Inscrutability and ontological commitment

Philosophical Studies 141 (1):21 - 42 (2008)
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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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Berit Brogaard
University of Miami

Citations of this work

How to have a radically minimal ontology.Ross P. Cameron - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 151 (2):249 - 264.
The General Truthmaker View of ontological commitment.Bradley Rettler - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (5):1405-1425.
Paraphrase and the Symmetry Objection.John A. Keller - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2):365-378.
Ontological Commitment.Phillipn D. Bricker - 2014 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
From a Logical Point of View.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1953 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.

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