| dc.description.abstract | Ontology attempts to answer the question What is there? Trying to pursue this question, contemporary analytic philosophers argue over whether there are tables over and above parti-cles arranged tablewise, whether ordinary objects persist through time by having instantane-ous temporal parts and whether particles can compose both a lump and a distinct statue at the same time. The disputes are highly technical and contrived, yet ontologists carry on. But there is trouble in paradise. So-called ontological deflationists attempt to undermine the disputes by arguing that the disputes are insubstantial; they are not about the world, but rather about the correct use of language. Eli Hirsch is one of the philosophers who have challenged ontology, and his flavor of deflationism, quantifier variantism, says that there are many ontological languages with different answers to the ontological question. Ontologists merely disagree about which language to speak – they are engaged in a verbal dispute. Furthermore, ontology conducted in English (or any other natural language) is pointless, for the ontological beliefs of ordinary people – their beliefs in the existence of tables and chairs, statues and lumps – are trivially true. In sum: either ontologists speak different languages, in which case their ontolog-ical theses will merely reflect their linguistic choice, or they speak English, in which case any results will be trivial. In any case, ontology as we know it is undermined. This thesis explores Hirsch s view in more detail with the purpose of critically examin-ing his arguments. I provide two main lines of argument against Hirsch: (1) The idea of differ-ent ontological languages is more radical and problematic than it is usually assumed, poten-tially undercutting the philosophical significance of Hirsch s arguments; (2) Commonsensical ontological claims are not trivially true in English, and it might be possible to conduct ontolo-gy in English after all. I also consider a recent reply to Hirsch by Theodore Sider to the effect that ontologists should leave English for a dedicated ontological language. I show how this reply will rehabilitate ontology, but argue that it is not entirely successful. The present work does not provide a full-fledged defense of ontology, but tries to an-swer one influential criticism in illuminating detail. | eng |