Ontological Commitment, Quantification, and Ontology PDF Download

Author: Leroy Nelson Meyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ontology
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Author: Stephan Krämer
Publisher: Verlag Vittorio Klostermann
ISBN: 9783465038689
Category : Language and logic
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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If Art is smart and Art is rich, then someone is both smart and rich - namely, Art. And if Art is smart and Bart is smart, then Art is something that Bart is, too - namely, smart. The first claim involves first-order quantification, a generalization concerning what kinds of things there are. The second involves second-order quantification, a generalization concerning what there is for things to be. Or so it appears. Following W.V.O. Quine, many philosophers have endorsed a thesis of Ontological Collapse about second-order quantification. They maintain that ultimately, second-order quantification reduces to first-order quantification over sets or properties, and therefore also carries the latter's distinctive ontological commitments.In this revised version of his doctoral dissertation, awarded the Wolfgang-Stegmuller-Prize in 2012, Stephan Kramer examines the major arguments for Ontological Collapse in detail and finds all of them wanting. Quantifications, he argues, fall into at least two irreducible kinds: those on what things there are, and those on what there is for things to be.

Author: Paolo Valore
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110458640
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Scientific literature on particular themes in ontology is extremely abundant, but it is often very hard for freshmen or sophomores to find a red thread between the various proposals. This text is an opinionated introduction, a preliminary text to research in ontology from the so called standard approach to ontological commitment, that is from the particular point of view that connects ontological questions to quantificational questions. It offers a survey of this viewpoint in ontology together with their possible applications through a broad array of examples and open problems and, at the same time, essential references to the classics of philosophy, so as to allow non-specialists to understand the terms and analysis procedures characterizing the discipline. Its result is a wide-ranging overview of the issued tackled by ontology, with a particular focus on the most relevant problems of contemporary debate (categorial taxonomies, nonexistent objects, case studies of ontological debates in specific fields of knowledge).

Author: Jody Azzouni
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190622555
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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A new approach to the metaphysics, background logic, and semantics of ontological debate, Ontology Without Borders offers new solutions to perennial philosophical puzzles about constitution and the nonexistent. Book jacket.

Author: Patrick Dieveney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Following Quine, some philosophers argue that insofar as we accept our best scientific theories as true, we are committed to the existence of the things these theories say 'there are'. And, we determine what things our theories say 'there are' by looking to the objects required to satisfy the existentially quantified sentences of these theories. In other words, existential quantification is the mark of ontological commitment. In my dissertation, I examine this relationship between quantification and ontology. Building on work from Peter Geach and Van McGee, I develop an account of quantification, what I call"unrestricted substitutional quantification". I argue that this is not only the appropriate understanding of the quantifiers, but it also allows for a robust science of ontology. With this understanding of the quantifiers, I consider the role they play in determining our ontological commitments by examining the paradigm example of this role--the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument. My analysis of the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument focuses on two central points. First, I argue that standard formulations of the argument include an unnecessary premise. Eliminating this superfluous premise significantly strengthens the argument as it has drawn a great deal of criticism. Second, the resulting argument serves as a blueprint for Quinean appeals to existential quantification in determining our ontological commitments. As a result, the argument helps clarify a necessary condition on such appeals. We are only committed to the objects required to satisfy existentially quantified sentences in formalizations of our accepted theories provided they occur in appropriate formalizations of the theories. Hence, appealing to existential quantification to determine ontological commitments requires an account of 'appropriateness' for formalizations. I conclude by offering such an account by drawing on work from Hartry Field, Mark Colyvan, and other areas of study (e.g., Kantian Ethics) where a similar problem of occurs.

Author: Dale Gottlieb
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Shows that when Qyuine's criterion of ontological commitment is modified to allow for the legitimacy of substitutional quantification, two consequences follow: (i) fundamental questions of ontology cease to be settled by mere appeal to logical form and truth, and (ii) a powerful method for reducing ontological commitments becomes available.

Author: L. Decock
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401735751
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Willard VanOrman Quine has probably been the most influential th American philosopher of the 20 century. His work spans over seven decades, and covers many domains in philosophy. He has made major contributions to the fields of logic and set theory, philosophy of logic and mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, epistemology and metaphysics. Quine's first work in philosophy was in the field of logic. His major contributions are the two set-theoretic systems NF (1936) and ML (1940). 1 These systems were alternatives to the type theory of Principia Mathematica or Zermelo's set theory, and are still being studied by 2 mathematicians. An indirect contribution to the field of logic is his strong resistance to moda110gic. Quine's objectIons to the notions of necessity and analyticity have influenced the development of moda110gic? Quine has had an enormous influence on philosophy of mathematics. When Quine entered philosophy there was a discussion on the foundations of mathematics between the schools of intuitionism, formalism, and conventionalism. Quine soon took issue with Carnap's conventionalism in "Truth by convention,,4 (1936). Quine has never joined one of the other schools, but has added new elements that are the basic ones of the 5 contemporary schools of nominalism, platonism, and structuralism. Quine has long been in the shadow of Benacerraf and Putnam in this field. At the moment there seems to be a renewed interest in Quine's work, and most philosophers explicitly refer to Quine's work.

Author: Richard H. Severens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780820303352
Category : Ontology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Jody Azzouni
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190622571
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Our experience of objects (and consequently our theorizing about them) is very rich. We perceive objects as possessing individuation conditions. They appear to have boundaries in space and time, for example, and they appear to move independently of a background of other objects or a landscape. In Ontology Without Boundaries Jody Azzouni undertakes an analysis of our concept of object, and shows what about that notion is truly due to the world and what about it is a projection onto the world of our senses and thinking. Location and individuation conditions are our product: there is no echo of them in the world. Features, the ways that objects seem to be, aren't projections. Azzouni shows how the resulting austere metaphysics tames a host of ancient philosophical problems about constitution ("Ship of Theseus," "Sorities"), as well as contemporary puzzles about reductionism. In addition, it's shown that the same sorts of individuation conditions for properties, which philosophers use to distinguish between various kinds of odd abstracta-universals, tropes, and so on, are also projections. Accompanying our notion of an object is a background logic that makes cogent ontological debate about anything from Platonic objects to Bigfoot. Contemporary views about this background logic ("quantifier variance") make ontological debate incoherent. Azzouni shows how a neutral interpretation of quantifiers and quantifier domains makes sense of both philosophical and pre-philosophical ontological debates. Azzouni also shows how the same apparatus makes sense of our speaking about a host of items--Mickey Mouse, unicorns, Martians--that nearly all of us deny exist. It's allowed by what Azzouni shows about the background logic of our ontological debates, as well as the semantics of the language of those debates that we can disagree over the existence of things, like unicorns, without that background logic and semantics forcing ontological commitments onto speakers that they don't have.

Author: Roberto Poli
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048188458
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Ontology was once understood to be the philosophical inquiry into the structure of reality: the analysis and categorization of ‘what there is’. Recently, however, a field called ‘ontology’ has become part of the rapidly growing research industry in information technology. The two fields have more in common than just their name. Theory and Applications of Ontology is a two-volume anthology that aims to further an informed discussion about the relationship between ontology in philosophy and ontology in information technology. It fills an important lacuna in cutting-edge research on ontology in both fields, supplying stage-setting overview articles on history and method, presenting directions of current research in either field, and highlighting areas of productive interdisciplinary contact. Theory and Applications of Ontology: Philosophical Perspectives presents ontology in philosophy in ways that computer scientists are not likely to find elsewhere. The volume offers an overview of current research traditions in ontology, contrasting analytical, phenomenological, and hermeneutic approaches. It introduces the reader to current philosophical research on those categories of everyday and scientific reasoning that are most relevant to present and future research in information technology.