On Rational Restraints of Ontology

Koskinen, Heikki J.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-50730-9_6

Heikki J. Koskinen⁵

Part of the book series: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook ((VCIY,volume 19))

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Abstract

In this paper, my aim is to construe a pragmatic and rationally responsible account of ontological theorizing. The account is pragmatic in the sense that it is compatible with philosophical naturalism and does not involve commitments to substantial and controversial doctrines like global realism or metaphysical essentialism. The account is rationally responsible in the sense that it incorporates a variety of rational restraints on ontological theorizing. I begin with a problematization of general metaphysics or ontology, and then suggest that by looking at different conceptions of rationality, we can build various types of rational restraints into our methodological picture of ontological theorizing. These restraints are based on (i) logical or argumentative rationality; (ii) trust in sense experience or scientific experiments; and (iii) the ability to organize our sensations by means of concepts. To put the three conceptions of rationality to actual work, and to demonstrate their structural roles, a specific context of ontological theorizing is needed. As an illustrative example of how the relevant conceptions of rationality can be seen to provide rational restraints of ontological theorizing, I use Quine’s analysis of mass terms.

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Notes

1.
Met.I.1, 982a, 24–25.
2.
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press 1969, p. 98.
3.
On various aspects in which the Quinean and the Aristotelian conceptions of metaphysics specifically do not agree, see e.g. Jonathan Schaffer, “On What Grounds What”, in: David J. Chalmers /David Manley /Ryan Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics. New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 347–383.
4.
Cf. Jan Westerhoff, Ontological Categories. Their Nature and Significance. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005, p. 1.
5.
“The Fixation of Belief”, in: Christian J. W. Kloesei (Ed.), Writings of Charles S. Peirce . A Chronological Edition, Volume 3, 1872–1878. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1986, pp. 242–257.
6.
Ibid., p. 252.
7.
Ibid., p. 253.
8.
David J. Chalmers /David Manley /Ryan Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics. New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009.
9.
Matthew C. Haug (Ed.), Philosophical Methodology. The Armchair or the Laboratory? London: Routledge 2014.
10.
On p. 1 of Matthew C. Haug , “Introduction. Debates about Methods: From Linguistic Philosophy to Philosophical Naturalism”, in Matthew C. Haug (Ed.), Philosophical Methodology. The Armchair or the Laboratory? London: Routledge 2014, pp. 1–26.
11.
The Possibility of Metaphysics. Substance, Identity, and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, p. 26.
12.
According to Quine , a good scientific theory is under tension from two opposing forces: the drive for evidence and the drive for system. If either of these drives were unchecked by the other, it would issue in something unworthy of the name of scientific theory: in the one case, a mere record of observations, and in the other a myth without foundation. See W. V. Quine , Theories and Things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981, p. 31.
13.
Cf. Otto Neurath /Hans Hahn /Rudolf Carnap , “Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis”, English Translation in: Marie Neurath /Robert S. Cohen (Eds.), Otto Neurath . Empiricism and Sociology. Dordrecht: Reidel 1973 (orig. 1929), pp. 299–318; Rudolf Carnap, “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language”, in: A. J. Ayer (Ed.), Logical Positivism. Glencoe: Free Press 1959 (orig. 1932), pp. 60–81.
14.
Rudolf Carnap , Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Bristol: Thoemmes Press 1996 (orig. 1935), p. 32.
15.
Quine , Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p. 97.
16.
E. J. Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology. A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, p. 4.
17.
Ibid., p. 5; cf. Andrea Bottani, “Reason and Metaphysics”, in: Maria Cristina Amoretti/Nicla Vassallo (Eds.), Reason and Rationality. Frankfurt: Ontos 2012. Of course, fallibilism is also a scientific attitude associated with the tradition of pragmatism.
18.
Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics, loc. cit., pp. 4–5; E. J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002, pp. 5–7; E. J. Lowe, “Metaphysical Knowledge”, in: Haug (Ed.), Philosophical Methodology, loc. cit., pp. 130–132; cf. Antonella Corradini/Sergio Galvan/Jonathan E. Lowe (Eds.), Analytic Philosophy Without Naturalism. London: Routledge 2006.
19.
Cf. Leila Haaparanta, “Introduction”, in: Leila Haaparanta (Ed.), Rearticulations of Reason. Recent Currents. Acta Philosophica Fennica 88. Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland 2010, pp. 7–8. These include: (1) logical or argumentative rationality; (2) the ability of critical evaluation independently of authorities; (3) the ability to organize one’s sensations by means of concepts; (4) trust in sense experience or scientific experiments; (5) trust in modern science and technology; (6) one’s actions being guided by practical syllogism; (7) one’s ability to control one’s volitional and emotional impulses; (8) prudence or practical wisdom; and (9) striving for certain goals, such as wisdom or happiness.
20.
Cf. p. 333 of Leila Haaparanta, “Can Hope Have Reasons?”, in: Åsa Carlson (Ed.), Philosophical Aspects on Emotions. Stockholm: Thales 2005, pp. 327–340.
21.
Ibid.
22.
Cf. Henry Laycock, Words without Objects. Semantics, Ontology, and Logic for Non-Singularity. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, p. ix.
23.
Mark Steen , “The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions”, in: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition).
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/metaphysics-massexpress/.
24.
See pp. 188–211 of Otto Jespersen , The Philosophy of Grammar. London: George Allen & Unwin 1924.
25.
See pp. 90–124 of W. V. Quine , Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1960.
26.
See p. 454 of Michael Lockwood, “Review of Mass Terms. Some Philosophical Problems”, in: Mind, New Series 90, 359, pp. 454–457; p. 170 of Jeffry Pelletier, “Mass Terms”, in: Edward Craig (Ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 6. London: Routledge 1998, pp. 168–170.
27.
Steen , “The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions”, loc. cit.; cf. also Francis Jeffry Pelletier, “On Some Proposals for the Semantics of Mass Terms”, in: Journal of Philosophical Logic 3, pp. 87–108.
28.
Cf. Martin Davis, The Universal Computer. The Road from Leibniz to Turing. New York: Norton 2000.
29.
Cf. Quine , From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p. 46: “Carnap , Lewis and others take a pragmatic stand on the question of choosing between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism.” [italics mine].
30.
Quine , Word and Object, loc. cit., Ch. III.
31.
W. V. Quine , The Roots of Reference. La Salle: Open Court 1974.
32.
Cf. W. V. Quine , From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1995.
33.
Quine , Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., pp. 69–90.
34.
Cf. e.g. Quine , Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 233ff.
35.
Cf. Quine , ibid., pp. 72–79; Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., pp. 30–35.
36.
In: Quine , From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., pp. 65–79.
37.
Ibid., p. 66.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Ibid., p. 67.
40.
Ibid., p. 68.
41.
Ibid., p. 69.
42.
Cf. ibid., p. 72.
43.
Ibid., p. 73.
44.
Ibid., p. 74.
45.
Cf. Leila Haaparanta, “On Frege ’s Concept of Being”, in: Simo Knuuttila/Jaakko Hintikka (Eds.), The Logic of Being, Dordrecht: Reidel 1986, pp. 269–289; E. J. Lowe, More Kinds of Being. A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell 2009, pp. 3–4.
46.
Quine , From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., pp. 74–75.
47.
Ibid., p. 75.
48.
Ibid.; cf. Heikki J. Koskinen , “Quine , Predication, and the Categories of Being”, in: Leila Haaparanta/Heikki J. Koskinen (Eds.), Categories of Being, loc. cit., pp. 338–357.
49.
From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p. 76.
50.
Quine ibid. suspects that failure to observe the significant distinction between general terms and abstract singular terms is why our intellects have originally been seduced by abstract entities. In addition, he ibid., p. 77 mentions purely syntactic reasons for handling a general term like a proper name; cf. e.g. Quine , Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., pp. 14–15.
51.
One problematic feature has to do with the way in which Quine talks about specifying objects of indeterminate spatiotemporal spread. One might argue that the very specification of (at least physical or concrete) objects presupposes their determinate spatiotemporal limits. Cf. Quine , From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p. 68.
52.
On p. 3 of “On the Elements of Being I & II”, in: The Review of Metaphysics 7, 1953, pp. 3–18 & 171–192.
53.
Ibid.
54.
Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 276.
55.
Cf. e.g. Sara Mondini/Alessandro Angrilli/Patrizia Bisiacchi/Chiara Spinorelli/Katia Marinelli/Carlo Semenza, “Mass and Count Nouns Activate Different Brain Regions: An ERP Study on Early Components”, in: Neuroscience Letters 430, 1, 2008, pp. 48–53; E. K. Warrington/S. J. Crutch, “The Semantic Organization of Mass Nouns and the Representational Locus of the Mass/Count Distinction”, in: Brain and Language 95, 2005, pp. 90–91.
56.
Cf. e.g. Jaap van Brakel, “The Chemistry of Substances and the Philosophy of Mass Terms”, in: Synthese 69, 1986, pp. 291–324; Dean W. Zimmerman, “Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution”, in: The Philosophical Review 104, 1, 1995, pp. 53–110; Paul Needham, “Macroscopic Mixtures”, in: The Journal of Philosophy 104, 1, 2007, pp. 26–52.
57.
Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 275.
58.
Ibid., p. 161.
59.
Cf. Lowe , The Possibility of Metaphysics, loc. cit., pp. 174–189; Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and Its Task. The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge. Albany: The State University of New York Press 1999, pp. 131–158; Heikki J. Koskinen , From a Metaphilosophical Point of View. A Study of W. V. Quine ’s Philosophical Naturalism. Acta Philosophica Fennica 74. Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland 2004.
60.
Cf. Haug , Philosophical Methodology, loc. cit.
61.
Cf. Quine , Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p. 69ff.
62.
Cf. Charles Sanders Peirce , “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, in: Christian J. W. Kloesei (Ed.), Writings of Charles S. Peirce , loc. cit., pp. 257–276.
63.
The Four-Category Ontology, loc. cit., pp. 121–140.
64.
Quine , Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 36.
65.
Quine, Roots of Reference, loc. cit., p. 39.
66.
Quine, Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 92.
67.
Quine, Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p. 10.
68.
Quine, Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 121.
69.
Quine, Roots of Reference, loc. cit., p. 85.
70.
Quine , Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 90.
71.
Ibid., p. 91.
72.
Ibid., p. 95.
73.
Ibid., pp. 95–96.
74.
Ibid., p. 96. Later on, Quine ibid., p. 199 writes: “But the fact is that general and singular terms, abstract or concrete, are not to be known only by their role in predication. There is also the use of singular terms as antecedents of ‘it’, and the use of general terms after articles and under pluralization. Predication is but part of a pattern of interlocking uses wherein the status of a word as general or singular term consists.” Cf. Quine , Roots of Reference, loc. cit., p. 84.
75.
Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 97.
76.
Ibid.
77.
Cf. e.g. Pelletier, “Mass Terms”, loc. cit., p. 170.
78.
Quine , Word and Object, loc. cit., p. 98.
79.
Ibid.
80.
Ibid., p. 99.
81.
Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p. 10.
82.
This brings to mind Quine ’s similarly resolute talk of “regimentation” in Word and Object, loc. cit., pp. 157–161, and of “the Procrustean bed of predicate logic”, into which all of austere science is taken to pliantly submit in W. V. Quine , Quiddities. An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1987, p. 158. For critical evaluations of some implications, see e.g. Lowe , The Four-Category Ontology, loc. cit., pp. 52–65; Laycock, Words without Objects, loc. cit.
83.
Cf. e.g. Quine , Roots of Reference, loc. cit., pp. 88–89.
84.
From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., pp. 65–79.
85.
Ibid., p. 65.
86.
Ibid., p. 67.
87.
Ibid., p. 69.
88.
Ibid., p. 70.
89.
Ibid., p. 71.
90.
Ibid., p. 78.
91.
Ibid., p. 79.
92.
Ibid.
93.
Ibid., p. 71.
94.
Cf. ibid., p. 70.
95.
Cf. W. V. Quine /J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief. Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill 1978.
96.
Cf. ibid.
97.
Ibid.
98.
Cf. e.g. W. V. Quine , The Methods of Logic. Fourth Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982, p. 3. Quine ibid. writes: “It is only by way of the relations of one statement to another that the statements in the interior of the system can figure at all in the prediction of experience, and can be found deserving revision when prediction fails.”
99.
See e.g. Word and Object, loc. cit.
100.
Cf. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p. 15; The Ways of Paradox, loc. cit., p. 199.
101.
Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980, pp. 105–180.
102.
On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden: Blackwell 1986.
103.
“Truth and Mass Terms”, in: The Journal of Philosophy 69, 10, 1972, pp. 263–282.
104.
Ibid., p. 266.
105.
In ibid. n4, Burge notes that actually the formalization of the verb is defective, as is that of the proper names, but he decides to leave these matters aside.
106.
Ibid.
107.
Ibid.
108.
Pelletier, “On Some Proposals for the Semantics of Mass Nouns”, loc. cit., p. 88.
109.
Cf. ibid.
110.
“The Fixation of Belief”, loc. cit., p. 252.
111.
Bertrand Russell , The Problems of Philosophy. Fifteenth Impression. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989 (orig. 1912), pp. 93–94.
112.
From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p. 19.
113.
Together, they amount to the following: Empirical Rationality: (RR1a) The Empiricist Epistemology Restraint, (RR1b) The Naturalistic Consistency Restraint; Conceptual Rationality: (RR2a) The Conceptual Clarity Restraint, (RR2b) The Pragmatic Utility Restraint; Argumentative Rationality: (RR3a) The Argumentative Traceability Restraint, (RR3b) The Dialectical Contextuality Restraint.
114.
“The Fixation of Belief”, loc. cit.
115.
The Four-Category Ontology, loc. cit., pp. 52–65.
116.
The point here is not simply to assume a shared form of rationality, but rather to point out that if there is to be any meaningful dialogue at all between differing parties, then some form of shared rationality has to provide a basis for the dialogue.
117.
Cf. Rudolf Carnap , The Logical Syntax of Language. London: Paul Kegan, Trubner Trench & Co. 1937, p. 52.
118.
Cf. Peirce , “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, loc. cit.
119.
“Metaphysical Knowledge”, loc. cit., p. 131.
120.
Cf. ibid.
121.
Cf. William P. Alston, A Sensible Metaphysical Realism. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 2001, p. 8; Ilkka Niiniluoto , Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999, pp. 21–41.
122.
From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p. 79.

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Faculty of Theology, Centre of Excellence Reason and Religious Recognition (Academy of Finland), University of Helsinki, Vuorikatu 3, 4, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland
Heikki J. Koskinen

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Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland
Sami Pihlström
Institut Wiener Kreis, Universität Wien , Vienna, Austria
Friedrich Stadler
Forum Scientiarum, Universität Tübingen Forum Scientiarum, Tübingen, Germany
Niels Weidtmann

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Koskinen, H.J. (2017). On Rational Restraints of Ontology. In: Pihlström, S., Stadler, F., Weidtmann, N. (eds) Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50730-9_6

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