A Study On Quine's Ontological Thoughts

Quine used the methods of language analysis and logic analysis from the ancient problem of "existence" to explain the close relationships between quantification and existence, logic and ontology. He turned traditional ontology into ontological commitment, and pointed out that ontology is relative.Quine distinguished ontological fact from ontological commitment, in his view, ontology should study ontological commitment. He proposed two well-known slogans of "existence is to be the value of bound variables" and "no entity without identity". The former is the standard identification of ontological commitment. When studying of ontology, everyday language should be rewritten into first-order logic language, then clarify what things can be used as the value of bound variables, these things are what the theory has been promised. The latter is the recognized standard of ontological commitment which is used to identify what kind of ontological commitment can be acceptable. Quine believed that the ontological problem is a problem of language. Because of the uncertainty of translation and the inscrutability of reference, he thought that ontology is relative. In the choice of ontology, Quine took the pragmatic principle. Quine attached great importance to the achievements of natural science and methods of natural science research. In his view, ontology and natural science are in the same position. Quine's ontological thoughts have obvious features of pragmatism and scientism.Quine not only restored the proper status of ontology in philosophy study which greatly triggered the later philosophers to re-explore and debate the ontological problem, but also created a new way of ontology research. Quine's ontological thoughts have important theoretical value, but there are also some drawbacks.