The Research Of Quine's Logical Thought And Ontology

Quine's philosophy of logic has produced increasing influence.However,some scholars criticize Quine's narrow view of logic,arguing that he just regards logic as primary logic with equality,which strays away from the development stageand trend of modern logic.But theacademics do not deny Quine's research on ontology,admitting his research has remedied the drawbacks of traditional ontology's transcendence and speculation,which even has recovered metaphysics to some extent.In research,it is surprisingly found that Quine's pursue of clarity inevitably leads to his narrow logical view and theory of ontological commitment.The following two aspects incarnate Quine's pursue of clarity.Firstly,Quine strictly distinguishes the basic categories of logic,mainly involving the use and reference of symbols,variables and pattern letters,general terms and abstract individual terms,the objective interpretations and the alternative interpretations of logic,the extension objects and the intensionobjects,and the extensional context and the non-extensional context.Secondly,Quine responds classical philosophical problem about logical methods and identity,by resorting to semantic ascent to build relationship with the researches of ontology and epistemology along with the criticism of analyticity,and by clarifying the semantic standard of ontological commitment.Those efforts not only contribute topresenting the target and progress of existing logical research,the application of the agent function and isomorphism concept to restore ontology,but involve the semantic research of logic aboutthe term meanings and references,and clarify logical category like logic proposition,property,relation,validity,truth-value,class and ordered pair.Quine's ontological orientation convincingly supports the epistemological research on logic,and his ontological doctrine is related to his discussion about logical category,which together make up Quine's new interpretation to the construction mechanism of logical theory and manifest the scientific spirit of logic-pursuing objectivity and clarity of Quine's philosophy.The main body of this paper consists of 4 parts,which gradually spreadaccording to the clarity theme.In the first part,it is introduced in detail Quine's logical research andachievement from these six aspects that if logic contains set theory,Quine's discussion about classical logic,Quine's responses to deviant logic,if logichas revisability,Quine's contribution to modern logic,Quine's logical thought,etc,and Quine's logical thought is summarized into six aspects mutually connected,i.e.clarity criterion to measure logic,narrow view of logic admitting primary logic with equality,the basic task of logic,the two basics of logic and the logical truths,the indirect links between logic and the outside world as well as the logical revisability of simplification of human conceptual system.In the second part,based on analyzing and summarizing western research of traditional ontology and its limitation,Quine's semantic standard of ontological commitment,identity criterion identifying entity and the relativity of ontology are further analyzed,and the systematicness and explanatory power of Quine's theory of ontological commitment are also argued by responding to some relevant questions of philosophy of logic.In the third part,Quine's philosophical orientation of naturalism and coherence problem of his ontology are mainly discriminated.Beside presenting Quine's transformation of traditional logic based on his clarity-pursuing philosophy,the critical thinking about his eliminationism trend toward natural class,this paper tries to clarify his standpoint of set theoretic about the presupposition of class and combine his analysis of the relevant presupposition to reveal the conflicts in his theory of philosophy of logic,and argue the way to eliminate the conflict lies in abandoning the logistic program such as Russell's and Frege's,so that to satisfy the need of the theory of natural science byputting the alogical set theory into Quine's philosophy entirety of logic.The fourth part is the sublimation of the fore three parts.It systematically elaborates the important theoretical value,the practical significance and the disadvantages of Quine's clarity-pursuing target in his logical research and philosophical research.Firstly,it explores the important theoretical value of Quine's pursuing the target of clarity from these three aspects: the traditions of western philosophy's emphasizing mathematics and logic,the clarity's role as a link between Quine's logical theory and his ontological commitment theory,and Quine's two contributions to logic.Meanwhile,the clarity that Quine pursues sufficiently incarnates the quintessence of critical thinking,whichis able to eliminate some harmful thinking sets in Chinese traditional culture such as over-emphasizing instinct and experience,and can effectively cultivate human's innovation capability so that it powerfully underlines the non-negligible theoretical significance of Quine's clarity-pursuing target.Moreover,pursuing strict clarity leads his narrow logical view to departure from the mainstream thought of modern logic,even become the obstacle in the development of modern logic.It leads his ontological doctrine to application in parts of mathematics or narrow scope of alltraditional pure mathematics so that the universal applicability is lowered immensely.