Full Idea
In 'She did it for the sake of her country' no one thinks that the expression 'the sake' refers to an individual thing, a sake. But given that, how can we work out what the ontological commitments of a theory actually are?
Gist of Idea
'Did it for the sake of x' doesn't involve a sake, so how can ontological commitments be inferred?
Source
Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.1)
Book Reference
Macdonald,Cynthia: 'Varieties of Things' [Blackwell 2005], p.25
A Reaction
For these sorts of reasons it rapidly became obvious that ordinary language analysis wasn't going to reveal much, but it is also a problem for a project like Quine's, which infers an ontology from the terms of a scientific theory.