Sam Cowling, “Abstract Entities” (Routledge, 2017)
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What is the philosophical puzzle introduced by the sentence “The number seven is odd”?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talese, Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Today's conversation is with Sam Cowling, who's Associate Professor of Philosophy at Denison University. His new book, Abstract Entities, is just out from Routledge. Here's a true sentence. The number seven is odd. Now, what's philosophically odd about this sentence is that it seems to imply that there must be numbers, including the number seven. Just as the truth of the Statue of Liberty is in New York implies that there is such a statue, as well as the fact that it's in New York.
But the number seven, unlike the statue, isn't located anywhere and we can't see it or touch it. We could conceivably find the Statue of Liberty at some point in a silo in Nevada. But we can never find the number seven in a silo in Nevada. Plato argued long ago that the number seven, among other things, is what he calls an abstract entity. But why should we think that reality includes such things as abstract entities as well as the concrete things that we can see and touch? In his new book, Cowling provides a sophisticated discussion of what abstract as opposed to concrete entities might be, what reasons we have for thinking that they exist, and how we might explain mathematical, scientific, and other truths and our knowledge of such truths if we don't think that they do.
This deftly written critical survey of the problem of abstract entities is an excellent introduction to fundamental metaphysics, and it brings together the main arguments on both sides, as well as raising new issues in the Platonist-Nominalist debate. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Sam. Welcome to New Books and Philosophy. Hey, thanks so much for having me.
I'm looking forward to
chatting. Yeah, this is a really interesting book that brings kind of up to date. And it's an old problem. It's interesting that the The book comes out as part of Routledge's new problems in philosophy. But of course, the problem of abstract entities is an old problem. I mean, it's been around at least since Plato. And it remains a kind of a perennial problem. So it's very nice to be able to see something in metaphysics that's so nicely focused on a particular problem in one nice, clean, well-written place. Maybe you can say, first of all, before we get into the book itself, tell us a little bit about yourself as a philosopher, how you got into it and how you came to write this book.
Sure. So I grew up on the west coast of Canada and I ended up doing my undergraduate work at the University of Victoria.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the philosophical puzzle introduced by the sentence “The number seven is odd”?
0:00–6:56
2
Why do abstract entities like numbers, propositions, and properties matter for metaphysics?
6:56–14:37
3
How does Sam Cowling’s personal academic background lead to his interest in abstract entities?
14:37–21:19
4
What is the core distinction between abstract and concrete entities?
21:19–30:47
5
How do Platonist and Nominalist positions differ on the existence of abstract entities?
30:47–40:58
6
What are the main arguments supporting Platonism, such as the indispensability argument?
40:58–48:06
7
What challenges do under‑determination and non‑uniqueness pose for Platonist theories?
48:06–56:25
8
What future research directions does Cowling see for the debate over abstract entities?
56:25–1:06:39
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