Fictionalism in Ontology
| Abstract | Fictionalism in ontology is a mixed bag. Here I focus on three main variants—which I label after the names of Pascal, Berkeley, and Hume—and consider their relative strengths and weaknesses with special reference to the ontology that comes with common sense. The first variant is just a version of the epistemic Wager, applied across the board. For all we know—says the Pascalian—our ordinary common-sense ontology may be a fiction. However, what goes on in that fiction matters a lot to us. Indeed, that’s all that matters, so let us pretend the fiction is true and let’s continue to plan our lives accordingly. The second variant builds instead on a semantic intuition | |||||||||
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