Quine's Ontological Commitment Research

The discussion about ontology in history has continued until now. From Aristotle to Hegel, Ontology has been given a variety of interpretations. The unchanged explanation is that ontology is the science of existence, or in other words, Ontology is the science of existence as existence, which studies what there is and how it exists, and so on. Different from before, Quine studied what there is form the point of language, and limited the existence within the scope of a theory. His unique explanation on ontology has become the main theme throughout his thoughts on ontology. In order to make philosophy problem researches accurate and formalized, Quine applied modern logic ideas to characterize ontology which is the fundamental of philosophy. This kind of research model has become a classical statement of Analytical Philosophical in 1950s.According to his holism of knowledge and empiricism, Quine stated his theory of ontological commitment. It contains two criterions, one is the acceptance criterion of ontology, that is,"what there is is the value of restricted variables", the other is the recognizing criterion of Ontology, that is"without entity without identity". Quine changed the choice of Ontology into the choice of conceptual scheme, speaking mode, and language form by means of these two criterions, and put forward his Nominalism, that is what there is are only physical objects and class. Quine transforms controversies over ontology into controversies over language, excluding abstract entities outside the scope of ontology.Quine's theory of ontological commitment is not only a original theory of western analytical philosophy which motivates other philosophy thinking, but also plays a positive role in promoting Chinese logic and philosophy. Especially, Quine's realistic and scientific research attitude is a good example of logic and philosophy research. Based on the summarization of the theoretical value and limitations of Quine's theory of ontological commitment, this paper attempts to achieve some enlightenment from his methods and spirits.