Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?

Abstract

The usual charge against Carnap's internal/external distinction is one of 'guilt by association with analytic/synthetic'. But it can be freed of this association, to become the distinction between statements made within makebelieve games and those made outside them-or, rather, a special case of it with some claim to be called the metaphorical/literal distinction. Not even Quine considers figurative speech committal, so this turns the tables somewhat. To determine our ontological commitments, we have to ferret out all traces of nonliterality in our assertions; if there is no sensible project of doing that, there is no sensible project of Quinean ontology.Not that I would undertake to limit my use of the words 'attribute' and 'relation' to contexts that are excused by the possibility of such paraphrase... consider how I have persisted in my vernacular use of 'meaning', 'idea', and the like, long after casting doubt on their supposed objects. True, the use of a term can sometimes be reconciled with rejection of its objects; but I go on using the terms without even sketching any such reconciliation. 1 Quine, Word and Object

Relativity and the Moving Spotlight

“…In fact, this is sometimes legitimate even when there are no sentences that, understood literally, express just what the story expresses fictionally. (Yablo [1998] claims that this is the situation mathematical fictionalists are in.) Still, I think it may be possible to spell out the literal truth behind the superspacetime metaphor.…”

Inscrutability and ontological commitment

“…Likewise, if an actress on a stage says 'just then the witch, to satisfy an itch, was flying on her broomstick, thumbing for a hitch', she does not thereby commit herself to witches. And someone who says before his job interview 'I have butterflies in my stomach' does not thereby commit himself to stomachs with butterflies in them (see Yablo 1998Yablo , 2002Yablo , 2005.…”

Unlikely Bedfellows? Collingwood, Carnap and the Internal/External Distinction

“…The distinction between curiosity and quizzicality was introduced by Yablo and Gallois (Yablo and Gallois 1998) who identified the attitude of curiosity with the "analytic movement's official attitude", the one which has generally prevailed "after a period of ordinary-language-inspired quizzicality" (Yablo and Gallois 1998: 231). Though originally introduced to distinguish between different phases within the analytic tradition, Yablo and Gallois' distinction could be easily adapted to capture the relation between idealists and pragmatists.…”