Abstract
There are two doctrines for which Quine is particularly well known: the doctrine of ontological commitment and the inscrutability thesis—the thesis that reference and quantification are inscrutable. At first glance, the two doctrines are squarely at odds. If there is no fact of the matter as to what our expressions refer to, then it would appear that no determinate commitments can be read off of our best theories. We argue here that the appearance of a clash between the two doctrines is illusory. The reason that there is no real conflict is not simply that in determining our theories’ ontological commitments we naturally rely on our home language but also (and more importantly) that ontological commitment is not intimately tied to objectual quantification and a reference-first approach to language. Or so we will argue. We conclude with a new inscrutability argument which rests on the observation that the notion of objectual quantification, when properly cashed out, deflates.
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Notes
For the first kind of argument see e.g. Quine (1960, 1968); for the second kind see e.g. Quine (1968); Wallace (1977), Davidson (1979) and Putnam (1980); for the third kind see e.g. Putnam (1980). Cardinality arguments typically rest on the assumption that every consistent 1st-order theory has an infinite number of models which stand to each other in the submodel relation.
Our speakers also happen to speak a second language with more words.
See e.g. the original argument in Putnam (1980).
Assuming that the quoted sentence and the constant ‘n’ belong to a particular language and that every term in the language refers to exactly one expression.
I am here following the standard practice of taking extensional relations to be referentially transparent. For discussion see e.g. Williamson (2006).
For Quine, of course, names are not individual constants but names with descriptive content. But even names with descriptive content are intersubstitutable in extensional contexts. For example, since ‘the president’ and ‘the son of George Bush Sr.’ are co-extensional, ‘the son of George Bush Sr.’ can be substituted for ‘the President’ in ‘the President is in Florida’ without any change in truth-value. Thanks to Luca Moretti here.
Of course, our best theories may not include names like ‘Pegasus’ and ‘General Oreius’. But the sentences we utter do. Moreover, the exact same points can be made with respect to empty common nouns such as ‘unicorn’ and ‘centaur’. Thanks to Luca Moretti here.
Parsons is not claiming that sentences or theories are committed to sets. Rather, he is claiming that if the notion of ontological commitment is extensional, then there is a unique set of all the entities to which the sentence or theory in question is committed.
For these and other problems with this criterion see Brogaard (2007b).
If numbers exist necessarily, then numbers are among the entities of the domain of any world. Moreover, the variables of a theory range over entities in the domain. So, if numbers exist necessarily, then regardless of which sentence or theory and which world we consider, numbers are among the entities over which the variables of the theory range. By (MC), any theory or sentence is committed to numbers. If naïve set theory is inconsistent, then ‘necessarily, if naïve set theory is true, then entities that rule out the existence of sets are among the entities over which the variables of naïve set theory range’ is vacuously true. By (MC), naïve set theory incurs a commitment to entities that rule out the existence of sets.
Of course, it might if it analytically entails that there are Fs. Thanks to Amie Thomasson here.
The meaning of ‘actually’ is a function from a property or a proposition to an extension at the world of utterance. For insightful discussion of these issues see Rumfitt (forthcoming).
To avoid this problem Rayo offers the following criterion of ontological commitment: T carries commitment to Gs just in case ‘T → ∃xϕ’ is a truth of (free) logic for some predicate ϕ expressing F-hood, and part of what it is to be F is to be G.
The example is due to Nolan (1997, p. 544).
It is, of course, intuitive that if you expand a theory, then the commitments of the theory change. However, if Expansion fails, then if we expand a theory, then the commitments of the original (and unchanged) part of the theory change, which is highly unintuitive.
If epistemic rationality comes apart from practical rationality, then we can take all occurrences of ‘rational’ to be shorthand for ‘epistemically rational’.
More precisely, detachment is the inference from ‘rationality requires that if p, then q’ and ‘p’ to ‘rationality requires that q’.
Thanks to John Broome for offering this response.
As rationality supervenes on the mind, I take having-evidence to be a state of mind rather than a relation to a state of the world outside the mind.
This example is due to John Broome.
An example might be the waterfall illusion where a stationary object appears to move and stay still. See Crane (1988).
For a defense of a substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers, see e.g. Wright (2007).
This terminology is from Agustin Rayo (pers. comm.). In a truth-first language truth-values are assigned to sentences or theories holistically. What is true in such a language will depend in part on the evidence available to the speakers and what the speakers are willing to assent to given the evidence. In a reference-first language, reference is determined first, and truth-values are then assigned to sentences compositionally.
To a first approximation, ‘p’ is a pleonastic variant of ‘q’ iff ‘p’ is ‘the result of movement and extraction that places particular parts of the syntactic material [of ‘q’] in special positions’. (Hofweber 2005, p. 267). Pleonastic variants will have the same truth-conditional content in spite of the fact that they differ in surface grammar. Thomasson (2007) argues further that pleonastic variants are analytically equivalent.
Defenders of the pleonastic strategy might perhaps say that what they are doing is proposing an additional criterion for being ontologically committed. But, as we have already seen, there is no alternative criterion for being ontologically committed which is not fraught with difficulty. Of course, it might be said that an acceptance or assertion of a sentence or theory carries commitment only if the quantifiers are interpreted objectually. But this would be unmotivated (see below). One might also wonder what determines whether the quantifiers in a sentence or theory are objectual or substitutional. I suppose this will depend in part on the role the quantifiers play in the language. Hofweber (2005), for example, argues that quantifiers sometimes play only an inferential role. For example, when we say that a certain famous detective whose name we don’t remember lives on Baker Street, we do not intend to quantify over real entities in the domain. In such cases the quantifiers are plausibly substitutional. If the speakers have no clear intentions and their linguistic behaviour does not clearly indicate how they interpret the quantifiers, I suppose it is indeterminate whether the quantifiers are objectual or substitutional. Thanks to Amie Thomasson here.
A word on the work by Amie Thomasson is here in order. Thomasson argues that Quine’s criterion is not necessary for ontological commitment (see e.g. her 2007). This is so, she argues, because what a theory is committed to cannot always be read off of the overt quantificational claims of the theory. If a given language allows the pleonastic transformation from ‘there are nine planets’ to ‘the number of planets is nine’, then both of these sentences will commit us to numbers. The reason both commit us to numbers is that (i) the second sentence is an analytic consequence of the first, and (ii) the application conditions for the word ‘number’, as used by ordinary folks, are satisfied, which, she argues, suffices for the word to have an extension. I am sympathetic to this proposal. But the thesis offered in this paper differs from Thomasson’s in at least the following two respects: whether or not the second sentence commits us to numbers will depend on whether or not one sincerely accepts it. It is possible to refuse to accept the second sentence and in that way avoid commitment to numbers. Further, whether the first sentence commits us to numbers will depend on whether sincerely accepting it requires us to rationally believe that there are numbers. And whether this is so will depend on the norms governing rational behavior. In the philosophy room it may be rationally permissible to accept the first sentence and reject the second. Hence, in the philosophy room, it may be perfectly rational to believe that there are nine planets and yet deny that the number of planets is nine. In these circumstances, then, it may be that the second sentence commits us to numbers whereas the first does not. Of course, it is also possible to argue that if there really is an analytic entailment from ‘there are nine planets’ to ‘the number of planets is nine’ (as Thomasson would argue), it’s not possible to accept the first and reject the second. Certainly, the standard reply will be to say that in the philosophy room it may be possible (even if not while using plain English). So the question that remains is what these different “higher” standards are for accepting, e.g., that there are numbers (where this is uttered in the philosophy room). One might say, with Thomasson, that most of these appeals to higher standards don’t make sense (what more is it supposed to take to “really” think that there are numbers?) Thanks to Amie Thomasson for discussion of these issues.
This argument owes much to Jody Azzouni’s (2004) argument for ontological independence as a mark of real existence, though his conclusion differs from mine.
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Acknowledgements
The paper has benefited from correspondence with J.C. Bjerring, David Chalmers, Mark Colyvan, Patrick Greenough, Al Hajek, Michael Lynch, Joe Salerno, Jonathan Schaffer, Susanna Schellenberg, Wolfgang Schwartz, Manidipa Sen, and Weng Hong Tang and the audience discussion in Sydney. Special thanks to John Broome, Luca Moretti and Amie Thomasson for written comments on the paper and to Luca Moretti for organizing a great conference.
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Brogaard, B. Inscrutability and ontological commitment. Philos Stud 141, 21–42 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9261-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9261-x