Abstract

The first problem which Gochet takes up in this important book is whether the proposition is necessary to logical syntax. Gochet is intent upon following out the nominalistic enterprise of desolving [[sic]] the ontological status of the proposition as much as possible. He notes that Quine’s schematic letters can replace the propositional variables, and thus the first transference is made from semantics to syntax, the first important loosening of ontological commitments. Tarski’s thesis that sentences are true or false, and not propositions, is the leading idea in the analysis and in the nominalistic criterion, in general. Throughout, the specific problem is to determine when the use of the notion of proposition is ontologically compromising. Here Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment is the analytic tool. Gochet distinguishes a syntactic version and a semantic version. Gochet refines this criterion by means of several objections of Ayer and Church and making some technical innovations proposed by Prior and Marcus-Barcan. Thus, along with the law of parsimony, he now has a powerful means for detecting the ontological commitments of certain modes of speech.