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122 PORRO
Bennett says the nihilist wants to preserve ordinary judgements, thus showing his opponents
and ordinary people that his view can answer the composition question and does not lose on
the ground of expressive power. It is not clear at all how exactly recapturing believers’ claims
helps the nihilist preserve ordinary judgements, and Bennett does not say anything to
enlighten this. The tricky point, which is at the root of the disagreements between me and
Bennett I suspect, is that in the case of claims about ordinary objects, the believers’ claims are
very close to ordinary claims. (B) is similar to (O) more than (N) is similar to (O), because the
believer is closer to common sense in this respect than nihilists are. This may give the
impression that the nihilist is in fact trying to recapture the believers’ claims. However, if we
think about (B1) and (N1), it becomes apparent that the nihilist has no reason to recapture
(B1). This is because recapturing (B1) does not help the nihilist preserve ordinary judgements,
or boost his position’s expressive power, or answer the composition question. If this is true in
the case of (N1) and (B1), why would things be different in the case of (B) and (N)?
Recapturing (B) does not help the nihilist preserve ordinary judgements or show how the
nihilist can answer the composition question. Thinking about (N1) and (B1) helps
understanding what is happening in the debate, whereas thinking only about (B), which is so
similar to the ordinary judgement’s claim, can be misleading.
So far I have argued that Bennett’s diagnosis of what is happening in the composition debate
is wrong. However we can make a further step ahead and make a more general claim. I want
to argue that in general it is a mistake for a philosophical view to recapture his opponents’
claims. Thus even if one was not convinced by my argument and thought that nihilists are
in fact difference-minimizing, I am going to give him further reasons to be worried about this
aspect of difference-minimizing. Let us think about the purposes philosophical views have (in
no particular order):
– explain what it is supposed to explain;
– have its position understood;
– preserve ordinary judgements 7 ;
– show its opponents are wrong or at least worse off;
– ...
Re-expressing or re-stating opponent’s claims is useful in order to show why the opponent’s
position is wrong, however it does not serve any of the other purposes just listed. Moreover,
even when one recaptures his opponent's claims in order to prove them wrong, this is most
definitely not a case of difference-minimizing. The reason why one recaptures his opponent’s
claims here is rather to maximize the differences between himself and the other, to show why
he is right and the other is wrong. A very clear example of what I am saying comes from the
metaphysical debate between tropes' and universals’ ontologies. Take the universalist’s claim
that a table is red because it instantiates the property of ‘redness’. On the other hand the
tropist claims that a table is red because it has a trope of ‘being this shade of red’. Both claims
are ways of recapturing the ordinary claim ‘The table is red’. The tropist’s claim (granting just
for the sake of the argument that he plays the role of the low-ontology side) patently does not
try to recapture the universalist’s claim, rather it explains the ordinary claim in tropes’ terms.
sometimes nihilists recapture believers’ claims, but also against the weaker claim that nihilists ever try
to recapture any of opponents’ claims.
7
A further question can be raised, i.e. ‘should any philosophical position reconstruct ordinary
judgements?’. This is an interesting question, however it is not relevant to my enquiry at present. I am
here only focusing on arguing against Bennett and thus taking for granted that at least some
philosophical views try to preserve ordinary judgements.