Fictionalism and Moore's Paradox

Many philosophers strive for a thin ontology but are nevertheless unwilling to curtail ordinary and scientific talk that carries apparent commitment to the entities they reject. As Carnap put it, such a philosopher speaks with an uneasy conscience, ‘like a man who in his everyday life does with qual...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian journal of philosophy 2001-09, Vol.31 (3), p.293-307
Main Author: SZABO, Zoltan Gendler
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Conservatism
Contemporary Philosophy
Epistemology
F theory
Fictionalism
General Interest
Logic
Logical empiricism
Moore, G E
Moore, George E
Observational terms
Ontology
Paradoxes
Philosophical logics. Philosophy of language
Philosophical thought
Philosophy
Philosophy of language
Physical theory
Pragmatism
Putnam, H
Quine, Willard V
Scepticism
Semantics
Singular terms
Stars
Theory
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Summary:Many philosophers strive for a thin ontology but are nevertheless unwilling to curtail ordinary and scientific talk that carries apparent commitment to the entities they reject. As Carnap put it, such a philosopher speaks with an uneasy conscience, ‘like a man who in his everyday life does with qualms many things which are not in accord with the high moral principles he professes on Sundays.’ To appear less hypocritical he may, of course, tell us openly what he is doing and invite us to join him. But then it is hard to see why he is not advocating the absurd position that we should assent to sentences of the form ‘There are F s but I don't believe that there are F s.’ This is a simple objection, and there is a simple answer to it. But the answer is not available to everyone. I will argue that defenders of a particular version of fictionalism are in trouble with Moore's paradox. The bad news for fictionalism in general is that this particular version is the one that best deals with the Quine-Putnam challenge.
ISSN:0045-5091
1911-0820
DOI:10.1080/00455091.2001.10717569