Hirsch's realism contrasts sharply with Carnap's anti-realism. For Carnap, different linguistic frameworks are incommensurable. They peacefully coexist, logically isolated from one another. Apparent ontological disputes are meaningless for lack of a common subject matter, a single “reality” that is being disputed. For Hirsch, on the other hand, each side in an ontological dispute is speaking truly of the one and only reality. The appearance of a genuine dispute arises because they are speaking different languages whose quantifiers have different meanings. Each side of the dispute can translate the others claims into his own language to see that both are speaking truly, and that the dispute is merely verbal. The disagreement is over the meaning of words, not the nature of reality.