The Indeterminacy of the Distinction between Objects and Ways of Being

Abstract

Few if any distinctions are more easily recognisable and assented to than that between objects, that is, things which are some ways, and that which they are, that is, ways for objects to be (‘ways of being’ for short). In this paper I present an argument designed to show that this distinction is indeterminate in the sense that the truth-conditions of predicational sentences leave open what should count as an object and a way of being. The bulk of the argument is inspired by the celebrated permutation argument advanced by Quine, Wallace, Putnam and others.