Abstract

In this talk I wish to do three things: first, I explain why Quine took first-order classical logic to be the only language in which we should formulate a theory or declarative statement to determine its ontological commitments. Second, I argue that Quineans cannot relax Quine’s restriction to classical logic such that any non-classical logic may be used to uncover a theory’s ontological commitments, because this leads to radical ontological relativism according to which the ontological commitments of a theory are relative to a logic. Finally, I consider whether Quineans can go beyond Quine by accepting plural logic, but no other logics. This, I claim, is not possible because plural logic is not transparent: it allows for translations that make ontologically non-equivalent theories come out as ontologically equivalent.