Abstract

In response to Hirsch's deflationary arguments, Sider attempts to introduce a special Ontologese quantifier to preserve the substantivity of fundamental debates in metaphysics. He claims that this strategy can be effected by two distinct means, one of which is a list of instructions for metaphysicians, which he argues suffice to give the new quantifier a meaning that carves nature at the joints. I argue that these instructions will not allow someone to start speaking Ontologese if their prior language is sufficiently deviant with respect to it, and that natural languages may be in just such a position.

Highlights

  • In response to Hirsch’s deflationary arguments, Sider attempts to introduce a special Ontologese quantifier to preserve the substantivity of fundamental debates in metaphysics

  • The issue has been heatedly debated in a series of papers by Sider and Hirsch; the aim of this article is to add to the discussion by posing a problem for one of Sider’s methods of introducing the Ontologese quantifier

  • I will argue that considerations of context and eligibility are not jointly sufficient for evading the problem, because if we construe Ontologese as Sider proposes, neither the speaker nor their interlocutors will know what their own words mean, which is an intolerable consequence

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Summary

Introduction

In response to Hirsch’s deflationary arguments, Sider attempts to introduce a special Ontologese quantifier to preserve the substantivity of fundamental debates in metaphysics. The Official Method: Stipulate that your existential quantifier has the most natural, eligible, fundamental, joint-carving meaning in the (semantic) vicinity of the English expression ‘there is’.

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