On Ontological Innocence

Abstract

The three essays that compose this dissertation are centrally concerned with the possibility of ontologically innocent quantification. Roughly speaking, quantified claims are ontologically innocent when they are consistent with the denial that there really are the entities over which they quantify. Quantification of this kind has a somewhat paradoxical quality. Nonetheless, I am inclined to think that ontologically innocent quantification is possible. The primary goal of this dissertation is to take the initial steps towards a defense of this claim. The first chapter challenges a thesis I call Equiv. Equiv in effect says that quantification can never be ontologically innocent. I argue that accepting the ontologically pluralist claim that there are multiple ways to be implies the falsity of Equiv. This is important because there are reasons to think that proponents of Equiv should also be ontological pluralists. If so, then there's good reason to think that Equiv must be false simpliciter. The second chapter is directed against those who argue that higher-order quantification is consistent with the thesis that it is possible to quantify absolutely unrestrictedly over everything. I argue that higher-order quantification is in fact at odds with absolutely unrestricted quantification, unless the relevant higher-order quantifiers are interpreted as ontologically innocent. Since the view that quantification can be absolutely unrestricted is prima facie attractive, the upshot of this conclusion is that we have reason to think that higher-order quantification might be ontologically innocent. Although significant, the arguments of the first two essays don't yet explain how we might make sense of ontological innocence. My third chapter tries to develop the beginnings of such an explanation. The thought is that the difference between ontologically innocent and ontologically committal quantification might be connected with the weightiness of the entities over which the quantifier ranges. Reflecting on what it is to be parsimonious offers a way to unpack this idea: I argue that the entities over which a theory quantifies can differ in the contribution they make to the unparsimoniousness of a given theory. My hope is that this variation can in turn help to explicate differences in ontological weightiness.