Metaphilosophy

by

Yuri Cath

• LAST REVIEWED: 22 November 2022
• LAST MODIFIED: 29 June 2011
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0074

Introduction

Often philosophers have reason to ask fundamental questions about the aims, methods, nature, or value of their own discipline. When philosophers systematically examine such questions, the resulting work is sometimes referred to as “metaphilosophy.” Metaphilosophy, it should be said, is not a well-established, or clearly demarcated, field of philosophical inquiry like epistemology or the philosophy of art. However, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries there has been a great deal of metaphilosophical work on issues concerning the methodology of philosophy in the analytic tradition. This article focuses on that work.

General Overviews

Currently there is a lack of more general overviews of metaphilosophy or philosophical methodology. However, there are a number of good overviews of more narrowly defined topics within these areas. Braddon-Mitchell and Nola 2009 outlines the influential “Canberra Plan” project in philosophical methodology. Manley 2009 provides a very useful overview of the recent literature on metametaphysics, as does Eklund 2006. Nagel 2007 provides an excellent overview of the literature on epistemic intuitions. Daniels 2009 gives a good overview of work in moral philosophy on the method of reflective equilibrium. Gutting 2009 is a book on philosophical knowledge that closely examines the methods of a number of famous philosophers. Papineau 2009 is a survey article on naturalism that includes a good overview of methodological naturalism. Alexander and Weinberg 2007 gives a good introduction to the experimental philosophy movement and some of the most important works in that literature—see also Knobe and Nichols 2008 cited under Anthologies and Collections.

• Alexander, Joshua, and Jonathan M. Weinberg. “Analytic Epistemology and Experimental Philosophy.” Philosophy Compass 2.1 (2007): 56–80.

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  A good survey article on experimental philosophy. Distinguishes two importantly different views of the relationship between experimental philosophy and traditional philosophy, responds to criticisms of experimental philosophy, and suggests future directions for research in this area.

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• Braddon-Mitchell, David, and Robert Nola. “Introducing the Canberra Plan.” In Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism. Edited by David Braddon-Mitchell and Robert Nola, 1–20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

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  A useful introduction to the project in philosophical methodology and conceptual analysis known as the “Canberra Plan,” associated most closely with the work of Frank Jackson and David Lewis. Describes the origins of the Canberra Plan in work by Ramsey, Carnap, and Lewis on theoretical terms.

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• Daniels, Norman. “Reflective Equilibrium” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. 2009.

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  A good introduction to the method of reflective equilibrium, focused primarily on the extensive literature on this subject in moral philosophy.

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• Eklund, Matti. “Metaontology.” Philosophy Compass 1.3 (2006): 317–334.

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  A good survey article of some of the central issues in recent metametaphysical debates about the status and methodology of disputes in ontology.

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• Gutting, Gary. What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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  A book arguing that analytic philosophy as a discipline has achieved a great deal of knowledge over the last fifty years. Unlike many discussions of philosophical methodology, this book has the important virtue of basing its conclusions on a series of detailed case studies of the methods and arguments of important works in analytic philosophy.

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• Manley, David. “Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 1–37. Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.

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  An excellent first introduction to debates in metametaphysics on the question of what, if any, metaphysical disputes are trivial or merely verbal disputes.

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• Nagel, Jennifer. “Epistemic Intuitions.” Philosophy Compass 2.6 (2007): 792–819.

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  A very good overview of metaphilosophical debates about the status and nature of epistemic intuitions; also shows how empirical evidence from linguistics and psychology connects with these debates.

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• Papineau, David. “Naturalism” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. 2009.

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  This article contains a very good introduction to methodological naturalism. It clearly explains the difference between methodological and ontological versions of naturalism and examines the relation of methodological naturalism to conceptual analysis and the use of intuitions in philosophy.

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Anthologies and Collections

There are a growing number of collections on topics related to philosophical methodology. Beyer and Burri 2007 is a collection of essays on the possibility, character, and scope of philosophical knowledge. Braddon-Mitchell and Nola 2009 is a collection of papers on the influential “Canberra Plan” approach to philosophical methodology, associated most closely with the work of Frank Jackson and David Lewis. Ravenscroft 2009 is a collection of critical papers on Jackson’s work, and many of these papers address his influential views on conceptual analysis and philosophical methodology. The papers in Knobe and Nichols 2008 develop or examine the program of experimental philosophy. DePaul and Ramsey 1998 is a collection on intuitions that predates, but is still relevant to, later debates about experimental philosophy and the practice of appealing to intuitions in philosophy. Chalmers, et al. 2009 is a collection on metametaphysics.

• Beyer, Christian, and Alex Burri, eds. Philosophical Knowledge: Its Possibility and Scope. Grazer Philosophische Studien 74. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.

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  A collection on philosophical knowledge that contains a number of papers dealing with questions about methodology and the role of intuitions in philosophy.

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• Braddon-Mitchell, David, and Robert Nola, eds. Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

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  An excellent collection of papers on the “Canberra Plan” project in philosophical methodology, many of which examine foundational questions about how this project should be interpreted and developed.

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• Chalmers, David J., David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, eds. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.

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  A collection of new papers on metametaphysics by leading figures in the field. Essential reading for anyone working in this area.

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• DePaul, Michael, and William Ramsey, eds. Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.

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  A collection of papers on intuitions, many of which criticize or defend the role of intuitions in the method of cases and the method of reflective equilibrium. Contains a number of works arguing that the psychological literature on intuitions has skeptical implications for the philosophical practice of appealing to intuitions. Predates the experimental philosophy movement, but many of its papers are still widely cited in the experimental philosophy literature.

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• Knobe, Joshua, and Shaun Nichols, eds. Experimental Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

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  A volume on experimental philosophy that collects together a number of important existing papers, as well as a few new papers. Overall an excellent volume, although note that it does not contain many works from the growing literature devoted to debating the alleged skeptical implications of experimental philosophy for the methods of traditional philosophy—the contribution from Sosa being the most notable exception.

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• Knobe, Joshua, Tania Lombrozo, and Edouard Machery, eds. Special Issue: Psychology and Experimental Philosophy. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1.2–3 (2010).

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  A special issue (in two parts) of this interdisciplinary journal is devoted to work on experimental philosophy and contains a number of interesting papers.

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• Ravenscroft, Ian, ed. Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson. Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.

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  A collection of papers on the work of Frank Jackson, many of which critique his views on philosophical methodology and conceptual analysis—see especially the papers by Blackburn, Horgan and Timmins, Hornsby, Lycan, Price, and Schroeter and Bigelow, as well as Jackson’s replies to these critics.

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Blogs, Lectures, and Other Resources

This section includes some online resources that are useful for research on metaphilosophy. The Arché Methodology Project Weblog is a weblog connected to a research project on philosophical methodology and intuitions. Certain Doubts is an epistemology weblog that regularly has posts on methodological issues in epistemology. The 2010 John Locke Lectures by David Chalmers deal with a number of central issues in metaphilosophy, including the possibility of a priori knowledge and the nature of verbal disputes. Experimental Philosophy contains links to almost all the published papers in experimental philosophy. The Experimental Philosophy Weblog is the leading online forum for the discussion of new work in experimental philosophy. PhilPapers is an online directory of philosophy articles and books that is very useful for researching issues in philosophical methodology. Thoughts Argument and Rants is a philosophy weblog that often has posts on issues in philosophical methodology.

• Arché Methodology Project Weblog.

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  A weblog devoted to discussing issues concerning philosophical methodology; also has links to papers and conference announcements.

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• Certain Doubts.

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  An epistemology weblog that often has interesting posts related to issues in metaepistemology, such as the import of results from experimental philosophy for debates between contextualists, interest-relative invariantists, and traditional invariantists.

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• Chalmers, David. The 2010 John Locke Lectures.

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  In these lectures Chalmers addresses a number of issues that are important for philosophical methodology, including the debates between Carnap and Quine over the analytic-synthetic distinction. The website has handouts, slides, and audio files from the lectures and a link to another webpage where you can download chapters of a manuscript on which the lectures are based. Chapter 9 is an already influential discussion of verbal disputes.

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• Experimental Philosophy.

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  A webpage with links to almost all of the published papers in experimental philosophy; also has links to forthcoming papers, information about what journals have been publishing in experimental philosophy, and a list of experimental philosophy labs and organizations.

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• Experimental Philosophy Weblog.

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  This weblog has regular posts on experimental philosophy by leading figures in the field, as well as links to new papers and conference announcements.

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• PhilPapers.

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  An online directory of philosophical articles and books. This is a fantastic resource for research in any area of philosophy, including metaphilosophy.

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• Thoughts Arguments and Rants.

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  A leading philosophy weblog that regularly has good posts on metaphilosophical issues.

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The Method of Cases and Conceptual Analysis

The method of cases is a practice of testing and then refining philosophical theories by seeing whether or not they conflict with our intuitions or judgments about particular cases (where these are often hypothetical cases or thought experiments). The method of cases is often closely associated, or even identified, with the philosophical project of conceptual analysis, although a number of philosophers argue that this is a mistake. This section is divided into four subsections: Defenses lists works that defend (more or less) traditional accounts of the method of cases or conceptual analysis; Criticisms lists works that question the method of cases or conceptual analysis; Revisionary Accounts lists works that develop or examine revisionary accounts of the method of cases and conceptual analysis; and Background lists some central works in the philosophy of language and meaning that regularly inform contemporary discussions of conceptual analysis.

The Method of Reflective Equilibrium

The method of reflective equilibrium is a procedure for forming and evaluating beliefs or theories. The method of narrow reflective equilibrium is a process of making mutual adjustments to two sets of initial judgments—particular case judgments about a target domain and judgments about what general principles govern that domain—until the remaining judgments are brought into a state of balance or “reflective equilibrium.” On the method of wide reflective equilibrium, another set of judgments is added into this process, namely, any judgments about subjects outside of the target domain that bear on one’s (particular or general) judgments about that domain. The method of reflective equilibrium is most frequently discussed in moral philosophy. However, it is often also claimed that it is the primary method used for forming and evaluating philosophical theories in general. This section consists of a selection of important works from the ethics literature as well as works addressing the more general application of this method in philosophy. Rawls 1999 is a famous work in political philosophy in which the term “reflective equilibrium” was first introduced. Goodman 1954 outlines a method for assessing rules of inference that is often identified as being the first full articulation of a version of the method of reflective equilibrium. Daniels 1979 appeals to the distinction between narrow and wide reflective equilibrium in responding to criticisms of reflective equilibrium. Lewis 1973 offers a short but influential statement of a form of reflective equilibrium. Williamson 2007 argues that reflective equilibrium is inadequate as a model of the methods used in philosophy. Cummins 1998 and Stich 1988 both criticize the use of reflective equilibrium in philosophy because of its reliance on intuitions. Sosa 1991 defends reflective equilibrium against Stich’s criticisms. Pust in chapter 1 of his book Intuitions as Evidence (Pust 2000, cited under Defenses) argues, against Daniels 1979, that not only narrow but also wide reflective equilibrium assigns a foundational role to intuitions. The papers by Cummins and Stich are closely related to some of the criticisms of armchair philosophy made by experimental philosophers—see The Negative Program.

• Cummins, Robert. “Reflections on Reflective Equilibrium.” In Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry. Edited by Michael R. DePaul and William Ramsey, 113–127. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.

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  Claims that what is called “reflective equilibrium” in philosophy is a standard methodology used in the natural sciences, where intuitions are assigned the role played by observations in science. However, Cummins argues that intuitions, unlike observations, are epistemologically useless because they are never calibrated; that is, their presumed reliability as a guide to truths about their targets is never confirmed by independent means.

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• Daniels, Norman. “Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics.” Journal of Philosophy 76.5 (1979): 256–282.

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  An influential defense of reflective equilibrium against the charge that it is a disguised form of subjective intuitionism. Concedes that narrow reflective equilibrium can be regarded as a sophisticated form of intuitionism. However, Daniels argues that wide reflective equilibrium is not a form of intuitionism, as it allows extensive revisions of our moral judgments in light of our background theories and so does not assign a foundational role to moral intuitions.

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• Goodman, Nelson. Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. London: Athlone, 1954.

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  Offers what is often cited as the first statement of a version of reflective equilibrium. Rules of inference are justified by their accordance with valid judgments about the acceptability of particular inferences, and judgments about particular inferences are justified by their accordance with valid rules of inference. This circularity is virtuous, rather than vicious, because the process of justification is one of making mutual adjustments between rules and accepted inferences.

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• Lewis, Davis. Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwell, 1973.

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  In chapter 4 (p. 88), Lewis gives a short but illuminating description of his influential approach to philosophical inquiry, outlining what is essentially a version of the method of reflective equilibrium.

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• Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

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  Rawls’s famous work in political philosophy in which he suggests that the aim of a theory of justice is to describe our conception of justice. To uncover one’s conception of justice, one should examine different proposed principles of justice and make mutual adjustments between these principles and one’s “considered judgments” about what particular things are just or unjust, until the remaining principles and judgments are in a state of reflective equilibrium. First published 1971 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap).

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• Sosa, Ernest. “Equilibrium in Coherence?” In Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology. By Ernest Sosa, 257–269. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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  Defends reflective equilibrium against the criticisms of Stich 1988. Distinguishes an individual from a social version of reflective equilibrium. Argues that Stich’s critique only undermines the social version of reflective equilibrium, and that the individual version of this method is the one most apt for pursuing the aims of analytic epistemology.

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• Stich, Stephen. “Reflective Equilibrium, Analytic Epistemology, and the Problem of Cognitive Diversity.” Synthese 74 (1988): 391–413.

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  We should expect different cultures to employ different cognitive and reasoning processes. But which of these different ways of reasoning should we use? Reflective equilibrium cannot answer this question because reasoning systems containing unjustified inferential rules could still be brought into reflective equilibrium. Similar problems undermine any epistemological project that holds that the choice between competing justificational rules is a matter that can be resolved by conceptual analysis. Reprinted in DePaul and Ramsey 1998 (cited under Anthologies and Collections), pp. 95–112.

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• Williamson, Timothy. “Evidence in Philosophy.” In The Philosophy of Philosophy. By Timothy Williamson, 208–246. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.

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  In section 7 of chapter 7, Williamson offers some brief but interesting critical remarks about reflective equilibrium related to his broader critique of “psychologistic” conceptions of the evidence used in philosophy.

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Methodological Naturalism

Methodological naturalism is the view that the methods of philosophy are, or should be, continuous with the methods of the natural sciences. (Note the term “methodological naturalism” is also used in the philosophy of religion to name an unrelated view.) Often, but not always, philosophers who endorse this continuity thesis take themselves to be thereby rejecting conceptual analysis, analyticity, and the a priori. This reflects the pervasive influence of Quine’s work on many contemporary philosophers who endorse methodological naturalism—in particular, the vision of a naturalistic approach to epistemology in Quine 1969. As well as Quine 1969, this section lists works that develop, apply, or examine different forms of methodological naturalism. Bealer 1992 argues that Quinean empiricism is incoherent. Kim 1988 argues that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is not really a form of epistemology at all. Devitt 1996 provides a naturalistic methodology for semantics. Haack 1993 distinguishes a moderate from a more radical interpretation of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. Kornblith 2002 develops a form of naturalized epistemology according to which knowledge is a natural kind. Maddy 2007 offers and applies a naturalistic approach to philosophy that the author calls “second philosophy.” Papineau 2009 argues that philosophy is like science in three important ways. See also Prinz’s “Empirical Philosophy and Experimental Philosophy” for an interesting argument for the continuity of traditional conceptual analysis with the methods of the natural sciences (Prinz 2008, cited under The Positive Program).

• Bealer, George. “The Incoherence of Empiricism.” Aristotelian Society supp. 66 (1992): 99–138.

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  Offers three different arguments for the conclusion that Quinean empiricism is incoherent because of its commitment to the claim that intuitions are not evidence. Argues that we should replace Quinean empiricism with “moderate rationalism,” according to which intuitions, like experiences, are a basic source of evidence.

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• Devitt, Michael. Coming to Our Senses: A Naturalistic Program for Semantic Localism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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  Develops a naturalistic methodology for semantics that is then used to argue against various views in semantics, including semantic holism and direct-reference theories of the meaning of names. Also offers a naturalistic account of the role of armchair intuitions and thought experiments in philosophy.

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• Haack, Susan. “The Two Faces of Quine’s Naturalism.” Synthese 94 (1993): 335–356.

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  Argues that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is ambivalent between two very different methodological projects: “modest naturalism” and “scientistic naturalism.” Modest naturalism views epistemology as an a posteriori and empirical discipline. Scientistic naturalism goes further and views epistemology as simply part of empirical psychology. Scientistic naturalism is at odds with the traditional aims of epistemology, but modest naturalism is not. Claims that scientistic naturalism faces serious problems not faced by modest naturalism.

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• Kim, Jaegwon. “What Is ‘Naturalized Epistemology?’” Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988): 381–405.

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  Claims that epistemology is essentially a normative discipline, given its central concern with the normative concept of justification. Argues that “naturalized epistemology” in Quine 1969 is not actually a kind of epistemology at all, as it is committed to replacing the normative aims of epistemology with purely descriptive aims.

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• Kornblith, Hilary. Knowledge and Its Place in Nature. Oxford: Clarendon, 2002.

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  Argues that epistemology should directly examine knowledge itself, as opposed to our concept of knowledge. Appeals to cognitive ecology to support the conclusion that knowledge is a natural kind, and claims that we should use the same kind of empirical means to investigate knowledge that we would use to investigate other natural kinds. Chapter 1 offers a naturalistic account of the role of intuitions in the construction of empirical theories.

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• Maddy, Penelope. Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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  Develops a form of naturalism called “second philosophy.” The “second philosopher” is an idealized figure who is perfectly at home in all of the natural sciences and uses their methods in all attempts to answer philosophical questions. Second philosophy is contrasted with the views of major figures in the history of philosophy and is applied to philosophical issues concerning truth, reference, logic, and mathematics.

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• Papineau, David. “The Poverty of Analysis.” Aristotelian Society supp. 83 (2009): 1–30.

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  Argues that the methods of philosophical inquiry (including the method of cases) are continuous with the methods of scientific inquiry in the following three ways: (1) the claims made by philosophy are synthetic; (2) philosophical knowledge is a posteriori; and (3) the central questions of philosophy concern actuality rather than necessity. Criticizes alternative conceptions of philosophical methodology that reject either of (1), (2), or (3).

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• Quine, W. V. “Epistemology Naturalized.” In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. By W. V. Quine, 69–90. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.

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  Criticizes empiricist attempts to provide an epistemological foundation for science by showing how any statements about the external world can be derived from, or translated into, statements about sense data or sensations. Argues that we should abandon such projects and instead study the psychological and causal relations between our sensations and our beliefs or theories about the external world. Epistemology, on this view, is a chapter of psychology.

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Experimental Philosophy

Experimental philosophy is a recent but already highly active, and controversial, movement in philosophical methodology. Experimental philosophers often appeal to empirical results gathered by professional scientists. But what distinguishes this movement is that experimental philosophers also run their own experiments—sometimes in collaboration with scientists—that are designed to address philosophical and metaphilosophical questions. The movement is particularly known for its use of survey methods as a means of collecting data on people’s intuitions. Following a rough but useful distinction made in the literature, we can distinguish a “negative” from a “positive” program of experimental philosophy. Negative experimental philosophers argue that their experimental results have important skeptical implications for the armchair methods of traditional philosophy—in particular, for the method of cases and the method of reflective equilibrium (see The Method of Cases and Conceptual Analysis and The Method of Reflective Equilibrium). Positive experimental philosophers argue that their results support conclusions about the nature of folk concepts or the mechanisms that underlie our intuitions about the extension of these concepts. Sometimes they also argue that such conclusions provide (indirect) support for philosophical positions concerning the entities picked out by such concepts. This section is divided into two subsections: The Negative Program and The Positive Program.

Metametaphysics

Metametaphysics examines foundational questions about metaphysics. In the early 21st century, there has been a lot of work in metametaphysics on the question of what, if any, debates in ontology are merely verbal, or trivial, as opposed to substantive disputes. Metametaphysics (Chalmers, et al. 2009, cited under Anthologies and Collections) is an excellent volume of new papers, all of which are of a high quality. This section lists a selection of papers from that volume as well as other important works from the literature. Carnap 1950 and Quine 1948 are two historical works that exert a very strong influence over the contemporary literature. Philosophers that argue for a deflationary or antirealist view of metaphysical disputes often align their views with those of Carnap 1950, whereas philosophers who favor a more substantive and realist view of metaphysics typically do the same with respect to Quine 1948. Chalmers 2009, Hirsch 2002, Putnam 1987, and Thomasson 2007 all defend different deflationary stances toward various ontological issues. Sider 2009 and Van Inwagen 2002 each defend strongly realist attitudes toward ontological questions. Bennett 2009 questions the focus in metametaphysics on linguistic or conceptual questions. Discussions of metametaphysics often consider the role of conceptual analysis in metaphysics and the continuity of the methods of philosophy and science (see The Method of Cases and Conceptual Analysis and Methodological Naturalism). See also Paul’s “A New Role for Experimental Work in Metaphysics” (Paul 2010, cited under The Negative Program) for an argument for the relevance of experimental philosophy to metaphysics, and The 2010 John Locke Lectures (cited under Blogs, Lectures, and Other Resources) for a link to an important manuscript on verbal disputes.

• Bennett, Karen. “Composition, Colocation, and Metaontology.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 38–76. Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.

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  Identifies a form of “dismissivism”—the view that there is something deeply wrong with metaphysical disputes—that is epistemological in nature. Criticizes the standard semantic forms of dismissivism. Argues that the epistemic form of dismissivism may be the right attitude toward debates about constitution and composition.

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• Carnap, R. “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4 (1950): 20–40.

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  Famously distinguishes “internal” from “external” existence questions. Internal questions are made within a linguistic framework and concern the existence of entities of the kind that framework was constructed to speak about. External questions are made from the outside of a framework and concern the reality of the framework’s system of entities as a whole.

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• Chalmers, David J. “Ontological Anti-Realism.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 77–129 Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.

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  Distinguishes three positions relating to the question of whether there are objective answers to ontological disputes. Heavyweight and lightweight ontological realists agree that “ontological existence assertions” have objective and determinate truth-values, while ontological antirealists deny this. But lightweight realists, unlike heavyweight realists, claim that such assertions are still somehow trivial or nonsubstantial. Presents arguments against both forms of ontological realism and responds to objections to ontological antirealism.

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• Hirsch, Eli. “Quantifier Variance and Realism.” Philosophical Issues 12 (2002): 51–73.

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  Defends the doctrine of “quantifier variance”—according to which expressions like “there exists something” can be legitimately interpreted both in a way such that they are true and in a way such that they are false—against the charge that it conflicts with realism. Argues that the acceptance of this doctrine supports a deflationary attitude toward existence questions. Identifies the doctrine of quantifier variance with Putnam’s doctrine of “conceptual relativity.”

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• Putnam, Hilary. The Many Faces of Realism. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1987.

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  In lecture 1, Putnam outlines the doctrine of “conceptual relativity,” according to which the notions of object and existence are ambiguous, and appeals to this doctrine to support a deflationary attitude to questions about the total number of objects in the world.

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• Quine, Willard V. “On What There Is.” Review of Metaphysics 2.5 (1948): 21–38.

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  A paper that is often credited with almost single-handedly reviving the reputation of substantial metaphysics in analytic philosophy. Quine takes “the ontological question” to be the question of what exists. The way to answer this question is to accept the existence of only those entities that our best scientific theories are committed to.

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• Sider, T. “Ontological Realism” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 384–423 Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.

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  Defends a realist attitude toward ontological questions and argues against deflationary attitudes based on the doctrine of quantifier variance. Claims that everyone should agree that there are multiple interpretations of quantifiers. The central issue for metaontology is whether any of these quantifier meanings carves nature at the joints better than any of the others. Argues that there is a single best quantifier meaning that carves nature at its joints.

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• Thomasson, Amie L. Ordinary Objects. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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  A defense of a commonsense ontology that rests on a realist but deflationary view of existence questions. The question of whether ordinary objects like tables exist is to be solved by analyzing the application conditions of the word “table,” which analysis reveals that it is a trivial truth that tables exist.

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• Van Inwagen, Peter. “The Number of Things.” Philosophical Issues 12 (2002): 176–196.

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  A critique of the view in Putnam 1987 (and similar ideas in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus) that it is nonsensical to speak of the number of objects in the world.

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