CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Nicoara, Laura |
|---|---|
| Title | Carnapian Deflationism in Metaontology: Drawing the Limits of What Can Be Achieved by the Internal/External Distinction |
| Summary | Attempts to deflate first-order ontological debates have become commonplace in recent metametaphysics. Many are traceable back to Carnap’s distinction between internal and external existence-questions, where the former are meaningful and the latter are meaningless. In this thesis I attempt three things. First, I propose a reading of Carnap’s original distinction that is plausible, modest and intuitive, and I raise the worry that despite its plausibility it cannot do any deflationary work in metaontology. Second, I examine Amie Thomasson’s recent attempt to develop Carnap’s distinction into a global deflationary view and I argue that this view leads to an unsatisfactory form of inclusive realism that makes the notion of existence so trivial that metaontological questions can easily re-arise within it. Finally, I propose a form of modest deflationism that takes Carnap’s internal/external distinction as a starting point but is not based on the alleged meaninglessness of ontological questions but on their unanswerability. |
| Supervisor | Ben-Yami, Hanoch |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/nicoara_laura.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University