Quine - On What There Is电子版.pdf

On What There Is Willard Van Orman Quine Review of Metaphysics (1948). Reprinted in 1953 From a Logical Point of View . Harvard University Press. Revised and reprinted later A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo- Saxon monosyllables: „What is there?‟ It can be answered, moreover, in a word— „Everything‟—and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is. There remains room for disagreement over cases; and so the issue has stayed alive down the centuries. Suppose now that two philosophers, McX and I, differ over ontology. Suppose McX maintains there is something which I maintain there is not. McX can, quite consistently with his own point of view, describe our difference of opinion by saying that I refuse to recognize certain entities. I should protest, of course, that he is wrong in his formulation of our disagreement, for I maintain that there are no entities, of the kind which he alleges, for me to recognize; but my finding him wrong in his formulation of our disagreement is unimportant, for I am committed to considering him wrong in his ontology anyway. When I try to formulate our difference of opinion, on the other hand, I seem to be in a predicament. I cannot admit that there are some things which McX countenances and I do not, for in admitting that there are such things I should be contradicting my own rejection of them. It would appear, if this reasoning were sound, that in any ontological dispute the proponent of the negative side suffers the disadvantage of not being able to admit that his opponent disagrees with him. This is the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing. Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato’s beard ; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam‟s razor. It is some such line of thought that leads philosophers l