Ontology after Carnap

253 Pages·2016·1.34 MB·English

by  Stephan Blatti

Ontology after Carnap

Ontology after Carnap
edited by
Stephan Blatti
and Sandra Lapointe
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Stephan Blatti and Sandra Lapointe
1. Carnap’s Big Idea 13
Thomas Hofweber
2. Three Carnaps on Ontology 31
Robert Kraut
3. Frameworks and Deflation in “Empiricism, Semantics,
and Ontology” and Recent Metametaphysics 59
Alan Sidelle
4. Carnap, the Necessary A Posteriori, and Metaphysical Anti-realism 81
Stephen Biggs and Jessica Wilson
5. Three Degrees of Carnapian Tolerance 105
Eli Hirsch
6. Carnap and the Prospects for Easy Ontology 122
Amie Thomasson
7. Much Ado about Something-from-Nothing; or, Problems
for Ontological Minimalism 145
Simon Evnine
8. Carnap’s Legacy for the Contemporary Metaontological Debate 165
Matti Eklund
9. Carnap and Ontology: Foreign Travel and Domestic Understanding 190
Richard Creath
10. Carnap on Abstract and Theoretical Entities 200
Gregory Lavers
11. Questions of Ontology 220
Kathrin Koslicki
Index 243

Notes on Contributors
Stephen Biggs, Iowa State University
Stephan Blatti, University of Memphis
Richard Creath, Arizona State University
Matti Eklund, Uppsala University
Simon Evnine, University of Miami
Eli Hirsch, Brandeis University
Thomas Hofweber, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Kathrin Koslicki, University of Alberta
Robert Kraut, Ohio State University
Sandra Lapointe, McMaster University
Gregory Lavers, Concordia University
Alan Sidelle, University of Wisconsin
Amie Thomasson, University of Miami
Jessica Wilson, University of Toronto

Introduction
Stephan Blatti and Sandra Lapointe
Metaphysics incorporates two levels of inquiry: ontology and metaontology.1 In the
first, questions about what exists and about the properties and relations of various
existents are posed and answered. The array of entities whose existence and properties
are of concern ranges from the more familiar objects of everyday life, such as tables and
persons, to the more exotic realms of numbers, fictional characters, propositions, and
possible worlds. Given the enormous variety of things concerned, the questions ontol-
ogists address often remain highly general. Ontological questions may concern, for
example, what exists, what sort of stuff makes up those entities that do exist, in what
kinds of relations existents stand with one another, the categories of existents, etc.
Metaontology takes as its subject ontology itself. One may ask how, for instance, are
ontological questions to be understood, and what really is at stake in raising and
attempting to answer them? Or one may wonder by what standard are we to decide
between competing answers to these questions? Or whether there are beliefs, state-
ments, and/or practices that reveal antecedent commitments regarding answers to
ontological questions (or antecedent constraints on the range of tenable answers)?
While most, if not all, significant figures in the history of western metaphysics
have held at least tacit views concerning these metaontological questions, careful
and sustained work in metaontology is a relatively recent phenomenon.2 The single
most significant episode in the brief history of metaontological inquiry was the
mid-twentieth-century debate between the leading exponent of the logical positivist
movement, Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), and the leading critic of that movement,
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000).3 The subject of their dispute was the nature
1 The question of the relation between metaphysics and ontology is not altogether unproblematic. Some
of the essays included here (see Koslicki infra, Hofweber infra, Sidelle infra) offer a discussion of these
issues.
2 Notwithstanding a few prior instances, regular use of the term ‘metaontology’ appears to date back no
further than Peter van Inwagen’s 1998 article titled simply “Meta-ontology,” though even he had some
reservations about the term’s introduction (249 n1). (See also Koslinski infra.)
3 Though preceded and succeeded by other relevant publications (see Quine 1951b and 1960, Carnap
1956, Appendix D and Creath 1990), the primary moves in this debate were made in quick succession in
Quine’s “On What There Is” in 1948, Carnap’s “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” in 1950, and Quine’s