On the Existence of Nonexistence Commitments

In this article, I introduce a new kind of ontological commitment, according to which one is committed to the nonexistence of some entity. I start with an analysis of ontological commitment which gives prominence to Putnam’s notion of “intellectual honesty” and proceed to argue that whatever the correct view of ontological commitment is, there is a variety of understudied ontological commitment, viz. nonexistence commitments. Based on such commitments, one can make what I call “counter-indispensability arguments”, which are formally similar to indispensability arguments, though the conclusion is antirealist as opposed to realist. I argue that all the reasons we have to accept and use indispensability arguments in ontology carry over to counter-indispensability arguments. Finally, I apply this new tool to two ontological debates. I illustrate how it helps distinguishing between soft and strong versions of antirealism about philosophically controversial entities.