Ontology, Commitment, and Quine's Criterion

Philosophia Mathematica 15 (3):271-290 (2007)
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Abstract

For Quine, the ontological commitments of a discourse are what fall under its (objectual) quantifiers. The recent literature, however, is beginning to move away from this picture. There are direct challenges to Quine's criterion, and there are also attempts to provide alternatives. Azzouni suggests that the ontological commitments of a discourse should be determined by an existence predicate instead. The availability of this alternative forces an adjudication between Qune's criterion and the predicate approach to ontological commitment. I argue that to adjudicate between these criteria for ontological commitment, we need first to adjudicate between criteria for what exists

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Yvonne Raley
City University of New York

Citations of this work

From primitive identity to the non-individuality of quantum objects.Jonas Becker Arenhart & Décio Krause - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 46 (2):273-282.
The facticity of explanation and its consequences.Yvonne Raley - 2007 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21 (2):123 – 135.

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References found in this work

Science Without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism.Hartry H. Field - 1980 - Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology.Rudolf Carnap - 1950 - Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4 (11):20-40.
Mathematics as a science of patterns.Michael David Resnik - 1997 - New York ;: Oxford University Press.
From a Logical Point of View.Richard M. Martin - 1955 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15 (4):574-575.

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