ABSTRACT
Ontological disputes are typically taken to concern the existence of certain entities. Yet, they may also be read as metalinguistic negotiations – covert normative disputes about what one should mean by certain key words (for example, “exist”). This chapter first explores three claims of varying strengths, which aim at connecting ontological disputes with the phenomenon of metalinguistic negotiation: that these disputes “must be,” “are,” and “could be” metalinguistic negotiations. It subsequently focusses on three major approaches to the relation between language and reality, “plain realism,” “relativistic realism” and “relativistic antirealism,” arguing that, no matter one’s position along such axis, adoption of some form of equivocalism (rather than univocalism) about the semantics of “exist” renders one’s theory hospitable to the idea of ontological disputes as metalinguistic negotiations.
