The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility that at least some ontological dispute are better understood as what David Plunkett and Timothy Sundell have called ‘metalinguistic negotiations’. I will take the debate between the dominant approaches of realism and anti-realism (especially fictionalism) about the ontological status of scientific models as a case-study. I will argue that such a debate is best seen as normatively motivated, insofar as a normative and non-factual question may be involved in it: how ought the relevant piece of language to be used? Even though I will generally assess the prospects for a broadly deflationist approach, I shall outline a sense in which such a dispute can be recast as ‘minimally substantive’.
El objetivo de este artículo es explorar la posibilidad de que al menos algunas disputas ontológicas puedan ser mejor entendidas como lo que David Plunkett y Timothy Sundell han llamado ‘negociaciones metalingüísticas’. Utilizaré como caso de estudio el debate sobre el estatus ontológico de los modelos científicos entre los enfoques dominantes del realismo y del antirrealismo (especialmente, el ficcionalismo). Argumentaré que este debate puede verse mejor como un debate motivado normativamente, en tanto que una pregunta normativa y no-fáctica aparece implicada, a saber: ¿cómo deben usarse los elementos del lenguaje relevantes? Aunque evaluaré de forma general las perspectivas de un enfoque ampliamente deflacionista, perfilaré un sentido en el que dicha disputa puede verse como ‘mínimamente sustantiva’
The general aim of this paper is to explore the possibility of conceiving the ontological dispute between realists and anti-realists about scientific models in terms of what David Plunkett and Tim Sundell (2013) have called ‘metalinguistic negotiation’.
There is a variety of things that are commonly referred to as scientific models. Some model systems are straightforward physical objects (for instance, Watson and Crick’s metal model of DNA and Phillips’ hydraulic model of the economy), but many of them, maybe the majority, are not material at all (as there are no concrete perfectly spherical planets, frictionless pendulums, or perfectly rational agents). Therefore, in the latter cases, it seems there are no (concrete) objects that match the identifying descriptions we use to introduce them. Thomson-Jones (2010) calls them ‘non-concrete models’. Non-concrete models (and the related descriptions) raised a thorny issue in ontology: what account should be given of these descriptions and what sort of objects, if any, do they describe? If we deny that are any entities which model descriptions refer to,
In this paper I focused on the dispute between realists and fictionalists about the existence of scientific (non-concrete) models. My challenge here will not be to settle the dispute, but rather to offer an attempt at explaining why it is so persistent and yet worthwhile. My conclusion will be that such a dispute can be better understood as a case of what David Plunkett and Timothy Sundell have called ‘metalinguistic negotiation’ (2013). First of all, I will try to sum up the different standpoints of both parties involved in the debate, or at least some of the most influential ones. Then, I will argue that Plunkett and Sundell’s considerations might be carried over to this debate. I will maintain that ontologists have no substantive grounds to choose one view or the other, so they are in a sense ‘free’ to choose between the competing standpoints for practical purposes. In spite of this, I shall finally explain in what sense the dispute can still be regarded as ‘minimally substantive’.
Realists hold that there is something that scientific models correctly describe. Given the successful use of these devices, they claim that our
The Meinongian approach to scientific models is parallel to the neo-Meinongian view of fictional character. According to them, the truth of sentences like “A perfect sphere of uniform mass density would produce a gravitational field of uniform magnitude at all points on its surface” must be taken literally. Here, the perfect sphere is taken to be a non-existent object: the non-existent object truly described in that sentence and which turn out to have all of the properties ascribed to it. The immediate consequence of this account is that it makes possible to quantify over entities that do not exist and to distinguish existence from quantification. A distinction, however, many philosophers claim to find incomprehensible.
Another view along similar lines takes models systems to be (existing)
[…] The simple pendulum described in a model is said to have a certain length and to move through space over time in a certain way, but abstracta of course cannot do that. (Thomson-Jones 2010, 13)
A move that was advanced to avoid the puzzle is to claim that abstract objects possess the properties ascribed to them in the model, but possess them in a ‘special’ way. Edward N. Zalta (1983) develops this idea distinguishing two modes of presentations:
In sum, choosing one of the previous route, it could be possible, in principle, to avoid contradictions. Nonetheless, in any case, the original attractions of the realist account would be undermined, namely the idea that model descriptions can be straightforwardly compared (for isomorphism) with the real-world target systems (Thomson-Jones 2010, 15). In fact, embracing, for instance, Zalta’s stategy, we end up to take the relevant abstracta to bear some other different kind of relation to their properties (encoding them), from the one borne by the target systems (exemplifying them).
These difficulties of realism have led some to defend an opposite view about scientific models. According to anti-realists we are wrong to take statements about model systems literally, as genuine descriptions of certain (kind of) objects. They hold that some parts of the scientific enterprise do not correspond to anything in reality.
Anyway, to date, one of the most promising reaction to the realist account of scientific models is to adopt a so called ‘pretense view’, according to which we do not need to posit any kind of objects at all, but we just pretend that there are. We do not need to think of statements about model systems literally, as accurate descriptions of a certain (kind of) object, instead we should take such statements as props in games of make-believe. In short, model systems usually are presented to us by way of descriptions and such “[…] model descriptions should be understood as props in games of make-believe” (Frigg 2010a, 260). In particular, Frigg (2010a, 2010b) applies Walton’s theory of fiction to scientific models. Walton (1990, chap.2) maintains that, when we read a fictional text, we are supposed to imagine things according to certain rules. In the same way, Frigg treats scientific models as imaginary creations. As “[…] fictional propositions are ones for which there is a prescription to the effect that they have to be imagined” (Walton 1990, 39), model descriptions must be taken as prescriptions to imagine that there are certain objects with the relevant properties:
It is fictional that the model system has these properties, roughly, if the model-description, together with the appropriate rules of generation, enjoins us to imagine that there is a system that has these properties. (Frigg 2010c, 268)
Therefore, as well as Walton’s renounces the postulation of fictional entities, a theory of scientific modeling based on this account is free of ontological commitments to any Meinongian or abstract objects, and so there is no ontology of them to give (Frigg 2010a, 264). In conclusion, on Frigg’s proposal, scientific models turn out to be ontologically like works of fiction: model descriptions give rise to model systems, which are “Akin to characters and places in literary fiction” (Frigg 2010b, 100). For example, when a model description reports that “An ideal tuning fork vibrates at just one frequency”, it is not describing a concrete object (the ideal tuning fork) that does not exist, nor it is committed to the existence of an abstract object as having properties it could not have (a vibration). Instead, according to the pretense view, the model-description of the ideal tuning fork serves as a prop in a game in which we have to imagine that there is a concrete object, which vibrates at just one frequency.
However, attempts at treating scientific models as work of fiction present at least two sorts of worries. Firstly, Frigg treats all discourses about scientific models as implicitly involving games of pretense. Not just the ‘internal’ discourse about the objects as described in the model (for instance, when we say
If we were to understand model-systems in the same way that Walton understands fictional characters then it seems that we would conclude that there are no model systems. […] If there are no model-systems then there can be no facts about them and we cannot establish an object-to-object [representation] relation between model-systems and the world. (2012, 58)
Frigg attempted to handle this difficulty by suggesting that we analyze ‘transfictional’ statements (the statements which compare the model systems with the target system) as comparisons of properties, which are unproblematic (Frigg 2010a, 263). For example, saying that some actual rabbit population behaves like a population in a model, we are taking the fiction to have certain properties which can be compared to the properties of a real rabbit population. But, as Godfrey-Smith promptly replied,
It is not clear that giving an explanation of modeling in terms of un-instantiated properties is more down-to-earth than giving one in terms of non-existent objects. (2009, 114)
So, what is the moral? The moral here is not that such views cannot be made coherent: as I tried to briefly show, they perhaps can be, in a way or another.
—They are typically not resolvable by empirical means.
—Disputants deny they could resolve them even if work in linguistics or lexicography showed definitively how the relevant terms are used in our community.
—Disputants are not simply interpreted as talking past each other.
These odd features are also the hallmarks of what David Plunkett and Tim Sundell (2013) have called ‘metalinguistic negotiations’ (albeit their target was not meta-ontology, but meta-ethics). Debates understood as metalinguistic negotiations are debates that concern a distinctive normative question: how best to use the relevant terms relative to the context at hand. They are “Debates that involve negotiating the appropriate use of a piece of language” (Plunkett and Sundell 2013, 15) and that reflect disagreements about how (or whether) those very terms ought to or should
Now, a further suggestion that I have advanced is that the two parties’ claims are not to be viewed so much as truth - apt claims, but rather, as proposals to how to extend the future uses of the concept under debate. (Stojanovic 2011, 13)
We can sum up some hallmarks of metalinguistic negotiations which make them particularly persistent and hard to resolve as follows (Plunkett and Sundell 2013, 3); Plunkett 2015, 847):
1.The disagreements cannot be resolved just by adding empirical information. They do not go away even if the disputants agree on all ‘facts’, nor any further discoveries might resolve things one way or the other
2.They do not go away even if disputants recognize that they are using the relevant terms in different way.
3.They do not go away even if the disputants agree about how the word is
It is important to notice that the extent of the relevant negotiations involved vary greatly. Metalinguistic negotiations are not confined to gradable adjectives or other context-sensitive expressions, but they can even concern words that are seemingly quite fixed in their meaning. They may simply involve pressing for one way of precisifying a vague term (or a term that is indeterminate in some of its areas of application), or involve advocating more substantial changes in the ways a term is to be used (or whether it is to be used at all).
Consider, for instance, the case originally introduced by Peter Ludlow in his paper
Then their disagreement turns precisely on the question of what one ought to count as a publication. To put it differently, whether an online conference working paper should or shouldn’t fall in its extension. Given this indeterminacy, a practical issue will arise for Didi and Naomi (and, more generally, for their academic community) to decide whether or not to extend the concept of ‘publication’ in such a way as to include among its instances a certain kind of “new” objects, namely, online conference working papers, or not. (Stojanovic 2011, 12)
Note that unlike the cases of metalinguistic sharpening involving gradable adjectives, there is little reason to think that the relevant linguistic expressions here (‘athlete’ and ‘publication’) are semantically context-sensitive. Moreover, in these two examples, there is little reason to think that the disputes concern straightforward factual matters about the topics at hand. The speakers mutually know all of the facts about Secretariat’s speed, strength, etc., and what races, awards, metals he won, etc., and in the same way, Didi and Noemi know all about Khaled’s academic history. Instead, these disputes are best seen at the pragmatic level as being metalinguistic negotiations; that is to say, disputes about which of the senses of ‘athlete’ and ‘publication’ are best to use.
The exchange between realists and fictionalists about the existence of scientific models may be understood in a similar way. If we take the meaning of a word to be the concept it expresses in a context, such a kind of dispute reflects a disagreement about which among some set of competing concepts should be used in the context at hand. Therefore, on the assumption that the given exchange is a metalinguistic negotiation, the immediate topic of disagreement in that exchange turns out to be one in ‘conceptual ethics’
These normative questions about thought and talk—how should we use our words? which concepts should we use? how should we use them? —are questions in what we will call
Fictionalism can be helpfully undestood as a position in conceptual ethics insofar as fictionalists advocate the distinctly normative view that we ought to use the relevant concept(s) within the scope of some sort of pretense. We can distinguish two sorts of questions in conceptual ethics:
i.Should we use a given concept?
ii.And if so, how should we use it exactly?
Unlike eliminativists, fictionalists answer the first question affirmatively; but unlike realists, they invoke a kind of make-believe to answer the second. Even if, according to them, there are not any objects which scientific models refer to, there may still be good reasons to continue thinking and talking ‘as if’ there were. Fictionalism is usually motivated by the desire to strike a compromise between the theoretical value of representing the world correctly and the practical value of exploiting whatever conceptual resources help us get by (Burgess and Plunkett 2013a, 1103).
However, in order to interpret model talk as implicitly in the context of such a pretense, a sort of revisionary work seems to be needed: revisions to the face-value understanding of discourses about model systems. As stated by Toon:
When scientists appear to talk about theoretical models as objects […] we
Therefore, in order to avoid endorsing what they consider false or defective thoughts, fictionalists construe (or suggest to construe) discourses about models as falling within the scope of an (high-order, intensional) operator like: ’imagine’, ‘assume’, or ‘consider’, to the effect of remarking that they are not literally true. Indeed, in Walton’s words, “[…] fictional propositions are ones for which there is a prescription to the effect that they have to be imagined” (Walton 1990, 39), prescriptions to imagine that there are certain objects with the relevant properties. Adding qualifications to what would otherwise be an assertion (or a series of assertions), which have the effect of cancelling the assertoric force, fictionalists get exactly the revisions that are needed to treat such discourses pretensefully. In this way, they try to give readings that do not threaten “To force mysterious entities on us” (Walton 1990, 416), engaging in “Voodoo metaphysics” (Walton 1990, 385).
While it seems plausible to apply metalinguistic negotiation to at least some classical debates in metaphysics,
But, can this account also apply to the dispute between realists and fictionalists about the existence of scientific models? In principle, such a debate cannot be resolved neither through empirical work (by appealing to facts or evidence of any kind), nor using standard analytic/conceptual methods (such as mathematical reasoning and proof).
The alternative is therefore to understand the fictionalist’s ontological claim (“The objects described in scientific models do not exist, they are just fictional objects”) and the realist’s claim (“The objects described in models exist—in some form”) as normative claims, i.e. as proposals to adopt one linguistic form or the other, hence as proposals of how we should talk about models (whether within the scope of a pretense operator or not). Specifically, they do so in a metalinguistic way: not describing one use rather than the other, but directly illustrating them. For example, the fictionalist uttering: “Imagine a mathematical pendulum to have a certain length and to move through space over time in a certain way...”, and the realist: “The mathematical pendulum of a certain length moves through space over time in a certain way...”. These sentences must be taken as illustrative examples which pick out linguistic rules
In this way, even though realists’ and fictionalists’ claims about the existence of scientific models seem to express ontological commitment to reality being a particular way, they turn out to express practical commitments to the adoption of some linguistic forms or others.
But, on what grounds can we advocate changes in the way our terms or concepts ought to be used? The point I wish to outline here is precisely that such changes in the ways the relevant terms are to be used (or which concepts we ought to use) are often advanced not in the light of metaphysical discoveries, but rather on practical grounds. That is to say, the grounds for pressing one view or another are, after all, practical. According to the circumstances, by choosing one linguistic form or another may help scientists better describe the model in question and, as a result, better express their scientific theories and reason through their consequences. ‘Better’ in each case presumably means better in terms of greater clarity, precision, avoidance of difficulties (better on practical grounds). Moreover, appeals may be made to practical advantages in simplifying calculations and predictions in the model, or just in simplifying the description and presentation of the model itself. For instance, using the relevant terms not within the scope of a pretense aids scientists in describing models in a concise way and to avoid the cumbersomeness of scientific explanation and prediction if we attempt to use the relevant terms within the scope of a pretense. By speaking literally of a mass point (a body with nonzero mass and with zero volume)
On the other hand, the use of fictional/pretenseful discourse for terms like ‘point mass’ or ‘mathematical pendulum’ (that enables us to say we are merely pretending that there are point mass and mathematical pendulum) may serve to suggest and highlight important disanalogies between those terms and theoretical terms
But at any rate, such considerations must be handled on a case-by-case basis. Depending on what is important and what is not for a given purpose (but also depending on the shared background knowledge of the participants in the communication), scientists may shift the focus of attention. By communicating information in a certain way they make clear what is important and what is supposed to be correctable. In short, to choose one way of speaking or the other could be taken as a stipulative enterprise in which the parties aim to decide how the relevant terms in a model description ought to be used, given certain practical interests or purposes.
As a consequence, in the event that parties made their normative statements explicit (the fictionalist explicitly claiming “We should adopt the linguistic rule that allows us to use model descriptions inside a pretense operator” and the realist claiming: “We should not, instead we should take them at face value”) the disagreement would soon turn into an instance of ‘deep disagreement’,
The root issue at the heart of a deep disagreement is the question of which (linguistic) rules we ought to employ. This problem is distinct from the question of whether it is true that they are. Moreover, it is a not a problem that will be resolved by appealing to epistemic reasons. Deep disagreements are rationally irresolvable and the best explanation for why deep disagreements are rationally irresolvable is that there are no objectively true linguistic rules.
Obviously, the fact that an ontological dispute can be recast as a metalinguistic negotiation undermines its ontological substantivity. Where, it is usually argued that in order to be ontological substantive or significant, an ontological debate must fulfill at least the two following requirements:
i.To have realist or anti-realist ontological commitments.
ii.To contend that one language is objectively more ontologically fitting than the other.
Nevertheless, there is room for an account that may illuminate a ‘minimal’ (or ‘deflationist’) sense in which the dispute at stake can be deemed as ontologically substantive.
Since, according to the deflationist standpoint, one may come to (legitimately) infer the existence of the entities in question regardless of any empirical evidence or metaphysical discovery, those entities could be thought as, in some sense, independent from the empirical world, with a deflated ontological status.
I will (for brevity) sometimes refer to my view simply as the ‘deflationary’ position. But of course this term can be and has been used in a variety of ways, and on my view we should
And again:
I think, however, that we should not suggest that the entities to which we become committed are in general ‘thin and inconsequential’, ‘ontologically shallow’, or that their existence is somehow to be understood in a deflationary manner. Instead, we should simply say that such entities exist—full stop—and adopt a simple realist view of them. (Tohomasson 2015, 146)
Thereby, the only difference with more ‘heavy-duty’ forms of realism lies in the motivations for accepting the entities in question. In fact, she does not argue for them by suggesting that the relevant entities are ‘posits’ that explain phenomena. Contrary to Platonists, for instance, she does not appeal to explanatory power or the like to justify her acceptance of them.
In short, the view outlined here does not deflate the notion of existence (or at least not necessarily) but rather it aims to deflate debates about existence questions. An ontological debate is deflated insofar it does not aim to select the language that “carves the world at its joints”
The primary advantages of this sort of deflationary approach are epistemological: for we can account of the persistence and difficulty of the ontological debate about the existence of scientific models without implying substantive forms of meta-ontology. That is to say, without appealing to fugitive ontological facts that are detectable neither by direct empirical methods nor by conceptual analysis (requiring nothing ‘epistemically metaphysical’ (Sider 2011, 187)). Instead, the disputants in such a debate can be seen as engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation (advocating for ways we should employ the relevant terms and concepts), rather than in reporting metaphysical discoveries or reporting discoveries about the world.
The idea put forward here does not really differ from Carnap’s approach, according to which an ontological question is a matter of “Practical decision concerning the structure of language, not a theoretical question as their formulation seems to suggest” (Carnap 1950, 23), where acceptance of a certain linguistic form is judged according to its expediency and fruitfulness given certain intended aims. Or better, as is well-known, the later Carnap held that there are two different ways of asking and answering questions concerning the existence or reality of entities: internal and external questions.
‘Internal questions’ are questions that arise
On the contrary, ‘external questions’ are categorial questions asked before (or
On Carnap’s original view, even though they are expressed in object-language terms, what ontologists are doing can be more charitably understood as asking external questions. And they are only legitimately understood as practical in character, i.e. as questions of the form: should we adopt this framework? Would it be useful? Carnap plainly sums up the point as follow:
Those who raise the question of the reality of the thing world itself have perhaps in mind not a theoretical question as their formulation seems to suggest, but rather a practical question, a matter of a practical decision concerning the structure of our language. We have to make the choice whether or not to accept and use the forms of expression in the framework in question. (207)
These questions should perhaps to be answered within the enterprise of what he called ‘conceptual engineering’ or ‘linguistic engineering’ (as opposed to the pure descriptive work in syntax or semantics, generally engaged by linguists). In Carnap’s mature conception, different language structures can be chosen as a means to formulate theoretical assertions in a way analogous to how an engineer chooses an instrument:
I admit that the choice of a language suitable for the purposes of physics and mathematics involves problems quite different from those involved in the choice of a suitable motor fora freight airplane; but, in a sense, both are engineering problems, and I fail to see why metaphysics should enter into the first any more than into the second. (43)
Conceptual or linguistic frameworks are tools, so we do neither have to prove their correctness, nor we do have to agree on which ones to use. But, we can test their suitability for various practical purposes. The acceptance of a linguistic framework may in fact “Be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended to be used” without the need of “Any theoretical justification, because it does not imply any assertion of reality” (214).
Likewise, in the dispute between realists and fictionalists about the existence of scientific models, each party may use an ontological assertion of that sort to positively or negatively evaluate the adoption of a linguistic form which, in turn, may have certain characteristics, consequences, practical advantages or disadvantages. Their claims have thereby to be understood in terms of practical considerations about which linguistic resource we should choose: for example, the one which is more useful or convenient to adopt by appealing to practical virtues or non-epistemic values (such as, among others, greater efficiency, fruitfulness, simplicity, etc.). In short, the purposes for which a linguistic form is intended to be used will determine which factors are relevant for the decision: the efficiency, fruitfulness and simplicity of the use of the thing language may be among the decisive factors. Of course, the implicit practical purposes which realists appeal to in order to take discourse about scientific models at face value and the implicit practical purposes which fictionalists appeal to in order to talk about scientific models within the scope of a pretense operator can be various and different (among, for instance, efficiency, fruitfulness, simplicity, etc.) and such criteria are to be assessed on the basis of a case-by-case analysis.
In this paper I explored the possibility to understand the ontological dispute between realists and anti-realists (in particular, fictionalists) about scientific models in terms of metalinguistic negotiation. I argued that their respective ontological claims have a different function than that of referring; in other words, their work does not consist in representing a certain range of entities in the world or describing pieces of reality, but rather to perform a function that is fundamentally non-descriptive. Indeed, although the disputants seem to be engaged in a factual disagreement, they are best seen as pragmatically advocating ways in which we should think and talk about scientific models. As such, their ontological claims turn out be covertly normative (they carry a normative component) and the dispute, at bottom, normatively motivated. Accordingly, an essential feature of such an ontological dispute is that it is practical; that is to say, it has as a purpose to influence and regulate their behavior. In particular, it may serve them to coordinate with each other in the linguistic practice about scientific models. In this way, it is possible to account for its persistency, which grounds in the difficulty of addressing deep normative questions, without implying that it is pointless and without undermine its depth and importance.
Moreover, I argued that, depending on the circumstances, parties in the debate aim to decide which linguistic form to adopt given certain practical purposes. However, the dispute can be viewed as ‘minimally substantive’, in the sense that, even though linguistic choices turn out to be largely a practical matter, they can in principle affect our ontological commitments.
Or, in Stojanovic (2011), ‘forward-looking disagreement’.
Thomson-Jones (2010, 284) defines them as ‘descriptions of missing systems’
In particular, see van Inwagen (2004, 126-138).
Some, like van Fraassen (1980), would say that if by chance the abstract terms used by scientists did denote something real, we have no way of knowing it.
In this respect, a possible alternative is the so called ‘artifactualist’ view: an hybrid position according to which model systems are abstract objects created by scientists, mind-dependent social and cultural objects such as laws and nations, stories and symphonies. The key point of the artifactualist approach is to allow that in external
Take as faultless disagreement, roughly those in which (i) the two parties truly disagree, (ii) they are both right (from their own perspectives), and (iii) they both believe that the other is wrong.
See, for instance, Belleri (2017) for a way of understanding the debate between endurantists and perdurantists as a case of metalinguistic negotiation. Plunkett (2015, 842) also argues that «Some (perhaps many) philosophical disputes are metalinguistic negotiations» (2015, 853), focusing on questions of ground, supervenience, and real definition rather than the existence questions.
As ontological debates, I take into account here the philosophical debates about existence that are typically thought not to be ‘settled’ even when the disputing parties agree about the empirical facts.
For instance, questions about the existence of prime numbers between twenty and thirty may be resolved appealing to Euclid’s Theorem that there are infinitely many prime numbers.
For other definitions of verbal dispute, which I will not discuss here, see Jenkins (2014) and Chalmers (2011).
Roughly, by ‘linguistic rules’ I mean both semantic and syntactic rules.
Nevertheless, on this view, commitments articulated by their statements are not practical commitments in the traditional sense of being a commitment to act (moving our bodies towards some end) in accord with some prescriptions. Rather they are commitments to speaking (and consequently, thinking and reasoning) in some ways. Therefore the commitment expressed by one who uses a statement of that sort is not conceived, in the first instance, as an ontological commitment to the way reality is, but rather a commitment to think and reason in a particular way.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for drawing me out on this issue.
Theoretical terms are terms that refer to the unobservable entities that scientific theories posit to explain or predict empirical results and which have empirical existence presuppositions. Inaccessible to experience, their claim to conviction derives from the acceptability of the theories in which they figure. Examples of theoretical entities are normally thought to be electrons, fields, and genes, but also entities advanced by theories at the frontiers of physics whose concrete existence is still uncertain, such as strings and gravitons.
‘Vulcan’ or ‘Phlogiston’ are classical examples of empirical presuppositions that turned out to fail.
See Lynch (2010).
Or better, it perhaps possible to consider objectively true the linguistic rules in force in practice but, as already stated, neither of the two rules seems unambiguously grounded in scientific practice.
For the requirements for an ontological dispute to be substantive see, for example, Sider (2009, 385) and Manley (2009, 4).
Of course, there can likely be some resistance to treating the existence question at hand as a question to be answered in such a deflationary way. For this might seem to some to give us entities too cheaply. Indeed, some might ask: Why should we think that such a method can reveal ontological commitments? This feeling stems, I think, from an impulse to pursue a certain kind of ‘deep’ ontology, or, as Frank Jackson (1998, 1–5) has called it, ‘serious metaphysics’. According to which, the primary role of the ontologist addressing existence questions is not to undertake a certain kind of conceptual analysis, but rather to engage in deep discoveries about what
Many different substantive criteria have been proposed and utilized as conditions for what it takes for entities to exist. For instance, the ‘Eleatic’ criterion: «Everything that exists makes a difference to the causal powers of something» (Armstrong 1997, 41; see also his 1978, vol. 2, 5), promoted by David Armstrong and later endorsed by Kim (1993, 348–49) and Trenton Merricks (2001, chapter 3). Another common proposal worth mentioning is that for things to exist they must be (in some sense) mind-independent, as George Lakoff puts it: «Existence cannot depend in any way on human cognition» (1987, 164); or Jody Azzouni’s criterion of ontological independence from «Any psychological or linguistic process whatever» (2004, 113). Still other criteria for existence are sometimes considered, for example, trackability, observability, or other forms of epistemic robustness (Elder 1989, 440).
See especially: Hale and Wright (2001); Schiffer (2003); Rayo (2013).
For instance, Schiffer (2003) defends this idea.
See Thomasson (2015, Chapter 3).
Even if «Introducing the new nominative vocabulary that enables us to refer to new kinds of objects might, however, pragmatically enhance our ability to formulate explanations, and might in that sense aid in explanation» (2015, 157).
See also Agustín Rayo’s arguments against what he calls the ‘metaphysicalist’ position that for an atomic sentence to be true there must be a certain kind of correspondence between the logical form of a sentence and the metaphysical structure of reality (Rayo 2013, 6-11).
See Sider (2011,
Thanks to an anonymous referee for asking me to clarify this distinction.
Contrary to what is maintained, among others, by heavyweight metaphysicians in the neo-Quinean tradition, who think of themselves as doing work of a piece with science, weighing up the merits of competing theories about the world just as a scientist does.
Note that, insofar a framework is understood as a system of noun terms and predicates (and the set of rules governing their use) it is also quite consistent with Carnap’s account to endorse the idea that different frameworks do not differ in using quantifier with a different meaning and that the meaning of the quantifier does not vary across different frameworks (see, for instance, Thomasson 2015, Chapter 1.5).
For instance, questions about the existence of prime numbers between twenty and thirty may be resolved by mathematical reasoning. From these we may also make easy inferences to answer more general questions. For if there are primes between twenty and thirty, then there are numbers (Thomasson 2015, 11)