Ontology: minimalism and truth-conditions

Philosophical Studies 162 (3):683-696 (2013)
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Abstract

In this paper, I develop a criticism to a method for metaontology, namely, the idea that a discourse’s or theory’s ontological commitments can be read off its sentences’ truth- conditions. Firstly, I will put forward this idea’s basis and, secondly, I will present the way Quine subscribed to it. However, I distinguish between two readings of Quine’s famous ontological criterion, and I center the focus on the one currently dubbed “ontological minimalism”, a kind of modern Ockhamism applied to the mentioned metaontological view. I show that this view has a certain application via Quinean thesis of reference inscrutability but that it is not possible to press that application any further and, in particular, not for the ambitious metaontological task some authors try to employ. The conclusion may sound promising: having shown the impossibility of a semantic ontological criterion, intentionalist or subjectivist ones should be explored

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References found in this work

Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Ontological relativity and other essays.Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.) - 1969 - New York: Columbia University Press.
Philosophy of logic.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1970 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Edited by Simon Blackburn & Keith Simmons.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.
From an ontological point of view.John Heil - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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