How to minimize ontological commitments: a grounding-reductive approach

Abstract

Some revisionary ontologies are highly parsimonious: they posit far fewer entities than what we quantify over in ordinary discourse. The most radical examples are minimal ontologies, on which physical simples are the only things that exist. Highly parsimonious ontologies, and especially minimal ones, face the challenge of either accounting for the truth of our ordinary quantificational discourse, or paraphrasing such discourse away. Common strategies for addressing this challenge include classical reduction (by means of formal derivation and postulates), paraphrase nihilism, and a distinction between ontological and existence commitments. I argue, however, that these strategies are either implausible or fail to provide truth conditions consistent with minimal or parsimonious ontologies. I then discuss, defend, and suggest ways to strengthen an alternative framework for reduction, on which the sentences of reducing theories ground those of reducible theories. Relative to the other options for defending minimal ontology, a strengthened grounding-reductive approach can (in principle) provide more defensible truth conditions for minimal ontology, better preserve scientific realist intuitions, set a more attainable standard for reduction, and allow our existence commitments to be more responsive to empirical evidence and scientific expertise. As a result, I argue that minimal ontology becomes more defensible-though not certain-on a grounding-reductive framework. But even if minimal ontology were wrong, the grounding-reductive framework makes other parsimonious but non-minimal ontologies more plausible. Minimal OntologyConsider the following argument: MIN:(1) The only entities whose existence we're committed to are those required to make true the sentences of our best theory(2) The only entities required to make true the sentences of our best theory are physical simples(3) Therefore, the only entities whose existence we're committed to are physical simples