Button, T;
(2020)
Deflationary metaphysics and ordinary language.
Synthese
, 197
pp. 33-57.
10.1007/s11229-016-1212-z.
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Abstract
Amie Thomasson and Eli Hirsch have both attempted to deflate metaphysics, by combining Carnapian ideas with an appeal to ordinary language. My main aim in this paper is to critique such deflationary appeals to ordinary language. Focussing on Thomasson, I draw two very general conclusions. First: ordinary language is a wildly complicated phenomenon. Its implicit ontological commitments can only be tackled by invoking a context principle; but this will mean that ordinary language ontology is not a trivial enterprise. Second: ordinary language often points in different directions simultaneously, so that a wide variety of existence questions cannot be deflated merely by appealing to ordinary language.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Deflationary metaphysics and ordinary language |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11229-016-1212-z |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1212-z |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Keywords: | Deflationary metaphysics · Ordinary language · Easy ontology · Metaontology · Metametaphysics · Existence questions · Amie Thomasson · Eli Hirsch · Neo-Carnapian metaphysics · The Context Principle · Mereology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10085873 |
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