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Thin 0 bj ects
An Abstractionist Account

0ystein Linnebo

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
For my daughters Alma and Frida
Contents

Preface xi

Part I. Essentials
1. In Search of Thin Objects 3
1.1 Introduction 3
1.2 Coherentist Minimalism s
1.3 Abstractionist Minimalism 7
1.4 The Appeal of Thin Objects 9
1.5 Sufficiency and Mutual Sufficiency 11
1.6 Philosophical Constraints 13
1.7 Two Metaphysical "Pictures" 17
2. Thin Objects via Criteria of Identity 21
2.1 My Strategy in a Nutshell 21
2.2 A Fregean Concept of Object 23
2.3 Reference to Physical Bodies 26
2.4 Reconceptualization 30
2.5 Reference by Abstraction 33
2.6 Some Objections and Challenges 37
2.6.1 The bad company problem 38
2.6.2 Semantics and metasemantics 38
2.6.3 A vicious regress? 39
2.6.4 A clash with Kripke on reference? 40
2.6.5 Internalism about reference 41
2.7 A Candidate for the Job 42
2.8 Thick versus Thin 4S
Appendix 2.A Some Conceptions of Criteria ofldentity 46
Appendix 2.B A Negative Free Logic 48
Appendix 2.C Abstraction on a Partial Equivalence 49
3. Dynamic Abstraction Sl
3.1 Introduction Sl
3.2 Neo-Fregean Abstraction S3
3.3 How to Expand the Domain SS
3.4 Static and Dynamic Abstraction Compared 60
3.5 Iterated Abstraction 61
3.6 Absolute Generality Retrieved 64
3.7 Extensional vs. Intensional Domains 66
viii CONTENTS

Appendix 3.A Further Questions 70

3.A.l The higher-order needs of semantics 70
3.A.2 Abstraction on intensional entities 70
3.A.3 The need for a bimodal logic 71
3.A.4 The correct propositional logic 73
Appendix 3.B Proof of the Mirroring Theorem 74

Part II. Comparisons

4. Abstraction and the Question of Symmetry 77
4.1 Introduction 77
4.2 Identity of Content 79
4.3 Rayo on "Just is" -Statements 81
4.4 Abstraction and Worldly Asymmetry 83
5. Unbearable Lightness ofBeing 87
5.1 Ultra-Thin Conceptions of Objecthood 87
5.2 Logically Acceptable Translations 89
5.3 Semantically Idle Singular Terms 90
5.4 Inexplicable Reference 92
Appendix 5.A Proofs and Another Proposition 94
6. Predicative vs. Impredicative Abstraction 95
6.1 The Quest for Innocent Counterparts 95
6.2 Two Forms of!mpredicativity 96
6.3 Predicative Abstraction 98
6.3.1 Two-sorted languages 98
6.3.2 Defining the translation 100
6.3.3 The input theory 100
6.3.4 The output theory 102
6.4 Impredicative Abstraction 103
Appendix 6.A Proofs 106
7. The Context Principle 107
7.1 Introduction 107
7.2 How Are the Numbers "Given to Us"? 108
7.3 The Context Principle in the Grundlagen 110
7.4 The "Reproduction" of Meaning 114
7.5 The Context Principle in the Grundgesetze 117
7.6 Developing Frege's Explanatory Strategy 123
7.6.1 An ultra-thin conception of reference 123
7.6.2 Semantically constrained content recarving 124
7.6.3 Towards a metasemantic interpretation 127
7.7 Conclusion 129
Appendix 7.A Hale and Fine on Reference by Recarving 129
 CONTENTS ix

Part III. Details

8. Reference by Abstraction 135
8.1 Introduction 135
8.2 The Linguistic Data 137
8.3 Two Competing Interpretations 140
8.4 Why the Non-reductionist Interpretation is Preferable 143
8.4.1 The principle of charity 143
8.4.2 The principle of compositionality 144
8.4.3 Cognitive constraints on an interpretation 146
8.5 Why the Non-reductionist Interpretation is Available 148
8.6 Thin Objects 151
Appendix 8.A The Assertibility Conditions 153
Appendix 8.B Comparing the Two Interpretations 155
Appendix 8.C Internally Representable Abstraction 156
Appendix 8.D Defining a Sufficiency Operator 157
9. The Julius Caesar Problem 159
9.1 Introduction 159
9.2 What is the Caesar Problem? 160
9.3 Many-sorted Languages 162
9.4 Sortals and Categories 163
9.5 The Uniqueness Thesis 166
9.6 Hale and Wright's Grundgedanke 167
9.7 Abstraction and the Merging of Sorts 169
Appendix 9.A The Assertibility Conditions 171
Appendix 9.B A Non-reductionist Interpretation 173
Appendix 9.C Defining a Sufficiency Operator 174
10. The Natural Numbers 176
10.1 Introduction 176
10.2 The Individuation of the Natural Numbers 176
10.3 Against the Cardinal Conception 178
10.3.1 The objection from special numbers 179
10.3.2 The objection from the philosophy oflanguage 180
10.3.3 The objection from Jack of directness 181
10.4 Alleged Advantages of the Cardinal Conception 182
10.5 Developing the Ordinal Conception 183
10.6 Justifying the Axioms of Arithmetic 185
11. The Question of Platonism 189
11.1 Platonism in Mathematics 189
11.2 Thin Objects and Indefinite Extensibility 191
11.3 Shallow Nature 192
11.4 The Significance of Shallow Nature 195
11.5 How Beliefs are Responsive to Their Truth 197
11.6 The Epistemology of Mathematics 201
X CONTENTS

12. Dynamic Set Theory 205

12. lIntroduction 205
12.2 Choosing a Modal Logic 206
12.3 Plural Logic with Modality 208
12.4 The Nature of Sets 211
12.4. l The extensionality of sets 211
12.4.2 The priority of elements to their set 212
12.4.3 The extensional definiteness of subsethood 213
12.5 Recovering the Axioms ofZF 214
12.5.l From conditions to sets 214
12.5.2 Basic modal set theory 216
12.5.3 Full modal set theory 217
Appendix 12.A Proofs of Formal Results 219
Appendix 12.B A Harmless Restriction 222

Bibliography 223
Index 233
Preface

This book is about a promising but elusive idea. Are there objects that are "thin" in the
sense that their existence does not make a substantial demand on the world? Frege
famously thought so. He claimed that the equinumerosity of the knives and the forks
on a properly set table suffices for there to be objects such as the number of knives
and the number of forks, and for these objects to be identical. Versions of the idea of
thin objects have been defended by contemporary philosophers as well. For example,
Bob Hale and Crispin Wright assert that

what it takes for "the number of Fs = the number of Gs" to be true is exactly what it takes for
the Fs to be equinumerous with the Gs, no more, no less.[ ... ] There is no gap for metaphysics
to plug. 1

The truth of the equinumerosity claim is said to be "conceptually sufficient" for the
truth of the number identity (ibid.). Or, as Agustin Rayo colorfully puts it, once God
had seen to it that the Fs are equinumerous with the Gs, "there was nothing extra she
had to do" to ensure the existence of the number of F and the number of G, and their
identity (Rayo, 2013, p. 4; emphasis in original).
The idea of thin objects holds great philosophical promise. If the existence of certain
objects does not make a substantial demand on the world, then knowledge of such
objects will be comparatively easy to attain. On the Fregean view, for example, it
suffices for knowledge of the existence and identity of two numbers that an unprob-
lematic fact about knives and forks be known. Indeed, the idea of thin objects may
well be the only way to reconcile the need for an ontology of mathematical objects
with the need for a plausible epistemology. Another attraction of the idea of thin
objects concerns ontology. If little or nothing is required for the existence of objects
of some sort, then no wonder there is an abundance of such objects. The less that
is required for the existence of certain objects, the more such objects there will be.
Thus, if mathematical objects are thin, this will explain the striking fact that math-
ematics operates with an ontology that is far more abundant than that of any other
science.
The idea of thin objects is elusive, however. The characterization just offered is
imprecise and partly metaphorical. What does it really mean to say that the existence
of certain objects "makes no substantial demand on the world"? Indeed, if the truth
of "the number of Fs = the number of Gs" requires no more than that of "the Fs are

1
(Hale and Wright, 2009b, pp. 187 and 193). Both of the passages quoted in this paragraph have been
adapted slightly to fit our present example.
xii PREFACE

equinumerous with the Gs", perhaps the former sentence is just a fafon de parler for
the latter. To be convincing, the idea of thin objects has to be properly explained.
This book attempts to develop the needed explanations by drawing on some
Fregean ideas. I should say straight away, though, that my ambitions are not primarily
exegetical. I use some Fregean ideas that I find interesting in an attempt to answer
some important philosophical questions. By and large, I do not claim that the
arguments and views developed in this book coincide with Frege's. Some of the views
I defend are patently un -Fregean.
My strategy for making sense of thin objects has a simple structure. I begin with
the Fregean idea that an object, in the most general sense of the word, is a possible
referent of a singular term. The question of what objects there are is thus transformed
into the question of what forms of singular reference are possible. This means that
any account that makes singular reference easy to achieve makes it correspondingly
easy for objects to exist. A second Fregean idea is now invoked to argue that singular
reference can indeed be easy to achieve. According to this second idea, there is a
close link between reference and criteria of identity. Roughly speaking, it suffices
for a singular term to refer that the term has been associated with a specification
of the would-be referent, which figures in an appropriate criterion of identity. For
instance, it suffices for a direction term to refer that it has been associated with a
line and is subject to a criterion of identity that takes two lines to specify the same
direction just in case they are parallel. 2 In this way, the second Fregean idea makes easy
reference available. And by means of the first Fregean idea, easy reference ensures easy
being. My strategy for making sense of thin objects can thus be depicted by the upper
two arrows (representing explanatory moves) in the following triangle of interrelated
concepts:

reference

/~
objecthood - - - - - - - - - . identity criteria

(The lower arrow will be explained shortly.)

My concern with criteria of identity leads to an interest in abstraction principles,
which are principles of the form:

(AP) §a = §{3 = a "' f3

2
Admittedly. we would obtain a better fit with our ordinary concept of direction by considering instead
directed lines or line segments and the equivalence relation of "co-orientation': defined as parallelism plus
sameness of orientation. We shall keep this famous example unchanged, however, as the mentioned wrinkle
does not affect anything of philosophical importance.
 PREFACE xiii

where a and f3 are variables of some type, § is an operator that applies to such
variables to form singular terms, and "' stands for an equivalence relation on the
kinds of items over which the variables range. An example made famous by Frege is
the aforementioned principle that the directions of two lines are identical just in case
the lines are parallel. My preferred way of understanding an abstraction principle is
simply as a special type of criterion of identity.
How does my proposed route to thin objects compare with others explored in the
literature? My debt to Frege is obvious. I have also profited enormously from the
writings of Michael Dummett and the neo-Fregeans Bob Hale and Crispin Wright.
As soon as one zooms in on the conceptual terrain, however, it becomes clear that the
route to be traveled in this book diverges in important respects from the paths already
explored. Unlike the neo-Fregeans, I have no need for the so-called "syntactic priority
thesis': which ascribes to syntactic categories a certain priority over ontological ones.
And I am critical of the idea of "content recarving': which is central to Frege's project
in the Grundlagen (but not, I argue, in the Grundgesetze) and to the projects of the
neo-Fregeans as well as Rayo.
My view is in some respects closer to Dummett's than to that of the neo-Fregeans.
I share Dummett's preference for a particularly unproblematic form of abstraction,
which I call predicative. On this form of abstraction, any question about the "new"
abstracta can be reduced to a question about the "old" entities on which we abstract.
A paradigm example is the case of directions, where we abstract on lines to obtain
their directions. This abstraction is predicative because any question about the result-
ing directions can be answered on the basis solely of the lines in terms of which
the directions are specified. I argue that predicative abstraction principles can be
laid down with no presuppositions whatsoever. But my argument does not extend
to impredicative principles. This makes predicative abstraction principles uniquely
well suited to serve in an account of thin objects. My approach extends even to the
predicative version of Frege's infamous Basic Law V. This "law" serves as the main
engine of an abstractionist account of sets that I develop and show to justify the strong
but widely accepted set theory ZF.
The restriction to predicative abstraction results in an entirely natural class of
abstraction principles, which has no unacceptable members (or so-called "bad
companions"). My account therefore avoids the "bad company problem': Instead,
I face a complementary challenge. Although predicative abstraction principles are
uniquely unproblematic and free of presuppositions, they are mathematically weak.
My response to this challenge consists of a novel account of "dynamic abstraction':
which is one of the distinctive features of the approach developed in this book. Since
abstraction often results in a larger domain, we can use this extended domain to
provide criteria of identity for yet further objects, which can thus be obtained by
further steps of abstraction. (This observation is represented by the lower arrow in
the above diagram.) The successive "formation" of sets described by the influential
iterative conception of sets is just one instance of the more general phenomenon of
xiv PREFACE

dynamic abstraction. Legitimate abstraction steps are iterated indefinitely to build

up ever larger domains of abstract objects. Dynamic abstraction can be seen as a
development and extension of the famous iterative conception of sets.
A second distinctive feature of my approach is the development of the idea of
thin objects. Suppose we speak a basic language concerned with a certain range of
entities (say, lines). Suppose ~ is an equivalence relation on some of these entities (say,
parallelism). Then it is legitimate to adopt an extended language in which we speak
precisely as if we have successfully abstracted on ~ (say, by speaking also about the
directions of the lines with which we began). I argue we have reason to ascribe to this
extended language a genuine form of reference to abstract objects. Since these objects
need not be in the domain of the original language, we can introduce yet another
language extension, where we talk about yet more objects. In fact, there is no end to
this process of forming ever more expressive languages.
Some words about methodology are in order. I make fairly extensive use oflogical
and mathematical tools. Formal definitions are provided, and theorems proved. I am
under no illusions about what this methodology achieves. As Kripke observes, "There
is no mathematical substitute for philosophy" (Kripke, 1976, p. 416). Definitions and
theorems do not by themselves solve any philosophical problems, at least not of the
sort that will occupy us here. The value of the formal methods to be employed lies
in the precision and rigor that they make possible, not in replacing more traditional
philosophical theorizing. But experience shows that precision matters in the discus-
sions that will concern us. It is therefore scientifically inexcusable not to aspire to a
high level of precision. In fact, much of the material to be discussed lends itself to
a mathematically precise investigation. While the use of formal methods does not by
itself solve any philosophical problems, it imposes an intellectual discipline that makes
it more likely that our philosophical arguments will bear fruit. 3
A quick overview of the book may be helpful. Part I is intended as a self-contained
introduction to the main ideas developed in the book as a whole. Chapter 1 sets the
stage by introducing the idea of thin objects, explaining its attractions as well as some
difficulties. This discussion culminates in a detailed "job description" for the idea of
thin objects. This job description is formulated in terms of a notion of one claim
sufficing for another-although the ontological commitments of the latter exceed
those of the former. By formulating some constraints on the notion of sufficiency,
I provide a precise characterization of what it would take to substantiate the idea
of thin objects. Chapter 2 introduces my own candidate for the job. I explain the
Fregean conception of objecthood and the idea that an appropriate use of criteria of
identity can suffice to constitute relations of reference. Chapter 3 introduces the idea of
dynamic abstraction. The form of abstraction explained in Chapter 2 can be iterated,

3
Compare (Williamson, 2007).
 PREFACE XV

resulting in ever larger domains. I argue that this dynamic approach is superior to the
dominant "static" approach, both philosophically and technically.
Part II compares my own approach with some other attempts to develop the idea
of thin objects. I begin, in Chapter 4, by describing and criticizing some symmet-
ric conceptions of abstraction according to which the two sides of an acceptable
abstraction principle provide different "recarvings" of one and the same content.
In Chapter 5, I explain and reject some "ultra-thin'' conceptions of reference and
objecthood, which go much further than my own thin conception. One target is Hale
and Wright's "syntactic priority thesis", which holds that it suffices for an expression to
refer that it behaves syntactically and inferentially just like a singular term and figures
in a true (atomic) sentence. The ultra-thin conceptions make the notion of reference
semantically idle, I argue, and give rise to inexplicable relations of reference. The
important distinction between predicative and impredicative abstraction is explained
in Chapter 6. I argue that the former type of abstraction is superior to the latter, at least
for the purposes of developing the idea of thin objects. Only predicative abstraction
allows us to make sense of the attractive idea of there being no "metaphysical gap"
between the two sides of an abstraction principle. Finally, in Chapter 7, I discuss a
venerable source of motivation for the approach pursued in this book, namely Frege's
context principle, which urges us never to ask for the meaning of an expression in
isolation but only in the context of a complete sentence. Various interpretations of
this influential but somewhat obscure principle are discussed, and its role in Frege's
philosophical project is analyzed.
Part III spells out the ideas introduced in Part I. I begin, in Chapter 8, by developing
in detail an example of how an appropriate use of criteria of identity can ensure
easy reference. Chapter 9 addresses the Julius Caesar problem, which concerns cross-
category identities such as "Caesar = 3''. Although logic leaves us free to resolve
such identities in any way we wish, I observe that our linguistic practices often
embody an implicit choice to regard such identities as false. Chapter 10 examines
the important example of the natural numbers. I defend an ordinal conception of the
natural numbers, rather than the cardinal conception that is generally favored among
thinkers influenced by Frege. The penultimate chapter returns to the question of how
thin objects should be understood. While my view is obviously a form of ontological
realism about abstract objects, this realism is distinguished from more robust forms
of mathematical Platonism. I use this slight retreat from Platonism to explain how
thin objects are epistemologically tractable. The final chapter applies the dynamic
approach to abstraction to the important example of sets. This results in an account
of ordinary ZFC set theory.
The major dependencies among the chapters are depicted by the following diagram.
The via brevissima provided by Part I is indicated in bold.
Xvi PREFACE

11

9
/
12
i
8

i i
'~f/10
I~'
I

Many of the ideas developed in this book have had a long period of gestation.
The central idea of thin objects figured prominently already in my PhD dissertation
(Linnebo, 2002b) and an article (later abandoned) from the same period (Linnebo,
2002a). At first, this idea was developed in a structuralist manner. Later, an abstrac-
tionist development of the idea was explored in (Linnebo, 2005) and continued in
(Linnebo, 2008) and (Linnebo, 2009b). These three articles contain the germs oflarge
parts of this book, but are now entirely superseded by it. The idea of invoking thin
objects to develop a plausible epistemology of mathematics has its roots in the final
section of (Linnebo, 2006a). The second distinctive feature of this book-namely that
of dynamic abstraction-has its origins in (Linnebo, 2006b) and (Linnebo, 2009a)
(which was completed in 2007).
Some of the chapters draw on previously published material. In Part I, the opening
four sections of Chapter 1 are based on (Linnebo, 2012a), which is now superseded
by this chapter. Section 2.3 derives from Section 4 of (Linnebo, 2005), which (as
mentioned) is superseded by this book. The remaining material is mostly new. In
Part II, Sections 4.2 and 4.3 are based on (Linnebo, 2014), and Section 6.2 on (Linnebo,
2016a). These two articles expand on the themes of Chapters 4 and 6, respectively.
Chapter 7 closely follows (Linnebo, forthcoming). In Part III, Chapters 8, 10, and 12
are based on (Linnebo, 2012b), (Linnebo, 2009c), and (Linnebo, 2013), respectively,
but with occasional improvements. Chapter 9 and Section 11.5 make some limited
use of (Linnebo, 2005) and (Linnebo, 2008), respectively, both of which are (as
mentioned) superseded by this book.
There are many people to be thanked. Special thanks to Bob Hale and Agustin
Rayo for our countless discussions and their sterling contribution as referees for
Oxford University Press, as well as to Peter Momtchiloff for his patience and sound
advice. I have benefited enormously from written comments and discussions of ideas
 PREFACE xvii

developed in this manuscript; thanks to Solveig Aasen, Bahram Assadian, Neil Barton,
Rob Bassett, Christian Beyer, Susanne Bobzien, Francesca Boccuni, Einar Duenger
B0hn, Roy Cook, Philip Ebert, Matti Eklund, Anthony Everett, Jens Erik Fenstad,
Salvatore Florio, Dagfinn F0llesdal, Peter Fritz, Olav Gjelsvik, Volker Halbach, Mirja
Hartimo, Richard Heck, Simon Hewitt, Leon Horsten, Keith Hossack, Torfinn
Huvenes, Nick Jones, Frode Kjosavik, J6nne Kriener, James Ladyman, Hannes Leitgeb,
Jon Litland, Michele Lubrano, Jonny Mcintosh, David Nicolas, Charles Parsons, Alex
Paseau, Jonathan Payne, Richard Pettigrew, Michael Rescorla, Sam Roberts, Marcus
Rossberg, Ian Rumfitt, Andrea Sereni, Stewart Shapiro, James Studd, Tolgahan Toy,
Rafal Urbaniak, Gabriel Uzquiano, Albert Visser, Sean Walsh, Timothy Williamson,
Crispin Wright, as well as the participants at a large number of conferences and
workshops where this material was presented. Thanks to Hans Robin Solberg for
preparing the index. This project was initiated with the help of an AHRC-funded
research leave (grant AH/E003753/l) and finally brought to its completion during
two terms as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. I gratefully acknowledge
their support.
PART I

Essentials
 1
In Search of Thin Objects

1.1 Introduction
Kant famously argued that all existence claims are synthetic.1 An existence claim
can never be established by conceptual analysis alone but always requires an appeal
to intuition or perception, thus mal<ing the claim synthetic. This view is boldly
rejected in Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic {Frege, 1953), where Frege defends an
account of arithmetic that combines a form of ontological realism with logicism. His
realism consists in taking arithmetic to be about real objects existing independently
of all human or other cognizers. And his logicism consists in tal<ing the truths
of pure arithmetic to rest on just logic and definitions and thus be analytic. Most
philosophers now probably agree with Kant in this debate and deny that the existence
of mathematical objects can be established on the basis of logic and conceptual
analysis alone. This is why George Boolos, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, can offer a
one-line refutation ofFregean logicism: "Arithmetic implies that there are two distinct
numbers" (Boolos, 1997, p. 302), whereas logic and conceptual analysis-Boolos takes
us all to know-cannot underwrite any existence claims (other than perhaps of one
object, so as to streamline logical theory). 2
However, the disagreement between Kant and Frege lives on in a different form.
Even if we concede that there are no analytic existence claims, we may ask whether
there are objects whose existence does not {loosely speal<ing) make a substantial
demand on the world. That is, are there objects that are "thin'' in the sense that their
existence does not (again loosely speal<ing) amount to very much? Presumably, an
analytic truth does not make a substantial demand on the world. 3 But perhaps being
analytic is not the only way to avoid imposing a substantial demand. Instead of asking
Frege's question of whether there are existence claims that are analytic, we can ask the
broader question of whether there are existence claims that are "non-demanding" -in
some sense yet to be clarified.
A number of philosophers have been attracted to this idea. Two classic examples
are found in the philosophy of mathematics. First, there is the view that the existence

1 2
See (Kant, 1997, B622-3). See also (Boolos, 1997, pp. 199 and 214).
3 Analyticity must here be understood in a metaphysical rather than epistemological sense (Boghossian,
1996). I cannot discuss here whether Frege's rationalism led him to depart from a traditional conception of
(metaphysical) analyticity. See (Macfarlane, 2002) for some relevant discussion.
4 IN SEARCH OF THIN OBJECTS

of the objects described by a theory of pure mathematics amounts to nothing more

than the consistency or coherence of this theory. This view has been held by many
leading mathematicians and continues to exert a strong influence on contemporary
philosophers of mathematics. 4 Then, there is the view associated with Frege that the
equinumerosity of two concepts suffices for the existence of a number representing
the cardinality of both concepts. For instance, the fact that the knives and the forks
on a table can be one-to-one correlated is said to suffice for the existence of a number
that represents the cardinality of both the knives and the forks. 5 Agustin Rayo nicely
captures the idea when he writes that a "subtle Platonist" such as Frege

believes that for the number of the Fs to be eight just is for there to be eight planets. So when
God created eight planets she thereby made it the case that the number of the planets was eight.
(Rayo, 2016, p. 203; emphasis in original)

I am not claiming that there is a single, sharply articulated view underlying all these
views, only that they are all attempts to develop the as-yet fuzzy idea that there are
objects whose existence does not make a substantial demand on the world.
We have talked about objects being thin in an absolute sense, namely that their
existence does not make a substantial demand on the world. An object can also be thin
relative to some other objects if, given the existence of these other objects, the existence
of the object in question makes no substantial further demand. Someone attracted to
the view that pure sets are thin in the absolute sense is likely also to be attracted to the
view that an impure set is thin relative to the urelements (i.e. non-sets) that figure in
its transitive closure. The existence of a set of all the books in my office, for example,
requires little or nothing beyond the existence of the books. Moreover, a mereological
sum may be thin relative to its parts. For example, the existence of a mereological sum
of all my books requires little or nothing beyond the existence of these books. 6
I shall refer to any view according to which there are objects that are thin in either
the absolute or the relative sense as a form of metaontological minimalism, or just
minimalism for short. The label requires some explanation. While ontology is the
study of what there is, metaontology is the study of the key concepts of ontology, such
as existence and objecthood. 7 A view is therefore a form of metaontological min-
imalism insofar as it holds that existence and objecthood have a minimal character.
Minimalists need not hold that all objects are thin. Their claim is that our concept of an
object permits thin objects. Additional "thickness" can of course derive from the kind
of object in question. Elementary particles, for example, are thick in the sense that
their existence makes a substantial demand on the world. But their thickness derives
from what it is to be an elementary particle, not from what it is to be an object.

4 See for instance (Parsons, 1990), (Resnik, 1997), and (Shapiro, 1997).
5 See for instance (Wright, 1983) and the essays collected in (Hale and Wright, 200!a).
6
Philosophers attracted to this view include (Lewis, 1991, Section 3.6) and (Sider, 2007).
7 See for instance (Eklund, 2006a).
 COHERENTIST MINIMALISM 5

Metaontological minimalism has consequences concerning ontology proper. The

thinner the concept of an object, the more objects there tend to be. Metaontological
minimalism thus tends to support a generous ontology. 8 By contrast, a generous
ontology does not by itself support metaontological minimalism. The universe might
just happen to contain an abundance of objects whose existence makes substantial
demands on the world.
Just as metaontological minimalists are heirs to the Fregean view that there are
analytic existence claims, there are also heirs to the contrasting Kantian view. Hartry
Field has attacked the idea that mathematical objects are thin, sometimes mentioning
the Kantian origin of his criticism.9 And various metaphysicians reject the idea
that mereological sums are thin relative to their parts. 10 Just as with the original
Kantian rejection of analytic existence claims, this contemporary rejection of thin
objects strikes many philosophers as plausible. Metaontological minimalism can
come across as a piece of philosophical magic that aspires to conjure up something
out of nothing-or, in the relative case, to conjure up more out of less.
The chapter is organized as follows. In the next two sections, I outline two influ-
ential approaches to the idea of thin objects that are found in the philosophy of
mathematics and that were mentioned above. Then, I examine the appeal of the idea.
Based on this examination, I formulate some logical and philosophical constraints
that any viable form of metaontological minimalism must satisfy. We thus obtain
a "job description': and the task of the book is to find a suitable candidate for the
job. The chapter ends with an attempt to dramatically reduce the field of acceptable
candidates by rejecting the customary symmetric conception of abstraction in favor
of an asymmetric conception. The left-hand side of an abstraction principle makes
demands on the world that go beyond those of the right-hand side. Thin objects are
nevertheless secured because the former demands do not substantially exceed the
latter. For the truths on the left are grounded in the truths on the right.

1.2 Coherentist Minimalism

One classic example of metaontological minimalism is the view that the coherence
of a mathematical theory suffices for the existence of the objects that the theory
purports to describe. Since it is coherent to supplement the ordinary real number
line IR with two infinite numbers -oo and +oo, for example, the extended real
number line i = IR U {-oo, +oo} exists. And since it is coherent to supplement
IR with the imaginary unit i = .J=T and all the other complex numbers, the complex
field C exists. All that the existence of these new mathematical objects involves,
according to the view in question, is the coherence of the theories that describe the
relevant structures. Let us refer to this as a coherentist approach to thin objects.

8 See (Eklund, 2006b) for a discussion of some extremely abundant ontologies that may arise in this way.
9 10
See (Field, 1989, pp. 5 and 79-80). See for instance (Rosen and Dorr, 2002) .
6 IN SEARCH OF THIN OBJECTS

This approach enjoys widespread support within mathematics itself and is defended
by several prominent mathematicians. In his correspondence with Frege, for example,
David Hilbert wrote:

As long as I have been thinking, writing and lecturing on these things, I have been saying
the exact reverse: if the arbitrarily given axioms do not contradict each other with all their
consequences, then they are true and the things defined by them exist. This is for me the
criterion of truth and existence. 11

As is well known, the word 'criterion' is ambiguous between a metaphysical meaning

(a defining characteristic) and an epistemological one (a mark by which something
can be recognized). Since the context favors the metaphysical reading, the passage
is naturally read as an endorsement of metaontological minimalism, not just of an
extravagant ontology.
A similar view is endorsed by Georg Cantor:

Mathematics is in its development entirely free and only bound in the self-evident respect that
its concepts must both be consistent with each other and also stand in exact relationships,
ordered by definitions, to those concepts which have previously been introduced and are
already at hand and established.12

It may be objected that, while this passage defends an extremely generous ontology,
it is not a defense of metaontological minimalism. In response, we observe that the
passage is concerned with what Cantor calls "immanent reality", which is a matter of
occupying "an entirely determinate place in our understanding". Cantor contrasts this
with "transient reality", which requires that a mathematical object be "an expression
or copy of the events and relationships in the external world which confronts the
intellect" (p. 895). He feels compelled to provide an argument that the former kind of
existence ensures the latter. The most plausible interpretation, I think, is that Cantor
seeks a form of metaontological minimalism with respect to immanent existence but
merely a generous ontology concerning transient existence.
The coherentist approach to thin objects has enjoyed widespread support among
philosophers as well. A structuralist version of the approach has in recent decades
been defended by central philosophers of mathematics such as Charles Parsons,
Michael Resnik, and Stewart Shapiro.13 For instance, Shapiro includes the following
"coherence principle" in his theory of mathematical structures:

Coherence: If <p is a coherent formula in a second-order language, then there is a structure that
satisfies <p. (Shapiro, 1997, p. 95)

11
Letter to Frege of December 29, 1899, in (Frege, 1980). See (Ewald, 1996, p. 1105) for another example
from Hilbert.
12
See (Cantor, 1883), translated in (Ewald, 1996, p. 896).
13 See the works cited in footnote 4 . Also relevant is the "equivalence thesis" of (Putnam, 1967).
 ABSTRACTIONIST MINIMALISM 7

It is instructive to compare this principle with Tarski's semantic account of logical

consistency and consequence. On Tarski's analysis, a theory T is said to be seman-
tically consistent (or coherent) just in case there is a mathematical model of T. The
coherence principle can be regarded as a reversal of this analysis: we now attempt
to account for what models or structures there are in terms of what theories are
coherent. 14
Shapiro not only endorses the coherence principle but makes some striking claims
about its philosophical status. He compares the ontologically committed claim that
there is a certain mathematical structure with the (apparently) ontologically innocent
claim that it is possible for there to be instances of this structure. These claims are
"equivalent" (p. 96), he contends, and "[i]n a sense [... ] say the same thing, using
different primitives" (p. 97). Shapiro's view is thus a version of coherentist minimalism,
centered on the claim that

there is a model of T <=> T is coherent

where <p <=> 1/f means that <p and 1/f "say the same thing''.
The coherentist approach can be extended to objects that are thin only in a
relative sense. Coherence does not suffice for the existence of "thick" objects such as
electrons. But given the existence of certain thick constituents, coherence may suffice
for the existence of further objects that are thin relative to these constituents. Given
the existence of two electrons, for example, their set and mereological sum may exist
simply because the existence of such objects is coherent.
Is coherentist minimalism tenable? I remain neutral on the question. My present
aim is to develop and defend an alternative form of minimalism based on Fregean
abstraction. My pursuit of this aim is unaffected by the success or failure of the
coherentist alternative.

1.3 Abstractionist Minimalism

Another classic example of metaontological minimalism derives from Frege and has
been developed by the neo-Fregeans Hale and Wright. Frege first argues (along lines
that will be outlined in Section 1.4) that there are abstract mathematical objects. He
then pauses to consider a challenge:
How, then, are the numbers to be given to us, if we cannot have any ideas or intuitions of them?
(Frege, 1953,§62)

That is, how can we have epistemic or semantic "access" to numbers, given that their
abstractness precludes any kind of perception of them or experimental detection?

14
This is not to say that we possess a notion of coherence that is independent of mathematics. Our view
on questions of coherence will be informed by and be sensitive to set theory. Here we use some mathematics
to explicate a philosophical notion, which in turn is used to provide a philosophical interpretation of
mathematics. See (Shapiro, 1997, pp. 135-6) for discussion.
8 IN SEARCH OF THIN OBJECTS

Frege's response urges us to transform the question of how linguistic (or mental)
representations succeed in referring to natural numbers into the different question
of how complete sentences (or their mental counterparts) succeed in having their
appropriate arithmetical meanings:
Since it is only in the context of a sentence that words have any meaning, our problem becomes
this: To define the sense of a sentence in which a number word occurs. (Frege, 1953, §62)

This response raises some hard exegetical questions, which are discussed in Chapter 7.
But the argumentative strategy of the Grundlagen is made tolerably clear a few pages
later, where Frege makes a surprising claim about the relation between the parallelism
oflines and the identity of their directions:
The judgement "line a is parallel to line b'; or, using symbols, a II b, can be taken as an identity.
If we do this, we obtain the concept of direction, and say: "the direction ofline a is identical with
the direction of line b". Thus we replace the symbol II by the more generic symbol =, through
removing what is specific in the content of the former and dividing it between a and b. We carve
up the content in a way different from the original way, and this yields us a new concept.
(Frege, 1953,§64)

Consider the criterion of identity for directions:

(Dir)
Frege claims that the content of the right-hand side of this biconditional can be
"recarved" to yield the content of the left-hand side. The idea is that we get epistemic
and semantic access to directions by first establishing a truth about parallelism oflines
and then "recarving" this content so as to yield an identity between directions.
Let <p <=} 1/1 formalize the claim that <p and 1/1 are different "carvings" of the same
content-in a sense yet to be explicated. Then (Dir) can be strengthened to:
(Dir{?)

Inspired by this example, Frege and the neo-Fregeans seek to provide a logical
and philosophical foundation for classical mathematics on the basis of abstraction
principles, which generalize (Dir). These are principles of the form
(AP) §a = §{3 B Ci ~ {3

where a and f3 range over items of some sort, where ~ is an equivalence relation on
such items, and where § is an operator that maps such items to objects. One famous
example is Hume's Principle, which says that the number of Fs (symbolized as #F)
is identical to the number of Gs just in case the Fs and the Gs can be one-to-one
correlated (symbolized as F ~ G):
(HP) #F= #GB F~ G

As Frege discovered, this principle has an amazing mathematical property. When

added to second-order logic along with some natural definitions, we are able to
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which it is easy to enlist on the side of the governmental theory. He
has been busy all his life; and he has no education, or one that is
worse than none, about those issues which, in a crisis like that which
has come upon us, suddenly reveal themselves as the issues of life
and death. History, no doubt, should have informed him. But history,
for the most part, is written without intelligence or conviction. It is
mere narrative, devoid of instruction, and seasoned, if at all, by some
trivial, habitual, and second-hand prejudice of the author. History has
never been understood, though it has often been misunderstood. To
understand it is perhaps beyond the power of the human intellect.
But the attempt even has hardly begun to be made.
Deprived, then, of this source of enlightenment, Press and
the ordinary man falls back upon the press. But the government
press is either an agent of the very governments it poison
mind.
the public
should exist to criticize (it is so notoriously and
admittedly on the Continent, and, to an extent which we cannot
measure, also in England), or else it is (with a few honorable
exceptions) an instrument to make money for certain individuals or
syndicates. But the easiest way for the press to make money is to
appeal to the most facile emotions and the most superficial ideas of
the reader; and these can easily be made to respond to the
suggestion that this or that foreign State is our natural and inevitable
enemy. The strong instincts of pugnacity and self-approbation, the
nobler sentiment of patriotism, a vague and unanalyzed impression
of the course of history, these and other factors combine to produce
this result. And the irony is that they may be directed indifferently
against any State. In England, for instance, a hundred years ago, it
was France against whom they were marshaled; sixty years ago it
was Russia; thirty years ago it was France again; now it is Germany;
presently, if governments have their way, it will be Russia again.
The foreign offices and the press do with nations what they like.
And they will continue to do so until ordinary people acquire right
ideas and a machinery to make them effective....
The governmental theory holds that States are We must realize
the great realities, and that they are natural that States are
enemies. My reply is that States are unreal
abstractions; that the reality is the men and women unreal
and children who are the members of the States; abstractions.
and that as soon as you substitute real people for the abstract idea
that symbolizes them you find that they have no cause of quarrel, no
interests or desires of a kind to justify or necessitate aggressive war.
And, if there were no aggressive war, there could, of course, be no
cause for defensive war....
G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, January, 1915.
 THE WAY OUT OF WAR
We will to perpetuate European peace. How are No
we to accomplish it? By keeping in view and putting aggrandizement!
into effect certain clear principles.
First, the whole idea of aggrandizing one nation and humiliating
another must be set aside. What we are aiming at is, not that this or
that group of States should dominate the others, but that none
should in future have any desire or motive to dominate. With that
view, we must leave behind the fewest possible sores, the least
possible sense of grievance, the least possible humiliation. The
defeated States, therefore, must not be dismembered in the hope of
making or keeping them weak; and that means, in detail, that, if the
Allies win, the English and the French must not take the German
colonies, or the Russians the Baltic Coast, the Balkans, or
Constantinople; and that, if Germany wins, she must not dismember
or subordinate to her system France or England or the neutral
powers. That is the first clear condition of the future peace of
Europe.
Secondly, in rearranging the boundaries of No subjugation of
States—and clearly they must be rearranged—one small
point, and one only, must be kept in mind: to give to nationalities!
all peoples suffering and protesting under alien rule the right to
decide whether they will become an autonomous unit, or will join the
political system of some other nation. Thus, for example, the people
of Alsace-Lorraine should be allowed to choose whether they will
remain under Germany, or become an autonomous community, or be
included in France. The same principles shall be applied to the
Poles. The same to Schleswig-Holstein. The same to the Balkan
States. The same to the Slav communities included in Austria-
Hungary. There would arise, of course, difficulties in carrying this
principle through. For, in the Balkan States, in Bohemia, and
elsewhere, there is an almost inextricable tangle of nationalities. But
with good-will these difficulties could be at least partially met.
 Even the wholesale transference of peoples of one nationality from
one location to another is a possibility; and, indeed, it is now going
on. In any case the principle itself is clear. Political rule must cease
to be imposed on peoples against their will in the supposed interest
of that great idol, the abstract state. Let the Germans, who belong
together, live together under the same government, pursuing in
independence their national ideal and their national culture. But let
them not impose that ideal and that culture on reluctant Poles and
Slavs and Danes. So, too, let Russia develop her own life over the
huge territory where Russians live. But let her not impose that life on
unwilling Poles and Finns. The English, in history, have been as
guilty as other nations of sacrificing nationality to the supposed
exigencies of the State. But of late they have been learning their
lesson. Let them learn it to the end. Let no community be coerced
under British rule that wants to be self-governing. The British have
had the courage, though late, to apply this principle to South Africa
and Ireland. There remains their greatest act of courage and wisdom
—to apply it to India.
A Europe thus rearranged, as it might be at the There must be
peace, on a basis of real nationality instead of on a established an
basis of States, would be a Europe ripe for a international
authority.
permanent league. And by such a league only, in
my judgment, can its future peace, prosperity, happiness, goodness,
and greatness be assured. There must be an end to the waste upon
armaments of resources too scanty, at the best, to give to all men
and women in all countries the material basis for a good life. But if
States are left with the power to arm against one another they will do
so, each asserting, and perhaps with truth, that it is arming in
defense against the imagined aggression of the others. If all are
arming, all will spend progressively more and more on their
armaments, for each will be afraid of being outstripped by the others.
This circle is fatal, as we have seen in the last quarter of a century.
To secure the peace of Europe the peoples of Europe must hand
over their armaments, and the use of them for any purpose except
internal police, to an international authority. This authority must
determine what force is required for Europe as a whole, acting as a
whole in the still possible case of war against powers not belonging
to the league. It must apportion the quota of armaments between the
different nations according to their wealth, population, resources,
and geographical position. And it, and it alone, must carry on, and
carry on in public, negotiations with powers outside the league. All
disputes that may arise between members of the league must be
settled by judicial process. And none of the forces of the league must
be available for purposes of aggression by any member against any
other.
With such a league of Europe constituted, the problem of
reduction of armaments would be automatically solved. Whatever
force a united Europe might suppose itself to require for possible
defense would clearly be far less than the sum of the existing
armaments of the separate States. Immense resources would be set
free for the general purposes of civilization, and especially for those
costly social reforms on the accomplishment of which depends the
right of any nation to call itself civilized at all. And if any one insists
on looking at the settlement from the point of view of material
advantage—and that point of view will and must be taken—it may be
urged, without a shadow of doubt, that any and every nation, the
conquerors no less than the conquered, would gain from a reduction
of armaments far more than they could possibly gain by pecuniary
indemnities or cessions of territory which would leave every nation
still arming against the others with a view to future squandering of
resources in another great war. This is sheer common sense of the
most matter-of-fact kind.
A League of Europe is not Utopian. It is sound business.
Such a league, it is true, could hardly come into And we must
being immediately at the peace. There must be prepare public
preparation of opinion first; and, not less important, opinion for the
idea.
there must be such changes in the government of
the monarchic States as will insure the control of their policy by
popular opinion; otherwise we might get a league in which the
preponderating influence would be with autocratic emperors. But in
making peace the future league must be kept in view. Everything
must be done that will further it, and nothing that will hinder it. And
what would hinder it most would be a peace by which either there
should be a return to the conditions before the war—but of that there
is little fear—or by which any one power, or group of powers, should
be given a hegemony over the others. For that would mean a future
war for the rehabilitation of the vanquished.
The mood, therefore, which seems to be growing View of peoples
in England, that the British must “punish” Germany must supersede
by annihilating her as a political force; the mood view of
governments.
which seems to be growing in Germany, that she
must annihilate the British as the great disturbers of the peace—all
such moods must be resolutely discouraged. For on those lines no
permanent peace can be made. Militarism must be destroyed, not
only in Germany but everywhere. Limitation of armaments must be
general, not imposed only on the vanquished by victors who propose
themselves to remain fully armed. The view of peoples must be
substituted once for all for the view of governments, and the view of
peoples is no domination, and, therefore, no war, but a union of
nations developing freely on their own lines, and settling all disputes
by arbitration.
G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1915.
 LOWES DICKINSON’S PLAN
Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Lowes Mr. Dickinson’s
Dickinson attempts to point the moral of the war plan lacks hard-
headedness.
and to offer a way out. His theory is that wars are
made by governments without the consent and against the interest
of their subjects; they are made because the governmental mind is
obsessed with the illusion that States are “natural enemies,” that
they have always been so and always will be, that force is the only
arbiter between them. This fantasy of the governing caste, says Mr.
Dickinson, is what rules the State, and through control of foreign
policy and the press drags the population to slaughter. The remedy
is to shatter the illusion, to assert against the criminal nonsense of
the governing mind the humanity and commonsense of ordinary
people....
Now peace will have to be built on a very hard-headed basis or it
will be fragile and illusory. But it is just this hard-headedness which
Mr. Dickinson’s argument seems to lack. In our opinion he himself is
building on an illusion, and if his doctrine prevails among the workers
for peace their passion will be misdirected, and their disappointment
will be as deep as their hopes are high.
To prove these assertions, we need not go Is political power
beyond the example which Mr. Dickinson uses, the irrelevant to
case of Russia and her desire to hold economic power?
Constantinople. Mr. Dickinson dismisses this ambition with the
statement that “for all purposes of trade, for all peace purposes, the
Dardanelles are open. And it is the interest of all nations alike that
they should remain so.” What he is assuming here is that it makes
no economic difference whether Constantinople is under one political
government or another. This is the center of Mr. Dickinson’s
argument, and it rests on the doctrine of Norman Angell that “political
power is a consideration irrelevant to economic power.”
Is it irrelevant in a case like that of the Dardanelles? The Black
Sea region is already a great agricultural exporting region; it is
destined most probably to become the industrial center of Russia.
But to carry out goods, Russian ships must pass through a narrow
Turkish strait. Mr. Dickinson says that for all “peace purposes” the
passage is free. Is it? Let us suppose that Mexico held New York
harbor, or that Ecuador held Liverpool. Would these harbors be free
to American and English commerce? They would be free if Mexico
and Ecuador were highly efficient governments imbued with the
doctrine of absolute free trade. Then commerce might pass through
easily. But if Mexicans or Ecuadorians took it into their heads to
exercise sovereignty by setting up a tariff zone around New York or
Liverpool, who would regard political power as irrelevant to economic
power? Certainly not the Manchester exporter as he paid his
customs tax to the pleasant official from Ecuador.
Although England is in no danger from Ecuador, there are nations
in the world which suffer just as fantastically. There is the case of
Servia, shut off from a “window on the sea.” Servia exports pigs,
when she isn’t fighting for the privilege of exporting them. But to
export anything she has to run the gauntlet of an Austrian tariff to the
north, Albanian and Greek discrimination to the west and south. Shut
off from the sea, she is like a man trying to get out of a restaurant
who has still to tip the waiter, the headwaiter, the girl who took care
of his hat, and the boy who brushed it.
Political power is not in the least irrelevant to No; political
economic power. Mr. Dickinson has no doubt heard power is an
of a thing which we Americans call vulgarly “dollar instrument for
monopolies and
diplomacy.” European powers do not call it that, but concessions.
they practise it. They call it staking out “spheres of
influence,” and there is nothing sentimental or illusory about it. The
nation that can secure political control of an undeveloped country
can decide who shall receive the mining rights and the railroad
franchises, can fix railroad rates to favor its own manufacturers, can
use all the methods which Americans describe as restraint of trade.
It may have been dishonest, it certainly wasn’t a delusion, when
capitalists in those dreadful early days of this republic bought
political power to further economic ends. A legislature or a governor
was generally worth the price in this country, and we presume that
they would be worth the price in Asia Minor. If German bureaucrats
governed Morocco, they would, we suppose, be good to their
friends, almost all of whom have at least a nominal residence east of
Belgium, and French capitalists might then be prospecting fresh
mines and pastures new.
Mr. Dickinson ignores these considerations when he speaks of
national antagonisms arising “because a few men of the military and
diplomatic caste have a theory about States, their interests and
destinies.” He ignores the monopolies, the use of tariffs, the special
privileges of which political power is the instrument. He does not face
the fact that in every country there are exporters of goods and
capital, concession-hunters and traders, who stand to gain by the
use of governmental power in half developed territory. To them at
least it is not a matter of indifference whether Germany is politically
supreme in say India or China. Since Germany has brought the
doctrine of protection to its highest point, it would make a very great
difference to the commerce of other nations if Germany developed a
world-empire.
How little reality there is in Mr. Dickinson’s contention may be seen
by analyzing his concrete proposals. Apart from the shattering of the
great illusion of the governmental mind by a propaganda, he
suggests a settlement of Europe on the basis of nationality, capped
by a League of Europe to maintain the peace.
Now there are all sorts of reasons for trying to Governmental
found States on nationality, and the only reason theory not mere
against the proposal is the reason on which Mr. illusion.
Dickinson’s article is built. He tells us on one page that “ordinary
people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think at all in terms of
the state.” Then what difference does it make to people of the same
nationality that they should be under different governments, and how
is the world’s peace to be assured by gathering into one State
people who do not care about the State? Either the people have an
interest in the State or they have not, but surely it is futile for Mr.
Dickinson to argue in one place against the German contention that
their emigrants are “lost,” and in another that the Danes of
Schleswig-Holstein should go back to Denmark. And what does he
mean by telling us that in the event of an Austro-German victory
“Italy and the Balkans will be pillaged to the benefit of Austria, and
Russia rolled back—though that would be all to the good—from her
ambition to expand in the West.” Is Mr. Dickinson also afflicted with
the “governmental mind,” that he should talk of “benefit” to Austria
and pronounce it good that “Russia” be rolled back? What does he
mean by telling us that “the English and the French must not take the
German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic coast, the Balkans, or
Constantinople,” for what difference does it make, except to the
“governmental mind,” who exercises political power!
As for the League of Europe, surely no one here Mr. Dickinson
would wish to obstruct the plan. But if the League is ignores crucial
to be based on nothing more realistic than an problems.
absence of governmental thinking, it will be a very precarious
league. Every argument advanced by Mr. Dickinson is based on the
assumption of absolute free trade in the world, yet in his plan of
peace he says not one syllable about how tariffs and discriminations
and monopolies are to be wiped out. The conflict between Germany
and England is world-wide, yet Mr. Dickinson is thinking only of
rectified frontiers in Europe.
When he proposes so readily a League of Europe with a police
force to carry out its jurisdiction, has he considered the possibility of
civil war within the League? If Germany and Austria rebelled against
the League, they would presumably be attacked on all sides. But
they are now attacked on all sides. We had on this continent a
league of States with a central government, a Supreme Court, and
an army. In 1861 some of the States seceded, and the struggle
which followed, called a Civil War, was a terrible conflict. Has Mr.
Dickinson faced the fact that a League of Europe would be based on
the status quo, would be a sort of legalization of every existing
injustice? And how does he propose to amend peacefully the
constitution of Europe if some nation objects too seriously?
The New Republic, Jan. 2, 1915.
 THE MORROW OF THE WAR

OUR PURPOSE
This country (Great Britain) is at war, and has for In time of war,
the moment one overwhelming preoccupation: to prepare for
peace.
render safe our national inheritance.
The Union of Democratic Control has been founded for the
purpose of trying to secure for ourselves and the generations that
succeed us a new course of policy which will prevent a similar peril
ever again befalling our Empire. Many men and women have already
joined us holding varying shades of opinion as to the origins of the
war. Some think it was inevitable, some that it could and should have
been avoided. But we believe that all are in general agreement about
two things: First, it is imperative that the war, once begun, should be
prosecuted to a victory for our country. Secondly, it is equally
imperative, while we carry on the war, to prepare for peace. Hard
thinking, free discussion, the open exchange of opinion and
information are the duty of all citizens to-day, if we are to have any
hope that this war will not be what most wars of the past have been
—merely the prelude to other wars.
Our contribution to this necessary discussion are The program.
the principles put forward for consideration by the
Union of Democratic Control.
The Union of Democratic Control has been created to insist that
the following policy shall inspire the actual conditions of peace, and
shall dominate the situation after peace has been declared:
1. No Province shall be transferred from one Government to
another without consent by plébiscite or otherwise of the population
of such Province.
2. No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered upon
in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of Parliament.
Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control of foreign policy
shall be created.
 3. The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at
creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance of
Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a Concert of the
Powers and the setting up of an International Council whose
deliberations and decisions shall be public, part of the labor of such
Council to be the creation of definite Treaties of Arbitration and the
establishment of Courts for their interpretation and enforcement.
4. Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement a
plan for the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments of all the
belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that policy shall attempt to
secure the general nationalization of the manufacture of armaments,
and the control of the export of armaments by one country to
another.
It is the purpose of this pamphlet to elaborate and explain the
considerations which underlie the policy outlined above.

I
No Province shall be transferred from one Government to another
without the consent of plébiscite of the population of such Province.
This condition has been placed first because if There must be
adhered to practically and in spirit, and if general
recognized by the European Powers as a principle recognition of
principle of
that must guide all frontier rearrangements, it would plébiscite.
help to put an end to European war.
If no province were retained under a Government’s power against
the will of its inhabitants, the policy of conquest and the imposition of
political power would lose its raison d’être.
The subject as a whole is wrapped up, of course, with the principle
of democratic government and is not merely a problem of
international but of internal politics, and could not be treated briefly in
a mere outline like the present. But any one who reflects carefully on
the subject will see that the peace in Europe ultimately depends
upon the acceptance of this idea.
 It is obvious that there are many difficulties of detail in its
application; that a plébiscite may be a mere form and not reflect the
real wishes of the population concerned, and under military control it
can be used as an instrument for obtaining an apparent sanction for
oppression, and that in populations of mixed race it is very difficult of
application. But it should not be impossible to guard against the
defeat of the principle through defects in the working machinery.
Plébiscites, where used at the end of the war, might be carried out
under international supervision. The essential is that the principle
involved should be clearly enunciated.
Fortunately the Government has already given the country a
valuable lead in this matter. For Mr. Churchill, speaking on
September 11, said:
“Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to
make the same mistake or the same sort of mistake as Germany
made when she had France prostrate at her feet in 1870. [Cheers.]
Let us, whatever we do, fight for and work towards great and sound
principles for the European system, and the first of those principles
which we should keep before us is the principle of nationality—that is
to say, not the conquest or subjugation of any great community, or of
any strong race of men, but the setting free of those races which
have been subjugated and conquered; and if doubt arises about
disputed areas of country we should try to settle their ultimate
destination in the reconstruction of Europe which must follow from
this war with a fair regard to the wishes and feelings of the people
who live in them.”
We agree with Mr. Churchill that the terms of One nation must
peace should secure that there shall in the future not be allowed to
be no more Alsace-Lorraines to create during half a dominate another.
century resentment, unrest, and intrigues for a revanche. The power
of the victorious parties must not be used for vindictive oppression
and dismemberment of beaten nationalities, but for the creation, by
cooperation with all the belligerents, victors and vanquished alike, of
a true society of nations, banded together for mutual security. The
future relationship of the States of Europe must be not that of victor
and vanquished, domination or subserviency, but of partnership. The
struggle of one nation for domination over another must be replaced
by the association of the people for their common good.

II
No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered upon in
the name of Great Britain without the sanction of Parliament.
Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control of foreign policy
shall be created.
The peoples of all constitutionally-governed Secret diplomacy
countries are justified in demanding that diplomatic must go.
relations with their neighbors shall be conducted
with the main object of maintaining friendly international intercourse.
The increasing social and economic interdependence, the
ramifications of the credit system, the facility and rapidity of
intercommunication, the developing community of intellectual
interest, the growth of a collective social consciousness, are
combining to minimize the significance of the purely political frontiers
which divide civilized States. For these reasons the world is moving
towards conferences when political difficulties arise as a substitute
for war. The determination to preserve national ideals and traditions
offers no real obstacle. But the common interest of civilized
democracies cannot be advanced by a secret diplomacy out of touch
with democratic sentiment.
The anomaly of such practises in a democratic State has only to
be understood to be condemned. All the domestic activities of a
constitutional Government are tested in the crucible of public
analysis and criticism. But the Government department charged with
the supervision of the nation’s intercourse with its neighbors, which if
wrongly handled may react with ruinous effect upon the whole field
of its domestic activities and upon the future of its entire social
economy, not only escapes efficient public control, but considers
itself empowered to commit the nation to specific courses and to
involve it in obligations to third parties entailing the risk of war,
without the nation’s knowledge of consent.
 During the past eight years particularly, the British foreign
management of the Foreign department has policy has been
become avowedly and frankly autocratic. autocratic.
Parliamentary discussion of foreign policy has become so restricted
as to be perfunctory. It is confined to a few hours’ roving debate on
one day in each session. The eliciting of information by means of
questions, never satisfactory, is rendered extremely difficult by the
ingenuity employed in evading the issues it is attempted to raise.
Advantage has been taken of the wholesome desire that discussion
of foreign policy should not partake of mere party recriminations, to
burke discussion altogether, and this process has received the
endorsement of both Front Benches. A claim to “continuity” has been
further evolved to stifle debate on foreign affairs, whereas in point of
fact, if one feature more than another has characterized British
foreign policy of recent years, it has been its bewildering fluctuations.
Parliamentary paralysis has had its counterpart in the country. The
present Government’s tenure of office has been marked by an
almost complete abstention from public reference to foreign affairs.
The public has been treated as though foreign affairs were outside—
and properly outside—its ken. And the public has acquiesced. Every
attempt to shake its apathy has been violently assailed by
spokesmen of the Foreign Office in the press. The country has been
told that its affairs were in the wisest hands, and that mystery and
silence are the indispensable attributes to a successful direction of
foreign policy. The caste system which prevails in the diplomatic
service, and which has survived unimpaired the democratizing of the
majority of the public services, facilitates these outworn political
dogmatisms. Appointment is made by nomination and selection.
Candidates are required to possess an income per annum of £400.
The natural result is that the vast bulk of the national intelligence is
debarred from the diplomatic field of employment. A study of the
Foreign Office list will disclose the fact that over 95 per cent. of the
British diplomatic staff is composed of members of the aristocracy
and landed gentry.
Inevitable exile from their country results in our Connection
diplomatic representatives abroad losing touch with between politics
the center of affairs and living in a mental
atmosphere remote from the popular and and business is
progressive movements of the time. Another ignored.
pronounced characteristic of the system is the indifference displayed
by the Foreign Office to the business interests of the nation. Our vast
commercial interests, so intimately affected by our relations with
foreign Powers, are regarded as lying outside the orbit of diplomatic
considerations. The connection between politics and business—and
by business we mean the entire framework of peaceful commerce
upon which the prosperity of this country depends—appears to be
ignored, or, at least, treated with indifference and something like
contempt. The services of our Consuls abroad are not sufficiently
utilized, and the Consular machinery requires complete overhauling.
Such questions as, for instance, the effect upon British commercial
interest of British diplomacy supporting the acquisition of
undeveloped areas of the world’s surface by a Power like France,
which imposes differential tariffs upon British goods, and opposing
the acquisition of such areas by a Power like Germany, which admits
British goods on terms of equality, does not appear to enter into
Foreign Office calculations.
In the last few years also has been added Policy is framed
another institution which modifies national policy by military experts
without coming under Parliamentary control, the without
Parliamentary
Committee of Imperial Defense. Its influence upon control.
the Cabinet is nominally indirect, and its activities
confined to the discussion of hypothetical events. But no one can
doubt that its recommendations exercise a powerful effect on the
executive decisions of the Government. No criticism of the advice
given by the Committee is possible in Parliament. Momentous
military and naval schemes are prepared there on which hang the
issues of peace and war, as in the case of our recent relations to
France. It is an intimate and powerful means of framing Government
policy according to the ideas of military experts, without the
knowledge and control of Parliament.
In the various ways indicated, opportunities of evincing an
intelligent concern in its foreign policy has been increasingly
withdrawn from the nation. The work of the Department escapes all
outside control, loses all sense of contact with national life, and
tends more and more to become an autocratic institution,
contemptuous of the efforts of a small group of members in the
House to acquire information, and utilizing a powerful section of the
press to mold public opinion in the direction it considers public
opinion should travel.
The nation awoke with a shock to the evils of this state of affairs in
the summer of 1911, when it suddenly found itself on the very brink
of war with Germany over a Franco-German quarrel about Morocco,
and became cognizant of the existence of diplomatic entanglements
of which it had no previous intimation.
It is obviously impossible to attempt here a full presentment of the
Moroccan crisis of 1911. But the story is inseparably intertwined with
the avowals to the House of Commons on August 3rd, 1914, of the
secret understanding with France which has played so capital a part
in bringing about British intervention in the present war.
So long as this situation prevails it must be Nation must
perfectly clear to any man of ordinary intelligence participate in
that the system of government under which we live direction of
foreign policy.
is not a democratic system, but its antithesis. It
cannot be too often insisted upon that the domestic concerns of the
nation, its constitutional liberties, its social reforms, all its internal
activities in short, depend upon the preservation of peaceful relations
with its neighbors. War in which this country is involved is certain to
prove a serious check to social progress. Hence it is a matter of
absolutely vital concern to the nation that the machinery of its
Foreign Office should be thoroughly capable of performing its
functions, and that the policy pursued by that department should be
pursued with the knowledge and the consent of the nation. It is
imperative not only that a treaty with a foreign Power should require
endorsement by Parliament, but that no agreement or understanding
possessing binding force and postulating the use of the national
military and naval forces should be valid without the assent of
Parliament. The nation should insist upon this essential reform, and
should seriously apply itself to considering what other steps are
needed to ensure some mechanical means whereby a greater
national control of foreign policy can be secured; whether by the
establishment of a permanent Committee of the House of Commons,
by the adaptation to suit our needs of the American system under
which a two-thirds majority of one branch of the Legislature is
required for the validity of international agreements, or other
procedure. But real and permanent reforms will not be obtained
unless the nation is determined to assert its fundamental right to
participate in the formation of its own foreign policy.

III
The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at creating
Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance of Power”; but
shall be directed to the establishment of a Concert of Europe and the
setting up of an International Council whose deliberations and
decisions shall be public.
What does the “Balance of Power” mean? The “Balance of
Power.”
It is popularly supposed to mean that no single
Power or group of Powers should, in the interests of international
peace, be allowed to acquire a preponderating position in Europe,
and that the policy of Great Britain should be directed against such a
consummation. British policy during the past few years has been
based upon the assumption that Germany had attained, or was
seeking to attain, that position of eminence.
It is that idea which, in the minds of masses of our people, justifies
the present war.
But if this policy has been right in the past, what prospect does the
future hold? The victory of the Allies—which is a vital necessity—
must enormously upset the “balance” by making Russia the
dominant military power of Europe, possibly the dictator both in this
Continent and in Asia.
Russia can draw upon vast sources of human military material,
only partly civilized. At present she is governed by a military
autocracy which is largely hostile to Western ideas of political and
religious freedom. There is hope in the minds of Western Liberals
that the war may bring political liberation to Russia. At present that is
only a hope. For wars have as often been a prelude to tyranny as to
liberty. It is only too likely that after a victorious war our national
feeling may revert to its old anti-Russian channel, and we shall again
have the “Balance of Power” invoked to protect Europe and India
against a new Russian preeminence.
Speaking generally, the “Balance of Power” is little more than a
diplomatic formula made use of by the mouthpieces of the interests
from whose operations war comes. It signifies nothing more than
that, at a given moment, in a given country, there is an effort to hold
up to the public gaze the Government and the people of another
country as being intent upon the destruction of its neighbors. At one
moment it is Russia, at another France, and at another Germany.
The “Balance of Power” was invoked for several years and down to
within a few weeks of the Crimean War to inflame British public
opinion against France. It was invoked against Russia to justify the
Crimean War, and France was chosen as the ally with which to fight
Russia! No sooner had peace been signed than France became
once more the potential threat to the “Balance of Power”; and again
during the period of rivalry in West and Central Africa, and in the Far
East, in the late nineties.
Once the ball has been set rolling in the required The power of the
direction, influences of all kinds are brought to bear press in making
for the purpose of permanently fixing this idea in war-opinion.
the public mind. A flood of innuendo, denunciation, and distorted
information is let loose. Every dishonorable motive and the most
sinister of projects are attributed to the Government and the people
selected for attack. The public becomes the sport of private
ambitions and interests, of personal prejudices and obscure
passions, which it can neither detect nor control, and, for the most
part, does not even suspect. The power for mischief wielded by
these forces is to-day immense, owing to a cheap press and to the
concentration of a large number of newspapers, possessing in the
aggregate an enormous circulation, under one directing will. At the
present moment the editorial and news columns of some fifty British
newspapers echo the views of one man, who is thus able to
superimpose in permanent fashion upon public thought the dead
weight of his own prejudices or personal aims and intentions, and to
exercise a potent influence upon the Government of the day.
For the last few years these newspapers have How the “Balance
striven with unceasing pertinacity to create an of Power” works.
atmosphere of ill-will and suspicion between Great
Britain and Germany. The effort has been continuous, systematic,
and magnificently organized, and inferential evidence is not lacking
that it has been pursued with the approval and even with the
assistance of certain official influences, and to the satisfaction of
certain foreign Governments. This propaganda has had, needless to
say, its counterpart in Germany. The net result of the latest
recrudescence of the “Balance of Power” policy with its Alliances and
Ententes as the dominating factor in international relationships is
now visible to all men. A quarrel (whose culminating episode was the
murder in a Bosnian town of the heir to the Austrian throne last June)
between Austria and Serbia, to which the Russian Government
determined to become a party, has already involved the peoples of
France, Belgium, Britain, and Germany, the first three of whom were
not even remotely concerned, in a terrible and desolating war.
Japan and Montenegro have also become involved, and the same
fate may overtake Holland, Italy, the other Balkan States, and the
Scandinavian Powers. But for the policy of the “Balance of Power”
the results of the quarrel would almost certainly have been confined
to the parties immediately affected, and an early mediation by the
neutral Powers would have been possible.
Bright’s scathing denunciation of the fetish of the “Balance of
Power” appeals with even greater force to us to-day:
“You cannot comprehend at a thought what is meant by this
balance of power. If the record could be brought before you—but it is
not possible to the eye of humanity to scan the scroll upon which are
recorded the sufferings which the theory of the balance of power has
entailed upon this country. It rises up before me when I think of it as
a ghastly phantom ... which has loaded the nation with debt and with
taxes, has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of