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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that An a priori entailment relation must replace modal entailment in the analysis of ontological commitment.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.A priori entailment is too restrictive: Kripke's necessary a posteriori shows ontological facts can be necessary without being knowable a priori.
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    • 2.If water's composition H2O is an ontological commitment of chemistry, it is discovered empirically, not via a priori reasoning.
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    • 3.Therefore, requiring a priori entailment would wrongly exclude legitimate ontological commitments grounded in necessary a posteriori truths.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Quine's original criterion grounds ontological commitment in the bound variables of our best scientific theories, not in any epistemic entailment relation.
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    • 2.Science routinely incurs ontological commitments—to dark matter, fields, wavefunctions—whose connection to observation is neither a priori nor purely modal.
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    • 3.Replacing modal entailment with a priori entailment smuggles a rationalist epistemic constraint into what is fundamentally a naturalistic, holistic project.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Modal entailment violates the epistemic constraint that ontological commitments be knowable a priori.
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    • 2.An entailment account of ontological commitment requires an entailment relation that satisfies the epistemic constraint.
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    • 3.A priori entailment, unlike modal entailment, satisfies the epistemic constraint.
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