A family of contemporary metaontological positions argues that disputes in fundamental ontology are verbal rather than substantive. Different ontological vocabularies are different languages, equally adequate to the world; the choice between them is pragmatic, not factual.

The lineage runs from Rudolf Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" -(Carnap, Rudolf, 1950) (distinguishing internal questions answerable within a linguistic framework from external questions of pragmatic framework-choice) through Eli Hirsch's quantifier variance (the view that different ontological frameworks have different quantifier-meanings, each equally adequate to reality; *Quantifier Variance and Realism* -(Hirsch, Eli, 2011), collecting work from 2002 onward) to Amie Thomasson's easy ontology (*Ontology Made Easy* -(Thomasson, Amie L., 2015)). David Chalmers's "Ontological Anti-Realism" (in *Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology*, ed. Chalmers, Manley and Wasserman -(Chalmers, David J., 2009)) develops a more refined version on which there is no fact of the matter about absolute existence, while internal-to-framework existence is unproblematic. Matti Eklund's "The Picture of Reality as an Amorphous Lump" (in Sider, Hawthorne and Zimmerman's *Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics*) defends a related but distinct position on which different carving-schemes are equivalent descriptions of a structurally underdetermined reality. On this picture, asking whether T, S, and Φ are necessary is asking the wrong kind of question; there is no language-independent fact of the matter for an answer to track.

The deflationist's neutrality is not neutral. Different ontological vocabularies must be vocabularies *of something*: different ways of carving up a shared reality. If there were no common reality, there would be nothing for distinct vocabularies to be alternative descriptions of. The deflationist's framework presupposes that this reality has whatever conditions are required for distinct descriptions to be applied to the same thing: extension over which carvings can vary, persistence for the same matter to be re-described, distinction between description and described. These are the structural conditions under different names. ("Configuration" throughout this reply names whatever jointly instantiates the three structural roles T, S, and Φ as derived at [§2.6](<2.6 Triconditionality of Nature.md>); it is shorthand for that joint-instantiation condition rather than an additional ontological category. The formal regimentation of the structural claims in terms that satisfy Quine's extensionalist constraints is carried out at §[§2.10.1](<2.10.1 Three Distinct Logics.md>)–2.10.3.) Three forms of the deflationary move sharpen what each version commits to.

*First.* The Carnapian framework form treats ontological questions as internal to a chosen linguistic framework. “Are there numbers?” is well-formed inside the framework of arithmetic and answerable trivially in the affirmative; outside the framework it is a pragmatic question about whether to adopt the framework. Hirsch's quantifier variance generalizes the move: different frameworks have different quantifier-meanings, each equally adequate to reality. There is no privileged sense of “exists” against which framework-choice can be assessed.

The reply is internal to the position's own apparatus. For two frameworks to be alternative carvings of a shared reality, the shared reality must have whatever properties license distinct alternative carvings: at minimum, sufficient extension to be carved differently (S), persistence across the alternative carvings (Φ), and the temporal ordering of carving-events that lets one framework be adopted, then another, then evaluated comparatively (T). Hirsch concedes that frameworks must be alternatives of something but holds that what they are alternatives of can be specified only within some framework. The concession is enough. If the something has whatever properties are required to be the something the frameworks are alternatives of, those properties are the structural conditions, and they obtain whether or not any framework names them.

This is the thin claim, not the heavyweight one: not that some framework-transcendent carving is metaphysically privileged, but that whatever a framework must quantify over in order to be a framework at all already instantiates the roles. On Quine's bound-variable criterion ([§2.8.3](<2.8.3 Not Physicalism.md>); with the later formal discussion at [§2.10.2](<2.10.2 The Stratified Architecture.md>)), the commitment is read off what any framework-comparison must range over; the conditions are framework-independent in the sense that no framework can decline them, not in the sense of a privileged carving lying behind every framework and reachable from none.

That the roles are Reality's and not the framework's is earned below, on the deflationist's own criterion, once the deepest form of the position is in view. Carnap's "external questions" are pragmatic only on the assumption that there is no fact of the matter outside the framework. The assumption is the position's central claim, and the assumption is what the present argument contests. It is a contest whose founding form is Quine's, who rejects any principled internal/external distinction in "On Carnap's Views on Ontology" -(Quine, W. V., 1951) on the strength of the ontological-commitment criterion of "On What There Is" -(Quine, W. V. O., 1948). What the present account adds to that Quinean realism is the specification of the conditions a substrate must satisfy to be the something rival frameworks are alternatives of.

*Second.* Thomasson's -(Thomasson, Amie L., 2015) easy ontology is the most carefully developed contemporary version. Existence questions are answerable trivially given conceptual competence: “Are there tables?” follows from “There are particles arranged tablewise” plus the application conditions of “table”; “Are there numbers?” follows from “There are five apples” plus the application conditions of “number”. The position is deflationary about ontology while remaining committed to the trivial truth of ordinary existence claims. There are no hard ontological questions because the apparent hardness reflects only confusion about application conditions.

The reply tracks Thomasson's own framework. Application conditions are themselves features that must be specified: a concept's application conditions persist across applications (Φ), distinguish cases of application from cases of non-application (S), and operate across the temporal succession of applications (T). Thomasson's account is consistent with the present account at the level where the present account's claim applies: the application conditions are themselves features of a configured reality, and the conditions of their being application conditions are the structural roles. Thomasson's deflationism succeeds at deflating ontology in the sense she means; it does not deflate the conditions on which the deflationary apparatus operates. The remaining disagreement is whether the structural conditions are themselves substantive ontological commitments (the present view) or further easy commitments derivable from concept-use (a possible Thomassonian reply). The present argument takes the Triconditional machinery of [§2.6](<2.6 Triconditionality of Nature.md>) (especially the Mutual Containment Result at [§2.6.5](<2.6.5 Mutual Containment.md>)) as the case for the first reading: the structural roles mutually require one another and cannot be derived from any prior conceptual base.

*Third.* The Chalmers -(Chalmers, David J., 2009) and Eklund -(Eklund, Matti, 2008) positions occupy philosophically refined ground. Chalmers's ontological anti-realism distinguishes lightweight quantifiers (used in ordinary discourse, indifferent to deep ontological commitment) from heavyweight quantifiers (used in fundamental ontology, subject to framework-relativity). The position holds that heavyweight ontological questions have no determinate answer while lightweight ones have trivial answers. Eklund's position treats reality as a structurally underdetermined "amorphous lump" that admits of multiple equivalent carvings, with no carving privileged over others. Both positions sharpen the deflationary tradition by making it consistent with the trivial truth of ordinary existence claims.

The reply concedes the lightweight/heavyweight distinction and presses where the heavyweight claim sits. Chalmers's position requires that there be lightweight-but-real configurations (otherwise lightweight existence claims would not be trivially true) and that no heavyweight fact about absolute existence obtains. The present account's claim is not a heavyweight claim about a privileged absolute carving; it is a claim about what any configuration capable of being something (at any weight) must instantiate. If Chalmers's lightweight configurations include extension, persistence, and temporal succession (and they must, on pain of being indistinguishable from no configuration at all), then the structural conditions obtain at the lightweight level Chalmers grants. Eklund's amorphous lump faces the same pressure. The more charitable reading of the position is that the lump is *underdetermined by privileged carvings* rather than structureless: reality admits multiple equivalent carving-schemes, none of which is the metaphysically privileged one. The reply does not require treating the lump as structureless. Even reality underdetermined-by-privileged-carvings must still support three things. It must support the framework-comparison the position invokes (different carvings must be distinguishable from one another and from the lump they carve). It must support the application of each carving to the lump (each scheme must operate on something that persists as what it operates on). And it must support the temporal succession of carving-acts by which one scheme is adopted, evaluated, and replaced by another. Those three are the structural conditions under different names, and they obtain at whichever level reality is configured to admit alternative carvings at all. The ∅ fork then sharpens what the position itself commits to: a lump structureless enough to admit any carving whatever is a lump indistinguishable from ∅ ([§2.7](<2.7 Nothing to Consider.md>)); a lump with sufficient structure to admit some carvings but not others is a lump with the structural conditions named.

The position can be sharpened across all three forms into the claim that every ontological commitment is internal to a framework. The sharpening is unstable. The claim itself is either internal to a framework (in which case it is one ontological commitment among others, not the metalevel verdict it presents itself as) or external, in which case it asserts a framework-independent fact about the relation between frameworks and the world, contradicting its own deflationism. There is no third position from which the verdict can be issued without using the apparatus the verdict denies. Thomasson's reply -(Thomasson, Amie L., 2015), ch. 3 (that the metaontological claim is itself trivially true given the application conditions of metaontological vocabulary) relocates the instability rather than dissolving it: the application conditions of metaontological vocabulary are themselves features of a configured reality, and the conditions of their being application conditions are what the present argument names.

*The retreat to the framework.* One reply remains. Grant everything so far: that no framework can decline the three roles, that every carving and every comparison of carvings already deploys succession, distinction, and exchange. The deflationist can still say this fixes only a fact about frameworks (about what any scheme must presuppose to be a scheme) and not a fact about Reality. That the roles are presupposed by all our descriptions is one thing; that they are Reality's own structure, owing nothing to the describing, is another, and the transcendental result delivers only the first. The line is Stroud's: that we cannot think past a structure shows how we must think, not how things stand.

The retreat has no ground to stand on, and the reason is internal to the position once more. The deflationary apparatus rests on a single criterion of what it is for something to be objective rather than framework-relative: to be objective is to be invariant under the choice of framework, and to be merely framework-relative is to vary with it.

Quantifier variance is the thesis that what exists varies with the quantifier-meaning a framework supplies; the lightweight/heavyweight distinction is the distinction between what holds inside a chosen scheme and what would hold across all of them; the verdict that no carving is privileged just is the claim that every candidate joint varies across admissible frameworks. Strip the position of the invariance-criterion and it cannot state its own thesis: "privileged" means framework-transcendent, and framework-transcendence is measured as invariance. The criterion is not optional equipment; it is what gives the deflationary verdict its content.

Apply it. The three roles do not vary across frameworks; they are what every framework presupposes, the fixed point under the operation *adopt a different scheme*. Framework-invariance supplies evidence that the roles are not artifacts of any one scheme. It does not, without a further bridge, entail that they are mind-independent features of Reality; a deflationist may treat them as constraints on every admissible framework. The dispute therefore narrows to whether invariance is merely transcendental or genuinely ontological. The present account argues for the latter, but it should not present that bridge as forced by deflationism alone. The transcendental fact, read through the criterion the deflationist must hold in order to speak at all, counts as transcendent by the deflationist's own measure.

This is the heavyweight claim in the only sense the opening allows it. *Reality* is fixed at [§1.1](<1.1 Reality.md>) as a structural-role term (what any content presupposes, its reference set by what the role requires and not by which thing fills it). The constitutive language there names the structural shape of the primitive modal field, not an essence prior to it. The present conclusion claims exactly that and no more: the roles belong to Reality in that they are invariant across every scheme in which anything is configured at all, not in the sense of an essence lying behind all configuration and reachable from none.

The deflationist who demands the second sense before conceding the first asks for a target [§1.1](<1.1 Reality.md>) already declines to posit. The demand purchases nothing: a structure that does no work in any framework and is reachable from none is, by the ∅ fork, indistinguishable from the absence of structure ([§2.7](<2.7 Nothing to Consider.md>)). What [§1.1.1](<1.1.1 Reality Precludes.md>) leaves conditional is supported here but not discharged by invariance alone: what is invariant across languages is internal to no single language, yet may still be characterized by a deflationist as a universal condition on representation rather than as mind-independent ontology.

One regress is owed an answer. The deflationist can lift the retreat a level: the claim that the roles are invariant across all frameworks is itself advanced within a framework (a meta-framework that individuates schemes and ranges over them) so what is shown is invariance within that meta-framework, not invariance as such. But the trilemma is indifferent to level. The meta-claim that one has shown only invariance-within-M is itself either internal to some further scheme, in which case it varies across schemes and is, by the criterion, non-objective, and so cannot deliver the objective verdict it pronounces; or it is external, a framework-transcendent fact about the relation between meta-frameworks and the roles, which is the thing the position forbids itself.

Nor does the regress escape the roles by climbing: any meta-framework that individuates frameworks and ranges over them is itself carving. It requires distinction to hold its frameworks apart, exchange to compare them, succession to adopt one and then another. Each ascent instantiates the roles it is meant to rise above. The invariance is therefore not invariance at a level but invariance the hierarchy cannot exit; the regress, far from undercutting the result, is its demonstration.

A kindred move worth marking. Modal conventionalism ([§4.1.7](<4.1.7 Modal Conventionalism.md>)) runs a parallel deflationary argument at the level of modal claims rather than existence claims; the structural reply takes the same form. Modal fictionalism ([§4.4.4](<4.4.4 Modal Fictionalism.md>)) deflates modal commitment by relocating it to a fiction; again the structural conditions return at the level of the storytelling. The deflationary family across these three sections shares a common structure and a common vulnerability: each version succeeds at deflating its target only by leaving the conditions on its deflationary apparatus implicit, and each, on examination, presupposes the structural roles at the level its deflation operates.

*What converges.* Three forms of metaontological deflationism (Carnapian framework-relativity, Thomassonian easy ontology, Chalmers–Eklund refined deflationism), and each, fully developed, is consistent with the present account at the level its claim applies: the Carnapian form requires a substrate frameworks are alternatives of, Thomasson's form requires application conditions, and the Chalmers–Eklund form requires lightweight-but-real configurations or a structurally non-trivial lump. Each of these already has the structural conditions. However the deflationism is pitched, each form denies □(T∧S∧Φ) a framework-transcendent register, and each is answered at the same fixed point: the register is *a priori* / constitutive, the register line fixed at [§4.1.1](<4.1.1 Rigid Designation.md>)–[§4.1.2](<4.1.2 Two-Dimensional Semantics.md>).

The deflationist who presses anyway operates within the structural conditions while declaring them undecidable. The declaration is a configuration within Reality, and so is the framework that hosts it. Both fall within the scope of the argument they contest.


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← [4.1.7 Modal Conventionalism](<4.1.7 Modal Conventionalism.md>) | [4.1.9 Wittgensteinian Quietism](<4.1.9 Wittgensteinian Quietism.md>) →
