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 (not actually for hermeneutical or historic interest, but as a way of exposing the idea). However, I distinguish between two readings of Quine’s famous ontological criterion, and I center the focus on (assuming without further discussion the other one to be mistaken) 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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Notes
I take Quine—my Quine—, Cameron and Armstrong to be the main champions of this cause.
Rayo makes similar considerations at the opening of his (2007):
An immediate consequence of this way of thinking about ontological commitment is that the ontological commitments carried by a sentence are an aspect of its truth-conditions. This means, in particular, that one cannot change the ontological commitments carried by a sentence without thereby changing the sentence’s truth-conditions. (Rayo 2007, p. 428).
The idea thus is that it only makes sense to try to figure out the ontology of a theory when this is apt to be formalized in quantificational language. In Quine’s words: “The question of ontology simply makes no sense until we get to something recognizable as quantification, or perhaps as a relative clause, with pronouns as potential variables.” (1975, p. 269).
Azzouni gets it wrong: “On Quine’s view, our quantifiers range over what exists, not over what we merely take to exist.” (2004, p. 126).
It is significant that Cameron also offers the double view—minimalist and literalist—present in Quine. Cameron considers that when language tries to carve the world at its joints, the literal reading is mandatory, and he calls that language “Ontologese” (s. his 2010), but that is exactly what Quine calls simply natural science.
In Carnap’s words: ‘If someone decides to accept the thing language, there is no objection against saying that he has accepted the world of things. But this must not be interpreted as if it meant his acceptance of a belief in the reality of the thing world, there is no such belief or assertion or assumption (…)’ (1956, pp. 207–208. Emphasis in original).
In fact, this statement is ambiguous. As it stands, it could represent either the literal or the liberal view; it depends on whether we consider that the existential generalization is logically and unavoidably entailed by the use of a name (i.e., that ‘Fa’ entails ‘(∃x)Fx’), or whether the possibility is conceded to block this entailment (as under a substitutional reading of the quantifiers). Thomasson (2007) makes a similar point, but she considers that it is not so clear that the substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers does not imply ontological commitments. Thus, once one accepts ‘Jupiter has four moons’, one is forced to accept ‘the number of moons of Jupiter is four’, which in turn implies that ‘there is something that is the number of moons of Jupiter’, and that, according to Thomasson, implies irrevocably a commitment with the existence of numbers. Nevertheless, we can (and rationally must) make the aforementioned inference, but to consider ‘four’ as a denoting term or not is not explicitly stated either in the inference or in the sentences. For sure, Quine is correct here: “Where substitutional quantification serves, ontology lacks point” (1969a, p. 107).
That is, indispensability of a quantified expression does not entail eo ipso commitment to the quantified variables’ values. Of course, this is a very substantial claim, but this paper takes it as established. S., for argumentation, Azzouni (2004, 2009) or forthcoming, Yablo (1998).
It is worthy of note that TC-Ontologists, even when minimalist, do not easily accept this view. Cameron, e.g., asks: “What possible reason could one have for thinking of some propositions that they need to be grounded in what there is that doesn’t apply to all propositions?” (2008, p. 107). And another TC-Ontologist, Heil, claims: “When a claim about the world is true, something about the world makes it true” (2003, p. 9). Although this latter claim is too vague to be disputed, Heil seems to be thinking along the same line as the literalist Quine.
Quine linked this idea to the thesis of ontological relativity, namely, that consequently the ontology of a discourse is relative to the ontology we choose for the metalanguage we will employ. This opens an unavoidable regress, as it is not at all clear how the metalanguage gets its ontology fixed. (This must suffice by now, but further reflections in the next chapter touch upon this point).
I am thus offering a Davidsonian view of IR, which differs from Quines’s. Quine considered that the different trade-offs in the interpretations maintain the sentence truth-conditions fixed but not its ontology probably because of a positivistic redoubt in his philosophy, which makes him take the entities to which observation sentences are keyed (redness, coldness) as the ones really existing and the rest as Menschenwerk. Quine asks, discussing under determination: “[T]aking a more positivistic line, should we say that truth reaches only to the observation conditionals at most, and, in Kronecker’s words, that alles übrige is Menschenwerk?” (1975, p. 242). Davidson, for his part, considers that the different interpretations keep the ontology fixed because, at least as it concerns our ordinary environment, “there is a single ontology” (1995, p. 121), and thereof his consideration of inscrutability as an ontologically innocuous thesis.
A. Rayo also makes this point:
Note, for example, that on standard semantic theories one assigns to each first-order predicate of the language a set as its semantic value. From this it follows that one’s semantic theory for ‘∃x Elephant(x)’ carries commitment to sets. But it would be a mistake to conclude on those grounds alone that ‘∃x Elephant(x)’ itself carries commitment to sets. Just because a semantic theory uses sets in specifying truth conditions for ‘∃x Elephant(x)’, it doesn’t follow that the truth-conditions thereby specified demand of the world that it contain sets. Similarly, just because a semantic theory uses elephants in specifying truth conditions for ‘∃x Elephant(x)’ it doesn’t immediately follow that the truth-conditions thereby specified demand of the world that it contain elephants. (Op. cit., p. 431).
A little bit of technicality in order to motivate the assertion. An axiom of the theory will state the satisfaction conditions (and derivately the truth-conditions) for a monadic predicate ‘P’ as follows:
‘Pxk’ is satisfied by I iif Pxk.
That means that the predicate P is satisfied for some object k if and only if in the offered interpretation—a mapping of variables to objects—the object k is P. So, we need to include interpretations in the metalanguage’s domain.
There are good prospects. For example to adopt the canonical notation when we want to assert the existence of one object (‘∃x’) but to adopt the pluralist one when several objects are posited (‘∃xx’). (S. e.g., Rayo 2007).
Does the idea of senquences containing objects which are not assumed as existing sound Meinongian to you? (It does to me). It will depend on whether you consider Tarskian-semantics as entailing realism or not. Obviously, here is not the place to discuss it. However, if you take it to entail realism, think of my point as claiming that Tarskian semantics is neutral about whether the target language commits itself to real or Meinongian objects. I may even allow you to think of my point as affirming that we can find an ontologically neutral satisfactory truth theory (apt to employ as a truth-conditional semantics) (following, e.g., along the lines of Horwich’s minimalism?).
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jody Azzouni for useful comments on a (much worse) previous draft.
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Peñaranda, J.J.L. Ontology: minimalism and truth-conditions. Philos Stud 162, 683–696 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9789-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9789-z