Philip Reynor May ‘05

Quine’s Defence of Ontology against Carnap

Philip Thomas Reynor_____________________________________________________________________

In analysing the ontology’s of Quine and Carnap some

arresting resemblances between the two standpoints emerge, which

Quine himself recognizes1, and it the main aim of this paper to

investigate how ingrained these resemblances are. Once the

degree of resemblance or non-resemblance has been established, it

will be apparent how far Quine has to reach in order to defend his

ontology. I intend to show that his reach does not have to extend

incredibly far. In fact, through the course of the investigation it

becomes evident that instead of mounting a defence against Carnap

what Quine is attempting is an examination, one that instead of

creating a gulf will create a bridge and an attempt at a unified

ontology. The problem of explaining and assessing Quine’s defence

then revolves into the problem of explaining and assessing the

value of Quine’s attempt at unification. The brilliance of Quine’s

method of defence is that he renders the situation such that there is

nothing in need of defence. Is it necessary to organise a defence, or

an attack, against something with which you agree? Certainly not,

instead of an attempt at defence Quine opts for an approach that

that is favourable for both ontology’s. Why argue for one theory

against another when it is possible to argue for both by accepting

reconciliation. If this reconciliation can be achieved through unified

theory, there is no need to defend at all. However, how successful is

Quine in his attempts at defence through unification? First, I will be

forwarding Quine’s ontology and his use of a traditional defence

1 In his paper called ‘Carnap’s Views on Onology’, in ‘The Ways of Paradox and other essays’ (see bibliography).

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against problems such as Plato’s beard; after this, I will examine the

apparent divergences of the two theories and finally I will

investigate how Quine maintains his defence through reconciliation

and whether it is a lucrative course of action.

In Quine’s paper On What There Is we see him argue in

defence of his ontology against two fictional characters of his own

imagination. When defending his ontology against Carnap in his

earlier paper On Carnap’s Views on Ontology we are witness to a

distinctly contrary approach to defence, mentioned above, which I

will be getting to later. Firstly, let us look at Quine’s ontology as

expropriated from On What There Is. He begins with the problem of

Plato’s beard the tangled doctrine of non-being. Quine and his

fictional debating partner ‘Mr X’ differ in their ontology’s; ‘Mr X’

maintains that there is something, an entity, which Quine maintains

there is not, and thus the problem arises. With respect to Quine’s

formulation of the problem, he cannot without contradiction claim

that ‘Mr X’s’ entity is not, i.e. ‘Non-being must in some sense be,

otherwise what is it that there is not?’2Quine sustains that this is

confusion on the part of ‘Mr X’ who must admit that a physical

being, such as Pegasus, does not exist and instead must posit being

for the mental Pegasus-idea. However, this same ‘Mr X’ would never

suffer confusion regarding the Parthenon and Parthenon-idea, so

why tolerate it with Pegasus and why not just admit to the non-

being of Pegasus. Enter Quine’s second apparent opponent ‘Wyman’

who upholds the being of Pegasus as an unactualized possible.

‘Wyman’ admits to the non-existence or non-actuality of Pegasus

while simultaneously maintaining that it is. Quine then decides to

‘clear Wyman’s slum (of possibles) and be done with it’. ‘Wyman’

can hardly admit ‘the round square cupola on Berkeley College’ as

an unactualized possible instead he claims that it is meaningless.

2 Ibid, p.1.

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Philip Reynor May ‘05

Now, to attempt an entanglement of Plato’s beard Quine utilizes

Russell’s theory of singular descriptions.

When a statement of being or non-being is analysed…it ceases to contain

any expression which even purports to name the alleged entity whose

being is in question, so that the meaningfulness no longer can be thought

to presuppose that there be such an entity.3

So now, in place of the meaningless ‘Pegasus’ we can use the

descriptive phrase ‘the winged horse of Bellerophon’; and if there

were no descriptive phrases available for Pegasus we could simply

substitute ‘is Pegasus’ or ‘pegasizes’, thus cutting off and disposing

with Plato’s beard. It can now be safely said that we do not commit

ourselves to an ontology containing ‘Pegasus’ if we commit

ourselves to ‘Pegasus is not’.

We now come to the beginning of the conflict between Carnap

and Quine. The essential difference between teacher and student

breaks down to this – Carnap’s dichotomy consists of a ‘fundamental

distinction between the two kinds of questions concerning the

existence or reality of entities’4 and Quine disagrees. Quine’s

undivided idea develops from his opposition to ‘Mr X’ and ‘Wyman’

when he investigates the problem of universals.

When we use the word ‘similar’, without defining it in any anterior terms,

do we thereby commit ourselves to the acceptance of an abstract entity

which is the relation of similarity.5

How do we discover if we are committing ourselves to abstract

entities? The anti-nominalist claims that in using a general term

such as ‘fish’ we are alluding to abstract entities. On the other hand,

the nominalist would believe they are referring to a concrete

3 Ibid, p.7.4 Supplement ‘A’ ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ from Carnap’s ‘Meaning and Necessity’, p.206.5 Ibid, p.204.

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particular ‘fish’ and not committing themselves to naming an

abstract ‘fishhood’. In addition, when we say that the word ‘similar’

is true of each ‘X’ with regard to each ‘Y’ we do not however name a

relation of similarity. How could ‘fish’ or ‘similar’ be put on level

terms with ‘Dublin’ or ‘Morning Star’? Even if the nominalist is found

guilty of using the word ‘fishhood’, they could easily claim to be

alluding to the general term and not the abstract entity. However,

‘Mr X’ may counter with the claim that ‘fishhood’ has meaning and

is still a universal and ‘Mr X’ believes we commit ourselves to

abstract entities in this way. Nevertheless, by examining the

difference between meaning and naming, we find a gulf. Using

Frege’s example of the phrases ‘Evening Star’ and ‘Morning Star’,

we find that both phrases name the same entity but have a different

meaning. Quine, in response, must refuse to admit meanings, but in

doing so, he does not deny the meaningfulness of statements and

can still ‘view utterances as significant’ without supporting a domain

of meanings. He also denies a commitment to entities by the use of

alleged names that are quickly dismissed as ‘admissible without

claiming to name’.6

Are there any entities that we commit ourselves to in a given

theory? By utilizing the phrases ‘there is a number between one and

ten’ or ‘there are brown cars’ are we not implying that there are

abstract entities and physical objects respectively.

…the objects we are to be understood to admit are precisely the objects

which we reckon to the universe of values over which the bound variables

of quantification are to be considered to range.7

Thus, to answer the earlier question, the entities we are

committing ourselves to, according to Quine, are bound variables of

quantification and not alleged names. The entities over which these

bound variables range are the ones that are true for a given theory.

6 Ibid.7 From Quine’s ‘Word & Object’, p.242.

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Using bound variables, we have full reign to commit to entities that

we cannot name, as it has already been shown that names can be

abolished with Russell’s theory of descriptions. ‘To be assumed as

an entity is…to be reckoned as the value of a variable’8 However, in

determining what entities we are allowed to presuppose i.e. what

there is, we see the dichotomy of Carnap which I mentioned earlier.

In Quine’s essay Carnap’s Views on Ontology, he places questions of

the being of a number between one and ten or of there being brown

cars on one side of Carnap’s dichotomy and questions of physical

entities or abstract entities on the other. Quine, however, does not

acknowledge this distinction and instead unifies the dichotomy by

blurring the distinctions and allying the two question types. In

Carnap’s paper Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology, the dichotomy

is at it most prevalent in the discussion concerning the framework

of the language.

If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities,

he has to introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new

rules; we shall call this procedure the construction of a linguistic

framework for the new entities in question. And now we must distinguish

two kinds of questions of existence: first, questions of the existence of

certain entities of the new kind within the framework; we call them

internal questions; and second, questions concerning the existence or

reality of the system of entities as a whole, called external questions.9

Now that I have forwarded Carnap’s ontological dicotomy, I will

proceed to explicate Quine’s method of reconciliation between

Carnap’s ontology and his own. Quine begins by reinterpreting

Carnap’s external and internal distinction as a distinction between

category questions, which ‘exhaust the range of a particular style of

bound variables’10and subclass questions, which do not exhaust the

range. However, Quine does re interpret the terminology used by

Carnap that the analytic type of internal question is contained, in

8 From Quine’s ‘From a Logical Point of View’, p.13.9 Carnap, ‘Meaning and Necessity’, p.206.10 Quine, ‘The Ways of Paradox and other essays’, p.207.

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Quine’s formulation, within the subclass range. Quine holds that if

we use a single style of variables to encompass the whole range of

entities then questions of numbers, classes, and physical objects all

become subclass questions, thus trivialising11 Carnap’s dichotomy

into the problem of whether to use one or two styles of variables.

He argues further against the compartmentalisation of variables by

utilizing Zermelo’s set theory12 under this theory all questions of

numbers or physical and abstract entities become subclass

questions. However, under a strict adoption of Russell’s theory of

types13 the problem remains until we take Russell’s method of

typical ambiguity and exploit it to its full potential discarding the

use of a distinct style of variables for every and all types. In this

way, Quine has shown that Carnap’s dichotomy is trivial, and thus

reconciled the two ontology’s even under the adoption of the theory

of types. With regard to Carnap’s paper Empiricism, Semantics and

Ontology Quine has shown that it is possible to eradicate the

distinction without damaging its philosophical aims.

I have shown how Quine defends his theory against opponents

like ‘Mr X’ and ‘Wyman and also how he achieved what he set out

to and reconciled his ontology with that of Carnap’s rendering a

negligible need to defend against an ontology that ‘commits’ to the

same entities as his own. Nevertheless, the wound was stitched by

the re-interpretation of Carnap’s terminological distinction between

external and internal questions. However, this does not affect

Carnap’s formulation in any major respect; for the introduction of

his framework he to admits that entities of the new kind, as internal

11 Quine explains this triviality mathematically. He states that ‘…the difference between using the explicit hypothesis ‘x is a real number between 0 and 1’ and introducing the restricted variables is so negligible that at the level of ordinary mathematical writing it cannot usually be detected; nor is there any reason why it should be detected.’ Quine, ‘The Ways of Paradox’, p.208. 12 Zermelo’s axiomatization of set theory classified the existence of sets regulated by a predicate to just those sets whose members were members of a given set and satisfied the predicate.13 A proposition relating to other propositions must, Russell says, be of another type from, a higher order then, the proposition it is about. So we must say that the classes of all first order classes which are not members of themselves are a second order class, thus it is nonsense to say that a class is or isn’t a member of itself.

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within the framework, are substitutable for variables and using

these variables sentences of the new kind can be generated. If the

internal questions concern the existence of entities of the new kind,

mentioned above, then Quine’s subdivision must lead to an

analytic/synthetic distinction between category and subclass

questions within the internal framework. This further implies that

external category questions, which are synthetic, can be abandoned

in favour of internal subclass questions. Essentially questions about

the reality of the thing world or the system of entities can be

formulated as internal subclass questions. The problem for Quine

now lies with the quandary of the analytic/synthetic distinction. In

the paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism Quine attempts to prove that

there is no distinction, Carnap however would appear to disagree

until we look at his formulation of the connotative, propositions of

meaning, and formal, syntactical propositions. It is possible to view

connotative as synthetic and formal as analytic modes of

expression, and in On the Character of Philosophical Problems

Carnap, so as not to cut the branch he sits on, reduces all

propositions to the formal mode while retaining their

meaningfulness. In this way, he too is blurring the lines between

analytic and synthetic proposition and in a sense bestowing the

reconciliation upon Quine.

Bibliography:

Carnap, R; ‘Meaning and Necessity’; Chicago University Press

(Chicago 1988).

Carnap, R; ‘On the Character of Philosophical Problems’ reprinted in

‘The Linguistic Turn’; ed: Rorty, R; Chicago University Press

(Chicago 1967).

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Flew, A (ed.); ‘A Dictionary of Philosophy’; Pan Books Limited

(London 1979).

Quine, W.V.O; ‘From a Logical Point of View’; Harvard University

Press (U.S.A 1980-1996).

Quine, W.V.O; ‘The Ways of Paradox and other essays’; Harvard

University Press (London 1997).

Quine, W.V.O; ‘Word & Object’; M.I.T Press (U.S.A 1996).

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