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Single Idea 10667
[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
]
Full Idea
Quine's test of ontological commitment says that anything that can be said truly at all must be capable of being said in a logically perfect language, so there must be a paraphrase of every truth into the language of logic.
Gist of Idea
A logically perfect language could express all truths, so all truths must be logically expressible
Source
report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Keith Hossack - Plurals and Complexes 2
Book Ref
-: 'British Soc for the Philosophy of Science' [-], p.414
A Reaction
A very nice statement of the Quinean view, much more persuasive than other statements I have encountered. I am suddenly almost converted to a doctrine I have hitherto despised. Isn't philosophy wonderful?
The
21 ideas
with the same theme
[nature of existence commitments]:
10784
|
Whenever there's speech it has to be about something
[Plato]
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13879
|
For Frege, ontological questions are to be settled by reference to syntactic structures
[Frege, by Wright,C]
|
6060
|
'Existence' means that a propositional function is sometimes true
[Russell]
|
13938
|
A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question
[Carnap]
|
19485
|
Names have no ontological commitment, because we can deny that they name anything
[Quine]
|
11101
|
General terms don't commit us ontologically, but singular terms with substitution do
[Quine]
|
8496
|
What actually exists does not, of course, depend on language
[Quine]
|
10667
|
A logically perfect language could express all truths, so all truths must be logically expressible
[Quine, by Hossack]
|
15785
|
Our commitments are to an 'ontology', but also to an 'ideology', or conceptual system
[Hintikka]
|
10548
|
The context principle for names rules out a special philosophical sense for 'existence'
[Dummett]
|
10281
|
The objects we recognise the world as containing depends on the structure of our language
[Dummett]
|
18211
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You can reduce ontological commitment by expanding the logic
[Field,H]
|
12226
|
The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence
[Hale/Wright]
|
7678
|
Ontology must include the minimum requirements for our semantics
[Jacquette]
|
8258
|
Two of the main rivals for the foundations of ontology are substances, and facts or states-of-affairs
[Lowe]
|
8301
|
Some abstractions exist despite lacking causal powers, because explanation needs them
[Lowe]
|
12449
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Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences
[Azzouni]
|
10643
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We speak of a theory's 'ideological commitments' as well as its 'ontological commitments'
[Linnebo]
|
10668
|
We are committed to a 'group' of children, if they are sitting in a circle
[Hossack]
|
14491
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Rival ontological claims can both be true, if there are analytic relationships between them
[Thomasson]
|
18770
|
We can distinguish 'ontological' from 'existential' commitment, for different kinds of being
[Anderson,CA]
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