Title: The Reality of Rainbows: Loose Talk and Ontology

Abstract: To be, not to be, or to loosely be? For this talk, we will venture into the murky shadowlands of ontology to explore the third option. Picking up a thread from Yablo’s (1998) remarks on ontology, I’ll suggest that, due to the ubiquity of loose talk, things that don’t really exist can still play load-bearing roles in our description of the world. If this really is loose talk at work, then it should be possible to draw some connections between the pragmatics of loose talk and ontology. That’s what I’ll try to do, bringing the logic of loose talk to bear on issues of Realism vs. Anti-Realism. As a concrete case study, I’ll ask whether or not rainbows are real.