ONLINE FIRST
published on February 10, 2025
Ezra Rubenstein

https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil20251308
Generalism Without Generation
According to generalism, the world is fundamentally general ¨C¨C ultimately, there are no individuals. I distinguish two versions of this view. ¡®Permissive generalism¡¯ holds that facts involving individuals are non-basic: they are generated by purely general basic facts. I argue that permissive generalists will struggle to provide suitably systematic and non-arbitrary explanations for facts involving individuals. These problems are avoided by switching to ¡®strict generalism¡¯: the view that truths about individuals are non-perspicuous, and reduce to purely general perspicuous truths. I illustrate this alternative approach by proposing a metaphysical semantics for individualist truths in general terms. This serves both as a recommendation to generalists and, more broadly, as a case study in two different approaches to metaphysical explanation: one centered on generation, the other on reduction.