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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Entailment accounts of ontological commitment handle implicit ontological commitment correctly, unlike quantifier accounts.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Entailment accounts generate commitment to whatever any sentence logically entails, including logical truths and set-theoretic consequences far beyond intended scope.
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    • 2.If '∃x Human(x)' commits us to humanity-as-universal, then by parity every sentence commits us to numbers, sets, and mereological sums via unintended logical entailments.
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    • 3.Quine's criterion succeeds precisely because it ties commitment to regimented theory, not to the uncontrolled inferential closure that entailment accounts permit.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The inference from '∃x Human(x)' to 'humanity exists' is valid only given a prior substantive metaphysical assumption that predicates denote universals.
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    • 2.Entailment accounts thus smuggle in contested metaphysical theses—such as Fregean concept-realism—disguising first-order ontological disputes as matters of mere logical consequence.
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    • 3.Rayo and Yablo's work on nominalistic paraphrase shows that apparent entailments to abstracta can be blocked without loss of content, undermining the account's claim to capture implicit commitment.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Quantifier accounts of ontological commitment require that a thing exist as the value of a quantified variable in order for a sentence to be ontologically committed to that thing.
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    • 2.Some sentences carry implicit ontological commitments to entities that are not values of any quantified variable.
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    • 3.If '∃x Human(x)' entails that humanity exists, then the sentence is ontologically committed to properties or universals even though no property or universal is a quantified variable value.
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