Online research in philosophy

in D. Chalmers, D. Manley and R. Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics, Oxford University Press.

forthcoming in Metametaphysics, ed. by David Chalmers, David Manley & Ryan Wasserman, Oxford University Press. [final draft in .pdf].

This volume concerns the status and ambitions of metaphysics as a discipline.

This volume concerns the status and ambitions of metaphysics as a discipline.

To appear in David Chalmers, Ryan Wasserman and David Manley, eds., Metametaphysics (OUP, 2009).

forthcoming in Metametaphysics, edited by David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, Oxford University Press.

forthcoming in Metametaphysics, edited by David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, Oxford University Press.

In a series of publications, Eli Hirsch has presented a sustained defense of common-sense ontology. Hirsch's argument relies crucially on a meta-ontological position sometimes known as ‘superficialism’. Hirsch's argument from superficialism to common-sense ontology is typically resisted on the grounds that superficialism is implausible. In this paper, I present an alternative argument for common-sense ontology, one that relies on (what I argue is) a much more plausible meta-ontological position, which I call ‘constructivism’. Note well: I will not quite argue that constructivism is true; merely that it is significantly more plausible than superficialism, and consequently affords a safer route to common-sense ontology. Thus my main goal in the paper is not quite to establish common-sense ontology, nor for that matter to refute Hirsch's argument for it. My goal is, in a way, more expressive than argumentative: I wish to articulate a novel meta-ontological position, one that I take to be in no way obviously less plausible than already familiar positions, and to point out that the position probably leads to common-sense ontology. I open, in section 1, with a discussion of Hirsch's argument and the main objection to it. I then develop, in section 2, a sketch of the alternative meta-ontology I have in mind. I close, in section 3, with the argument that this alternative meta-ontology, too, leads to common-sense ontology.