Carnap was a deflationist about traditional ontological disputes, such as whether numbers exist, or physical objects exist. He held that existence questions could be interpreted in two different ways, internally or externally. When interpreted internally, the question was to be answered relative to a linguistic framework.  If the framework was mathematical, existence questions, such as whether there are prime numbers greater than 1000, were to be answered by means of proof, given the axioms and rules of logic introduced by the framework. If the framework was empirical, existence questions, such as whether electrons exist, were to be answered through observation according to the rules of confirmation and disconfirmation introduced by the framework. When the existence questions involved the most general kinds introduced by the framework, the answers were trivial. In the framework of numbers, it is trivial that numbers exist; in the framework of physical objects, it is trivial that physical objects exist. For it is stipulated in introducing these frameworks that the variables range over numbers, or physical objects.