Quine: Peter HyltonReference, Ontological Relativity, and Realism

Section I of this essay discusses Quine's views about reference,, contrasting them with those of Russell. For the latter, our language and thought succeed in being about the world because of our acquaintance with objects; the relation of reference—roughly, the relation between a name and its bearer—is thus fundamental. For Quine, by contrast, the fundamental relation by which our language comes to be about the world, and to have empirical content, is that between a sentence and stimulations of our sensory surfaces; reference, while important, is a derivative notion. Section II shows how this view of reference as derivative makes possible the notorious Quinean doctrine of ontological relativity. Section III raises the issue of realism. It argues that somewhat different notions of realism are in play for Quine and for Russell—for Russell, objects, and our knowledge of objects, play the fundamental role, while for quine objectivity and truth are fundamental, with ontology being derivative.