display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 1633 | Absolute ontological questions are meaningless, because the answers are circular definitions [Quine] |
| Full Idea: What makes ontological questions meaningless when taken absolutely is not universality but circularity. A question of the form "What is an F?" can only be answered with "An F is a G", which makes sense relative to the uncritical acceptance of G. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.53) |
| 18964 | Ontology is relative to both a background theory and a translation manual [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Ontology is doubly relative. Specifying the universe of a theory makes sense only relative to some background theory, and only relative to some choice of a manual of translation of one theory into another. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.54) | |
| A reaction: People tend to forget about the double nature of Quine's notion of ontological commitment, and usually only talk about the commitment of the theory being employed. Why is the philosophical community not devoting itself to the study of tranlation manuals? |