The Prolix and the Pleonastic

Philosophical analysis has long involved finding the “proper” form of a sentence, aiming to find a form that is “transparent” regarding its implications. Easy ontologists that finding the tacit ontological commitments of ordinary claims about the world is easy. Simple paraphrases and elementary deductions from those paraphrases will do, they claim. We find the easy ontologists’ arguments wanting. After examining the natures of idioms and paraphrase, we conclude that the so-called easy arguments provide no warrant for ontological conclusions as they have traditionally understood. In several illustrative examples, we show that the easy ontologists preferred paraphrases are apt only if they carry no ontological implications, on pain of warranting ontological conclusions that are not credible.