Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in MetaontologyEli Hirsch has contributed steadily to metaphysics since his ground-breaking (and much cited) work on identity through time (culminating in the 1982 OUP book The Concept of Identity). Within the last 10 years, his work on realism and quantifier variance has been front-and-center in the minds of many metaphysicians. Metametaphysics, which looks at foundational questions about the very practice of metaphysics and the questions it raises, is now a popular area of discussion. There is a lot of anxiety about what ontology is, and Hirsch's diagnosis of how revisionary ontologists go wrong is one of the main views being discussed. This volume collects HIrsch's essays from the last decade (with the exception of one article from 1978) on ontology and metametaphysics which are very much tied to these debates. His essays develop a distinctive language-based argument against various anti-commonsensical views that have recently dominated ontology. All these views go astray, Hirsch says, by failing to interpret ordinary assertions about existence in a plausibly charitable way, so their philosophizing leads them to misuse language about ontology -- our ordinary concept of 'what exists' -- in favor of a position othat is quite different. Hirsch will supply a new introduction. The volume will interest philosophers of metaphysics currently engaged in these debates. |
Contents
1 A Sense of Unity | 3 |
A Reply to Xu | 27 |
3 Objectivity Without Objects | 36 |
4 The Vagueness of Identity | 45 |
5 Quantifier Variance and Realism | 68 |
6 Against Revisionary Ontology | 96 |
7 Comments on Theodore Siders Four Dimensionalism | 124 |
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Common terms and phrases
accept argument assertions assumption axioms Butlerian English charitable interpretation claim Clinton’s nose common sense concept constraint criteria of unity David Lewis discussion DL-English Eiffel Tower endurantism endurantists example existential existential relativism exists something composed explosionism expression the ship false follows formulation four-dimensionalism four-dimensionalists guage harbor on Monday Hilary Putnam identity imagine imply indeterminate infants interpretive charity intuitive Lewis Lewis’s linguistic community logical joints M-language McGrath mean Mereological Essentialism mereological essentialists mereological sums Metaphysics nominalists notion O∗-English ontological languages ontological sentences ontologists ordinary Oxford University Press P-English perdurantism philosophers physical objects plain English plausible position possible language presumption principle Putnam quantifier variance quantifier-like expressions question Quine reason referential relativism relevant retract revisionists s-fact seems semantic Shmenglish Sider Siderian sortal Sosa space-time speak Suppose Sydney Shoemaker temporal tences Thesis things tion tree true on precisification truth conditions vagueness verbal dispute W.V. Quine words