Abstract Recent analytic metaphysics has seen a resurgence in deflationary approaches following in the footsteps of Rudolf Carnap. However, these views face unanswered questions: W. V. O. Quine is still widely held to have successfully rebutted Carnap’s deflationism in the 1950s by rejecting the analytic/synthetic distinction on which it was based. Both Quineans and Carnapians should accept a deflationary reading of the Quine-Carnap debate, since it turns on the ontological question of how to individuate languages. On this reading, whichever theory provides the best practical resources for individuating and discussing languages-as-entities should be accepted, by the lights of either theorist. I argue that Quine’s ontology of languages is problematic by his own reasoning, and that Carnap’s has better pragmatic utility, so should be preferred. I then sketch a way for the neo-Carnapian to extract analyticity from natural languages.
Evie Willems (Fri,) studied this question.