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Single Idea 19485

[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment ]

Full Idea

I think there is no commitment to entities through use of alleged names of them; other things being equal, we can always deny the allegation that the words in question are names.

Gist of Idea

Names have no ontological commitment, because we can deny that they name anything

Source

Willard Quine (On Carnap's Views on Ontology [1951], p.205)

Book Ref

Quine,Willard: 'Ways of Paradox and other essays' [Harvard 1976], p.205

A Reaction

Hm. So why can't you deny that variables actually refer to existing entities? If I say 'I just saw James', it's a bit cheeky to then deny that James refers to anyone. He uses Russell's technique to paraphrase names.

The 21 ideas with the same theme [nature of existence commitments]:

10784 Whenever there's speech it has to be about something [Plato]
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 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 Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni]
10643 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 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]