wszyscy myślą, że to dno. ale na dnie tak nie wieje...

“Three
is a number,” on this view, is perspicuously rendered as “ ‘Three’
is a number-word,” which is not about a number but instead about
the word “three”, and serves to identify its syntactical category. The
word “number” just delimits the range of values of the variable in a
language that does not do so through syntactical structure, a function
that would be just as well served in a formal language by a distinct
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style of variable, as when we use the variable “n” to range over all
and only numbers.10
Sentences that employ universal words are, as Carnap put it in
LSL, “pseudo-object sentences in the material mode of speech.”11
They are “pseudo-object” sentences because they misleadingly
appear to refer to objects and to express factual commitments con-
cerning them. They are in the “material mode”, because they are
expressed in the object-language. To assert such a sentence is, then,
not to stake a claim with respect to extra-linguistic reality. It is
instead only to represent the syntactic structure of one’s language,
or perhaps to express one’s intention to structure it in a particular
way or recommend doing so. Having so structured the language, the
material-mode sentence is analytic, since it only reflects linguistic
structure.
Quine understands ESO to be Carnap’s attempt to apply the
doctrine of universal words to ontological disputes.12 While such
assertions as “There was a meeting of the admissions committee last
Tuesday” do concern a matter of empirical fact, “There are events”
only appears to do so. Since “event” is a universal word (or, as Quine
puts it, a “category” word), the assertion only represents the fact that
one quantifies over, or is advocating quantification over, events in
one’s language. It does not really represent an existential belief to
the effect that there really are events.
As with pseudo-object sentences generally, the object-language
or “internal” existential with universal word in predicate position
is analytic, since it merely reflects the decision to quantify into
positions occupied by certain expressions in the language. The
metalinguistic or “external” rendering would explicitly state that a
decision to structure our language in the appropriate way has been
made (or that it is recommended). This indicates that such decisions
are subject only to pragmatic reasoning. For what is warranted is an
action rather than a belief – namely, that we structure the language
in such a way – and actions are rationalized by pragmatic rather than
epistemic considerations.
As Quine understands it, Carnap endorsed Quine’s criterion of
ontological commitment, according to which you are ontologically
committed to the entities that you quantify over unless you can show
how such quantification can be dispensed with if push comes to
ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY
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shove.13 Nonetheless, Carnap did not take himself to be committed
to abstract entities, and so did not take himself to be a Platonist,
despite the fact that he quantified over abstract entities. Nor did
he have any plan to show that such quantification can be avoided.
Instead, Carnap’s claim, as Quine understood it, was that the range
of the criterion of ontological commitment is restricted to only those
assertions that involve non-universal words, since those with uni-
versal words are either analytic (as internal assertions) or pragmatic
(as external assertions). Carnap could then cheerfully quantify over
abstract entities, all the while denying that his doing so involves him
in ontological commitment, simply because the sentence – “There
are abstract entities” – that would express that commitment is either
analytic, and so records no matter of fact, or pragmatic, and so
concerns action rather than belief.
IV. LAZY NOMINALISM
Quine himself had nominalist sympathies. But he saw the defense
of nominalism as hard work, requiring that we show that we can
dispense with quantification over abstracta in scientific inquiry and
the interpretation of scientific doctrine. He came sadly to the con-
clusion that the nominalist program cannot be completed, and that
we are stuck with ontological commitment to abstract entities.14
And there was Carnap, suggesting that we can disown commit-
ment to abstract entities, without all the hard work, by appeal to the
doctrine of universal words and ultimately to the analytic/synthetic
distinction. Quine certainly found Carnap’s maneuver distasteful
in its appeal to the analytic/synthetic distinction. But he objected
to much more than merely the application of a distinction he
repudiated.
Quine originally proposed the criterion of ontological commit-
ment, in part, to ensure that we own up to the ontological con-
sequences of what we say.15 Quine took Carnap to be suggesting
that framework adoption is “a linguistic convention distinct some-
how from serious views about reality.”16 This locates Carnap among
those disreputable philosophers who have “thought to enjoy the sys-
tematic benefits of abstract objects without suffering the objects.”17
Siding with the Platonist in act and with the nominalist in motive,
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Carnap hid behind the analytic/synthetic distinction instead of put-