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Single Idea 8496
[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
]
Full Idea
Ontological controversy tends into controversy over language, but we must not jump to the conclusion that what there is depends on words.
Gist of Idea
What actually exists does not, of course, depend on language
Source
Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.16)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'From a Logical Point of View' [Harper and Row 1963], p.16
A Reaction
An important corrective to my constant whinge against philosophers who treat ontology as if it were semantics, of whom Quine is the central villain. Quine was actually quite a sensible chap.
The
21 ideas
with the same theme
[nature of existence commitments]:
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10784
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Whenever there's speech it has to be about something
[Plato]
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13879
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For Frege, ontological questions are to be settled by reference to syntactic structures
[Frege, by Wright,C]
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6060
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'Existence' means that a propositional function is sometimes true
[Russell]
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13938
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A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question
[Carnap]
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19485
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Names have no ontological commitment, because we can deny that they name anything
[Quine]
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11101
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General terms don't commit us ontologically, but singular terms with substitution do
[Quine]
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8496
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What actually exists does not, of course, depend on language
[Quine]
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10667
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A logically perfect language could express all truths, so all truths must be logically expressible
[Quine, by Hossack]
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15785
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Our commitments are to an 'ontology', but also to an 'ideology', or conceptual system
[Hintikka]
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10548
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The context principle for names rules out a special philosophical sense for 'existence'
[Dummett]
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10281
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The objects we recognise the world as containing depends on the structure of our language
[Dummett]
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18211
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You can reduce ontological commitment by expanding the logic
[Field,H]
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12226
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The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence
[Hale/Wright]
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7678
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Ontology must include the minimum requirements for our semantics
[Jacquette]
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8258
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Two of the main rivals for the foundations of ontology are substances, and facts or states-of-affairs
[Lowe]
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8301
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Some abstractions exist despite lacking causal powers, because explanation needs them
[Lowe]
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12449
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Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences
[Azzouni]
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10643
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We speak of a theory's 'ideological commitments' as well as its 'ontological commitments'
[Linnebo]
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10668
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We are committed to a 'group' of children, if they are sitting in a circle
[Hossack]
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14491
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Rival ontological claims can both be true, if there are analytic relationships between them
[Thomasson]
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18770
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We can distinguish 'ontological' from 'existential' commitment, for different kinds of being
[Anderson,CA]
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