Ontology made easy / Amie L. Thomasson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thomasson, Amie L. (Amie Lynn), 1968- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ontology.

Physical Description:

xiii, 345 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2015]

Contents:

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

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 AProblem 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

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

10.3 Avoiding the Joint-Carving Quantifier 304

10.4 Problemalizing the Joint-Carving Quantifier 308.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199385119

0199385114

OCLC:

883651687