Must Naturalism Lead to a Deflationary Meta-Ontology?

Metaphysica 15 (2):347-367 (2014)
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Abstract

Huw Price has argued that naturalistic philosophy inevitably leads to a deflationary approach to ontological questions. In this paper, I rebut these arguments. A more substantive, less language-focused approach to metaphysics remains open to naturalists. However, rebutting one of Price’s main arguments requires rejecting Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment. So, even though Price’s argument is unsound, it reveals that naturalists cannot rest content with broadly Quinean, “mainstream metaphysics,” which, I suggest, naturalists also have independent reasons to reject.

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Matthew Haug
William & Mary

Citations of this work

Naturalistic Metaphysics at Sea.Matthew Haug - 2018 - Philosophical Inquiries 6 (1):95-122.
The Possibility of Naturalized Metaphysics.Rasmus Jaksland - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Copenhagen

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References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
Naturalism in mathematics.Penelope Maddy - 1997 - New York: Oxford University Press.
On What There Is.W. V. O. Quine - 2011 - In Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin (eds.), The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present. Princeton University Press. pp. 221-233.

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