In defence of logical nominalism: reply to Leftow

This paper defends (especially in response to Brian Leftow’s recentattack) logical nominalism, the thesis that logically necessary truth belongs primarilyto sentences and depends solely on the conventions of human language. A sentenceis logically necessary (that is, a priori metaphysically necessary) iff its negationentails a contradiction. A sentence is a posteriori metaphysically necessary iff itreduces to a logical necessity when we substitute for rigid designators of objects orproperties canonical descriptions of the essential properties of those objects orproperties. The truth-conditions of necessary sentences are not to be found in anytranscendent reality, such as God’s thoughts. ‘There is a God’ is neither a priori nora posteriori metaphysically necessary; God is necessary in the sense thatHis existence is not causally contingent on anything else