Chapter 11 - Carnap and Quine on Ontology and Categories

Summary

While a number of commentators have argued that Quine’s account of Carnap’s paper in terms of the category/subclass distinction is simply a misunderstanding of Carnap, this essay argues that it is not. Instead, Quine was correct to construe Carnap’s external questions of existence as all being category questions. Quine’s second claim – that answers to internal category questions of existence are trivial and analytic – was, however, incorrect. Here, this essay then dissents from a view of Ebbs, who has recently argued that Quine was right on both points. Instead, it is argued that epistemic considerations that support Quine’s first point undermine his second point.