Reference, Quantification and Ontological Commitment

Projectnumber: Hertha Firnberg Position T 75 Reference, Quantification, and Ontological Commitment Elisabeth REICHER 27.06.2000 The aim of the project is a systematic treatment of some basic problems concerning the foundations of ontology, in particular problems of refencen, quantification, and ontological commitment. The starting point of the problem of ontological commitment is the assumption that scientific theories, as well as common sense beliefs, entail or are based on some ontological presumptions. In other words, every theory, or, more general, every system of beliefs, contain implicity an ontological framework, i. e., a view on what kinds of entities exist, where talke about "kinds" is to be understood in the most general sense. (Actually, this is already a hypothesis; it is widely, but not universally accepted, and it is one of tasks of the project to defend it.) Usually, these ontological assumptions are not made explicit, and often people are not even aware of them. Problems arise when a teory of system or beliefs entail antological assumptions that are in conflict with the consciously accepted ontological framework of the upholder of the theory. It may be, for instance, that mathematicians, linguists, or sociologists consider themselves to be nominalists, and yet their theories seem to commit them to the existence of abstract objects, like numbers, linguistic types, or nations, classes and states (in addition to concrete persons, linguistic tokens, or concrete thing in general). One of the tasks of the projekt is to make explict and to value the logical principles that supposedly allow to derive existence assumptions from non-existential beliefs. Another task is to disentangle the various kinds of problems of ontological commitment and to evaluate the proposed solutions. This programm includes, among others, the following topics: criteria of ontological commitment; the logickal function of proper names; the problem of negative singular existence statements; paraphrase stategies; Free logics; interpretation of the existence quantifier; modes of being and nonexistent objects; the problem of intentionality and the adverbial theory; the structure of ontological arguments.

Every scientific theory as well as every common sense worldview is based on "ontological assumptions". Ontological assumptions concern the question of which kinds of objects ("object" to be understood in the widest sense) exist. These assumptions can be explicit or implicit, and it may happen that implicit existential assumptions contradict explicit convictions. Modern theories and common sense worldviews tend to contain an explicit denial of mental and/or abstract objects. However, it can be shown that these theories and worldviews often contain implicit ontological commitments to exactly those objects whose existence is explicitly denied. The subject matter of this project was a variety of fundamental problems in the border zone of ontology ("the science of the being"), philosophy of logic, and philosophy of language. The focus was on the problem of ontological commitment: One of the main tasks of philosophy is the attempt to answer the question of which objects are the basic constituents of reality and how they are related to each other. In carrying out this task, in order not to get lost in wild speculations, one has to start with something that is already given, namely common sense beliefs and empirical theories about various domains of reality. These constitute the whole system of our beliefs, our "worldview". Each worldview is based (explicitly or implicitly) on certain ontological assumptions, that is, assumptions on what kinds of objects there are. For instance, most worldviews are based on the assumption that there are ordinary material objects. In other words, most people are ontologically committed to material objects. This is a rather uncontroversial claim. However, it is controversial whether our common worldviews commit us also to mental objects (for instance, a "consciousness" which is not identical to the brain, or "mental processes", which are not identical to physical processes); and it is even more contested whether they commit us to abstract objects (that is, to objects that are neither material nor mental). It is possible to discuss questions like the one of whether there are mental or even abstract objects in addition to material objects in a rational manner, if one accepts that it is a good argument in favour of the assumption of such objects that well-entrenched worldviews commit us to this assumption. This, however, raises the question of what the criterion of ontological commitment is. To answer this question, one has to investigate, among other things, some logical principles and the logical structure of those natural language sentences which we use to express our worldviews as well as the interpretation of certain logical symbols, in particular of the "existential quantifier". There is a long-standing tradition in philosophy to accept as few kinds of objects as possible. In particular, the assumption of mental and, even more, abstract objects has been and still is rejected by many. In the monograph which is the main outcome of this project, the author defends a criterion of ontological commitment which leads to the result that our common worldviews imply the existence of material as well as mental and abstract objects. This is, contrary to all reductionist tendencies, a strong argument in favour of mental and abstract objects.