Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Carnap on Analyticity and Existence: A Clarification, Defense, and Development of Quine’s Reading of Carnap’s Views on Ontology.Gary Ebbs - 2019 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 7 (5):1-31.
    Does Carnap’s treatment of philosophical questions about existence, such as “Are there numbers?” and “Are there physical objects?”, depend on his analytic–synthetic distinction? If so, in what way? I answer these questions by clarifying, defending, and developing the reading of Carnap’s paper “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” that W. V. Quine proposes, with little justification or explanation, in his paper “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology”. The primary methodological value of studying Quine’s reading of “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” is that it prompts (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The Adoption Problem and Anti-Exceptionalism about Logic.Suki Finn - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Logic 16 (7):231.
    Anti-exceptionalism about logic takes logic to be, as the name suggests, unexceptional. Rather, in naturalist fashion, the anti-exceptionalist takes logic to be continuous with science, and considers logical theories to be adoptable and revisable accordingly. On the other hand, the Adoption Problem aims to show that there is something special about logic that sets it apart from scientific theories, such that it cannot be adopted in the way the anti-exceptionalist proposes. In this paper I assess the damage the Adoption Problem (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Expressivism without Mentalism in Meta-Ontology.Mirco Sambrotta & Pedro Antonio García Jorge - 2018 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 26 (5):781-800.
    ABSTRACTCarnap famously argued that there are two kinds of questions and claims concerning the existence or reality of entities: internal and external ones. We focus on Carnapian external ontological claims of the form: ‘Xs really exist’, where ‘X’ stands for some traditional metaphysical category, such as ‘substance’, ‘fact’ or ‘structure’. While Carnap considered them as meaningless, we consider them as faultlessly meaningful. However, in line with an expressivist guise, we do not claim that they have the meaning they have in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Limits of Subtraction.Mark Colyvan - 2017 - Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (2):168-172.
    ABSTRACTIn the target article ‘If-Thenism’, Stephen Yablo develops a novel form of if-thenism, that appeals to the notion of logical subtraction. In this commentary, I explore the limits of Yablo's proposed subtraction procedure, by leaning on an analogy with photographic subtraction. In particular, I will argue that there will be cases when there's nothing interesting left after the subtraction and, as a consequence, there are serious limits to the applicability of the subtraction procedure.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ontological Trivialism?Seyed N. Mousavian - 2017 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 94 (1-2):38-68.
    How hard is it to answer an ontological question? Ontological trivialism,, inspired by Carnap’s internal-external distinction among “questions of existence”, replies “very easy.” According to, almost every ontologically disputed entity trivially exists. has been defended by many, including Schiffer and Schaffer. In this paper, I will take issue with. After introducing the view in the context of Carnap-Quine dispute and presenting two arguments for it, I will discuss Hofweber’s argument against and explain why it fails. Next, I will introduce a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Working from Within: The Nature and Development of Quine's Naturalism.Sander Verhaegh - 2018 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Metaontological Deflationism in the Aftermath of the Quine-Carnap Debate.Jonathan Egeland - 2015 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 29 (2):33-52.
    With metaphysical philosophy gaining prominence in the aftermath of the Quine-Carnap debate, not only has it become assumed that the Quinean critique leaves ontological pluralism behind as an untenable approach, but also that the same is true of deflationism more generally. Building on Quine’s criticisms against the analytic-synthetic distinction and the notion of quantifier variance, contemporary metaphysicians like van Inwagen and Sider continue to argue for the untenability of deflationary approaches to metaontology. In this paper I will argue that Quine’s (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • O problema ontológico da consciência na mecânica quântica.Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo - 2015 - Dissertation, Universidade Estadual de Maringá
    Quantum mechanics is an area of Physics that deals with subatomic phenomena. It can be extracted from a vision of the physical world which contradicts many aspects of our everyday perception, prompting many philosophical debates and admitting different interpretations. Among the wide range of problems within the interpretation of quantum theory, there is the measurement problem. Some philosophical aspects of the problems concerning the notion of “measurement” in quantum mechanics are analyzed in order to identify how the problem arises in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Knowledge of Abstract Objects in Physics and Mathematics.Michael J. Shaffer - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (4):397-409.
    In this paper a parallel is drawn between the problem of epistemic access to abstract objects in mathematics and the problem of epistemic access to idealized systems in the physical sciences. On this basis it is argued that some recent and more traditional approaches to solving these problems are problematic.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Defending Contingentism in Metaphysics.Kristie Miller - 2009 - Dialectica 63 (1):23-49.
    Metaphysics is supposed to tell us about the metaphysical nature of our world: under what conditions composition occurs; how objects persist through time; whether properties are universals or tropes. It is near orthodoxy that whichever of these sorts of metaphysical claims is true is necessarily true. This paper looks at the debate between that orthodox view and a recently emerging view that claims like these are contingent, by focusing on the metaphysical debate between monists and pluralists about concrete particulars. This (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   41 citations  
  • In Carnap’s Defense: A survey on the concept of a linguistic framework in Carnap’s philosophy.Parzhad Torfehnezhad - 2016 - Abstracta 9 (1):03-30.
    The main task in this paper is to detail and investigate Carnap’s conception of a “linguistic framework”. On this basis, we will see whether Carnap’s dichotomies, such as the analytic-synthetic distinction, are to be construed as absolute/fundamental dichotomies or merely as relative dichotomies. I argue for a novel interpretation of Carnap’s conception of a LF and, on that basis, will show that, according to Carnap, all the dichotomies to be discussed are relative dichotomies; they depend on conventional decisions concerning the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Against the New Fictionalism: A Hybrid View of Scientific Models.Chuang Liu - 2016 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (1):39-54.
    This article develops an approach to modelling and models in science—the hybrid view—that is against model fictionalism of a recent stripe. It further argues that there is a version of fictionalism about models to which my approach is neutral and which makes sense only if one adopts a special sort of antirealism. Otherwise, my approach strongly suggests that one stay away from fictionalism and embrace realism directly.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Blurring Boundaries: Carnap, Quine, and the Internal–External Distinction.Sander Verhaegh - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (4):873-890.
    Quine is routinely perceived as saving metaphysics from Carnapian positivism. Where Carnap rejects metaphysical existence claims as meaningless, Quine is taken to restore their intelligibility by dismantling the former’s internal–external distinction. The problem with this picture, however, is that it does not sit well with the fact that Quine, on many occasions, has argued that metaphysical existence claims ought to be dismissed. Setting aside the hypothesis that Quine’s metaphysical position is incoherent, one has to conclude that his views on metaphysics (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Getting off the Inwagen: A Critique of Quinean Metaontology.Karl Egerton - 2016 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4 (6).
    Much contemporary ontological inquiry takes place within the so-called ‘Quinean tradition’ but, given that some aspects of Quine’s project have been widely abandoned even by those who consider themselves Quineans, it is unclear what this amounts to. Fortunately recent work in metaontology has produced two relevant results here: a clearer characterisation of the metaontology uniting the aforementioned Quineans, most notably undertaken by Peter van Inwagen, and a raft of criticisms of that metaontology. In this paper I critique van Inwagen’s Quinean (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Fictionalism.Fiora Salis - 2015 - Online Companion to Problems in Analytic Philosophy.
    In this entry I will offer a survey of the contemporary debate on fic- tionalism, which is a distinctive anti-realist view about certain regions of discourse that are valued for their usefulness rather than their truth.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Relativity and the Moving Spotlight.Bradford Skow - 2009 - Journal of Philosophy 106 (12):666-678.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • Explanatory Indispensability Arguments in Metaethics and Philosophy of Mathematics.Debbie Roberts - 2016 - In Uri D. Leibowitz & Neil Sinclair (eds.), Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The Possibility of Naturalized Metaphysics.Rasmus Jaksland - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Copenhagen
    This project investigates naturalized metaphysics as a recent trend in analytic metaphysics originating in the naturalist attitude of James Ladyman and Don Ross in their seminal work Everything must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (2007). The primary focus, however, will be the more recent article “Neo-Positivist Metaphysics” (2012) by Alyssa Ney that originates in this tradition. The project will conclude that naturalized metaphysics is an unsuccessful attempt at an answer to the question ’how is metaphysics possible’. More precisely, the project will establish (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Does Ontology Matter?Andrew Graham - 2014 - Disputatio 6 (38):67-91.
    In this paper, I argue that various disputes in ontology have important ramifications and so are worth taking seriously. I employ a criterion according to which whether a dispute matters depends on how integrated it is with the rest of our theoretical projects. Disputes that arise from previous tensions in our theorizing and have additional implications for other issues matter, while insular disputes do not. I apply this criterion in arguing that certain ontological disputes matter; specifically, the disputes over concrete (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Four Neglected Prescriptions of Hartian Legal Philosophy.Kevin Toh - 2014 - Law and Philosophy 33 (6):689-724.
    This paper seeks to uncover and rationally reconstruct four theoretical prescriptions that H. L. A. Hart urged philosophers to observe and follow when investigating and theorizing about the nature of law. The four prescriptions may appear meager and insignificant when each is seen in isolation, but together as an inter-connected set they have substantial implications. In effect, they constitute a central part of Hart's campaign to put philosophical investigations about the nature of law onto a path to a genuine research (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Structuring reality.Naomi Margaret Claire Thompson - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
    This thesis explores attempts to characterise the structure of reality. Three notions stand out: Lewisian naturalness, Sider’s ‘structure’, and grounding, where the latter has become the most popular way to characterise the structure of reality in the contemporary literature. I argue that none of these notions, as they are currently understood, are suited for limning the metaphysical structure of reality. In the first part of the thesis I argue that, by the lights of the relevant theories, both naturalness and structure (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Realism, Truthmakers, and Language: A study in meta-ontology and the relationship between language and metaphysics.J. T. M. Miller - 2014 - Dissertation, Durham University
    Metaphysics has had a long history of debate over its viability, and substantivity. This thesis explores issues connected to the realism question within the domain of metaphysics, ultimately aiming to defend a realist, substantive metaphysics by responding to so-called deflationary approaches, which have become prominent, and well supported within the recent metametaphysical and metaontological literature. To this end, I begin by examining the changing nature of the realism question. I argue that characterising realism and anti-realism through theories of truth unduly (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The myth of the seven.Stephen Yablo - 2005 - In Mark Eli Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 88--115.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   94 citations  
  • Metaphor, Fictionalism, Make-Believe: Response to Elisabeth Camp.Kendall L. Walton - manuscript
    Prop oriented make-believe is make-believe utilized for the purpose of understanding what I call “props,” actual objects or states of affairs that make propositions “fictional,” true in the make-believe world. I, David Hills, and others have claimed that prop oriented make-believe lies at the heart of the functioning of many metaphors, and one variety of fictionalism in metaphysics invokes prop oriented make-believe to explain away apparent references to entities some find questionable or problematic (fictional characters, propositions, moral properties, numbers). Elisabeth (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Degrees of Being.Kris McDaniel - 2013 - Philosophers' Imprint 13.
    Let us agree that everything that there is exists, and that to be, to be real, and to exist are one and the same. Does everything that there is exist to the same degree? Or do some things exist more than others? Are there gradations of being? I argue that some entities exist more than others. Moreover, many of the notions in play in contemporary metaphysical discourse, such as fundamentality, perfect naturalness, and grounding ought to be cashed out in terms (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • Figurative Language in Explanation.Inga Nayding - 2013 - Disputatio 5 (35):2013.
    Yablo argued that some metaphors are representationally essential: they enable us to express contents that we would not be able to express without them. He defended a fictionalist view of mathematical language by making the case that it similarly serves as a representational aid. Against this, Colyvan argued that metaphorical/figurative language can never play an essential role in explanation and that mathematical language often does, hence concluding that Yablo’s fictionalism is untenable. I show that Colyvan’s thesis about explanation is highly (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Syntactic Priority Thesis and Ontological Disputes.George Duke - 2012 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42 (2):149-164.
    The syntactic priority thesis (henceforth SP) asserts that the truth of appropriate sentential contexts containing what are, by syntactic criteria, singular terms, is sufficient to justify the attribution of objectual reference to such terms (Wright, 1983, 24). One consequence that the neo-Fregean draws from SP is that it is through an analysis of the syntactic structure of true statements that 'ontological questions are to be understood and settled' (Wright, 1983, 25). Despite the significant literature on SP, little consideration has been (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Questions about 'Internal and External Questions about God'.Natalja Deng - 2012 - Religious Studies 48 (2):257-268.
    This article is an evaluation of Le Poidevin’s use of Carnap ’s stance on ontology within the philosophy of religion. Le Poidevin claims that 1) theists need to take God to be a putative entity within space-time in order for their claim that God exists to be meaningful, and that 2) instrumentalism about theology is viable. I argue that although Le Poidevin’s response to Carnap ’s argument is no less problematic than that argument itself, his position is in fact thoroughly (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Carnap's Metaontology.Matti Eklund - 2011 - Noûs 47 (2):229-249.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • The Story About Propositions.Bradley Armour-Garb & James A. Woodbridge - 2010 - Noûs 46 (4):635-674.
    It is our contention that an ontological commitment to propositions faces a number of problems; so many, in fact, that an attitude of realism towards propositions—understood the usual “platonistic” way, as a kind of mind- and language-independent abstract entity—is ultimately untenable. The particular worries about propositions that marshal parallel problems that Paul Benacerraf has raised for mathematical platonists. At the same time, the utility of “proposition-talk”—indeed, the apparent linguistic commitment evident in our use of 'that'-clauses (in offering explanations and making (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Borderline Hermaphrodites: Higher-order Vagueness by Example.R. Sorensen - 2010 - Mind 119 (474):393-408.
    The Pyrrhonian sceptic Favorinus of Arelata personified indeterminacy, cultivating his (or her) borderline status to undermine dogmatism. Inspired by the techniques of Favorinus, I show, by example, that ‘vague’ has borderline cases. These concrete steps lead to a more abstract argument that ‘vague’ has borderline borderline cases and borderline borderline borderline cases. My specimens are intended supplement earlier non-constructive proofs of the vagueness of ‘vague’.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Ontology and objectivity.Thomas Hofweber - 1999 - Dissertation, Stanford University
    Ontology is the study of what there is, what kinds of things make up reality. Ontology seems to be a very difficult, rather speculative discipline. However, it is trivial to conclude that there are properties, propositions and numbers, starting from only necessarily true or analytic premises. This gives rise to a puzzle about how hard ontological questions are, and relates to a puzzle about how important they are. And it produces the ontologyobjectivity dilemma: either (certain) ontological questions can be trivially (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • On 'Average'.Christopher Kennedy & Jason Stanley - 2009 - Mind 118 (471):583 - 646.
    This article investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as 'The average American has 2.3 children'. Such sentences have been used both by linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them to provide evidence against the hypothesis that natural language semantics includes a reference relation holding between words and objects in the world, whereas metaphysicians such as Joseph Melia and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed.Roxanne Marie Kurtz - 2013 - Analiza I Egzystencja 24:87-114.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On what grounds what.Jonathan Schaffer - 2009 - In Ryan Wasserman, David Manley & David Chalmers (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 347-383.
    On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is. Metaphysics so conceived is concerned with such questions as whether properties exist, whether meanings exist, and whether numbers exist. I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. Metaphysics so revived does not bother asking whether properties, meanings, and numbers exist (of course they do!) The question is whether or not they are fundamental.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   777 citations  
  • Propositions.Matthew McGrath - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • Go figure: A path through fictionalism.Stephen Yablo - 2001 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1):72–102.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   197 citations  
  • Hermeneutic fictionalism.Jason Stanley - 2001 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1):36–71.
    Fictionalist approaches to ontology have been an accepted part of philosophical methodology for some time now. On a fictionalist view, engaging in discourse that involves apparent reference to a realm of problematic entities is best viewed as engaging in a pretense. Although in reality, the problematic entities do not exist, according to the pretense we engage in when using the discourse, they do exist. In the vocabulary of Burgess and Rosen (1997, p. 6), a nominalist construal of a given discourse (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   93 citations  
  • No objects, no problem?Matthew McGrath - 2005 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (4):457 – 486.
    One familiar form of argument for rejecting entities of a certain kind is that, by rejecting them, we avoid certain difficult problems associated with them. Such problem-avoidance arguments backfire if the problems cited survive the elimination of the rejected entities. In particular, we examine one way problems can survive: a question for the realist about which of a set of inconsistent statements is false may give way to an equally difficult question for the eliminativist about which of a set of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • The Return of Moral Fictionalism.Nadeem J. Z. Hussain - 2004 - Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1):149–188.
    Fictionalism has recently returned as a standard response to ontologically problematic domains. This article assesses moral fictionalism. It argues (i) that a correct understanding of the dialectical situation in contemporary metaethics shows that fictionalism is only an interesting new alternative if it can provide a new account of normative content: what is it that I am thinking or saying when I think or say that I ought to do something; and (ii) that fictionalism, qua fictionalism, does not provide us with (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • God and Abstract Objects: The Coherence of Theism: Aseity.William Lane Craig - 2017 - Cham: Springer.
    This book is an exploration and defense of the coherence of classical theism’s doctrine of divine aseity in the face of the challenge posed by Platonism with respect to abstract objects. A synoptic work in analytic philosophy of religion, the book engages discussions in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaontology. It addresses absolute creationism, non-Platonic realism, fictionalism, neutralism, and alternative logics and semantics, among other topics. The book offers a helpful taxonomy of the wide range of options (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Metametametaphysics and Dialetheism.Suki Finn - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Logic 14 (1):128-146.
    This paper reflects on metametaphysics and as such develops a metametameta-physical view: that quietist metametaphysics requires dialetheism, and in turn a paraconsistent logic. I demonstrate this using Carnap’s metametaphysical position in his 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' as an example, with regard to how it exhibits self-reference and results in inconsistency. I show how applying Carnap’s position to itself produces a dilemma, both horns of which lead to a contradiction. Such inconsistency commonly arises from meta-theories with global scope, as the 'meta' (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Fictionalism and the folk.Adam Toon - 2016 - The Monist 99 (3):280-295.
    Mental fictionalism is the view that, even if mental states do not exist, it is useful to talk as if they do. Mental states are useful fictions. Recent philosophy of mind has seen a growing interest in mental fictionalism. To date, much of the discussion has concerned the general features of the approach. In this paper, I develop a specific form of mental fictionalism by drawing on Kendall Walton’s work on make-believe. According to the approach I propose, talk of mental (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Ontology, quantification, and fundamentality.Jason Theodore Turner - unknown
    The structuralist conception of metaphysics holds that it aims to uncover the ultimate structure of reality and explain how the world's richness and variety are accounted for by that ultimate structure. On this conception, metaphysicians produce fundamental theories, the primitive, undefined expressions of which are supposed to 'carve reality at its joints', as it were. On this conception, ontological questions are understood as questions about what there is, where the existential quantifier 'there is' has a fundamental, joint-carving interpretation. Structuralist orthodoxy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Carnap's External Questions and Semantic Externalism.Andrei Moldovan - 2014 - Prolegomena 13 (2):253-268.
    What is it for an utterance of an expression to lack meaning? In this paper I address the issue along the lines of Carnap’s seminal article “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology”. Carnap provides there an answer to the above question, which he then uses to argue that certain claims of metaphysics are meaningless. In the first section of the paper I present Carnap’s argument for the meaninglessness of certain metaphysical claims. In the second section I argue that, although the argument is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Abstract Expressionism and the Communication Problem.David Liggins - 2014 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (3):599-620.
    Some philosophers have recently suggested that the reason mathematics is useful in science is that it expands our expressive capacities. Of these philosophers, only Stephen Yablo has put forward a detailed account of how mathematics brings this advantage. In this article, I set out Yablo’s view and argue that it is implausible. Then, I introduce a simpler account and show it is a serious rival to Yablo’s. 1 Introduction2 Yablo’s Expressionism3 Psychological Objections to Yablo’s Expressionism4 Introducing Belief Expressionism5 Objections and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Ontology and the word 'exist': Uneasy relations.Jody Azzouni - 2010 - Philosophia Mathematica 18 (1):74-101.
    An extensive exploration of the special properties of ‘exist’ is here undertaken. Two of several results are: Denying that `exist’ has associated with it a set of necessary and sufficient conditions has seemed to a number of philosophers to imply metaphysical nihilism . This is because it has seemed that without such conditions the target domain of `existence’ is arbitrarily open. I show this is wrong. Second, my analysis sheds light on the puzzling question of what we are asking when (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Inscrutability and ontological commitment.Berit Brogaard - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 141 (1):21 - 42.
    There are two doctrines for which Quine is particularly well known: the doctrine of ontological commitment and the inscrutability thesis—the thesis that reference and quantification are inscrutable. At first glance, the two doctrines are squarely at odds. If there is no fact of the matter as to what our expressions refer to, then it would appear that no determinate commitments can be read off of our best theories. We argue here that the appearance of a clash between the two doctrines (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • The ontological commitments of inconsistent theories.Mark Colyvan - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 141 (1):115 - 123.
    In this paper I present an argument for belief in inconsistent objects. The argument relies on a particular, plausible version of scientific realism, and the fact that often our best scientific theories are inconsistent. It is not clear what to make of this argument. Is it a reductio of the version of scientific realism under consideration? If it is, what are the alternatives? Should we just accept the conclusion? I will argue (rather tentatively and suitably qualified) for a positive answer (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • Ontological Commitment and Quantifiers.T. Parent - 2020 - In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. New York, NY: Routledge.
    This is a slightly opinionated review of three main factions in metaontology: Quineans, Carnapians, and Meinongians. Emphasis is given to the last camp, as the metaontological aspect of Meinongianism has been underappreciated. The final section then offers some general remarks about the legitimacy of ontology, touching on ideas I have developed in other publications.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark