Trading Ontology for Ideology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Ontology and Quantification

   • Lieven Decock

   Pages 1-26

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3. Nominalism and Realism

   • Lieven Decock

   Pages 27-46

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4. Extensionalism

   • Lieven Decock

   Pages 47-109

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5. Sets and Predicates

   • Lieven Decock

   Pages 111-145

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6. Ontological Relativity

   • Lieven Decock

   Pages 147-173

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7. Genesis of Ontology

   • Lieven Decock

   Pages 175-191

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8. Taking Stock

   • Lieven Decock

   Pages 193-207

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9. Back Matter

   Pages 209-282

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Willard VanOrman Quine has probably been the most influential th American philosopher of the 20 century. His work spans over seven decades, and covers many domains in philosophy. He has made major contributions to the fields of logic and set theory, philosophy of logic and mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, epistemology and metaphysics. Quine's first work in philosophy was in the field of logic. His major contributions are the two set-theoretic systems NF (1936) and ML (1940). 1 These systems were alternatives to the type theory of Principia Mathematica or Zermelo's set theory, and are still being studied by 2 mathematicians. An indirect contribution to the field of logic is his strong resistance to moda110gic. Quine's objectIons to the notions of necessity and analyticity have influenced the development of moda110gic? Quine has had an enormous influence on philosophy of mathematics. When Quine entered philosophy there was a discussion on the foundations of mathematics between the schools of intuitionism, formalism, and conventionalism. Quine soon took issue with Carnap's conventionalism in "Truth by convention,,4 (1936). Quine has never joined one of the other schools, but has added new elements that are the basic ones of the 5 contemporary schools of nominalism, platonism, and structuralism. Quine has long been in the shadow of Benacerraf and Putnam in this field. At the moment there seems to be a renewed interest in Quine's work, and most philosophers explicitly refer to Quine's work.

• Willard Van Orman Quine
• argue
• logic
• naturalism
• ontology

• University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

  Lieven Decock

• University of Tilburg, Tilburg, The Netherlands

  Lieven Decock

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