From Ontological to Semantic Disagreement

Among Quine’s main concerns in his “On What There Is”, there was that of solving a problem of expressibility for ontological denials. His proposed solution to such a problem was, in a purely Carnapian vein, a shift of attention to the semantic features of ontological claims – what Quine called the strategy of “semantic ascent”. Quine’s relevant assumption is that talk about language is much less controversial than first-order talk of worldly items. My contention is that the semantic ascent strategy fails as a somehow “neutral” means to clarify ontological disputes and that it is better understood as a means to resolve or even dissolve such disputes.