Does Metaphysical Deflationism Require Global Expressivism?: A metasemantic methodology for the neo-Carnapian

Neo-Carnapian deflationism is an approach to metaphysics that is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. The movement behind it takes inspiration from Carnap’s (1950) paper Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology, and looks to deflate metaphysical questions and disputes, showing them to be insubstantial, since they turn on questions of language rather than metaphysics. I hold that this is all to the good. However, I argue that neo-Carnapianism is problematised by specific metasemantic assumptions, specifically the assumptions of representationalism. If we hold a representationalist view of language, then neo-Carnapianism fails. Over the course of this thesis, I will show how representationalism causes problems for the neo-Carnapian account, and argue for an alternative metasemantic approach – global expressivism – that we can substitute to save it. Global expressivism is itself a difficult position to make clear, so I will spend a significant amount of time demonstrating its core principles, before showing how to combine it with neo-Carnapianism, providing a deflationary approach to metasemantics to complement our deflationary approach to metaphysics.