Ontology and Analyticity

Abstract

Let’s take the following question as our point of departure: ‘what constitutes an ontological commitment?’ Due to reasons which will only become clear in the course of our discussion, it proves useful to put this question in a linguistic form and to give it the following formulation: ’What are the criteria in terms of which we decide the ontological commitment of a person using a particular language?’ An obvious answer that readily comes to mind is the following: when the user B of a particular language uses names, then all the objects designated by these names are to be credited to his ontology. The same holds for so-called definite descriptions (briefly: descriptions), that is, expressions of the form ‘the so and so’ (‘the author of “Wallenstein” ’, ‘the conqueror of Mt. Everest’); according to B the objects to which such descriptions refer are also included among the existing. Finally all the properties and relations about which B can formulate statements by means of the predicate- terms occurring in his language will be assumed by B to exist.