ABSTRACT
“Ostrich Nominalism” is David Armstrong's pejorative name for the Quinean response to the venerable One over Many problem. Instead of offering a solution to this problem, as do Realists and traditional Nominalists, the Ostrich dismisses the problem as pseudo. This chapter discusses the early responses to Armstrong, particularly by Michael Devitt and David Lewis. These responded to Armstrong's request for ontological commitment. This chapter then turns to Armstrong's request for “truthmakers”, a request that has dominated later discussions. Truthmaking is standardly understood semantically as a version of the correspondence theory, but it can be understood metaphysically. Understood semantically, the Ostrich dismisses Armstrong's request as a misguided attempt to derive a metaphysics from a semantics. Understood metaphysically, as a demand for “groundings”, the Ostrich is again dismissive: this is another bit of unnatural metaphysics. This chapter defends this dismissiveness in discussing Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra's truthmaker approach. Finally, this chapter considers Imaguire's Priority Nominalism.
