When best theories go bad

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (2):392-405 (2009)
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Abstract

It is common for contemporary metaphysical realists to adopt Quine's criterion of ontological commitment while at the same time repudiating his ontological pragmatism. 2 Drawing heavily from the work of others—especially Joseph Melia and Stephen Yablo—I will argue that the resulting approach to meta-ontology is unstable. In particular, if we are metaphysical realists, we need not accept ontological commitment to whatever is quantified over by our best first-order theories.

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David Manley
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Citations of this work

Paraphrase and the Symmetry Objection.John A. Keller - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2):365-378.
Modal Quantification Without Worlds.Billy Dunaway - 2013 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 151-186.
Quantifier Variance.Rohan Sud & David Manley - 2021 - In Ricki Leigh Bliss & J. T. M. Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. New York: Routledge. pp. 100-17.
The Metaphysical Commitments of Logic.Thomas Brouwer - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Leeds

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References found in this work

Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.

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