Austere Realism: Contextual Semantics Meets Minimal Ontology
Terence E. Horgan and Matjaž Potrč
Abstract
This book describes and defends an ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. The chapters argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently pl ... More
This book describes and defends an ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. The chapters argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, the chapters consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call “blobjectivism”—the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos (“the blobject”), which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts.
Keywords:
ontology,
common-sense posits,
truth,
semantic correctness,
semantic standards,
austere realism,
contextual semantics,
semantically correct affirmability,
indirect correspondence,
austere ontologies
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262083768 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262083768.001.0001 |
