more from Willard Quine

Single Idea 19492

[catalogued under 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems]

Full Idea

Quine's advice is to countenance numbers iff the literal part of our theory quantifies over them; and to count the part of our theory that quantifies over numbers literal iff there turn out really to be numbers.

Gist of Idea

Quine is hopeless circular, deriving ontology from what is literal, and 'literal' from good ontology

Source

comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Stephen Yablo - Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? XIII

Book Reference

Yablo,Stephen: 'Things: Philosophical Papers vol. 2' [OUP 2010], p.141


A Reaction

This sounds a bit devastating. Presumably it is indeed the choice of a best theory which results in the ontological commitment, so it is not much help to then read off the ontology from the theory.