nominalists cannot appeal to unencounterable
objects to clarify the objectionable notion of unencounterability.
Another strategy is to take possible worlds as alternative combinations
(set theoretic constructs) of entities that exist in our world. This is often
called the “combinatorialist view,” and it has been defended by both David
Armstrong and M.J. Cresswell.19 Or one could take possible worlds as
maximally consistent sets of sentences. However, neither of these views
will help the nominalist, since possible worlds turn out to be set theor-
etic constructs in both cases. Set theoretic entities are nominalistically
unacceptable.
Is there a nominalistically acceptable way to explicate the metaphysical
possibility inherent in the notion of encounterability? Perhaps. Nicholas
Rescher has argued that possible worlds exist only “as the objects of certain
intellectual processes”20 such as conceiving, entertaining, hypothesizing,
assuming, and so on. Rescher realizes that he cannot rest the notion of
metaphysical possibility on what has actually been conceived, entertained,
etc., for it is certainly coherent to claim that there are metaphysically pos-
sible states of affairs of which no human being has ever conceived. He
says:

One point of caution is immediately necessary. We are not saying that to be a possible (but
unactualized) state of affairs requires that this state must actually be conceived . . . so as in
fact to stand in relation to some specific mind. Rather, what we are saying is that possible,
albeit unrealized, states of affairs or things obtain an ontological footing, that is, they can
be said to “exist” in some appropriately qualified way only insofar as it lies within the
generic province of minds to conceive . . . them.21

So metaphysical possibility is just conceivability; x is metaphysically

possible if and only if x can be conceived. And, I take it, x is encounterable
if and only if a mind can conceive of encountering x. Of course, Rescher’s
58 J. M. DIETERLE

view leaves some modality unexplicated. That may be a problem for a

nominalist, but I won’t worry about it here. The main problem with his
approach is that if there had been no rational minds, there would have
been no unactualized possibilities. Rescher fully admits this. He says:
On such a view, then, mere or strictly hypothetical possibilities are mind-made. Does it
follow from this that if there were no men – or rather no rational minds – there would be
no unreal possibilities? Are we driven to a possibility-idealism as the logical terminus of
the line of thought we have been tracing out? These questions must, I believe, be answered
affirmatively.22

But surely it makes sense to claim that even if there were no ra-
tional minds, things could have gone other than the way they did go. It
wouldn’t be metaphysically necessary that things happened the way they
did even if no one were around to suppose that things had gone differ-
ently. Furthermore, it begins to look difficult to understand the notion of
encounterability on this picture. If ‘encounterability’ means ‘metaphys-
ically possible to encounter’ and ‘metaphysically possible to encounter’
is spelled out as ‘a rational mind could conceive of encountering’, then,
were there no rational minds, would everything be unencounterable? On
Rescher’s account, the answer would have to be “yes.” But surely this
is not the notion of metaphysical possibility that the nominalist is after.
Hence, even though Rescher’s account of modality may be nominalistic-
ally acceptable, it won’t do the work needed to spell out the notion of
metaphysical unencounterability.
There may be nominalistically acceptable accounts of possible worlds
that I have not considered.23 However, I suspect that they will fall prey to
the same sorts of problems as the above accounts. Nonetheless, nominalists
do still have one way to go: they can take ‘possibility’ as primitive and
rely on pre-theoretic intuitions. This is a familiar strategy, for it is the
sort of strategy that Field, Chihara, and Hellman take in their accounts
of mathematics.24 Field, Chihara, and Hellman take the notion of logical
possibility at “face value” – there is no attempt to explicate it in terms of
something non-modal or something more clearly understood.
It is certainly the case that we have pre-theoretic intuitions about what
is possible and what is not. As Stewart Shapiro writes,
. . . the modal notions invoked by [Field, Chihara, and Hellman] do have uses in everyday
(non-mathematical) language, and competent speakers of the language do have some pre-
theoretic grasp of how they work.25

Shapiro goes on to argue that these pre-theoretic intuitions do not

support the extensive use to which the three philosophers in question
put them. But our concerns here are different. We aren’t worried about
whether the intuitive sense of ‘possible’ can support a reconstrual of all
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 59

or part of classical mathematics. Instead, we are worried about whether

our pre-theoretic intuitions give us enough of an understanding of what is
possible and what is not to ground the notion of encounterability needed
to distinguish between nominalistically acceptable and nominalistically
unacceptable objects.
Throughout this section, I have been claiming that the kind of possib-
ility inherent in the notion of encounterability is metaphysical possibility.
The primitive possibility that Field, Chihara, and Hellman make use of
is logical possibility. While it is true that competent speakers of the lan-
guage have at least a partial grasp of when and how the term ‘possible’
ought to be applied, I’m not sure what kind of possibility ordinary speak-
ers of the language invoke when they say things like, “That’s possible.”
This is an empirical question and I suppose we could answer it by ask-
ing various people questions about what they think is possible and what
they think is not. I don’t want to spend much time speculating on what
the answers would be were we to do a survey of this sort, but I will
say that I suspect that we would find that the common understanding of
‘possibility’ is murky at best. I suspect that often people mean “physically
possible” when they use the word ‘possible’ and other times they mean
“logically possible”. If I’m right about this, then it isn’t clear that our pre-
theoretic intuitions about possibility are sharp enough to ground the notion
of encounterability.
Why? Because logical possibility is not strong enough to serve the
purposes of the nominalist. Remember that the nominalist is using encoun-
terability (or unencounterability) to banish the abstract. Abstract objects
are supposedly “bad” because they aren’t encounterable. If we invoke lo-
gical possibility to explain what is meant by ‘encounterable’, we get: An
object is encounterable if and only if it is logically possible to encounter
it. But surely it is logically possible to encounter an abstract object. There
is no formal contradiction in claiming that x is abstract and x has been
encountered. Of course, one might claim that there is a contradiction:
namely, that the very meaning of ‘abstract object’ entails that the object
is unencounterable. But there are two problems with this approach: First,
we would have to build the notion of analytic consequence into our logical
apparatus. Although some may find this appealing, it is not the standard
approach to logic. Second, if the notion of unencounterability were built
into the meaning of ‘abstract’, it would reduce the nominalist premise
“Abstract objects are bad because they are unencounterable” to “Abstract
objects are bad because they are abstract.” But then we don’t end up with
an argument against the abstract. We end up with merely the intuition of
60 J. M. DIETERLE

the early Quine and Goodman that abstract objects are to be renounced and
dismissed.
It seems equally clear that physical possibility won’t do the work that
the nominalist needs ‘possibility’ to do, because it is much too strong. For
example, it is physically impossible to encounter matter inside of a black
hole, but I presume that a nominalist would not want to reject that matter
on nominalistic grounds.
So, where are we? We were looking for an argument to show us why
we ought to be suspicious of abstract objects. We considered arguments
involving Ockham’s Razor and found that they don’t give us a reason
to conduct a wholesale purge of the abstract. We then considered the
argument that abstract objects are objectionable because they are unen-
counterable and we wondered what, exactly, a nominalist could mean by
‘encounterable’. We investigated various alternatives and discovered that
it is likely that the best a nominalist can do is to take the notion of ‘possib-
ility’ as primitive and rely on pre-theoretic intuitions. But it seems rather
unlikely that our pre-theoretic intuitions are sharp enough to pin down the
metaphysical possibility inherent in the notion of encounterability. Logical
or physical possibility won’t do the work that the nominalist needs ‘pos-
sibility’ to do. Thus, we seem to be back where we started. We still don’t
have a cogent argument against abstracta.
But, of course, an objection looms. “Look,” my Benacerrafian opponent
might claim, “you’re missing the point. While it is true that the knowledge
and reference problems follow from the fact that abstract objects are un-
encounterable, the main reason unencounterable objects are problematic
is that we cannot know about or refer to them. Even if you’re right and a
nominalist cannot give a satisfactory account of encounterability, it doesn’t
follow that the nominalist is wrong to worry about abstract objects. There
are clear cut cases of unencounterable objects. Abstract objects are one
of these clear cut cases. It is impossible to encounter them, so we cannot
know about or refer to them. That’s where the problem lies.”
As noted earlier, there is an enormous literature on the problem of
mathematical knowledge. The argument has been formulated in numerous
and varied ways, but the core idea is that since we have no causal interac-
tion with mathematical objects, we cannot have knowledge of or justified
beliefs about them. As it stands, there is a missing premise. The argument
would have to go something like the following:

(1) We have no causal interaction with abstract mathematical

objects.

(2) [Some form of causal constraint on knowledge or justification.]

 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 61

(3) Therefore, we cannot have knowledge of or justified beliefs

about mathematical entities.
As Mark Steiner noted early on, premise (2) must be filled in and
defended.26 As yet, no plausible theory of knowledge or justification has
been formulated that would support the nominalist’s conclusion. In fact,
much of the current debate relies on Goldman’s causal theory, but this
theory of justification (a) has been largely discredited, and (b) was origin-
ally intended to apply only to empirical knowledge of contingent facts.27
In (1997), John Burgess and Gideon Rosen consider and reject various
versions of premise (2) (i.e., various formulations of a causal constraint on
knowledge or justification), and conclude that a realist:
can be expected to point out that, in the absence of a detailed formulation of a causal theory
of justification, one may wonder whether such a theory really can be formulated so as to
have just the consequences a nominalist would want, and no further, undesired, sceptical
consequences.28

Of course, a nominalist would most likely be unsatisfied with this re-

sponse. For example, in his review of Burgess and Rosen (1997), Geoffrey
Hellman argues that the demand for a theory of justification is unwarran-
ted. Hellman sees the opposition’s demand for a defensible premise (2)
as a demand for a “conceptual analysis” of ‘know’. But, he claims, one
does not need such an analysis to insist on a naturalistic explanation of
knowledge.29
While Hellman is right that one does not need a conceptual analysis
of ‘know’ to object to abstracta, I take it that this is not what his oppos-
ition is seeking. Instead, they are demanding that the nominalist justify
the inference from (1) to (3) in the above argument. There is a gap in
the argument, and without some plausible premise to fill in that gap, we
have no reason to believe the conclusion. Again, the premise need not
be a conceptual analysis of ‘know’. But any defense of a causal premise
(whatever it turns out to be) must explain why a naturalistic explanation
requires causal interaction. If this requirement is built in by definition, then
we are once again left without an argument against abstracta. Put another
way, if nominalists are insisting on a naturalistic explanation of how we
can come to have knowledge of or justified beliefs about mathematical
objects and they insist that all naturalistic explanations of this kind require
causal interaction, then abstract objects are once again merely excluded by
definition.
I suspect that nominalists will still be unsatisfied with my discussion. It
is important to remember, though, that my object is not to offer a positive
defense of the realist position, but rather to consider whether there are any
good arguments against accepting abstract objects into one’s ontology. For
62 J. M. DIETERLE

the epistemological argument to be compelling, premise (2) must be filled

in and defended.30 Until this is done, it is merely nominalistic intuitions
that lead one directly from premise (1) to the conclusion.31
Perhaps, though, this charge is unfair. Perhaps arguments against ab-
stract objects that depend on ontological naturalism can lend support to
the causal constraint on knowledge. I turn to these arguments in the next
section.

3. ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM

In this section of the paper, I’m going to look at arguments against abstract
objects that depend on philosophical naturalism. The term ‘naturalism’
is used in a myriad of ways in the literature, but one can find two main
strains:32 (1) Methodological (or Epistemological) Naturalism. According
to a methodological naturalist, “the best methods of inquiry are, or are to be
modeled on, those of the natural sciences.”33 Methodological Naturalism
tells us that the only way we can obtain knowledge is through scientific in-
vestigation – there is no supra- or super-scientific vantage point. Since this
form of naturalism is simply methodological, by itself it doesn’t pronounce
against abstract objects. The methodology coupled with substantive claims
might produce an ontological thesis, but then we would need to look at the
substantive claims themselves for the argument against abstracta. (2) Onto-
logical Naturalism. Just a small sampling of the literature turns up various
characterizations of ontological naturalism. For example, in A Companion
to Metaphysics, we find:
Ontological Naturalism is the view . . . that only natural objects, kinds, and properties are
real . . . . Since ontological naturalism is supported by the success of natural science, and
success is success in recognizing what is real, it would do best to define ‘natural’ as ‘what
is recognized by natural science’.34

Michael Tye writes:

. . . different philosophers have had very different conceptions of what it is to be a naturalist
about a given domain . . . . The intuitive idea, I suggest, is simply that, on the naturalist
view, the world contains nothing supernatural.35

In the Oxford Companion to Philosophy we find:

In metaphysics, naturalism is perhaps most obviously akin to materialism, but it does not
have to be materialistic. What it insists on is that the world of nature should form a single
sphere without incursion from outside by souls or spirits, divine or human, and without
having to accommodate strange entities like non-natural values or substantive abstract
universals.36
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 63

Hilary Kornblith writes:

In metaphysics, I believe, we should take our view from the best available scientific the-
ories . . . . The task of the naturalistic metaphysician, as I see it, is simply to draw out the
metaphysical implications of contemporary science. A metaphysics which goes beyond
the commitments of science is simply unsupported by the best available evidence. A meta-
physics which does not make commitments as rich as those of our best current scientific
theories asks us to narrow the scope of our ontology in ways which will not withstand
scrutiny.37

Kornblith concludes that “Everything is entirely physically constituted.”38

In his Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Simon Blackburn writes that
naturalism is:
Most generally, a sympathy with the view that ultimately nothing resists explanation by the
methods characteristic of the natural sciences. A naturalist will be opposed, for example,
to mind-body dualism, since it leaves the mental side of things outside the explanatory
grasp of biology or physics; opposed to the acceptance of numbers or concepts as real but
non-physical denizens of the world; and opposed to accepting real moral duties and rights
as absolute and self-standing facets of the natural order.39

The overriding theme, then, is that only “natural” things are allowed into
a naturalist’s ontology, and something is “natural” if and only if it is re-
cognized by (natural) science. In a nutshell, then, ontological naturalism
claims that (natural) science tells us what there is. A naturalistic philo-
sopher ought to accept those entities that science tells us there are and
ought not to countenance entities that science eschews.
We are looking for a nominalist argument against abstract objects that
follows from ontological naturalism. Is there such an argument? That
depends on what natural science tells us there is. The Quine/Putnam
indispensability argument comes from the naturalistic perspective. I’ve
mentioned the argument several times throughout this paper, but let’s look
at Putnam’s own summary. He says:
. . . quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable for science, both formal and
physical; therefore we should accept such quantification; but this commits us to accepting
the existence of the mathematical entities in question. This type of argument stems, of
course, from Quine, who has for years stressed both the indispensability of quantification
over mathematical entities and the intellectual dishonesty of denying the existence of what
one daily presupposes.40

So it would seem that ontological naturalism does not provide an argu-

ment against abstract objects; in fact, it seems that ontological naturalism
gives us a positive argument for mathematical realism. Yet, in several of
the passages quoted above, we see that some naturalists claim that on-
tological naturalism entails the rejection of mathematical entities, if they
are realistically construed. Blackburn, for example, explicitly states that a
64 J. M. DIETERLE

naturalist will reject mathematical entities. Tye’s comment is less explicit

– he says only that the naturalist will reject things that are supernatural –
but I presume that he would view abstract mathematical objects as suspect.
Kornblith’s initial comments would seem to be amenable to mathematical
realism. After all, he says that metaphysicians ought not to narrow the
scope of their ontology beyond what science dictates. So, if science accepts
mathematical objects, metaphysicians ought to as well. However, Korn-
blith concludes that everything is entirely physically constituted, which
rules out abstract objects.
Of course, most of the people I have quoted are not writing in the
philosophy of mathematics. Tye and Kornblith, for example, are concerned
primarily with the ontology of the mental. Nonetheless, our concern is
whether naturalism provides an argument against abstract objects. If Tye,
Blackburn, Kornblith, et al. are correct, it does. If Quine, Putnam, and all
of the various mathematical realists who cite the indispensability argument
in their defense are right, it does not. What is going on here? Why the
disagreement?
There are at least two possible explanations of the divergence of opin-
ion on this issue. First of all, there could be disagreement over the term
‘natural’. Earlier, I stated that ‘natural’ is defined as what science re-
cognizes. At least two of our quotations support this definition: namely,
Kornblith’s and the entry from the Companion to Metaphysics. And on
this view (Kornblith’s conclusion aside), naturalistic philosophers do seem
to be committed to abstract mathematical objects, since science recognizes
them. But the other quotations are compatible with a different interpreta-
tion of ‘natural’. They could interpret ‘natural’ in the claim “only natural
objects exist” to mean ‘physically constituted’. But then, of course, we
merely exclude abstract objects by definition since abstract objects are not
physically constituted. I submit, then, that on the interpretation of ‘natural’
as ‘physically constituted’, naturalism gives us no argument against the
abstract. Instead, it depends fundamentally on the intuition of the early
Quine and Goodman. On this interpretation, all we have is an unsupported
declaration that abstract objects are to be renounced.
A second possible explanation of the divergence of opinion is that there
could be disagreement over the status of the indispensability argument
itself. If the argument really does show what its adherents allege it shows,
then that would tell against those who reject the abstract (assuming the
“what natural science tells us there is” interpretation of ‘natural’). They
would be narrowing their ontology beyond what science recommends,
which would be contradicting the very tenets of naturalism. But recently,
there has been some controversy over the indispensability argument.
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 65

Penelope Maddy has argued that the inference from the indispensability
of mathematics to mathematical realism is unjustified.41
Maddy claims that the naturalistic ontic thesis (i.e., that we ought to
countenance all and only those entities that are presupposed by our best
scientific theories) is not supported by actual scientific practice. She sup-
ports this claim by citing an historical example: the mid-19th century atom.
Scientific theory presupposed this type of entity, but many scientists were
skeptical that it existed. Thus, she claims, actual scientific practice does
not dictate that we accept an entity just because science presupposes it. Her
claim seems to be that methodological naturalistic principles should lead
us to give up the ontological naturalistic claim that we ought to accept all of
the entities that our best science presupposes. Hence, she claims, mathem-
atical realism does not follow from the indispensability of mathematics for
science. Maddy would thus endorse at most a modified naturalistic ontic
thesis: Accept only (but not all of) those entities that science tells us there
are.
Notice that even if Maddy were right, all it would show is that the in-
dispensability argument does not support mathematical realism. The nom-
inalist conclusion that abstract arguments are to be rejected doesn’t follow
immediately. Additional premises are needed to reach this conclusion.42
Nonetheless, it will be instructive to examine Maddy’s argument in more
detail.
Maddy draws her conclusion about the status of the indispensability ar-
gument from a case study in the history of science. In other words, she cites
a descriptive fact about actual scientific practice and draws a philosophical
conclusion about whether the (original) ontic thesis is true. But, as Mark
Colyvan has pointed out, “naturalism is, in part, a normative doctrine about
how we ought to decide our ontological commitments; it is not purely
descriptive.”43 Just because scientists didn’t universally accept the atom,
it doesn’t follow that they shouldn’t have. If Maddy wants to argue that the
naturalistic ontic thesis is false, more than an historical example is needed.
She needs to give us an argument that shows the scientific skepticism about
the atom was justified. In the absence of such an argument, we are left
without a reason to disbelieve the original ontic thesis and thus we have no
reason to reject the conclusion of the indispensability argument.
Of course, one might object that my reply to Maddy is unfair. Don’t
my remarks conflict with the naturalistic standpoint from which Maddy is
arguing? The answer is “no.” A naturalist holds that there is no privileged
position from which we can critique the practices of natural science. But it
does not follow from this that actual scientific practice is always right.
In her description of the case of the 19th century atom, Maddy writes
66 J. M. DIETERLE

as though the naturalistic philosopher of science is committed to “rubber

stamping” any scientific practice.44 But surely we can critique scientific
practice from a perspective located within science. So even though those
scientists did not accept the atom, it does not follow that they shouldn’t
have. (In fact, as Colyvan points out, it may be that the reasons the sci-
entists did not accept the atom were themselves non-naturalistic.) So,
again, Maddy needs to give us an argument that shows that the scientific
skepticism about the atom was justified.
So where are we? We were considering whether ontological natural-
ism gave us a reason for rejecting abstract objects. Ontological naturalism
tells us to accept only natural objects. If ‘natural’ means ‘physically con-
stituted’, then we don’t have an argument against the abstract, we have
only a pronouncement that we ought not to accept abstract objects into our
ontology. Once again, we are left with only the intuition of the early Quine
and Goodman. If, on the other hand, ‘natural’ means ‘what natural science
tells us there is’, then it seems that ontological naturalism not only does
not give us a reason for giving up abstract objects, but, instead, it gives
us a reason to accept at least some abstract objects. The indispensability
argument shows that our best scientific theories presuppose the truth of
much of mathematics, and we have not found a good reason to doubt the
indispensability argument.

4. THE THREE OBJECTIONS CONJOINED

In this section of the paper, I will consider whether the three objections
considered together will lead to a nominalist argument against abstract
objects. The reader will recall that in section 1, I argued that Ockham’s
Razor did not give us an argument against the abstract, because even if we
accept the second interpretation of the Razor – do not multiply kinds of en-
tities beyond necessity – we need support for the premise “it is preferable
to banish the abstract rather than the concrete.” I suggested at the end of
that section that unencounterability considerations might lend support to
that premise. At that point, we embarked on a discussion of the notion of
unencounterability. I argued that it is likely that the best a nominalist can
do in explicating this modal notion is to take the notion of “possibility”
as primitive and rely on pre-theoretic intuitions, but it seems rather un-
likely that those intuitions are sharp enough to pin down the metaphysical
possibility inherent in the notion of encounterability. Logical or physical
possibility won’t do the work a nominalist needs ‘possibility’ to do.
Perhaps, though, ontological naturalism gives us some reason to view
unencounterable objects with suspicion, and perhaps it can motivate the
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 67

relevant premise in the Ockham’s Razor argument. Recall that ontological

naturalism tells us that only natural objects exist. We saw that if ontological
naturalism presupposes that ‘natural’ means ‘physically constituted’, then
we merely exclude abstract objects by definition since abstract objects are
not physically constituted. So, for the nominalists to have an argument,
they must rely on the ‘what natural science tells us there is’ interpretation
of ‘natural’.
It may seem, then, that the controversy boils down to the indispens-
ability argument. Of course, the indispensability argument is a defense of
mathematical realism. If the opponents of the argument win the debate,
then what it shows is that mathematical realism doesn’t follow from on-
tological naturalism. That in and of itself does not amount to a defense
of nominalism or an argument against abstract objects. Nonetheless, if
the indispensability argument fails, then a nominalist argument utilizing
Ockham’s Razor would be defensible. If mathematical entities are not, in
fact, necessary for science, then we can justifiably razor them out of our
ontology.
Thus, we seem to have found a conditional argument against abstract
objects. Ontological naturalism coupled with Ockham’s Razor seems to
support the rejection of the abstract on the assumption that the indis-
pensability argument fails. However, it has been persuasively argued that
a methodological naturalist ought not to accept the second interpreta-
tion of Ockham’s Razor, because (a) it is not an accepted principle of
scientific methodology, and (b) it conflicts with other accepted methodolo-
gical scientific principles, such as those enjoining that a theory be familiar,
perspicuous, and fruitful.45
I suppose that a nominalist could use ontological naturalist principles
in an anti-abstract object argument while rejecting the tenets of method-
ological naturalism, but this seems like an odd position. Why would one
deny that science is the best method of inquiry, yet hold that we ought
to countenance all and only those entities that science presupposes? What
would be the justification for allowing science to dictate our ontological
commitments?

5. CONCLUSION

I have considered what I take to be the three main types of arguments

against abstract objects: arguments involving Ockham’s Razor, arguments
involving the notion of unencounterability, and arguments that rely on
ontological naturalism. We found only one argument – a conditional argu-
ment that couples Ockham’s Razor with the denial of the indispensability
68 J. M. DIETERLE

argument. In all other cases, we have seen that the nominalist must rely
on the sort of intuition that the early Quine and Goodman cited in 1947.
Of course, nowhere in this paper have I considered positive arguments for
abstracta. It may turn out that under careful examination, they are equally
dependent on intuition. If this is right, I don’t know how to adjudicate the
debate between those who have the intuition and those who do not. Perhaps
no adjudication is possible.46

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Stewart Shapiro, James Summerford, Sidney Gendin, Brian Dom-

ino, two anonymous referees, and the members of the St. Andrews Uni-
versity Departments of Logic and Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy for
their comments and suggestions.

NOTES

1 Quine and Goodman (1947), p. 173.

2 Ibid., p. 174.
3 See, e.g., Hale (1987), Chapter 3 and Burgess and Rosen (1997), pp. 16–25.
4 Actually, both interpretations of the principle must address the “beyond necessity”
clause. My remarks here thus carry over into the discussion of Ockham’s Razor interpreted
as a principle concerning kinds of entities.
5 See Quine (1960) and (1981) and Putnam (1975). See Field (1980) and (1989) for
a response to the Quine/Putnam indispensability argument. See also Maddy (1998) and
Balaguer (1998) for interesting but different responses to the indispensability argument. I
discuss Maddy’s response below in part III.
6 Field (1980), p. 31.
7 There are several other nominalistic theories that might be thought to lend support to
this argument. For example, Chihara (1990), and Hellman (1989). These programs are
different from Field’s, for they are not fictionalist. However, they offer reconstruals of
mathematical discourse that purport to eliminate reference to mathematical entities, so
they would seem to support the claim that we can banish abstract mathematical objects
from our ontology without denying the truth of science. If one or more of these programs
is successful at eliminating reference to abstracta in mathematical discourse, the argument
as a whole remains unchanged. Although there would be more support for premise (2),
premise (3) remains an issue.
8 See Tymoczko (1991). He says, “The following arguments . . . purport to show that ab-
stract objects are all the objects we need. I shall press the case that it is the best option we
have.” (p. 215 ) See also Quine (1969). Quine doesn’t argue that we ought to go this way,
but he notes that it is an option.
9 Field’s program has been widely criticized and it is doubtful that it can be successfully
sustained. See especially Shapiro (1983) and (1984). Field responds to Shapiro in (1989),
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 69

but Hallett (1990) shows why the response is insufficient. For other criticisms of Field, see
Maddy (1990), Chihara (1990), and most of the papers in Irvine (1990). But see Balaguer
(1998) for a rare defense of Field’s fictionalism. The other nominalist programs noted in
endnote 7 may fare better.
10 See Burgess and Rosen (1997), III.C.I.b. for arguments that a naturalist should not use
Ockham’s Razor to reject abstract objects.
11 See Benacerraf (1973).
12 Field uses a reliability theory in his formation of the problem. See Field (1989), pp.
23–30. The lack of causal interaction is still the crucial problem for abstracta on Field’s
formulation.
13 See, e.g., Maddy (1990) and Tymoczko (1991) for philosophers who have tried to give
naturalistic accounts of mathematical knowledge. See, e.g., Lewis (1986), pp. 108–110,
Burgess (1990), and Burgess and Rosen (1997), pp. 28–48 for philosophers who reject the
externalist assumptions.
14 See, e.g., Maddy (1990) and Wright (1983).
15 Barcan-Marcus (1978), p. 113.
16 I thank Sidney Gendin for this example.
17 See Lewis (1986).
18 See Plantinga (1973) and Stalnaker (1976).
19 See Armstrong (1989) and Cresswell (1972).
20 Rescher (1973), p. 168.
21 Ibid., p. 169.
22 Ibid., p. 172.
23 In conversation, Crispin Wright suggested that one might somehow build causality into
the notion of encounterability. However, assuming that abstract objects are defined as
lacking causal efficacy, the objection “Abstract objects are bad because they are unencoun-
terable” becomes “Abstract objects are bad because they are abstract.” So, if we take this
route, we don’t have an argument against abstracta. We are once again back with merely
the unsupported nominalistic intuition.
24 See Field (1980), Chihara (1990), and Hellman (1989).
25 Shapiro (1993), p. 457.
26 Steiner (1975). See also Burgess and Rosen (1997), pp. 35–41. It is important to note
that even the more current externalist theories used to formulate the problem locate the
objection in the lack of causal interaction with abstracta.
27 See Goldman (1965).
28 Burgess and Rosen (1997), p. 40. They go on to argue that Field’s reformulation of
the causal objection in terms of the reliability of belief leads to a general scepticism. It
also entails, they argue, embracing a non-Quinean foundationalist epistemology, because it
reduces to the question, “Granted that belief in some theory is justified by some standards,
is belief in that theory justified?” (p. 42) which is a non-naturalistic, foundationalist de-
mand. Burgess and Rosen’s discussion of Field draws heavily from Benacerraf’s editorial
introduction to section 9 of the 1983 edition of the Benacerraf and Putnam anthology.
29 See Hellman (1998).
30 Burgess and Rosen also note that even if the required premise were supplied and defen-
ded, the nominalist would still be obligated to show us why we are “supposed to have more
confidence in the causal theory of justification than in mathematics.” (1997, p. 40) Here,
they echo David Lewis’ comment, “Our knowledge of mathematics is ever so much more
70 J. M. DIETERLE

secure than our knowledge of the epistemology that seeks to cast doubt on mathematics.”
Lewis (1986), p. 109.
31 An anonymous referee has objected that the epistemic argument for nominalism is best
construed as a “lack of evidence” argument; i.e., that since we have no good evidence for
the existence of abstract mathematical objects, we shouldn’t accept them into our ontology.
If we frame the debate in these terms, then the controversy comes down to what counts as
good evidence. Many realists would claim that we do have evidence for the existence of
mathematical objects (that they are indispensible for science (Quine 1960, Putnam 1975),
that names of abstract objects function as singular terms in true sentences (Wright 1983,
Hale 1987), etc.). A thorough discussion of this issue would take us beyond the scope
of this paper, for we would have to examine in detail the positive arguments for realism.
However, I will note that if a nominalist requires that evidence for existence be somehow
causal in nature (e.g., that the objects be causally accessible to us), then we have once again
ruled out abstract objects by definition and thus still have no argument for nominalism. Why
must the evidence be of this sort?
32 In King (1994), three strains of naturalism are discussed. However, the third kind –
linguistic naturalism – seems best characterized as a method of showing that a particular
philosophical theory is naturalistic in the second (ontological) sense. King himself admits
that this is the case. We thus need not concern ourselves with linguistic naturalism.
33 Schmitt (1995), p. 343.
34 Ibid.
35 Tye (1994), p. 129.
36 Lacey (1995), p. 604.
37 Kornblith (1994), p. 40.
38 Ibid., p. 43.
39 Blackburn (1996), p. 255.
40 Putnam (1975), p. 347.
41 See Maddy (1992) and (1998). She gives two arguments for this claim, of which I will
only consider one. Michael Resnik has effectively responded to Maddy’s second argument
in (1995).
42 Perhaps the nominalist argument could be completed by an Ockham’s Razor premise. I
examine this option in the next section.
43 Colyvan (1998), p. 50.
44 I owe this point and the rest of this paragraph to Colyvan (1998).
45 Burgess and Rosen (1997), pp. 214–225. They note, “We know of no clear example
of striving after economy of abstract ontology in any domain of science, and we are
dubious that there is one.” (p. 225) Note the difference between (a) above and Maddy’s
case. Maddy offers us one scientific example and draws a general conclusion from it. In
contrast, Burgess and Rosen point out that the relevant interpretation of Ockham’s Razor
has never been an accepted scientific principle.
46 Balaguer (1998) comes to a similar conclusion, but for different reasons. In fact, Bal-
aguer goes a few steps further: he argues that there is no fact of the matter whether abstract
objects exist.
 OCKHAM’S RAZOR, ENCOUNTERABILITY, AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM 71

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Department of History and Philosophy

Eastern Michigan University
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
U.S.A.
E-mail: HIS_Dieterle@online.emich.edu