Abstract

Ontological minimalism (or easy ontology) combines realism about first-order existence questions with a deflationary understanding of such existence claims: the concepts of the entities at issue in first-order debates include application conditions, and if these are met, it is a trivial truth that entities of that kind exist. This chapter argues that this view faces serious problems in explaining how entities the existence of which can be guaranteed in this easy way can have other properties as a matter of conceptual necessity. For example, it is a conceptual necessity that the mereological fusion of A and B has A and B as parts. How can this be, given that the application condition of the concept _mereological fusion of A and B_ is simply that A and B exist? Only a substantive, first-order metaphysical claim can bridge this gap. So easy ontology is no easier than any other kind of ontology.