Abstract

IN THIS CHARMINGLY DISARMING FASHION Quine got us off on the wrong foot. No ontologist is interested in the attempt to give a complete inventory of the things which are. He is, indeed, interested in the sorts of things which are, but not just any list of sorts of things would interest him. There are, one might well say, white dogs, brown dogs, and brown and white dogs. Clearly these are some of the sorts of things there are. But such a list is of profound disinterest to ontologists because, I take it, such things are all of a more general sort, and it is the more general sorts of things which interest them. But, of course, dogs and frogs are more general sorts of things and ontologists are not interested in them either. There is something radically uninteresting even about the more general sorts of things so long as they are not in some sense ontologically basic or ultimate. The ontologist, we might say, is very much interested in providing, among other things, a list of the ultimate sorts of things. And here there is much room for disagreement. But, unfortunately, the ontologist’s interest can now no longer be said to be simple or clear, for it is by no means obvious what might be meant by such a phrase as "ontologically basic." It is the aim of this paper to get a little closer than has Quine to an understanding of what this phrase might come to.