Keywords
How to Cite
Abstract
This paper aims to analyse the historical discontinuity between Quinean and neo-Quinean metaontology. It identifies the tension between the strict naturalistic grounding of Quine’s defense of the epistemic legitimacy of ontological inquiry and its rejection by his self-proclaimed followers. The contradictions are illustrated via a reconstruction of the historically faithful metaontological position of Quine and by comparing it with concrete representative examples of selected thoughts of paradigmatic neo-Quineans, namely those belonging to David Lewis, Peter van Inwagen, and Theodore Sider. First, I cast doubt on the historiographical narrative, according to which Lewis and other neo-Quineans radically depart from Quine due to their attempts to preserve “common sense” judgements when formulating ontological theories. Subsequently, I demonstrate that the break of neo-Quineans with the Quinean approach to metaontology consists primarily in the rejection of naturalism, which prevents asking certain traditional metaphysical questions and attributes epistemic priority to the results of empirical sciences.
References
Alspector-Kelly, Marc. “On Quine on Carnap on Ontology.” Philosophical Studies 102, no. 1 (2001): 93–122. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1010353825006
Armstrong, David M. A Theory of Universals: Volume 2: Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Bennett, Karen. “Composition, Colocation, and Metaontology.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 38–76. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.0002
Berto, Francesco, and Matteo Plebani. Ontology and Metaontology: A Contemporary Guide. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
Bird, Graham H. “Carnap and Quine: Internal and External Questions.” Erkenntnis 42, no. 1 (1995): 41–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01666811
Bliss, Ricki, and J. T. M. Miller, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. New York: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315112596
Boolos, George. “Nominalist Platonism.” Philosophical Review 94, no. 3 (1985): 327–44. https://doi.org/10.2307/2185003
Brenner, Andrew. “Science and the Special Composition Question.” Synthese 195, no. 2 (2016): 657–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1234-6
Carnap, Rudolf. “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4, no. 11 (1950): 20–40.
Carnap, Rudolf. “Překonání metafyziky logickou analýzou jazyka.” Translated by Karel Berka. Filosofický časopis 39, no. 4 (1991): 623–43.
Caruso, Gregg. “Realism, Naturalism, and Pragmatism: A Closer Look at the Views of Quine and Devitt.” Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy 21, no. 1 (2007): 64–83. https://doi.org/10.1515/krt-2007-012105
Deng, Natalja. “What Quine (and Carnap) Might Say about Contemporary Metaphysics of Time.” In Quine, Structure, and Ontology, edited by Frederique Janssen-Lauret, 280–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198864288.003.0013
Egerton, Karl. “Getting off the Inwagen: A Critique of Quinean Metaontology.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4, no. 6 (2016): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v4i6.2962
Egerton, Karl. “Quine’s Metametaphysics.” In The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, edited by Ricki Bliss, and J. T. M. Miller, 49–60. New York: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315112596-4
Eklund, Matti. “Carnap’s Metaontology.” Noûs 47, no. 2 (2013): 229–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2011.00830.x
Eklund, Matti. “Neo‐Fregean Ontology.” Philosophical Perspectives 20, no. 1 (2006): 95–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2006.00104.x
Esfeld, Michael. “Quantum Humeanism, or: Physicalism without Properties.” Philosophical Quarterly 64, no. 256 (2014): 453–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqu030
Filip Grygar. “Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr a příběh kodaňské interpretace.” Teorie vědy / Theory of Science 39, no. 2 (2017): 207–38. https://doi.org/10.46938/tv.2017.376
Healey, Richard. “Physical Composition.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44, no. 1 (2013): 48–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsb.2011.05.001
Hirsch, Eli. Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199732111.001.0001
Hylton, Peter, and Gary Kemp. “Willard Van Orman Quine.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 1997–. Article published April 9, 2009. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/.
Hylton, Peter. “Carnap and Quine on the Status of Ontology: The Role of the Principle of Tolerance.” In The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine, edited by Sean Morris, 235–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108664202.017
Hylton, Peter. Quine. London: Routledge, 2007. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203962435
Chalmers, David J. “Ontological Anti-Realism.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 77–130. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.0003
Janssen-Lauret, Frederique, and Fraser MacBride. “David Lewis’s Place in the History of Late Analytic Philosophy: His Conservative and Liberal Methodology.” Philosophical Inquiries 6, no. 1 (2018): 51–72. https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v6i1.208
Janssen-Lauret, Frederique. “The Quinean Roots of Lewis’s Humeanism.” Monist 100, no. 2 (2017): 249–65. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onx007
Jenkins, C.S. “What Is Ontological Realism?” Philosophy Compass 5, no. 10 (2010): 880–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00332.x
Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena ke každé příští metafyzice, jež se bude moci stát vědou. Translated by Jaroslav Kohout and Jiří Navrátil. Praha: Svoboda, 1992.
Karakostas, Vassilios. “Humean Supervenience in the Light of Contemporary Science.” Metaphysica 10, no. 1 (2009): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-008-0037-8
Keskinen, Antti. “Quine on Objects: Realism or Anti-Realism?” Theoria 78, no. 2 (2012): 128–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-2567.2012.01128.x
Korman, Daniel. Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732532.001.0001
Ladyman, James, John G. Collier, Don Ross, and David Spurrett. Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199276196.001.0001
Lewis, David K. “Acceptance Speech for the Behrman Award” (1991). In Philosophical Manuscripts, edited by Frederique Janssen-Lauret and Fraser MacBride, 187–90. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847393.003.0037
Lewis, David K. “Humean Supervenience Debugged.” Mind 103, no. 412 (1994): 473–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/103.412.473
Lewis, David K. “New Work for a Theory of Universals.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 4 (1983): 343–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048408312341131
Lewis, David K. “Putnam’s Paradox.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62, no. 3 (1984): 221–36.
Lewis, David K. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986.
Lewis, David K. Philosophical Papers: Volume II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. https://doi.org/10.1093/0195036468.001.0001
Lowe, E. J. More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Manley, David. “Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 1–37. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.0001
Marschall, Benjamin, and Thomas Schindler. “Semantic Deflationism and Meta-Ontological Deflationism.” Philosophical Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2020): 99–119. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaa019
Marvan, Tomáš. “Quine a realismus.” Reflexe 31 (2006): 61–76.
Maudlin, Tim. “Part and Whole in Quantum Mechanics.” In Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics, edited by Elena Castellani, 46–60. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691222042-006
Maudlin, Tim. The Metaphysics within Physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199218219.001.0001
McDaniel, Kris. “Ways of Being.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by Ryan Wasserman, David Manley, and David Chalmers, 290–319. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.00010
McGrath, Sam Whitman. “On ‘Ontology.’” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 12, no. 1 (2024): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v12i1.5452
Morganti, Matteo. Combining Science and Metaphysics: Contemporary Physics, Conceptual Revision, and Common Sense. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002693
Morris, Sean, ed. The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108664202
Morris, Sean. “Carnap and Quine: Analyticity, Naturalism, and the Elimination of Metaphysics.” Monist 101, no. 4 (2018): 394–416. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/ony014
Nolan, Daniel Patrick. “Lewis’s Philosophical Method.” In A Companion to David Lewis, edited by Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer, 25–39. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844653072
Nolan, Daniel Patrick. David Lewis. Chesham: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.
Papineau, David. “Naturalism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 1997–. Article published February 22, 2007. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/naturalism/.
Peregrin, Jaroslav. “Post-analytická filosofie.” Organon F 1, no. 2 (1994): 89–108.
Peregrin, Jaroslav. “Realismus, relativismus a trápení ducha: Úvahy nad knihou Tomáše Marvana Realismus a relativismus.” Filosofie dnes 6, no. 2 (2014): 64–74. https://doi.org/10.26806/fd.v6i2.351
Peregrin, Jaroslav. Kapitoly z analytické filosofie. Praha: Filosofia, 2014.
Pils, Robert. “Quine’s Scientific Realism Revisited.” Theoria 86 (2020): 612–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12273
Price, Huw. “Metaphysics after Carnap: The Ghost Who Walks?” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 320–46. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.0011
Putnam, Hilary. Ethics without Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Quine, W. V. “Three Indeterminacies.” In Perspectives on Quine, edited by R. B. Barret and R. F. Gibson, 1–16. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
Quine, W. V. “Designation and Existence.” Journal of Philosophy 36, no. 26 (1939): 701–709. https://doi.org/10.2307/2017667
Quine, W. V. “Four Hot Questions in Philosophy. Review of P. F. Strawson’s Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties” (1985). In Quine in Dialogue, edited by Dagfinn Føllesdal and Douglas B. Quine, 206–12. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv322v4xz.30
Quine, W. V. “Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis.” Journal of Philosophy 47, no. 22 (1950): 621–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/2021795
Quine, W. V. “Naturalism; or, Living within One’s Means.” Dialectica 49, no. 2–4 (1995): 251–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-8361.1995.tb00164.x
Quine, W. V. “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology.” Philosophical Studies 2, no. 5 (1951): 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02199422
Quine, W. V. “On Mental Entities.” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 80, no. 3 (1953): 198–203. https://doi.org/10.2307/20023652
Quine, W. V. “On What There Is.” Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 5 (1948): 21–38.
Quine, W. V. “Ontology and Ideology Revisited.” Journal of Philosophy 80, no. 9 (1983): 499–502.
Quine, W. V. “Ontology and Ideology.” Philosophical Studies 2, no. 1 (1951): 11–15. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02198233
Quine, W. V. “Response to Gary Ebbs (1995).” In Quine and His Place in History, edited by Frederique Janssen-Lauret and Gary Kemp, 33–36. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472519_6
Quine, W. V. “Responses.” Inquiry 37, no. 4 (1994): 495–505, https://doi.org/10.1080/00201749408602370
Quine, W. V. “Structure and Nature.” Journal of Philosophy 89, no. 1 (1992): 5–9. https://doi.org/10.2307/2026889
Quine, W. V. “The Scope and Language of Science.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 8, no. 29 (1957): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/viii.29.1
Quine, W. V. “Two Dogmas in Retrospect.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21, no. 3 (1991): 265–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1991.10717246
Quine, W. V. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” Philosophical Review 60, no. 1 (1951): 20–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/2181906
Quine, W. V. “Whither Physical Objects?” In Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos, edited by R. S. Cohen, P. K. Feyerabend, and M. W. Wartofsky, 497–504. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1451-9_29
Quine, W. V. From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961.
Quine, W. V. From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674042476
Quine, W. V. Ontological Relativity, and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. https://doi.org/10.7312/quin92204
Quine, W. V. Philosophy of Logic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674042445
Quine, W. V. Pursuit of Truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Quine, W. V. The Roots of Reference. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1973.
Quine, W. V. Theories and Things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Quine, W. V. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9636.001.0001
Reid, Thomas. An Inquiry Into the Human Mind: On the Principles of Common Sense. Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute, 1810.
Rorty, Richard. “An Imaginative Philosopher: The Legacy of W. V. Quine.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 2, 2001.
Rorty, Richard. “Kripke versus Kant.” London Review of Books 2, no. 17 (1980).
Rose, David, and Jonathan Schaffer. “Folk Mereology Is Teleological.” Noûs 51, no. 2 (2015): 238–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12123
Rosen, Gideon. “Quine and the Revival of Metaphysics.” In A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, edited by Ernie Lepore and Gilbert Harman, 552–70. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118607992.ch26
Schaffer, Jonathan. “On What Grounds What.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 347–83. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.0012
Sider, Theodore. “Symposium on Four-Dimensionalism.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2004): 642–47, 674–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00371.x
Sider, Theodore. “Van Inwagen and the Possibility of Gunk.” Analysis 53, no. 4 (1993): 285–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/53.4.285
Sider, Theodore. Writing the Book of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Smid, Jeroen. “The Logic behind Quine’s Criterion of Ontological Commitment.” European Journal of Philosophy 28, no. 3 (2020): 789–804. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12534
Smith, James Andrew. “Carnap and Quine on Sense and Nonsense.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 9, no. 10 (2021): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v9i10.4743
Sullivan, Meghan. “The Minimal A-Theory.” Philosophical Studies 158, no. 2 (2012): 149–74. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9888-5
Tahko, Tuomas E. An Introduction to Metametaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139924832
Thomasson, Amie L. Ontology Made Easy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199385119.001.0001
Van Inwagen, Peter. “Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 472–506. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.0016
Van Inwagen, Peter. “Meta-Ontology.” Erkenntnis 48, no. 2/3 (1998): 233–50. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1005323618026
Van Inwagen, Peter. “What Is Naturalism? What Is Analytic Philosophy?” In Analytic Philosophy Without Naturalism, edited by Antonella Corradini, Sergio Galvan, and E. J. Lowe, 74–88. New York: Routledge, 2006. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203695135-10
Van Inwagen, Peter. Being: A Study in Ontology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192883964.001.0001
Van Inwagen, Peter. Existence: Essays in Ontology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107111004
Van Inwagen, Peter. Material Beings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Verhaegh, Sander. “Quine on the Nature of Naturalism.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 55, no. 1 (2017): 96–115. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12213
Verhaegh, Sander. Working from Within: The Nature and Development of Quine’s Naturalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190913151.001.0001
Weinberg, Jonathan M., Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich, “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions,” Philosophical Topics 29, no. 1–2 (2021): 429–60. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics2001291/217
Yablo, Stephen, and Andre Gallois. “Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 72 (1998): 229–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8349.00044
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2025 Michaela Dudová