Abstract

- Quine's 1946 lecture Nominalism is a superb exposition of his early views on ontological commitment. In my opinion, they are presented more clearly in this lecture than in On What There Is. I go on to illustrate these views in connection with the problem of finding nominalistically acceptable paraphrases of two sentences: ‘Some zoological species are cross-fertile' and ‘There are three times as many dogs as there are cats'. Various philosophical problems are examined that arise from the paraphrases taken into consideration. I conclude that the value of the lecture does not lie in its contribution to the "nominalist paraphrase project", but rather in what it adds to our understanding of how ontological disputes should be conducted.