Ontology Made Easy

361 Pages·2014·2.048 MB·English

by  Amie L. Thomasson

ONTOLOGY MADE EASY

ONTOLOGY MADE EASY
Amie L. Thomasson
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomasson, Amie L. (Amie Lynn), 1968–
Ontology made easy / Amie L. Thomasson.
pages cm
ISBN 978–0–19–938511–9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Ontology. I. Title.
BD311.T45 2015
111—dc23
2014008982
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my parents, Clarissa Camfield Thomasson
and Walter Neill Thomasson

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Forgotten Easy Approach 1
I.1. The Historical Backstory 4
I.2. The Rise of Neo-Quineanism 13
I.3. The Easy Approach to Ontology: A Preliminary
Sketch 20
I.4. The Plan of This Book 22
PART I
DEVELOPING EASY ONTOLOGY
1. Whatever Happened to Carnapian Deflationism? 29
1.1. Carnap’s Approach to Existence Questions 30
1.2. Quine and the Ascendency of Ontology 45
1.3. Putnam Takes Deflationism on an
Unfortunate Turn 56
vii
CONTENTS
1.4. ‘Exists’ as a Formal Notion: A Brief History 63
1.5. Is Carnap Committed to Quantifier Variance? 69
1.6. Conclusion 80
2. The Unbearable Lightness of Existence 82
2.1. A Core Rule of Use for ‘Exists’ 83
2.2. What Are Application Conditions? 89
2.3. Do Application Conditions for ‘K’ Include
That Ks Exist? 96
2.4. Answering Existence Questions Easily 112
2.5. Against Substantive Criteria of Existence 115
2.6. Lines of Reply 122
3. Easy Ontology and Its Consequences 127
3.1. Using Trivial Inferences to Answer Existence
Questions 129
3.2. Three Forms of Easy Ontology 132
3.3. First Result: Simple Realism 145
3.4. Second Result: Metaontological Deflationism 158
4. Other Ways of Being Suspicious 161
4.1. Denying That Ontological Disputes Are Genuine
Disputes 162
4.2. Denying That We Can Know the Answers 166
4.3. Denying That There Are Answers to Know 168
4.4. Understanding Hard Ontology 172
5. Fictionalism versus Deflationism 177
5.1. Motives for Fictionalism 181
5.2. The Fictionalist’s Case against Easy
Arguments 183
5.3. A Problem for the Fictionalist’s Analogy 186
5.4. How the Fictionalist Incurs a Debt 194
5.5. A Reply for the Fictionalist 198
5.6. The Deflationary Alternative 200
5.7. Conclusion 205
viii
CONTENTS
PART II
DEFENDING EASY ONTOLOGY
6. Do Easy Arguments Give Us Problematic
Ontological Commitments? 211
6.1. Are We Over-Committed? 212
6.2. Why Easy Arguments Require No Magic 215
6.3. Do We Get the Objects We Wanted? 221
6.4. Conclusion 230
7. Do Doubts about Conceptual Truths Undermine
Easy Arguments? 231
7.1. Why Easy Ontology Needs Conceptual Truths 232
7.2. Williamson’s Attack on Analyticity 235
7.3. How Easy Inferences Survive 238
7.4. Caveats and Conclusions 248
8. Are Easy Arguments Threatened by the Bad
Company Objection? 253
8.1. The Bad Company Challenge for the Easy
Approach 257
8.2. Avoiding Bad Company 260
8.3. The Limited Impact of Bad Company
Objections 267
9. Do Easy Arguments Fail to Answer Ontological
Questions? 272
9.1. Hofweber’s Solution to the Puzzle about
Ontology 273
9.2. Focus and Ontology 277
9.3. Ways to Read the Quantifier 286
10. Can Hard Ontological Questions Be Revived in
Ontologese? 295
10.1. Existence Questions in Ontologese 296
10.2. Just More Metaphysics? 299
ix