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Full Idea
A slogan: One can't read ontological commitments from semantic conditions unless one has already smuggled into those semantic conditions the ontology one would like to read off.
Gist of Idea
We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in
Source
Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3)
Book Ref
Azzouni,Jody: 'Deflating Existential Consequence' [OUP 2004], p.55
A Reaction
The arguments supporting this are subtle, but it's good enough for me, as I never thought anyone was ontologically committed just because they used the vagueries of language to try to say what's going on around here.
| 12437 | Truth lets us assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit [Azzouni] |
| 12438 | In the vernacular there is no unequivocal ontological commitment [Azzouni] |
| 12439 | Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni] |
| 12442 | 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' is true without a truthmaker [Azzouni] |
| 12445 | If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni] |
| 12441 | We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in [Azzouni] |
| 12440 | If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni] |
| 12446 | Names function the same way, even if there is no object [Azzouni] |
| 12448 | Things that don't exist don't have any properties [Azzouni] |
| 12447 | That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni] |
| 12449 | Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni] |
| 12450 | The periodic table not only defines the elements, but also excludes other possible elements [Azzouni] |