Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Amie Thomasson’s Easy Ontology rests on a vicious circularity that is highly damaging. Easy Ontology invokes the idea of application conditions that give rise to analytic entailments. Such entailments can be used to answer ontological questions easily. I argue that the application conditions for basic terms are only circularly specifiable showing that Thomasson misses her self-set goal of preventing such a circularity. Using this circularity, I go on to show that Easy Ontology as a whole collapses.

Highlights

  • In recent years, Amie Thomasson has been developing a deflationary metaontology called Easy Ontology

  • I argue in Sect. 3 that Thomasson is not successful in preventing the circularity and evaluate which damage this does to her approach in Sect

  • I argue in Sect. 5 that this problem is more widespread than Thomasson (2015, p. 104) acknowledges; to arrive at this conclusion, we need the circularity argument to be quite general in order to see that it does not depend on how exactly the line between ‘basic’ and ‘derivative’ terms is drawn

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Summary

Introduction

Amie Thomasson has been developing a deflationary metaontology called Easy Ontology. The strategy to answer specific ontological questions is to check whether certain terms apply given some uncontroversial truths. This is accomplished by associating terms with what Thomasson calls application conditions. As relations between application conditions give rise to analytic entailments, we only need to check whether some of the uncontroversial truths analytically entail the fulfilment of the application conditions of the terms in question This is why Easy Ontology is deflationary. Thomasson explicitly endorses as part of Easy Ontology This is important insofar as there are many charges of begging the question in the debate. Thomasson explicitly imposes a non-circularity condition on application conditions (see (AC2) in Sect.

Easy ontology in a nutshell
Application conditions and the Qua problem
The circularity of the application conditions
Preliminaries and scope of the circularity charge
The circularity charge
Potential objections to the circularity charge
Objection 1: unstatability
Objection 2: change of language
Further objections
How damaging is the circularity for easy ontology?
Conclusion
Full Text
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