display all the ideas for this combination of texts
11 ideas
16966 | Philosophers tend to distinguish broad 'being' from narrower 'existence' - but I reject that [Quine] |
Full Idea: It has been fairly common in philosophy early and late to distinguish between being, as the broadest concept, and existence, as narrower. This is no distinction of mine; I mean 'exist' to cover all there is. | |
From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.100) | |
A reaction: I sort of agree with Quine, but 'being' has a role in philosophy that is not required in science and daily life, as the name of the central problem of ontology, which probably has to be broken down before any progress can happen. |
21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
16965 | All we have of general existence is what existential quantifiers express [Quine] |
Full Idea: Existence is what existential quantification expresses. …It is unreasonable to ask for an explication of (general) existence in simpler terms. …We may still ask what counts as evidence for existential quantifications. | |
From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.97) | |
A reaction: This has been orthodoxy for the last 60 years, with philosophers talking of 'quantifying over' instead of 'exists'. But are we allowed second-order logic, and plural quantification, and vague domains? |
12741 | If experience is just a dream, it is still real enough if critical reason is never deceived [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Even if this whole life were said to be only a dream, and the visible world only a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough if we were never deceived by it when we make good use of reason. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1502), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7 | |
A reaction: I find this response more satisfactory than his response in Idea 12740. As a supporter of the coherence account of justification, I take the closest we get to knowledge to be when our full critical faculties and experience are brought to bear, and shared. |
12740 | The strongest criterion that phenomena show reality is success in prediction [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The most powerful criterion of the reality of phenomena, sufficient even by itself, is success in predicting future phenomena from past and present ones. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1502), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7 | |
A reaction: I would say that this is clutching at straws, as there is no reason at all to deny that dreams could be thoroughly coherent and predictable in their events. We must just live with these doubts, not try to defeat them. |
16963 | Existence is implied by the quantifiers, not by the constants [Quine] |
Full Idea: In the quantification '(∃)(x=a)', it is the existential quantifier, not the 'a' itself, which carries the existential import. | |
From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.94) | |
A reaction: The Fregean idea seems to be that the criterion of existence is participation in an equality, but here the equality seems not more than assigning a name. Why can't I quantify over 'sakes', in 'for the sake of the children'? |
16964 | Theories are committed to objects of which some of its predicates must be true [Quine] |
Full Idea: Another way of saying what objects a theory requires is to say that they are the objects that some of the predicates of the theory have to be true of, in order for the theory to be true. | |
From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.95) | |
A reaction: The other was for the objects to be needed by the bound variables of the theory. This is the first-order approach, that predication is a commitment to an object. So what of predicates which have no application? |
4216 | Express a theory in first-order predicate logic; its ontology is the types of bound variable needed for truth [Quine, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: According to Quine, we find the ontological commitments of a theory by expressing it in first-order predicate logic, then determining what kind of entities must be admitted as bound variables if the theory is true. | |
From: report of Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966]) by E.J. Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics p.216 | |
A reaction: To me this is horribly wrong. The ontological commitments of our language is not the same as ontology. What are the ontological commitments of a pocket calculator? |
18966 | Ontological commitment of theories only arise if they are classically quantified [Quine] |
Full Idea: I hold that the question of the ontological commitment of a theory does not properly arise except as that theory is expressed in classical quantificational form. | |
From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.106) | |
A reaction: He is attacking substitutional quantification for its failure to commit. I smell circularity. If it must be quantified in the first-order classical manner, that restricts your ontology to objects before you've even started. Chicken/egg. |
14490 | You can be implicitly committed to something without quantifying over it [Thomasson on Quine] |
Full Idea: Quine's test for ontological commitment ignores the fact that there are often implicit commitments to certain kinds of entities even where we are not yet quantifying over them. | |
From: comment on Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966]) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 09.4 | |
A reaction: Put this with the obvious problem (of which Quine is aware) that we don't quantify over 'sakes' in 'for the sake of the children', and quantification and commitment have been rather clearly pulled apart. |
16961 | In formal terms, a category is the range of some style of variables [Quine] |
Full Idea: In terms of formalized quantification theory, each category comprises the range of some distinctive style of variable. | |
From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.92) | |
A reaction: I add this for those who dream of formalising everything, but be warned that even Quine thought it of little help in deciding on the categories. Presumably there would be some variable that ranged across tigers. |