Abstraction, Identity, and Existence

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three papers focused on the meta-ontology of abstraction. These papers link the abstractionist meta-ontology to the sortal views of reference and ontology. Abstractionists take objects to be the worldly correlates of singular terms appearing in true sentences. This brings about the methodological challenge of detecting singular terms and true sentences prior to having made decisions regarding what objects there are. The first paper addresses these challenges by focusing on the meta-semantical role of identity criteria attached to sortal concepts. The result is a sortal abstractionist meta-ontology which is used in the other two papers to solve some problems of ordinary ontology. The second paper uses the abstractionist notion of objects to address the Problem of the Many. The third paper uses the abstractionist notion of object to address the problem of the arbitrariness of ordinary kinds. Thus, the three papers provide an indirect defense of the abstractionist meta-ontology. They show that this meta-ontology is implementable and fruitful outside the ontology of abstracta.