Abstract
As well as the familiar objects of everyday life, some philosophers talk about objects such as propositions, facts, states of affairs, and so on. Across a number of works, Mulligan describes these as formal objects. Mulligan has offered an ‘argument from knowledge’ for the existence of certain formal objects, namely, facts or obtaining states of affairs. After presenting this argument from knowledge, the aim of this chapter is to consider two questions: Can this kind of argument be extended to other kinds of formal object, and if so, what does this tell us about the nature of formal objects? It is suggested that, given an identification account of knowledge, the argument can be extended to argue for the existence of things such as values and propositions. Mulligan makes his argument more palatable to the realist by arguing that facts, and other formal objects, are not ontologically fundamental. This, together with the argument from knowledge, suggests that formal objects are to be understood as things which are ontologically dependent upon intentionality and hence on creatures capable of having intentional states and performing intentional acts.
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Notes
- 1.
One might object that in the case of innate knowledge that p, there is no coming to know that p, one always knows it. If one finds this point compelling, the following discussion can simply be restricted to cover cases of knowledge that p which do begin with episodic knowledge. As long as there are such cases, then the argument can still run through.
- 2.
Some externalists about content might disagree. For example, they might argue that if I was unwittingly on twin Earth and I thought to myself ‘This is a nice glass of water’, I would not know that the content of my thought was in fact ‘This is a nice glass of XYZ’. If one finds these arguments persuasive, the following can be restricted to thoughts which are not about natural kinds, or other things vulnerable to the externalist view.
- 3.
Note here, ‘thinking that p’ is just meant as entertaining the thought that p, not as believing that p.
References
Armstrong DM (1997) A world of states of affairs. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Armstrong DM (2004) Truth and truthmakers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Frege G (1956) The thought: a logical inquiry. Mind 65:289–311
Mulligan K (2006a) Ascent, propositions and other formal objects. In: Carrara M, Sacchi E (eds) Propositions: semantic and ontological issues. Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp 29–48
Mulligan K (2006b) Facts, formal objects and ontology. In: Bottani A, Davies R (eds) Modes of existence: papers in ontology and philosophical logic. Verlag, Frankfurt, pp 31–46
Mulligan K (2007) Intentionality, knowledge and formal objects. Disputatio 2:205–228 (Marques T (ed) Special issue on normativity and rationality)
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Fabrice Correia and Mark Textor for helpful comments on previous drafts, and to Kevin Mulligan for comments on a later version. This paper was written during the SNSF-funded research project ‘Theory of Essence’, part of the Eidos Centre for Metaphysics at the University of Geneva.
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Leech, J. (2014). Formal Objects and the Argument from Knowledge. In: Reboul, A. (eds) Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04199-5_2
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