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Quine’s Deflationary Structuralism

W. V. Quine undermined and rejected Rudolf Carnap’s metaphysical deflationism, reinstating scientific metaphysics. Despite this, Quine eventually develops his own brand of structuralist metaphysics that is equally though differently deflationary. This chapter traces the development of Quine’s deflationary attitude from the 1950s through to the 1990s. Quine’s early deflationary attitude gains focus with the emergence and prominence of the proxy function argument—objects are merely neutral nodes in theory structures—and deflationary structuralism is the result. The chapter concludes that Quine has been an interesting kind of ontological deflationist from early on, and that the deflationary structuralism that develops during the second half of the twentieth century is an integral and co-evolving part of his overall naturalism.