in which no minds or languages depend. Schiffer’s pleonastic propositions sound like
a species of beings by courtesy.
Part of Schiffer’s motivation for thinking that such entities have a diminished
status is that their existence is known via trivial inferences.^44 Given the truth of
“Fido is a dog,”Schiffer claims it trivially follows that“Fido has the property of being
a dog”is true.
Recently, Thomasson (2016) has criticized this part of Schiffer’s motivation, since
she thinks that the existence of ordinary physical objects can also be known via trivial
inferences, and yet we do not ascribe a diminished status to them automatically. For
example, according to Thomasson, given the truth of“the particles are arranged
tablewise,”it trivially follows that“the particles compose a table”is true. Regardless
of whether Thomasson is correct about the triviality of this inference, I think
Thomasson’s criticism of Schiffer is apt: from the fact that an object is known via a
trivial inference of this sort, we shouldn’t automatically conclude that it has a
diminished ontological status. (I will provide my own reason for not concluding
this via a discussion of properties in a moment.)
On the other hand, I am willing to grant that propositions might be mere beings by
courtesy, and that we can know this to be the case via metaphysical inquiry. This is
how it is with holes: the arguments that there are holes are in some sense trivial, e.g.,
(i) some objects are perforated; (ii) perforated objects have holes in them; (iii) so
there are some holes in some objects; (iv) so there are holes. But my knowledge that
holes have a diminished ontological status is not via my knowing that holes are
known via inferences of this sort. Rather, my knowledge is based on a direct
awareness of the deficient ontological status of holes. The point of trivial arguments
of this sort is not to provide a route to knowing the ontological status of the entities in
question, but rather to talk us out of an unwarranted eliminativism about these
entities that might tempt usbecause we antecedently implicitly recognize their defi-
cient ontological status.
What about properties? Here again caution is warranted. It might be that the
existence of properties in general is known via trivial arguments, and it might be that
trivial arguments of this sort support a view on which there is an“abundance”of
properties, i.e., more or less a property for every meaningful predicate. It does not
follow that each property has the same diminished ontological status. On the
contrary, we might wish to hold that although all properties exist, some properties
exist more than others. In fact, I do hold exactly this thesis, and it will be the focus
of chapter 7.
So Thomasson’s criticism of Schiffer is correct. But, as should be obvious,
I disagree with Thomasson’s suggestion that all things have the same ontological
status. Trivial arguments for Fs do notestablishadeflated ontological status for the
(^44) Mulligan (2006a: 42) also discusses Schiffer’s“nothing to something”inferences but argues that they
are to be justified by a theory of intentionality.