Ontology Deflated

Abstract

Kit Fine (Fine, 2009) rejects the standard Quinean quantificational account of ontological questions and favours an account of a very different kind on which existence or reality is expressed not by quantifiers but by a predicate ‘exists’ or ‘is real’, itself ultimately to be explained in terms of a sentential operator. Although primarily directed against the quantificational account, Fine’s criticisms apply equally to the account favoured by Hale, which rejects much of Quine’s view but agrees with him on a fundamental point: ‘The mark of our commitment to entities of a given kind is our acceptance, as strictly and literally true, of statements embedding expressions which, if they have reference at all, have entities of that kind as their referents, or semantic values.’ The chapter’s aim here is to explain why Hale finds Fine’s criticisms to be unsound.