Ontological Indifference of Theories and Semantic Primacy of Sentences

In his late philosophy, Quine generalized the structuralist view in the philosophy of mathematics that mathematical theories are indifferent to the ontology we choose for them. According to his ‘global structuralism’, the choice of objects does not matter to any scientific theory. In the literature, this doctrine is mainly understood as an epistemological thesis claiming that the empirical evidence for a theory does not depend on the choice of its objects. The present paper proposes a new interpretation suggested by Quine’s recently published Kant Lectures from 1980 according to which his global structuralism is a semantic thesis that belongs to his theory of ontological reduction. It claims that a theory can always be reformulated in such a way that its truth does not presuppose the existence of the original objects, but only of some objects that can be considered as their proxies. Quine derives this claim from the principle of the semantic primacy of sentences, which is supposed to license the ontological reductions he uses to establish his global structuralism. It is argued that these reductions do not actually work because they do not account for some hidden ontological commitments that are not detected by his criterion of ontological commitment.

Truthmaking, Supervenience, and Reduction

There are two main theories of ontological commitment: the quantifier view, and the truthmaker view. Since there are some truths that apparently commit us to certain entities, but actually do not, any ontological commitment theory must also contain an ontological reduction theory. Advocates of the quantifier view propose the paraphrasing method of reduction, while some advocates of the truthmaker view propose the supervenience method. In this paper, after a brief discussion of the quantifier view, the author proposes a modified version of truthmaker-based ontology, and shows that a plausible account of the supervenience method can be deduced from his version. He then shows that the supervenience method could explain why the paraphrasing method is successful. The author also argues that according to the truthmaker view we must accept composite objects as something over and above the particles which constitute them.

Levinas and the Night of Being

Can we truly claim that metaphysics is over? That we are living, as the post-phenomenological trend claims, in the epoch of the “end of metaphysics”? Through a close reading of Levinas’s masterpiece, Totality and Infinity, Raoul Moati tries to show that things are in fact much more complicated. Contrary to a certain common understanding of Levinas’s work, Totality and Infinity proposes not so much an alternative to Heidegger’s ontology, but a deeper elucidation of the meaning of “Being,” beyond Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. For this reason, the metaphor of the night becomes crucial to the exploration of a nocturnal face of the events of Being, beyond their ontological reduction to the understanding of Being. The deployment of being beyond its intentional or ontological reduction coincides with what Levinas calls “nocturnal events.” Insofar as the light of understanding hides them, it is only through the de-formalization of the traditional phenomenological approach of phenomena, that Levinas, Moati shows, leads us to their exploration and their systematic and mutual implications. Moati then elaborates, following Levinas, the possibility of what he calls a “metaphysics of society,” which cannot, in any way, be integrated into the deconstructive grasp of the so-called “metaphysics of presence.” In that sense, Moati’s philosophical inquiry constitutes an impressive meditation on the meaning and the possibility of a revival of metaphysics after the epoch of the “end of metaphysics.”

On the Microfoundations of Macroeconomics

In a review of Asset Accumulation and Economic Activity by James Tobin, Hyman Minsky outlined three types of macroeconomic approaches after John Maynard Keynes: the neoclassical synthesis, the New Classical approach, and fundamentalist Keynesian scholarship. Each of the three streams of thought identified by Minsky had trouble finding acceptance. Regarding the fundamentalist Keynesians, Minsky’s third group, this chapter suggests why mainstream economists tended to ignore them, attributing this neglect to a form of dogmatism. The bulk of this chapter, though, focuses on criticism leveled against the two other approaches quite directly, namely, that they had inadequate microfoundations. Unless otherwise stated, the microfoundations referred to in this chapter concern the aggregate manifestations of the general equilibrium (of the Arrow-Debreu type) of maximizing individual agents. Also discussed are the arbitrariness of aggregate demand and its implications, the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theory, and ontological reduction and explanatory reduction.

REDUKTYVIZMO RAIŠKA ŠIUOLAIKINĖJE ANALITINĖJE FILOSOFIJOJE

Šio straipsnio tikslas – bendrais bruožais aptarti reduktyvizmo raišką šiuolaikinėje analitinėje sąmonės, moralės, veiksmo ir priežastingumo filosofijoje bei įvertinti redukcijos strategijų šiose filosofijos šakose panašumus ir skirtumus. Straipsnyje aptariamos šešios reduktyvizmo strategijos – sąvokų sinonimija paremta redukcija, a posteriori tapatybės tezė, analitinis funkcionalizmas, anomalusis monizmas, analizė pasitelkiant pareities sąvoką, konceptualinė analizė be sąvokų sinonimijos – ir konstatuojama, kad skirtingose filosofijos srityse šios strategijos reiškiasi skirtingai, taip pat yra skirtingai kritikuojamos ir interpretuojamos. Straipsnyje mėginama paaiškinti kai kuriuos šių skirtumų ir daroma išvada, kad šiuolaikinėje analitinėje filosofijoje neperspektyvu kalbėti apie reduktyvizmą apskritai, kaip vieną visas sritis apimantį reiškinį, paremtą visas reduktyvistines koncepcijas vienijančiu reduktyvizmo modeliu, forma ar vizija.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: reduktyvizmas, analitinė filosofija, konceptualinė redukcija, ontologinė redukcija. Reductionism in Contemporary Analytical PhilosophyJonas Dagys, Vilius Dranseika, Vytautas Grenda, Ieva Vasilionytė AbstractThe aim of this paper is to provide a general account of the forms of reductionism in contemporary analytical philosophy of mind, morality, action and causation, and also to evaluate the similarities and differences of reductionist strategies in these fields. We discuss six reductionist strategies – reduction based on synonymy of terms, the thesis of a posteriori identity, analytical functionalism, anomalous monism, analysis invoking the concept of supervenience, and conceptual analysis without synonymy – and maintain that these strategies have different manifestations in different areas of philosophy, and so they are prone to different criticisms and interpretations. In this paper we attempt to provide an explanation for some of those differences, and also conclude that speaking of reductionism in general in contemporary analytical philosophy, as a phenomenon encompassing all fields, based on a single unifying model or vision of reduction, is not viable.Keywords: reductionism, analytical philosophy, conceptual reduction, ontological reduction.