1/14/19Abstract Entities (1963)1. (163-4) “I have argued in a number of papers…that abstract entities..are linguistic entities. They are linguistic expressions. They are expressions, however, in a rarified sense…Redness, as a first approximation, is the word -red- construed as a linguistic kind or sort which is capable of realization or embodiment in different linguistic materials, e.g., ‘red, ‘rot’, and ‘rouge’… Expressions in this rarified sense I have called…linguistic types.” (164)“abstract entities are linguistic types” (164) “the interpretation of qualities, relations, propositions, etc. as linguistic types.” (165): “the thesis that universals (in the sense of qualities, relations, classes, and the like) are linguistic kinds…”2. WS confronts the problem that linguistic types seem themselves to be a kind of (but only onekind of) universal. His solution (166) “requires us to hold that not all ones over and against manys are universals (i.e. qualities, relations, sorts, kinds, or classes), and consequently to conclude that the problem of “the one and the many” is in fact broader than the problem of universals (in the specified sense).” His example of a one-in-many that is not a universal in his sense is what is referred to by “the pawn”. His analysis will be that that expression is a distributive singular term. In effect, he shows us how such terms are used, and want that pragmatic account to do the work that was supposed to be done by semantic talk of what they refer to (namely, the thought would be, universals). (166) “to refer to such a one we need a singular term other than the singular terms by which we refer to individual pawns, and yet which does not refer to a universal of which they are instances.” (166) “Pawn” is a common noun. 3. Strategy (167): “If, therefore, we can understand the relation of the lion (one) to lions (many) without construing the lion as a universal of which lions are instances; and if the looked-for singular term pertaining to pawns can be construed by analogy with “the lion”—indeed, as “the pawn”—then we would be in a position to understand how the pawn could be a one as against a many, without being a universal of which pawns are instances. This in turn would enable a distinction between a generic sense of “abstract entity” in which the lion and the pawn as well as triangularity (construed as the triangular ) and that two plus two equals four (construed as the two plus two equals four ) would be abstract entitiesas being ones over and against manys and a narrower sense of abstract entity in which qualities, relations, sorts, classes, propositions and the like are abstract entities, but of these only a proper subset, universals but not propositions, for example, would be ones as over and against instances or members. This subset would include the kind lion and the class of pawns, which must not be confused with the lion and the pawn as construed above. But all this will be given a more careful formulation in what follows. Such is the agenda. It isreadily carried out.”4. [T]he fundamental theme is the equivalence schema The K is f º All Ks are f† where this represents an identity of sense, the dagger indicating that the righthand side is a “non-accidental” truth about Ks (i.e., [roughly] that being f is either one of the criteria for being a K or is implied by the latter on inductive grounds. [167]5. (168) “Now if we reflect on the two statement forms 1. The K is a one 2. Ks are a many we note that they are in the material mode, the former having (in first approximation) the sense of “The K” (in English, our language) is a singular term, the latter (and it will be noticed that the plural verb is an unperspicuous consequence of surface grammar) having the sense of “Ks” (in English, our language) is a plural term.” BB: Compare this move to the “syntactic strategy” of “Grammar and Existence” (GE): they are understood as “material mode” “equivalents” of “formal mode” claims. I have suggested that the sense of “equivalence”, which WS struggles to express, is best understood in terms of the pragmatically mediated semantic relations of BSD. Again, “the K” is in this sense a nominalization of the common noun = sortal predicate ‘K’. (Really, K--Quinean corner quotes.)6. (168) “I propose to call expressions of which “the lion” is a paradigm example “distributive singulars.” 7. (169) “To construe “triangularity” as having, albeit less perspicuously, the sense of “the -triangular-”…” Notice that here WS talks of “sense”, where in GE he talked of “force”. In general he is not clear about the relations he envisages between what he is explicating and what it is explicated in terms of.8. Thus, “triangular” would be the common name of items which play the role played in our language by *triangular*s, where the asterisk quotes form the common name of the design tokens of which one is found between them. [169]9. (169) “In the use which we have in mind, neither “the pawn” nor “the lion” is the name of the role or kind to which the common noun pertains.”10. (170) “Both the idea that qualities, relations, kinds, and classes are not reducible to manys and the idea that they are reducible to their instances or members are guilty of something analogous to the naturalistic fallacy.”11. (170-1) “the corresponding equivalences pertaining to pieces in a rule-governed system…”“the criteria have been split into a descriptive and a prescriptive component. It is the latterwhich is essential to the character of the equivalence as defining a “piece”…The division of the criteria into descriptive and prescriptive components is, potentially, the drawing of a distinction between a “piece” in a narrower sense (the criteria of which are specified by the prescriptive component) and what might be called a recognized “embodiment” or “materialization” of the piece.” 12. Texas chess (172).13. (173) “the conception of our language as one way of playing a game with more generic descriptive criteria of which there are other mutually different varieties is already implicit in the conceptual framework we actually use.”14. (173) “I have been proposing (as a first approximation) a “rational reconstruction” of triangularity as the