Counting by Identity: A Reply to Liebesman

ABSTRACT

David Liebesman (AJP, 2015) argues that we never count by identity. He generalizes from an argument that we don't do so with sentences indicating fractions, or with measurement sentences on their supposed count readings. In response, I argue that measurement sentences aren't covered by the thesis that we count by identity, in part because they don't have count readings. Then I use the data to which Liebesman appeals, in his argument that we don't count by identity using measurement sentences, in order to rebut his argument that we don't count by identity using sentences indicating fractions.

KEYWORDS:

• counting
• sortals
• measuring
• quantities
• fractions
• contextualism

Notes

¹ Thanks to Richard Grandy, Michael Levin, Gary Ostertag and Nathan Salmon for helpful comments.