Quine’s Ontology on Abstract Terms
In this paper I intend to examine Quine’s ontology on abstract terms as it is revealed in his “The Ontogenesis of Reference [Sec. 25]” in “Word and Object” (1960), “On What There is” (1948) and also in “The Roots of Reference” (1974) [Sec.25,32]. My aim is first to describe abstract terms. Then I’ll proceed by explaining usage and learning process of abstract terms. Finally I’ll point out problematic issues with abstract terms.
1. Abstract Terms
According to Quine when one utters “This figure is round”, “round” in this sentence is a general term applied to concrete objects. So it is a concrete general term. Quine suggests that to avoid this ambiguity we may call abstract singular term “round” as “roundness”. Hence “roundness” becomes a purported name of qualities or attributes. Quine claims a singular term can be first learned as a mass term as in a class of objects, such as red apple, red coat etc. Then one can have an idea of “redness” with given attributes to it.
He also claims that “Much of the
utility of abstract terms lies in abbreviated cross reference.”1 When
one utters the sentence “The same holds for X” Here, a supposed attribute
corresponds to an abstract term [if this attribute (or attributes) do not
correspond to elaborate phrase(s)]. Quine as a conclusion suggests that to
distinguish abstract singular terms from concrete general ones, one should use
suffixes such as ‘-ness’, ‘-hood’, ‘-ity’.
Quine mentions about the confusion
of sign and object in “The Ontogenesis of Reference [Sec. 25]”. I believe he earlier made ‘meaning’ and ‘naming’ distinction
as sign and object similarly in “On What There Is” He claimed that meaning is
an idea on mind and naming is simply naming an object. Hence an object can have
several names but only one meaning. In the case of abstract singular terms
there is no object one can name for example as “redness” but this singular term
has a meaning.
2. Description
and Relative Clauses
“… the singular noun in question can always be expanded into a
singular description”2 and this singular term need not have a
meaning. Quine claims that this is how one can talk about being according to
Russell’s theory of descriptions. On the other hand for relative clauses we
need an abstract general term to define an abstract singular term. Then one has
the chance to create an objectual quantification which varies over physical
objects in the world. As an example take “I got that jacket from a store which
was on sale” becomes “That jacket is what I got from a store which was on
sale.” And this latter sentence can be translated into “a is
J if and only if a is an x such that x is J” where “a is an x such that x is J”
is a general term (G). Hence “every x such that x is J is a G” is the objectual
quantification of the first example sentence.
Regarding descriptions, since every
singular term can be explained by a singular description, it follows that we
can eliminate abstract terms by assigning descriptions on them. However this is
a false approach: As in Quine’s example of “humility” when one tries to explain
is as ‘Humility is a virtue’ as in ‘Humble persons are virtuous’, here the goal
accomplished ‘humility’ is assigned to a concrete object but in ‘Humility is
rare’ we can one cannot have the same relationship as above since ‘Humble
persons are rare’( *) means there is a set of objects which is rare not one
humble person is rare which is absurd. Hence we cannot dispense with abstract
terms unless we get rid of the usage of (*).
3.
Conclusion
In
this paper, I tried to define abstract terms according to Quine. I –as much as I can- explained his views on
the issue. I further described his claims of ‘meaning’ and ‘naming’ in my point
of view. Moreover I explained his doctrine on admitting abstract terms in
language and pointed out that eliminating these terms is not as easy as it
seems.