Attitudes without Propositions

objects are causally relevant to the physical world, it follows that none of our mixed sentences express bottom-level mixed facts and, hence, that empirical science has a nominalistic that captures its complete picture of the physical world-a nominalistic that says that the physical world holds up its end of the empirical-science bargain. Thus, I conclude that (NC) is true. To recapitulate, the argument for this rests on three premises, viz., (i) Abstract objects-if there are such things-are not causally relevant to the operation or state of the physical world; (ii) If (i) is true, then the mixed facts expressed by empirical science supervene on more basic facts that aren't mixed, i.e., that are either purely nominalistic (i.e., purely physical, or neurological, or whatever) or else purely platonistic; and 18 I suppose that one might claim that (3) tells us something else about Floyd, viz., that he stands in the belief relation to the proposition that Clinton is president. But this is just nitpicking: the point is that when we move from (3) to its nominalistic content, we do not lose any important part of our picture of Floyd. ATTITUDES WITHOUT PROPOSITIONS 815 This downloaded from 157.55.39.176 on Sat, 09 Apr 2016 06:22:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms (iii) If the consequent of (ii) is true, then (NC) is true, i.e., empirical science has a nominalistic that captures its complete picture of the physical world. And if what I have argued is correct, then it seems that (COH) is also true, i.e., that it is coherent to believe the nominalistic of empirical science while maintaining that its platonistic is purely fictional. This is all I really need to argue in order to block the Frege-Bealer-Schiffer argument for platonism. But it is worth pointing out that nominalistic scientific realism can be shown to be not just coherent but actually quite plausible. Before I do this, however, I would like to address two different worries that people might have about the above argument. First, one might be worried that a scientific anti-realist could use my argument strategy to motivate a view that endorsed the content of empirical science but rejected its The worry, of course, is that this view is so implausible, that it undermines my argument strategy. The fact of the matter, though, is that my argument strategy cannot be used to motivate this view. The reason is that micro-level entities are causally related to macro-level entities. Indeed, if all the micro-level entities in the world suddenly disappeared, all the macro-level entities would disappear along with them. Moreover, empirical science predicts this, because part of its picture of the macro-level of the world is that it is composed of microlevel entities. Thus, empirical science simply doesn't have a purely macrolevel that captures its complete picture of the macro-level of the world. Thus, there is no viable view that endorses the macro-level of empirical science but not its micro-level content. Second, one might be worried that the claim that empirical science has a nominalistic that captures its complete picture of the physical world is much more controversial than I have allowed, because it is essentially equivalent to the claim that empirical science can be nominalized. But this worry is just misguided: the claim that empirical science has a nominalistic that captures its complete picture of the physical world is different from (and much weaker than) the claim that empirical science can be nominalized. The easiest way to appreciate this is to notice that empirical theories wear their nominalistic contents on their sleeves. The nominalistic of a theory is just that the physical world holds up its end of the T bargain, i.e., does its part in making true. Thus, while the claim that empirical science can be nominalized is highly controversial, the claim that it has a nominalistic that captures its complete picture of the physical world is entirely trivial. Indeed, it is no more controversial than the claim that abstract objects (if there are such things) are causally inert. These remarks suggest that empirical science could have a nominalistic that captured its complete picture of the physical world even if it

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