Author Description

The case for believing that there are abstract objects of various kinds, including those most discussed by philosophers, for example numbers and sets, is, in essence, very simple: we believe to be true many statements whose truth requires the existence of objects which, on any reasonable construal of the abstract/concrete distinction, are abstract. Familiar and plausible views concerning thought, reference and knowledge seem to leave no room for understanding abstract objects. Bob Hale develops the case for a broadly Fregean Platonism in this defence of a new view of abstract objects.