Talking about nothing: truth with or without objects

282 Pages·2010·0.999 MB·English

by  Azzouni, Jody

TALKING ABOUT NOTHING
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Talking about Nothing
Numbers, Hallucinations, and Fictions
Jody Azzouni

2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Azzouni, Jody.
Talking about nothing : numbers, hallucinations, and fi ctions / Jody Azzouni.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-973894-6
1. Ontology. I. Title.
BD331.A99 2010
111—dc22 2009039246
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments
M y thanks to Jeff McConnell for convincing me to stop everything I was doing
and write this book instead.
I’m grateful to Otávio Bueno and to Tim Crane for a number of constructive
suggestions—some heeded and some not. (I expect, in the coming years, to regret
not heeding more of their suggestions.) I’m also grateful to Erin Eaker, Thomas
Hofweber, and Robert Thomas for constructive suggestions on the article (2009)
that eventually matured into chapter 1 of this book.
My thanks to the participants in my class, Talking about Nothing, given in
spring 2009.
T he idea of fi gures 1 and 2 are mine. My thanks to Scott Brundage for bringing
them so delightfully into existence.
I’m grateful to Peter Ohlin of Oxford University Press for his invaluable and
unfl agging assistance, both with this book and with the previous books I’ve pub-
lished with Oxford University Press.
Finally, a thanks to the folk at Connecticut Muffi n, who supplied me with
copious amounts of tea while I wrote a large portion of this book.
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Contents
General Introduction 3
PART I NUMBERS, HALLUCINATIONS,
AND FICTIONS
1 Numbers 23
2 Hallucinations 50
3 Fictions 110
Conclusion to Part I 150
PART II LANGUAGES WITH AND
WITHOUT ONTOLOGY
Introduction to Part II 161
4 Scientifi c Languages, Ontology, and Truth 166
5 Truth Conditions and Semantics 218
General Conclusion 247
Bibliography 255
Index 267
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TALKING ABOUT NOTHING