Yablo, "Go Figure: A Path through Fictionalism" — Part 2 of 3

Object fictionalism looked like the clean solution. It looked like a way to mean something true about numbers without believing in them. Then its own logic turns on it. Run the machinery honestly and you can derive that numbers exist; run it the other way and the story itself accuses you of lying. Gideon Rosen has a name for the position you wake up in: a platonist malgré lui—in spite of himself.

In Part 2, Solomon and Clementine rebuild the road from Part 1—The Predicament, Quine's menu, object fictionalism's two biconditionals—before arming what Yablo's own section title calls The Bomb: an objection built from the fictionalist's own commitments, not an outside attack. From the wreckage, they start rebuilding, borrowing an unlikely case study (an ar ...