DPhil Seminar

Abstract: Realists about joint-carving believe that some ways of representing reality are objectively better than others. According to Sider’s (2011) influential framework, the notion of ‘joint-carving’ (in his nomenclature, ‘structural’) applies to ideology in the sense of Quine (1951)—the expressive resources of our language. It is bits of ideology which can be objectively better or worse at representing reality. This is supposed to improve on Lewis’s (1983) framework, under which only predicates can be joint-carving (in his nomenclature, they correspond to natural properties). When we go ‘beyond the predicate’, we can account for how other elements of our language (e.g. logical connectives) carve at the joints of nature. However, this view can only be satisfactory if we have a good grasp of what ‘ideology’ means. I argue that (i) we don’t; and that (ii) the theorist about joint-carving can do without it. I argue for (i) by claiming that the Quinean distinction between ontology and ideology is misguided. More precisely:

1. Ideology is not well-defined.
2. The distinction is not exhaustive.
3. Ontology can be reduced to ideology.

I argue for (ii) by appealing to higher-order existential commitments as an alternative framework for understanding joint-carving. Under this view, what a Quinean would call ‘ontological commitments’ are existential claims where the quantifier binds a variable of type e, whereas what they would call ‘ideological commitments’ are existential claims where the quantifier binds a variable of any type σ different from e.

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See the DPhil Seminar website for details.

_{DPhil Seminar Convenor: Tom Heywood}