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| Paper IPM / Philosophy / 14435 |
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| Abstract: | |
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How hard is it to answer an ontological question? Ontological trivialism, (ot), inspired
by Carnap's internal-external distinction among "questions of existence", replies "very
easy." According to (ot), almost every ontologically disputed entity trivially exists. (ot)
has been defended by many, including Schiffer (1996; 2003; 2006) and Schaffer (2009).
In this paper, I will take issue with (ot). After introducing the view in the context of
Carnap-Quine dispute and presenting two arguments for it, I will discuss Hofweber's
(2005; 2007) argument against (ot) and explain why it fails. Next, I will introduce a
modified version of ontological trivialism, i.e. negative ontological trivialism, (not),
defended by Hofweber (2005), according to which some ontologically disputed entities,
e.g. properties, (almost) trivially do not exist. I will show that (not) fails too. Then
I will outline a Meinongian answer to the original question, namely, 'How hard is it to
answer an ontological question?' The Carnapian intuition of the triviality of internal
questions can be saved by the Meinongian proposal that quantification and reference
are not ontologically committing and the Quinean intuition of the legitimacy of interesting
ontological questions can be respected by the Meinongian distinction between
being and so-being.
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