Paraphrases are prevalent in ontological debates. Their main target is to avoid ontological commitment to particular (kinds of) entities. For example, a sentence such as 'There is a chance of rain' apparently commits to the existence of chances. However, as we can paraphrase this sentence to 'It is likely that it rains' which is not ontologically committed to chances, it seems as if we can avoid the particular commitment to them. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the relation between paraphrase and ontological commitment. In particular, it considers what different paraphrase strategies are to be found in the literature and what problems they encounter. Only Alston's so-called symmetry objection is generally recognized, but I argue that there are at least four more problems. Moreover, I argue that criteria of ontological commitment are problematic, too. I consider several candidate criteria and show that they are unsatisfactory. Furthermore, I argue that criteria of ontological commitment are in some sense equivalent to criteria of adequate paraphrase. Regarding the latter, I argue (i) that satisfactory criteria of adequate paraphrase need to resolve the problems such as Alston's symmetry objection and (ii) that the common candidate criteria don't even jointly resolve them. I conclude that there are no adequate criteria of ontological commitment. I take it, however, that giving up on paraphrase is implausible in light of paraphrase examples such as the above one. To make sense of such paraphrases, the second part of my thesis proposes to understand them as explication proposals. In the rest of the thesis, I develop my understanding of explication which is called 'tolerant explication'. Tolerant explication is build on Carnapian and Quinean explication, but it is more widely applicable. In particular, I argue that the notion is superior to other like notions, but also subsumes them as special cases. Lastly, I propose to understand conceptual engineering as my tolerant explication by showing how tolerant explication resolves particular issues riddling conceptual engineering. One such problem is Strawson's objection that explication and conceptual engineering are just changing the topic instead of addressing the problem as posed. Another problem is that conceptual engineering forces us to commit to particular understanding of what's to be engineered, namely concepts.
Date of Award | 31 Dec 2021 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | - The University of Manchester
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Supervisor | David Liggins (Supervisor) & Christopher Daly (Supervisor) |
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- Explication
- Criteria of Ontological Commitment
- Ontological Commitment
- Criteria for Adequate Paraphrase
- Paraphrase Strategies
- Paraphrase
Metametaphysics: Paraphrase and Explication
Raab, J. (Author). 31 Dec 2021
Student thesis: Phd