Formal Philosophy-36

Paolo Valore (Università degli Studi di Milano) gave a talk called «A Critical Evaluation of the Standard Ontological Commitment: the Quantificational Paradigm Challenged»

Abstract:
Ontology has become a respectable subject for an analytic philosopher to pursue, thanks to the translation of existential claims in the idiom of quantification theory, in the classic Quinean line. Such a strategy is the standard paradigm for the ontological commitment and it is usually presented as the best reply to Carnaps veto to existential questions as external questions. However, this rehabilitation of ontology as a discipline has recently been challenged by both deflationists and realists. I will briefly present the latest debate in meta-metaphysics and I will attempt an evaluation of the meaning of the quantificational paradigm for contemporary meta-ontology.