It Takes More than Moore to Answer Existence-Questions

© 2019 Springer Nature. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Erkenntnis. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00107-4Several recent discussions of metaphysics disavow existence-questions, claiming that they are metaphysically uninteresting because trivially settled in the affirmative by Moorean facts. This is often given as a reason to focus metaphysical debate instead on questions of grounding. I argue that the strategy employed to undermine existence-questions fails against its usual target: Quineanism. The Quinean can protest that the formulation given of their position is a straw man: properly understood, as a project of explication, Quinean metaphysics does not counsel us to choose between obvious ordinary-language claims and absurd revisionist claims, even if appeal to Moorean facts is permitted.Peer reviewe