How ontologically committal is common sense? Is the common-sense philosopher beholden to a florid ontology in which all manner of objects, substances, and processes exist and are as they appear to be to common sense, or can she remain neutral on questions about the existence and nature of many things because common sense is largely non-committal? This chapter explores and tentatively evaluates three different approaches to answering these questions. The first applies standard accounts of ontological commitment to common-sense claims. This leads to the surprising and counter-intuitive result that common sense has metaphysically heavyweight commitments. The second approach emphasizes the superficiality and locality of common-sense claims. On this approach, however, common sense comes out as almost entirely non-committal. The third approach questions the seriousness of ontological commitment as such. If ontological commitment is cheap, it becomes possible both to accept the commitments of common sense at face value and to avoid the counter-intuitive consequences of heavyweight metaphysical commitments.

This chapter takes up the question of truthmakers for truths in and about fiction. After adopting a liberal attitude toward such truths, it surveys some of the basic positions and stances one might take regarding the alethic and metaphysical issues related to fiction. It then offers an (admittedly non-comprehensive) approach to the truthmakers for the truths related to fiction. Though the topic of truthmaking and fiction has only received minimal explicit attention, the view favoured here is most in line with Amie Thomasson’s artifactual theory that takes fictional characters to be dependently existing abstract beings. The chapter finishes by downplaying the ontological costs that accompany this view, and showing how views like Thomasson’s about fictional characters resonate with the trivialist view about mathematics.