Metaphysics First or Language First: The Notion of a Single Object

International audience ; In philosophy, general attention has been focused on the notion of an object as such, rather than that of a single object. There are two approaches concerning the notion of an object (as such). A metaphysics-first view takes objects to be given independently of language (and often leads to scepticism concerning whether language involves reference to objects at all). The second, language-first view takes the notion of an object to be defined on the basis of language, as in the Fregean definition according to which an object is what a referential noun phrase (NP) may stand for. This chapter argues that the notion of a single object or ‘being one’ does not require worldly or perceived conditions of integrity and even less so concept-relative atomicity. The notion of a single object is often based on conditions of integrity of some sort, but not strictly or always so. The notion is rather imposed through the use of count categories in natural language and thus provides a piece of support for linguistic idealism.