Quine and the problem of what there is

LAERA, RODRIGO

Simposio; Symposium Die Ontologie der Erkenntnistheorie: Quine, W. V. O; 2004

Please allow me to begin, probably in a rude way, by dividing Onthology in two tipes: On the one hand, the Onthology understood in a wide sense, and on the other hand, the onthology in a narrow sense. If we divide philosophers according to the onthology they support, we could call the first group ?the wide ones? and the second group ?the narrow ones?. We could also say that the group of the ?wide ones? is compound of many personalities: Platon, Bolzano (if we take into account the idea of Analitical falseness), Meinong, Husserl (the most attacked one), in some way also Frege (taking into account certain parts of ?Der Gedanke?, together with the fact that an object is defined as argument for a function). Within the polish philosophie we could mention Twardiwski, in a way also Le´sniwski ? although someone may have reservation about that-. As seen, the group of the ?wide ones? has important supporters and together they make a strong army. But no less strong is the group of the ?narrow ones?, its supporters are everytime more and they have the advantage of being more contemporary: we could mention Russell as mentor of the group (and I mean the Russell fro the theory of the descriptions and not the young Russell), Ryle, Strawson, Kripke and with them, most of the analitical philosophers. So is the case that if an analitical philosopher is still not affiliated to this group, that´s because they still haven´t expressed an opinion on that subject.