Realism and Anti-realism in Metaontology

Ross Pain (La Trobe University)

Metaontological realism is typically understood as the view that first-order ontological questions are answerable according to objective fact. However, despite the recent interest in metaontology, there has been surprisingly little analysis of what precisely this claim amounts to, nor what the implications of its rejection (i.e. metaontological anti-realism) are. This paper has two parts. Firstly, I attempt to outline the minimal conditions required by metaontological realism, and then give some reasons why my account is preferable to Carrie Jenkins’ (2010) account. Secondly, I endorse the claim that the notion of objectivity in metaontology is best understood in terms of mind-independence. However, I argue that the usage of the term “mind-dependence” is not stable across the first-order/metaontological divide. Consequently, I suggest the term “mind-dependent” is appropriate in first-order cases which fail to meet the criterion of objectivity, and that the term “language-dependent” is appropriate in metaontological cases which fail to meet the criterion of objectivity. This process gives us a clearer grasp of what it means to accept or reject the claim that ontology is in the business of revealing objective facts about the world.