Disputes in ontology often look so persistent and intractable that one may wonder whether they have any significance at all. Logical positivists, for instance, famously argued that the seemingly interminable metaphysical controversies are just cognitive meaningless. Nowadays, however, ontology and metaphysics are widely held as completely legitimate and meaningful philosophical endeavors. Yet, some of the arguments that philosophers put forward at the beginning of the 20th century to undermine ontological disputes are now re-appraised under a somewhat different light. The reason for this, as it is argued at length in this essay, is that questions about the structure and nature of ontological disagreement offer a privileged perspective for investigating the much-debated and multifaceted relationship between semantics and ontology.

Luca Morena has a Ph.D in analytic philosophy (University of Bologna) and is a member of Labont at the University of Turin. He has published articles and edited volumes on topics in ontology and metaphysics.