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Class-Membership and the Ontological Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

James K. Feibleman*
Affiliation:
Tulane University

Extract

Professor Quine in recent articles has raised an old question, an ontological one, concerning the status of universals. It is interesting to note that the same positions recur in symbolic logic that have appeared so often in the past in less exact language. There can be little doubt that the question he raises is crucial; and if the issue is not yet settled, there is at least some hope that it may be clarified. Propositions are required to make propositions clear.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1950

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Footnotes

Read before the Philosophy Club of the University of Virginia, March 28th, 1949.

References

1 Quine, W. V., “On Universals”, Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 12 (1947), p. 74, and Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine, “Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism”, Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 12 (1947), p. 105.

2 Sophist, 247E.

3 An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, New York, 1940 (Norton), p. 434.

4 Quine, W. V., “On Universals”, p. 74.

5 Republic, VII.

6 Parmenides, 131A.

7 Science and the Modern World, New York, 1929 (Macmillan), Ch. X.

8 Quine, W. V., “On Universals”, p. 75.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine, “Steps toward a Constructive Nominalism”, p. 105, n. 1.

12 Ibid., p. 105.

13 Ibid., p. 105, n. 2.

14 Science and the Modern World, New York, 1929 (Macmillan), Ch. III.

15 Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine, “Steps toward a Constructive Nominalism”, p. 100.

16 Ibid., p. 106–7.

17 Ibid., p. 107.

18 Ibid., p. 111.

19 Ibid., p. 112.

20 Ibid., p. 112 ff.

21 C. I. Lewis and C. H. Langford, Symbolic Logic, (Century, 1932), Ch. VI and Appendix II.