VI—On Type Distinctions and Expressivity

Abstract

Quine maintained that philosophical and scientific theorizing should be conducted in an untyped language, which has just one style of variables and quantifiers. By contrast, typed languages, such as those advocated by Frege and Russell, include multiple styles of variables and matching kinds of quantification. Which form should our theories take? In this article, I argue that expressivity does not favour typed languages over untyped ones.