What is ‘Metametaphysics’? An analysis of Meinong’s, Carnap’s and Quine’s Methodologies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31977/grirfi.v21i2.2336Keywords:
Metametaphysics; Methodology of Metaphysics; Meinong, Carnap, Quine.Abstract
Metametaphysics is the study regarding the foundations and the methodology of Metaphysics. We’ll analyze in this paper three methodologies that established the origins of Metametaphysics in the Analytic Tradition: that of Alexius Meinong, Rudolf Carnap and Willard van Orman Quine. According to Meinong, there is a distinction between ‘to exist’ and ‘there is’ and, in order to preserve the intuition that every intentional act is directed towards an object, there are things that do not exist. According to Carnap, the questions in Metaphysics can be easily answered by empirical or inferential means once we adopt a linguistic framework and answer these questions internally to this framework. Quine argued that to take an entity as existing is to take it as the value of a bound variable. Metametaphysics is relevant because it disambiguates our vocabulary and makes the philosophers avoid verbal disputes. Our objective in this paper was not to show our preferences to one of these methodologies but to provide a starting point for those who are not familiar with these matters — just so other researchers may engage with the issues that belong to Metametaphysics.
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