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120 PORRO
counting method should be adopted for independent theoretical reasons and upon reflection
on quantitative and qualitative parsimony.
If this is right, then it seems that before being able to apply Bennett’s argument strategy, we
need to figure out the best method for counting entities, which in turn requires to delve into a
methodological enquiry about the concept of parsimony. Unfortunately, the status of the
debate about parsimony in the literature is not encouraging, because philosophers do not
seem to have reached any agreement about a definition of parsimony (see for example Nolan
(1997), especially section 3). We thus find ourselves stuck with the following two horns of a
dilemma:
– either address questions about what parsimony is, and suspend questions about
dismissivism until those are answered;
– or use a strategy to find out whether a debate should be dismissed for epistemic
reasons that does not need to answer questions about parsimony first.
If this is correct, this lowers the chances to apply Bennett’s argument strategy to other
debates.
2.2. A Problem With Up-playing Expressive Powers
I now turn to discuss the attempt of the low-ontology side to minimize the difference between
his claims and the high-ontology side’s claims. First of all, Bennett discusses different
possible strategies the nihilist has to preserve ordinary judgements about what there is and is
not (Bennett 2009: 57-58). Then Bennett says (Bennett 2009: 58-59):
All nihilists want somehow to recapture the claims that the believer takes to be true 5 .
[...] As long as they do not simply proclaim statements about composites false, and stop
there, revolutionary nihilists are still up-playing their expressive power. They are still
difference-minimizers.
This implies:
– Recapturing believers’ claims is a way to minimize the differences between nihilists
and believers.
– Up-playing expressive power has the purpose of difference-minimizing.
Bennett is not explicit about the reason why nihilists try to recapture believers’ claims. In
general, Bennett says (Bennett 2009: 72):
All the participants [i.e. believers and nihilists] want somehow to preserve our ordinary
judgements of persistence, of sameness and difference, of what there is and isn’t.
Intuitively, the reason why the nihilist wants to preserve ordinary judgements is that he does
not want to say: ‘there are no toasters; revise your breakfast plans’ (Bennett 2009: 58). The
more interesting question is why nihilists try to recapture believers’ claims. This question is
important because if it turns out that nihilists have no reason to do so, this should make us
suspect that there are issues with difference-minimizing. However it is not easy to find out
why nihilists recapture believers’ claims. It is apparent from p. 57-58 that Bennett takes the
task of preserving ordinary intuitions and claims and the task of recapturing believers’ claims
to be related. Since Bennett does not say anything about the rationale behind differenceminimizing
in this case, I think I can formulate Bennett’s thought in two different ways. The
first version is most supported by textual evidence and is: (1-) Nihilists try to recapture
believers’ claims by up-playing their expressive powers. This claim refrains from stating the
reason why this is the case. A second possible version tries to interpret Bennett’s words, and
5
Bennett argues that also one-thingers try to recapture multi-thingers’ claims.