If Art is smart and Art is rich, then someone is both smart and rich – namely, Art. And if Art is smart and Bart is smart, then Art is something that Bart is, too – namely, smart. The first claim involves first-order quantification, a generalization concerning what kinds of things there are. The second involves second-order quantification, a generalization concerning what there is for things to be. Or so it appears. Following W.V.O. Quine, many philosophers have endorsed a thesis of Ontological Collapse about second-order quantification. They maintain that ultimately, second-order quantification reduces to first-order quantification over sets or properties, and therefore also carries the latter’s distinctive ontological commitments. In this revised version of his doctoral dissertation, awarded the Wolfgang-Stegmüller-Prize in 2012, Stephan Krämer examines the major arguments for Ontological Collapse in detail and finds all of them wanting. Quantifications, he argues, fall into at least two irreducible kinds: those on what things there are, and those on what there is for things to be.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2014
ISBN-Print
978-3-465-03868-9
ISBN-Online
978-3-465-13868-6
Publisher
Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main
Series
Studies in Theoretical Philosophy
Volume
1
Language
English
Pages
260
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Titelei/Inhaltsverzeichnis No access Pages 1 - 10
Preface No access Pages 11 - 12
Introduction No access Pages 13 - 32
1 Explicit Commitment No access
2 Implicit Commitment No access
3 Explicating Quine´s Criterion No access
4 Generalizing the Quinean Criterion No access
5 The Plural Reading No access
6 The Non-Nominal Reading No access
7 Objectual Semantics No access
8 High-Order Semantics No access
Concluding Remarks No access Pages 241 - 244
Bibliography No access Pages 245 - 254
Index No access Pages 255 - 260
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