Quine on Matters Ontological

by Ernie Stanley

Found within:
http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/1997.spring/gibson976.html

“Quine maintains that everything to which we concede existence is a posit”

“… a posit is a result of a linguistic process of reification: “The reification of bodies comes in stages in one's acquisition of language, each successive stage being more clearly and emphatically an affirmation of existence. The last stage is where the body is recognized as identical over time, despite long absences and interim modifications…” (Page 1)

Quine, an Anglo-American philosopher logically has deduced that existence is merely a series of hypothetical abstractions constructed within our minds and exist only in terms of language. That is, what we cannot describe in some manner, has no being, simply because it can not formulate itself within our mind.

This is a scientific based assertion of reality, and thus, as the religious scholar I question it. I do accept that I only perceive this world and do not truly realize it, not yet at least. However, to state that reality exists only in my mind strikes me as fairly reductionist and possibly nihilistic. It refuses any notion of a greater reality, while affirming at the same that God is everyone of us.

My main issue with such an idea is that it asserts itself above all other metaphysics (Quine himself does not agree with this), grounding the whole of existence within the mind. But what about the mind/body itself? Surely the mind cannot construct itself.