Participants in the debate about `ontological commitment' would benefit from distinguishing two different ways of understanding the notion. If the question at issue is `what is said to be' by a theory or `what a theory says there is', we are debating `explicit' commitment, while if we ask about the ontological costs or preconditions of the truth of a theory, we enquire into `implicit' commitment. I defend a conception of ontological commitment as implicit commitment; I also develop and defend an account of existentially quantified idioms in natural language which sees them as implicitly, but not explicitly, committing. Finally, I use the distinction between two kinds of ontological commitment to diagnose a flaw in a widely-used argument to the effect that existential quantification is not ontologically committing.
The question of ontological commitment is the question of `what a theory says there is'. So much is familiar to any student of Quine. See Quine, `On What There Is', repr. in his From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp.1-19, especially p.15ff. Yet the theory of ontological commitment remains in poor shape, and we lack consensus even with regard to the most basic questions: how should we give precise formulation to the notion of ontological commitment, and should we treat existentially quantified idioms as ontologically committing? Without agreement on foundational issues such as these, ontology is an impossible discipline, for unless we understand which sentences in the language of our theory may be used in ways which are ontologically committing, we cannot know whether theories put forward by would-be ontologists have the ontological significance they want them to have. Indee...
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...in any sentences which make ontological claims about s but does say of some named objects that they are s. On some not unreasonable views of the semantics of the situation, Specifically, that sentences containing names are not existential quantifications in disguise, and that there can be no truth expressed by a sentence of the form `a is a ' where the name a fails to refer.
the theory cannot be true unless there are s, yet the theory does not contain any sentence like `There are s' which could count as an ontological claim about s. Although s are not among the explicit commitments of the theory, it is certainly the case that the theory is committed to s in some sense, for if the theory is true then s must exist, and anyone who endorses the theory yet does not believe that s exist deserves censure for failing to acknowledge the ontological cost of his theory.
Realism and conventionalism generally establish the parameters of debate over universals. Do abstract terms in language refer to abstract things in the world? The realist answers yes, leaving us with an inflated ontology; the conventionalist answers no, leaving us with subjective categories. I want to defend nominalism — in its original medieval sense, as one possibility that aims to preserve objectivity while positing nothing more than concrete individuals in the world. First, I will present paradigmatic statements of realism and conventionalism as developed by Russell and Strawson. Then, I will present the nominalist alternative as developed by William of Ockham.
Trying to structure a situation in terms of such a consistent set of metaphors is in part like trying to structure that situation in terms of an objectivist model. What is left out are the experiential bases of the metaphors and what the metaphors hide. (p.220)
In this essay, I shall argue that there is no established truth-functional account of the meaning of indicative conditionals that is not subject to criticism but that the equivalence thesis - a truth-functional account of the meaning of indicative conditionals - is worth saving.
Davidson’s argument against the possibility of defining truth draws upon the work of Tarski. However, Tarski’s assumption that the semantic conception of truth holds only for formal languages which are not semantically closed is not as plausible as it seems to be since it can be shown that this would result in the impossibility of formulating a theory of truth, because the epistemological presuppositions of formal semantics undermine any theory of representation of reality in which our cognitions can be true or false representations. Yet Davidson concludes that "there cannot be a definition of ‘For all languages L, and all sentences s in L, s is true in L if and only if . . . s . . . L’." I am challenging Davidson by introducing into his above scheme my own definition of truth — "For all languages L, and all sentences s in L, s is true in L if and only if we prove s in L" — and then showing how to prove this definition philosophically.
Some kinds of utterances which have an indicative grammatical form seem, for different reasons, to be unable to say something true of the world. Logical contradictions are only the prime example of something the author baptizes impossible descriptions. So-called performative contradictions (e.g., "I do not exist") make up another kind, but there are at least two more such kinds: negating affirmations and performatives which cannot be explained within the philosophy of language. Only philosophical anthropology can explain their feature of "impossibleness," and a distinction between unreflective and reflective consciousness is central to the explanation. Particularly important here is G. H. Mead's distinction between two aspects of the self: the "I" and the "me." Each of the four kinds of impossible descriptions distinguished has its own contrary opposite. These are, in turn, logical tautologies, performative tautologies, affirming negations, and omissive performatives. The last three types as types have not received the philosophical recognition that they deserve. All four fit a general characterization which is given as a definition of the concept of superfluous description.
He defends the view that Quine’s ostrich nominalism is the best answer nominalists can offer to defeat the One Over Many argument. This is done by offering a solution to the problems of ostrich nominalist. However, Imaguire recognises that Quine would avoid arguing in terms of facts necessitating truths so labels this a new form of thinking, presenting a theory entitled ‘New Ostrich Nominalism’. Using the notion of ontological grounding, he furthers his argument by demonstrating that one does not have to show that the realist assumption of existence of universals is false, but only that it is not necessary (2014: 192). For an ostrich nominalist, the realist’s explanation of universals is derivate. It is not necessary for ‘a is F’ to be similar to another instance of ‘F’ or to anything else. From this reasoning, it is clear that the ostrich nominalist does take predicates with ontological seriousness. In order to assure substantiality, the realist must accept some additional principle for deciding whether a predicate commits us to a universal (Imaguire 2014: 197). An ostrich nominalist believes only predicates we quantify commit us to universals. The idea that we should avoid unnecessary commitments attempts to dissolve the One Over Many
Alain Badiou’s entire philosophical project rests on reclaiming the centrality of truth in philosophy, and he does so through a detailed working through of subjectivity, truth, and the event. Badiou makes it clear that in his systematic philosophy he wants to do without any reference to a subject who has and constructs its experiences, and the phenomenological structures of conscious life are not his focus. Although Badiou calls the method he uses in Logics of Worlds a phenomenology - it is, in his terms an objective phenomenology because it is about the existence of objects in a world and the relations that obtain among these objects, “the degrees of identity and difference among objects in a world” (Logics of Worlds, p. 48) Badiou identifies
avoids the metaphysics of presence. The fact that his theory is not vulnerable to logical difficulties because logic itself is precisely what is being called into
One of the more interesting concepts is the "Chain of signifiers", in which the signifier itself points not to the signified, or concept, but rather points to another set of signifiers, which each point to another set of signifiers, ad infinitum. It is this idea that "the word...never reaches the point when it refers to a signified" (Tyson 252) that positions language as nonreferential, with no end-game where a signified is met and all the supplements provided by the signifiers are resolves. There is no point at which language "refer[s] to things in the world" (252) instead relying on how we, through our own structures of signification, view concepts. Each chain of signifiers is dependent upon the structure that acts upon the creation of meaning and experience, and no longer dependent on the signified itself. For instance, a text never reaches the point where it relays the disparate ideas that formulated the text in the mind of the author - it instead is formulated of supplements that point to poten...
Atomic sentences have truth-values that evaluate the application of a concept to an object that is being referred. To find what the sentence refers to, the referent of the predicate must be applied to the referent of the subject. Connectives are vocabulary like “and”, “if”, and “not” that are functions from truth-values to truth tables. Each of these provide the basis for Frege’s language system such that we are able to speaking in our ordinary language, but still maintain the mathematical connection he attempts to establish early. Frege’s use of language and sentences being functions with variables is consistent with how he defines the basic constructs of what are needed in a human language.
Donnellen (1966) criticized the Russell and Strawson’s view. He claimed that there are attributive and referential uses of definite description. The former is about attributively using definite description in an assertion which stating something about “A is B”. The latter is about speaker using the description to let the audience to know what is “A is B” about. Donnellen claimed that Russell focus on former and Strawson focus on latter.
Russell’s Theory of Definite Description has totally changed the way we view definite descriptions by solving the three logical paradoxes. It is undeniable that the theory itself is not yet perfect and there can be objections on this theory. Still, until now, Russell’s theory is the most logical explanation of definite description’s role.
1. Non-cancellability: Conventional implicatures are commitments, and give rise to entailments, though separate from the ‘at-issue’ entailments of a sentence.
The Logical Hylomorphism is based on a logic which is formal description of a traditional account of what is distinguishing features about logic. The very distinction between the formal and material aspect of all the arguments has been
...ty requires a certain qualification on the combination of names in a proposition. This requirement cannot be fulfilled by any model of meaning that does not incorporate Wittgenstein’s context principle. Wittgenstein is acutely aware that to say how the character of the name restricts its use in a proposition is impossible. Consequently, he argues that this can be seen in the behavior of names in a proposition; by observing names in the context of a proposition, we learn their meaning without it being told to us in the manner that the aforementioned models attempt to do.