Quine reference and modality pdf

This edition doesn't have a description yet. Can you add one? Add another edition? Copy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help? Reference and modality Leonard Linsky. Donate this book to the Internet Archive library.

If you own this book, you can mail it to our address below. Not in Library. Want to Read. Check nearby libraries Library. Share this book Facebook. Last edited by IdentifierBot. Sign in Create an account. Syntax Advanced Search. Reference and Modality. Leonard Linsky. London: Oxford University Press Reference and modality by W. Modality and description by A.

Extensionality by R. Quantification into causal contexts by D. Semantical considerations on modal logic by S. Essentialism and quantified modal logic by T. Reference, essentialism, and modality by L. Quantifiers and propositional attitudes by W. Quantifying in by D. Semantics for propositional attitudes by J. Through the implication of observation categoricals, empirical content is holistically distributed to the sentences of the theory.

Because of this holistic feature, any change in the fund of implied observation categoricals affects the content of every sentence of the theory, and consequently the content of all predicates appearing in these sentences. The predicates, in turn, are used in describing objects and in differentiating them from each other: some objects are planets, others are not; some object numbers the planets, and no other object does.

An object is like what the theory says it is like, and there is no room for the question what the object is like independently of the theory. Because the content of the predicates used in saying what an object is like depends on the whole theory, an object depends not only for its existence, but also for its identity, on the whole theory.

These and other descriptions of the object within a theory are constitutive of what the 17 According to Quine, some sentences of a theory may be such that they play no role in the implication of any observation categorical. As Panu Raatikainen points out, Quine does not impose his notion of empirical content as a positivist criterion of meaningfulness.

From this perspective, the point of examples like 7 — 9 is not limited to questions about the descriptive content that our linguistic means of referring to objects may or may not have.

At this point, the reader may feel that I am grossly misinterpreting Quine. The view of objects as theory-dependent that I have just attributed to Quine smacks of linguistic or epistemological idealism of the most extreme kind—a view that the world is our construction, a mere product of our linguistic habits.

The view of objects I have attributed to Quine is an epistemological view; a transition from this to a metaphysical view that concerns the nature of objects themselves and not just the nature of our beliefs or conceptualization of objects may seem unwarranted.

However, I am convinced that I am not misinterpreting Quine with regard to his position on the nature of objects. To give a detailed demonstration of the correctness of my interpretation is beyond the scope of the present article; I have given this demonstration elsewhere Keskinen Although it is meaningful to say that a theory is right or wrong about objects in the external world, this statement itself must be made from within some or another theory to which this notion of the external world also belongs.

An object cannot be separated from the predicates used to describe it in a theory; the object is what the theory says it is, and there is no sense to the question what the object is really like independently of any theory. The theory is constitutive of what the object, for example the number nine, is. And an analogous point can be made of any object, concrete or abstract.

Conclusion The use Quine makes of his example 7 — 9 relies on our modal intuitions, intuitions which should reveal the kind of interference of descriptive elements that Quine sees as problematic to QML. But for Quine this way out is blocked. There are no objects independently of a theory in which they are posited through linguistic reference. An object is what the theory says it is, and hence all objects are, so to speak, irreducibly 19 This conception of objects does not threaten the intelligibility of non-modal contexts that are extensional, since in extensional contexts it is immaterial with respect to truth, at least how the object of which something is predicated happens to be linguistically specified.

But this notion of a necessary trait is explicitly a first-grade, metalinguistic one. In the present paper, I have attempted to spell out one important reason, not explicitly recognized by Quine himself, why metaphysical or de re necessity should indeed have no place in his naturalistic view of things.

References Barcan, R. The Journal of Symbolic Logic 11 1 , 1— Burgess, J. Quinus ab Omni Naevo Vindicatus. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25— Devitt, M. New York: Columbia University Press. New York: Oxford University Press. Divers, J. European Journal of Philosophy 15 1 : 40— Fitting, M.

First-Order Modal Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Essentialism and Reference. In The Philosophy of W. Quine, ed. Hahn L. La Salle: Open Court. Quine on Modality. In The Cambridge Companion to Quine, ed. Gibson, R.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. University of California, Riverside, Neale, Stephen. Cambridge: MIT Press, Nute, Donald. Quine, Willard V. Phil 40 : — Reprinted in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language. Leonard Linsky. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, , pp. From a Logical Point of View.

Word and Object. Ray, Greg. Smullyan, Arthur F.