A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an (...) extension of Hull’s view to the ubiquitous phenomenon of symbiosis. Finally, using immunology as a key example, it shows that the genidentity view suggests that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological and that its principal claim is one of priority, namely that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa. (shrink)

Universalist and nihilist answers to philosophical questions may be extreme, but they are clear enough. Aliquidist answers, by contrast, are typically caught between the Scylla of vagueness and indeterminacy and the Charybdis of ungroundedness and arbitrariness, and steering a proper middle course—saying exactly where in the middle one is going to settle—demands exceptional navigating powers. I myself tend to favor extreme answers precisely for this reason. Here, however, I consider one sense in which Something may claim superiority over its polar (...) competitors, Everything and Nothing, when it comes to answerting the ontological question, “What is there?”. (shrink)

As analytic philosophy is becoming increasingly aware of and interested in its own history, the study of that field is broadening to include, not just its earliest beginnings, but also the mid-twentieth century. One of the towering figures of this epoch is W.V. Quine (1908-2000), champion of naturalism in philosophy of science, pioneer of mathematical logic, trying to unite an austerely physicalist theory of the world with the truths of mathematics, psychology, and linguistics. Quine's posthumous papers, notes, and drafts revealing (...) the development of his views in the forties have recently begun to be published, as well as careful philosophical studies of, for instance, the evolution of his key doctrine that mathematical and logical truth are continuous with, not divorced from, the truths of natural science. But one central text has remained unexplored: Quine's Portuguese-language book on logic, his 'farewell for now' to the discipline as he embarked on an assignment in the Navy in WWII. Anglophone philosophers have neglected this book because they could not read it. Jointly with colleagues, I have completed the first full English translation of this book. In this accompanying paper I draw out the main philosophical contributions Quine made in the book, placing them in their historical context and relating them to Quine's overall philosophical development during the period. Besides significant developments in the evolution of Quine's views on meaning and analyticity, I argue, this book is also driven by Quine's indebtedness to Russell and Whitehead, Tarski, and Frege, and contains crucial developments in his thinking on philosophy of logic and ontology. This includes early versions of some arguments from 'On What There Is', four-dimensionalism, and virtual set theory. (shrink)

Quine's views on ontology and naturalism are well-known but rarely considered in tandem. According to my interpretation the connection between them is vital. I read Quine as a global epistemic structuralist. Quine thought we only ever know objects qua solutions to puzzles about significant intersections in observations. Objects are always accessed descriptively, via their roles in our best theory. Quine's Kant lectures contain an early version of epistemic structuralism with uncharacteristic remarks about the mental. Here Quine embraces mitigated anomalous monism, (...) allowing introspection and the availability in principle of full physical descriptions of the perceptual states which get science off the ground. Later versions abandon these ideas. My epistemic-structural interpretation explains why. I argue first-personal introspective access to mental states is incompatible with global epistemic structuralism. (shrink)

"This book is valuable as expounding in full a theory of meaning that has its roots in the work of Frege and has been of the widest influence.

Tadeusz Kotarbinski is one of towering figures in contemporary Polish philosophy. He was a great thinker, a great teacher, a great organizer of philosophical and scientific life, and, last but not least, a great moral authority. He died at the age of 96 on October 3, 1981. Kotarbinski was active in almost all branches of philosophy. He made many significant contributions to logic, semantics, ontology, epistemology, history of philosophy, and ethics. He created a new field, namely praxiology. Thus, using an (...) ancient distinction, he contributed to theoretical as well as practical philoso~hy. Kotarbinski regarded praxiology as his major philosophical "child". Doubtless, praxiology belongs to practical philosophy. This collection, howewer, is mainly devoted to Kotarbinski' s theoretical philosophy. Reism - Kotarbinski' s fundamental idea of ontology and semantics - is the central topic of most papers included here; even Pszczolowski' s essay on praxiology considers its ontological basis.,Only two papers, namely that of Zarnecka-Bialy and that of Wolenski, are not linked with reism. However, both fall under the general label "Kotarbinski: logic, semantics and ontology". The collection partly consists of earlier published papers. (shrink)

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...) follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. -/- This book offers a comprehensive study of Quine’s naturalism. Building on Quine’s published corpus as well as thousands of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, this book aims to reconstruct both the nature (chapters 2-4) and the development (chapter 5-7) of his naturalism. As such, this book aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS: A GENERAL DISCUSSION The terms 'analysis' and 'analyse' are used in all sorts of ways in ordinary discourse and in ...

This book is an exploration and defense of the coherence of classical theism’s doctrine of divine aseity in the face of the challenge posed by Platonism with respect to abstract objects. A synoptic work in analytic philosophy of religion, the book engages discussions in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaontology. It addresses absolute creationism, non-Platonic realism, fictionalism, neutralism, and alternative logics and semantics, among other topics. The book offers a helpful taxonomy of the wide range of options (...) available to the classical theist for dealing with the challenge of Platonism. It probes in detail the diverse views on the reality of abstract objects and their compatibility with classical theism. It contains a most thorough discussion, rooted in careful exegesis, of the biblical and patristic basis of the doctrine of divine aseity. Finally, it challenges the influential Quinean metaontological theses concerning the way in which we make ontological commitments. (shrink)

I revisit my 1993 paper on Putnam and mathematical realism focusing on the indispensability argument and how it has fared over the years. This argument starts from the claim that mathematics is an indispensable part of science and draws the conclusion, from holistic considerations about confirmation, that the ontology of science includes abstract objects as well as the physical entities science deals with.

W. V. Quine’s first philosophical monograph, Word and Object, is widely recognized as one of the most influential books of twentieth century philosophy. Notes, letters, and draft manuscripts at the Quine Archives, however, reveal that Quine was already working on a philosophical book in the early 1940s; a project entitled Sign and Object. In this paper, I examine these and other unpublished documents and show that Sign and Object sheds new light on the evolution of Quine’s ideas. Where “Two Dogmas (...) of Empiricism” is usually considered to be a turning point in Quine’s development, this paper redefines the place of ‘Two Dogmas’ in his oeuvre. Not only does Quine’s book project reveal that his views were already fairly naturalistic in the early 1940s ; Sign and Object also unearths the steps Quine had to take in maturing his perspective; steps that will be traced in the second half of this paper. (shrink)

Quine is routinely perceived as saving metaphysics from Carnapian positivism. Where Carnap rejects metaphysical existence claims as meaningless, Quine is taken to restore their intelligibility by dismantling the former’s internal–external distinction. The problem with this picture, however, is that it does not sit well with the fact that Quine, on many occasions, has argued that metaphysical existence claims ought to be dismissed. Setting aside the hypothesis that Quine’s metaphysical position is incoherent, one has to conclude that his views on metaphysics (...) are subtler than is often presupposed; both the received view that Quine saved metaphysics and the opposite view that Carnap and Quine are on the same anti-metaphysical team seem too one-sided if we take seriously Quine’s own pronouncements on the issue. In this paper, I offer a detailed reconstruction of Quine’s perspective on metaphysical existence claims. Scrutinizing his published work as well as unpublished papers, letters, and notebooks, I show how Quine is able to both blur the boundary between scientific sense and metaphysical nonsense and to argue that we cannot ask what reality is really like in a distinctively philosophical way. I argue that although Quine’s position is much closer to Carnap’s than the received view suggests, it still differs in two crucial respects. (shrink)

We tend to talk about (refer to, quantify over) parts in the same way in which we talk about whole objects. Yet a part is not something to be included in an inventory of the world over and above the whole to which it belongs, and a whole is not something to be included in the inventory over and above its constituent parts. This paper is an attempt to clarify a way of dealing with this tension which may be labeled (...) the Minimalist View: An element in the field of a part-whole relation is to be included in an inventory of the world if and only if it does not overlap any distinct element that is itself included in the inventory. (shrink)

We tend to talk about parts in the same way in which we talk about whole objects. Yet a part is not something to be included in an inventory of the world over and above the whole to which it belongs, and a whole is not something to be included in an inventory over and above its own parts. This paper is an attempt to clarify a way of dealing with this tension which may be labeled the Minimalist View: an (...) element in the field of a part‐whole relation is to be included in an inventory of the world if, and only if, it does not overlap any other element that is itself included in the inventory. As it turns out, a clarification of this view involves both a defense of mereological extensionality and an account of the topological distinction between detached and undetached parts. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show that W. V. O. Quine's animadversions against modal logic did not get the same attention that is considered to be the case nowadays. The community of logicians focused solely on the technical aspects of C. I. Lewis’ systems and did not take Quine's arguments and remarks seriously—or at least seriously enough to respond. In order to assess Quine's place in the history, however, his relation to Carnap is considered since their notorious break (...) was about the status of extensionality and modal logic. Since much of the works about the history of analytic philosophy is centered on the relationship of Quine and Carnap, their break about modality deserves much more attention—it also sheds some light on why should anyone wonder about Quine's early arguments against modal logic. The paper ends with some further considerations regarding the early formation of modal logic and hitherto unconsidered problematic issues. (shrink)

This paper tries to unleash the nature of the paradox of nonexistence or non-being or negative singular existentials by using a General Metalogical Theory. In the first section, this paper explains in detail the paradox of negative singular eixistentials and explains how Alexius Meinong and Bertrand Russell respond to this paradox. Russell resolves the paradox using quantification method which Quine extends to formulate a criterion of ontological commitments. In the second section, a General Metalogical Theory is explained, and it is (...) shown that how the developed General Metalogical Theory is useful in unleashing the paradox of nonexistence. The principles of General Metalogical Theory is developed from Quine’s criterion: to be is to be the value of bound variable. In Quine’s criterion, the notion of the bound variable is significant. The General Metalogical Theory in unleashing the nature of the paradox mainly focuses on the question: from where does the binding of the bound variable come? The paper argues that it is not enough to say that the binding of the bound variable comes from the existentially loaded use of the particular quantifier. General Metalogical Theory attempts to show that the binding of the bound variable comes from somewhere else, so that we attach the particular quantifier to the variable and use the particular quantifier in an existentially loaded sense. Explaining the binding nature of the bound variable in the above-mentioned manner will unleash the nature of the paradox. (shrink)

This paper resolves the problems raised by Israel Scheffler and Noam Chomsky against Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment. I call Scheffler’s and Chomsky’s problems as (1) the problem of inexorable ontological commitments and (2) the problem of false existential inferences. I extend their problems to a third one, which is called as the problem of extended inexorable ontological commitments to rival entities. In order to present the third problem, two ontological disputes are considered: Russell–Meinong dispute from the context of the (...) referential theory of meaning and David Lewis–Meinong dispute from the context of modal metaphysics. In order to work out a resolution to these three problems, I emphasize the distinction between meta-ontology/meta-theory and object theory. Then, it is explained that there is a functional difference between Quine’s criterion of ontological commitments (meta-theory) and the object theories to which this criterion is applied. Here, considering the functional difference, I introduce different kinds of commitments: direct commitments and indirect commitments. Using Strawson’s views on the notion of presupposition, the distinction between direct commitments and indirect commitments is characterized further. Employing this distinction, I resolve the problem of inexorable ontological commitment to the entities, the problem of false existential inferences and the problems of extended inexorable ontological commitment to the rival entities. (shrink)

A general meta-logical theory is developed by considering ontological disputes in the systems of metaphysics. The usefulness of this general meta-logical theory is demonstrated by considering the case of the ontological dispute between the metaphysical systems of Lewis’ Modal Realism and Terence Parsons’ Meinongianism. Using Quine’s criterion of ontological commitments and his views on ontological disagreement, three principles of metalogic is formulated. Based on the three principles of metalogic, the notions of independent variable and dependent variable are introduced. Then, the (...) ontological dispute between Lewis’ Modal Realism and Terence Parsons’ Meinongianism are restated in the light of the principles of metalogic. After the restatement, Independent variable and dependent variables are fixed in both Lewis’ Modal Realism and Terence Parsons’ Meinongianism to resolve the dispute. Subsequently, a new variety of quantifiers are introduced which is known as functionally isomorphic quantifiers to provide a formal representation of the resolution of the dispute. The specific functionally isomorphic quantifier which is developed in this work is known as st-quantifier. It is indicated that how st-quantifier which is one of the functionally isomorphic quantifiers can function like existential quantifier. It is also shown that there is some kind of inconsistency which is unavoidable in stating the ontological disagreement and therefore, paraconsistent logic is a requirement in stating the ontological disputes. (shrink)

This paper investigates the ontological presuppositions of quantifier logic. It is seen that the actual infinite, although present in the usual completeness proofs, is not needed for a proper semantic foundation. Additionally, quantifier logic can be given an adequate formulation in which neither the notion of individual nor that of a predicate appears.

Philosophers often aim to demonstrate that the things we ordinarily think and say can be reconciled with our considered beliefs about the world. To this end, many philosophers try to paraphrase ordinary language claims by finding equivalent sentences that are less misleading. For instance, though we know that there is no British family that is the average one, we want to say that the average British family has 1.8 children, and we might do that by paraphrasing this claim as: there (...) are nearly twice as many British children as British families. This article aims to introduce and distinguish different paraphrase strategies, sketch their role in metaphysical debates and highlight some crucial questions that proponents of such strategies face. (shrink)

According to a growing consensus in the secondary literature on Quine, the judgment Quine makes in favor of the nominalism outlined in “Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism” is in tension with the naturalism he later adopts. In this paper, I show the consensus view is mistaken by showing that Quine’s judgment is rooted in a naturalistic standard of clarity. Moreover, I argue that Quine late in his career is committed to accepting one plausible reading of his judgment in 1947. In (...) making these arguments, I draw attention to a version of naturalism that misreadings of Quine have prevented philosophers from appreciating, and thereby articulate and clarify a version of naturalism I recommend philosophers investigate today. (shrink)

W.V. Quine is a well-known proponent of naturalism, the view on which reality is described only in science. He is also well-known for arguing that our current scientific theories commit us to the existence of abstract objects. It is tempting to believe that the naturalistic philosopher should think scientists outside of philosophy are in the best position to assess the merits of revising our current commitment to abstract objects. But Quine rejects this deferential view. On the reading of Quine’s philosophical (...) methodology that I defend in this paper, the naturalistic philosopher not only may assess the merits of revising the commitments of our scientific theories, but also will recommend we make such revisions if doing so simplifies and clarifies our science. To develop my reading, I will examine John Burgess and Gideon Rosen’s naturalism in ontology that includes the deferential view Quine rejects. By explaining how Quine’s naturalism differs from the anti-revisionist, deferential naturalism in philosophy of mathematics that Burgess and Rosen advance, I seek to clarify and advance contemporary debates on naturalism. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to some of Scott Soames ' comments on my colloquium paper Marcus, Kripke, and the Origin of the New Theory of Reference. Except for the indicated parts added in May, 1995, this paper was written on December 16th–25th, 1994 as my reply to Soames for the APA colloquium in Boston, December 28, 1994. In this paper, I argue that Soames ' contention that Marcus is not one of the primary founders of contemporary nondescriptivist theories of (...) reference is false. Soames presents numerous arguments for his thesis that Marcus did not originate ideas later elaborated upon by Kripke, but his arguments are unsound; they are based in part on a misunderstanding of Marcus' theory and in part on an inadequate grasp of some of the key notions of the New Theory of Reference, such as the notion of a posteriori necessities and the notion of reference-fixing descriptions. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to offer a method for determining the ontological commitments of a formalized theory. The second section shows that determining the consequence relation of a language model-theoretically entails that the ontology of a theory is tied very closely to the variables that feature in that theory. The third section develops an alternative way of determining the ontological commitments of a theory given a proof-theoretic account of the consequence relation for the language that theory is in. (...) It is shown that the proof-theoretic account of ontological commitment does not entail that the ontological commitments of a theory depend on the variables of that theory. The last section of the article discusses how this account of ontological commitment can be used in other philosophical projects such as Wright’s (Frege’s conception of numbers as objects, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1983) abstractionism. The article concludes with a discussion of the upshots of adopting the proof-theoretic account of ontological commitment for ontology generally. (shrink)

The repudiation of propositions as “obscure entities” which is prevalent among logicians and philosophers of “nominalistic” persuasion, is frequently justified by pointing out that no agreement seems ever to have been reached about the identity-condition of propositions. And if we cannot specify, so they argue, under what conditions two sentences express the same proposition, then we use the word “proposition” without any clear meaning. Quine, for example, feels far less uneasy about quantification over class-variables than about quantification over attribute-variables and (...) propositional variables, because there is a clear criterion for deciding whether we are dealing with two classes or with only one class referred to by different predicates: two classes are identical if they have the same membership. And such a criterion of identity is alleged to be lacking for intensions. (shrink)

Tarski, Carnap and Quine spent the academic year 1940?1941 together at Harvard. In their autobiographies, both Carnap and Quine highlight the importance of the conversations that took place among them during the year. These conversations centred around semantical issues related to the analytic/synthetic distinction and on the project of a finitist/nominalist construction of mathematics and science. Carnap's Nachlaß in Pittsburgh contains a set of detailed notes, amounting to more than 80 typescripted pages, taken by Carnap while these discussions were taking (...) place. In my article, I present a survey of these notes with special emphasis on Tarski's rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, the passage from typed languages to first-order languages, Tarski's finitism/nominalism, and the construction of a finitist language for mathematics and science. (shrink)

The author investigates which methods of naming objects are possible in the language of physics on the basis of the real physical conditions and to which extend objects thereby can be identified. It is shown that in the language of classical physics naming by designation is always possible. But this implies only the temporal identity of objects, not the "trans - world" - identity, which is important for modalities. In the language of quantum physics naming by designation is no longer (...) applicable to individuals but only to classes of equivalent objects. And for these classes temporal identity as well as the "trans - world" - identity can be produced, which means that an adequate semantics can be specified for the concept of possibility necessary in this language. (shrink)

Quine’s general approach is to treat ontology as a matter of what a theory says there is. This turns ontology into a question of which existential statements are consequences of that theory. This approach is contrasted favourably with the view that takes ontological commitment as a relation to things. However within the broadly Quinean approach we can distinguish different accounts, differing as to the nature of the consequence relation best suited for determining those consequences. It is suggested that Quine’s own (...) narrowly formal account fails. Then a consideration of the necessitation approach championed by Jackson and Lewis shows that it does not do justice to the role of acknowledging consequences in determining rationality. I suggest that an approach which puts a priori consequence as the key relation does a better job. The task of spelling out the nature of a priori consequence is sketched, along with reasons to doubt the adequacy of the double indexing approach to analysing the a priori. The sorts of relations we can stand in to theories which allow us to inherit ontological commitments are touched on with a number of important philosophical strategies for introducing belief-like attitudes which nevertheless avoid ontological commitment. (shrink)

The indispensability argument is sometimes seen as weakened by its reliance on a controversial premise of confirmation holism. Recently, some philosophers working on the indispensability argument have developed versions of the argument which, they claim, do not rely on holism. Some of these writers even claim to have strengthened the argument by eliminating the controversial premise. I argue that the apparent removal of holism leaves a lacuna in the argument. Without the holistic premise, or some other premise which facilitates the (...) transfer of evidence to mathematical portions of scientific theories, the argument is implausible. (shrink)

The debate over whether we should believe that mathematical objects exist quickly leads to the question of how to determine what we should believe. Indispensabilists claim that we should believe in the existence of mathematical objects because of their ineliminable roles in scientific theory. Eleatics argue that only objects with causal properties exist. Mark Colyvan’s recent defenses of Quine’s indispensability argument against some contemporary eleatics attempt to provide reasons to favor the indispensabilist’s criterion. I show that Colyvan’s argument is not (...) decisive against the eleatic and sketch a way to capture the important intuitions behind both views. (shrink)

Whether a predicate is a referential expression depends upon what reference is conceived to be. Even if it is granted that reference is a relation between words and worldly items, the referents of expressions being the items to which they are so related, this still leaves considerable scope for disagreement about whether predicates refer. One of Frege's great contributions to the philosophy of language was to introduce an especially liberal conception of reference relative to which it is unproblematic to suppose (...) that predicates are referring expressions. According to this liberal conception, each significant expression in a language has its own distinctive semantic role or power, a power to effect the truth-value of the sentences in which it occurs. (shrink)

This paper traces the development of Quine's ontological ideas throughout his early logical work in the period before 1948. It shows that his ontological criterion critically depends on this work in logic. The use of quantifiers as logical primitives and the introduction of general variables in 1936, the search for adequate comprehension axioms, and problems with proper classes, all forced Quine to consider ontological questions. I also show that Quine's rejection of intensional entities goes back to his generalisation of Principia (...) Mathematica in 1932. (shrink)

This paper discusses the operations meant to act on situations of ontological uncertainties for chemicals. Using examples related to substances developed as part of nanotechnology programs, it analyses technical and social instruments meant to define the existence of these substances, as « new » or « existing » chemicals. Carbon nanotubes developed by a French company offer an illustration of containment, while the legal disputes about nano silver in the U.S. display oppositions about whether or not these compounds are equivalent (...) to colloïdal silver. The operations meant to deal with the ontological uncertainty of these substances define categories and craft political organizations. As such, they suggest developing an analytical approach able to jointly examine the ontologies of material objects and the forms of political ordering. (shrink)

A 'free logic' for singular terms with restrictions on existential generalization and universal instantiation is set out and argued for. Weaker logics, Such as lambert's fd and fd1 are held incapable of proving instances of tarski's truth schema for languages containing non-Denoting terms. Stronger logics, Such as scott's and lambert's fd2, Are held to yield false theorems when given natural interpretations. The logic defended conforms essentially to russell's semantical intuitions. Some consequences are drawn for the theory of identity.

The identity of a natural kind can be construed in terms of its causal profile. This conception is more appropriate to science than two alternatives. The identity of a natural kind is not determined by one causal role because one natural kind can have many causal roles and several functions and because some functions are shared by different kinds. Furthermore, the microstructuralist thesis is wrong: The identity of certain natural kinds is not determined by their microstructure. It is true that (...) if A and B have the same microstructural composition then a sample of a chemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B. However, the reverse does not hold. It is not the case that if a sample of a chemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B then A and B have the same microstructural composition. This is because a macroscopic NK can be “multiconstituted” by different microstructures. (shrink)

The debate concerning the ontological status of musical works is perhaps the most animated debate in contemporary analytic philosophy of music. In my view, progress requires a piecemeal approach. So in this article I hone in on one particular musical work concept – that of the classical Western art musical work; that is, the work concept that regulates classical art-musical practice. I defend a fictionalist analysis – a strategy recently suggested by Andrew Kania as potentially fruitful – and I develop (...) a version of such an analysis in line with a broad commitment to philosophical naturalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the development of analytic philosophy in the Philippines. I first highlight the circumstances that led to its inception in the late 1930s, and some of the notable works by prominent Filipino analytic philosophers that helped shape the tradition. Next, I discuss the socio-political climate in the late 1950s through the 1970s that may have led some Filipino philosophers to move away from analytic philosophy. Finally, I explore some signs of its re-emergence (...) in the late twentieth century and its possible trajectories in the twenty-first century. (shrink)