David Corfield Amie Thomasson

Ontology Made Easy

“general nouns have certain kinds of constitutive rules, including application conditions and coapplication conditions.”

“Ks exist iff the application conditions for ‘K’ are fulfilled.”

“So we deny that we should even be looking for any principle of the following form: for every x, x exists iff x is such and such (causally relevant, mind-independent, in possession of a real nature …). The deflationary approach thus involves rejecting the idea that there is a shared substantive criterion for existence.”

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