metametaphysics: new essays on the foundations of ontology

Metaphysics asks questions about existence: for example, do numbers really exist? Metametaphysics asks questions about metaphysics: for example, do its questions have determinate answers? If so, are these answers deep and important, or are they merely a matter of how we use words? What is the proper methodology for their resolution? These questions have recently received a heightened degree of attention.

This book, which I co-edited with David Manley and Ryan Wasserman, brings together articles by Karen Bennett, Matti Eklund, Kit Fine, Bob Hale, John Hawthorne, Eli Hirsch, Thomas Hofweber, David Manley, Kris McDaniel, Huw Price, Jonathan Schaffer, Ted Sider, Scott Soames, Amie L. Thomasson, Peter van Inwagen, Crispin Wright, Stephen Yablo, and me.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics, David Manley

2. Composition, Colocation, and Metaontology, Karen Bennett

3. Ontological Anti-Realism, David Chalmers

4. Carnap and Ontological Pluralism, Matti Eklund

5. The Question of Ontology, Kit Fine

6. The Metaontology of Abstraction, Bob Hale and Crispin Wright

7. Superficialism in Ontology, John Hawthorne

8. Ontology and Alternative Languages, Eli Hirsch

9. Ambitious, Yet Modest, Metaphysics, Thomas Hofweber

10. Ways of Being, Kris McDaniel

11. Metaphysics after Carnap: The Ghost Who Walks?, Huw Price

12. On What Grounds What, Jonathan Schaffer

13. Ontological Realism, Theodore Sider

14. Ontology, Analyticity, and Meaning: The Quine-Carnap Dispute, Scott Soames

15. Answerable and Unanswerable Questions, Amie L. Thomasson

16. Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment, Peter van Inwagen

17. Must Existence-Questions Have Answers?, Stephen Yablo