Ostrich Nominalism or Ostrich Platonism?

The first part of the work reviews Armstrong’s major arguments against the most extreme Nominalist position, namely Ostrich Nominalism: the argument from gross facts, the harlot argument, and the truthmaker argument. I argue that none of them is fully satisfactory. In the second part of my work I mount a stronger case against the Ostrich Nominalism moving from a phenomenon that has been neglected by Armstrong, that is, predicate anaphora. Focusing on the relevance of predicate anaphora in connection with the issue of the ontological commitment conveyed by predicates, I sketch a Platonic theory of predication, putting it to work in the field of the issues raised by Armstrong’s arguments against Ostrich Nominalism, and testing it with the traditional issue concerning Bradley’s regress. Eventually I argue that the One over Many problem is not a real problem at all, and that Armstrong’s later truthmaker-driven approach to predication is to be rejected.