Meta Ontology

Gilbert Ryle has argued that Plato's Theory of Forms is a "logically vicious" doctrine because it's fundamental concept of exemplification leads to a vicious infinite regress. David Armstrong and Alan Donagan have agreed with Ryle. After making Ryle's argument logically explicit, I show the exemplification regress is illusory. Exemplification is a genuine universal alongside other relations; there is nothing paradoxical in its being exemplified over and over and over ... Platonism can define logical properties of this relation but not the relation itself, however.