CFP: Monist: Metaontology
Submission deadline: January 31, 2014
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The Monist 97:4, October 2014
Metaontology
Deadline for Submissions: Jan 31, 2014
Advisory Editors: Francesco Berto, Fred Kroon and Alberto Voltolini
In recent times Quine’s view according to which ontological commitment is expressed by the quantificational structure of our language has come under attack. Thus fictionalists, on the one hand, argue that, because we cannot free our assertions from all traces of non-literality, there is no sensible project for Quinean ontology, while Meinongians, on the other hand, allow reference to, and thus quantification over, nonexistent objects, where Quineans retort that the Meinongian motto “There are things which do not exist” is simply contradictory. Some see these disagreements as opening up a new field of metaontology, which revitalizes classical questions of traditional metaphysics and gives new life to the classic Carnap-Quine dispute on internal and external questions. Is “exists” univocal or is it, as Aristotle would say, “spoken of in many ways”? Is “exists” perhaps vague? For the metaontologist, questions such as “Is existence a first-order property?” or “is to be to be the value of a (bound) variable?” might have multiple different answers, the consequences of which can be studied systematically. This issue of The Monist will include papers contributing to these and related debates.
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Alberto Voltolini
Professor, Philosophy of Mind
Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences
University of Turin
via S.Ottavio 20, I-10124 Turin (Italy)
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