Metametaphysics, Edited By

If there were anything negative to be said about this book with any plausibility, it would be that it comes behind time. After a period of general rejection of all metaphysics and ontology in early analytic philosophy, over the past four or five decades we have witnessed a radical resurrection of all kinds of metaphysical investigation. Old questions, theses and arguments are renewed nowadays with some additional analytical sophistication. Now, the urgent question that has been overlooked in this metaphysical flood is: are all questions of ontology and metaphysics really sound? Is there absolutely nothing of the positivist position against metaphysics and its ‗external questions' (as Carnap put it) that should be taken into account in contemporary investigations? When we simply neglect this central question, the alleged philosophical progress — the supposed ‗overcoming of the naïve anti-metaphysical attitude' — can collapse into being merely a change of fashions. Metametaphysics is a volume that congregates some of the most productive (meta-)metaphysicians of our days to examine this question. The book is composed of 17 contributions, some more historically oriented, others more systematically so. Positions vary according to the degree of more or less legitimacy the respective author concedes to metaphysical questions. Those who concede none or only less legitimacy are called ‗ontological anti-realists' (not to be confused with ‗anti-Platonists'), ‗deflationists,' ‗dismissivists' or, with some irony by Hawthorne, ‗superficialists.' In all of them, the ghost of neopositivism is somehow revived. Those who defend the legitimacy and substantiality of metaphysical enquiry are called, in contrast, ‗ontological realists,' ‗anti-deflationists' or ‗substantialists.' Some intermediate nuances are also discussed in the book: ‗strong deflation-ism,' ‗ultra-strong deflationism,' ‗weak deflationism,' etc. Unfortunately , the contributions are not systematically grouped, but simply organized in a more profane alphabetic order. In any case, in the introduction to the book David Manley — one of the editors — gives a very good overview not only of the content of the book, but also of the whole contemporary discussion on the methodology of metaphysics and the most usual arguments of its critics. Incidentally, the very last paper, written by Stephen Yablo, is also a good place to begin reading the book. Yablo creates a conversation between three fiction