Abstract

Recent contributions to the philosophy of the social sciences have motivated ontological commitments using appeals to the social sciences (_naturalized_ social ontologies). These arguments rely on social scientific realism about the social sciences, the view that our social scientific theories are approximately true. I apply a distinction formulated in metaontology between ontologically loaded and unloaded meanings of existential quantification to argue that there is a pragmatic approach to naturalized social ontology that is minimally realist (it treats existence claims as true or false) but that is ontologically austere. I argue that the extant arguments may be construed in terms of this pragmatic approach. The result is an approach to social ontology that is deflationist about naturalized social ontology.