METAPHYSICS SOPHISTRY & ILLUSION C

Metaphysics Sophistry and Illusion does two things. First it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view and argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions most notably the abstract-object question and the composite-object question. (More specifically Mark Balaguer argues that there''s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects--or material objects of any other kind.) Second Metaphysics Sophistry and Illusion explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism and explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions--call them Q1 Q2 Q3 etc.--such that for each of these subquestions one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism or scientism or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows: non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there''s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality and Q can''t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that''s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn''t say anything about reality and if it''s true isn''t made true by reality