On Quine on Carnap on Ontology

terms, but merely an explanation of my reaction to those objections [to the use of such terms] and of my impression that no sufficiently compelling reasons for them were given. Nevertheless, I thought that these objections deserved to be given careful and serious attention. This I did in my article “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology”.39 Notice that Carnap denied that the objections his empiricist critics raised had “sufficient reasons for them.” He did not suggest that they are legitimate concerns that can be answered. ESO should not, therefore, be interpreted as an attempt to answer their objections, but rather as an attempt to show that the objections themselves are misplaced. So Carnap’s critics accuse him of Platonistic commitments that a good empiricist would repudiate; and Carnap accuses them back of a priori metaphysical intuition-mongering in which no empiricist should indulge. “At the time,” Carnap noted of the dispute, “each of the two parties seemed to criticize the other for using bad metaphysics.”40 ESO was Carnap’s attempt to explain why he thought a commitment to empiricism does not imply nominalism, and why the suggestion that it does itself constitutes metaphysical speculation that the empiricist should renounce. 104 M. ALSPECTOR-KELLY ESO ends with the plea that we respect the scientist’s freedom to determine what sorts of entities to quantify over in her work, without interference from philosophical circles. The acceptance or rejection of abstract linguistic forms, just as the acceptance or rejection of any other linguistic forms in any branch of science, will finally be decided by their efficiency as instruments, the ratio of the results achieved to the amount and complexity of the efforts required. To decree dogmatic prohibitions of certain linguistic forms instead of testing them by their success or failure in practical use, is worse than futile; it is positively harmful because it may obstruct scientific progress. The history of science shows examples of such prohibitions based on prejudices deriving from religious, mythological, metaphysical, or other irrational sources, which slowed up the developments for shorter or longer periods of time. Let us learn the lessons of history. Let us grant to those who work in any special field of investigation the freedom to use any form of expression which seems useful to them; the work in the field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of those forms which have no useful function. Let us be cautious in making assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.41 The nominalist intuition of Carnap’s fellow empiricist critics amounts to a metaphysical prejudice, one that threatens to stand in the way of scientific progress by constraining the categories of entity over which a scientist can legitimately quantify. That they are empiricists who suppose that ontological convictions can legitimately influence our approach to empirical science, and who moreover assume that such convictions are consonant with, or even result from, empiricism itself, is all the more disturbing. For Carnap, the attempt to derive ontological constraints from empiricism is itself the true sin; the spirit of tolerance to which such constraints are a threat is the essence of Carnap’s empiricism. To suggest with Quine, then, that Carnap actually shared his empiricist critics’ nominalist conviction, and that he made a desperate attempt to reconcile that conviction with quantification over abstract entities, is to seriously misrepresent Carnap’s intent. Carnap was exhorting his critics to leave off intuition-mongering and leave science alone in its determination of which entities to include among the values of its variables. His critics’ distaste for abstract entities, not the abstract entities themselves, was Carnap’s target. Far from attempting to disown commitment to abstracta, Carnap was disowning his critics’ reasons for disowning commitment to abstracta. ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY 105 So understood, the fundamental feature of external questions, and one that Carnap emphasized, is that they are posed, and answered, prior to acceptance of the framework.42 His empiricist critics know, for example, that when one is engaged in mathematics, denial of “There is an even prime” evinces mathematical incompetence rather than ontological restraint. But that, of course, is not taken to decide the ontological issue, which concerns the fidelity of quantification over numbers to reality. It is because the empiricist-nominalist is convinced that there could not really be abstract entities, perhaps on the basis of a fundamental intuition like Quine and Goodman’s, that she concludes that mathematics cannot be taken at ontological face value. Carnap’s empiricist critics keep company with those philosophers who “believe that only after making sure that there really is a system of entities of the kind in question are we justified in accepting the framework by incorporating the linguistic forms into our language.”43 After all, they might say, the issue concerns the range of values of our variables. Surely we should ensure that they range only over what there is, or what we could know there is, and this question is prior to and independent of any assessment of the contribution mathematics makes to the conduct of empirical science. This, Carnap insisted, puts the cart before the horse. The question whether we should quantify over numbers does not initiate an inquiry into whether numbers exist. It initiates, rather, an inquiry into whether quantification over numbers contributes to the conduct of scientific inquiry. Quantification over mathematical entities facilitates inference, simplifies axiomatization, allows for considerable increase in the precision of empirical prediction and control, and so on. Whether these considerations, taken altogether, tell in favour of quantification over mathematical entities, or whether they can be satisfied with a more austere ontology, is an open question. But if they favour quantification over mathematical entities, we will come to affirm mathematical existentials. And that is where the question whether there are numbers finds a legitimate answer. It is an answer to a question of existence. But it is not an answer that decides the legitimacy of quantification over numbers. It is the product of a process that begins with the question whether quantification over numbers benefits science. 106 M. ALSPECTOR-KELLY Carnap dismissed the ontologist’s question because he thought that its answer would have to be synthetic and a priori, not because he thought that it would always receive an analytic answer. The question that Carnap rejected is one whose answer is supposed to determine the legitimacy of the introduction of the framework, whatever the contribution the framework might make to empirical science and whatever specific evidence might be given for particular assertions within the framework. To put the question beyond the pale of empirical science in this way is, for Carnap, tantamount to trafficking in metaphysical prejudice under the guise of synthetic a priori inquiry. Carnap’s nominalist empiricist critics were unwittingly engaged in the same illicit commerce. They did not take the sentence “There are no abstract entities” to be true in virtue of meaning alone. But to infer this sentence from empiricism does not turn the sentence into an empirical judgment warranted on the basis of empirical scientific inquiry. After all, it was precisely because of his critics’ nominalist convictions that they sought to revise scientific doctrine in nominalistic terms. Of course, they hoped that reconciliation between their conviction and scientific doctrine would ensue. Nevertheless, their project constitutes an attempt to fit the scientific image into their larger ontological frame; it is not part of the empirical scientific image itself. These critics have, with considerable irony, drawn a synthetic a priori conviction from their commitment to empiricism. And that is the last thing an empiricist should be doing. The analytic/synthetic distinction does show up in ESO, as the distinction between logical and empirical frameworks; the framework of numbers is an example of the first, the framework of ‘things’ (material objects) an example of the second. Assertions in logical frameworks are, Carnap thought, analytic, whatever the generality of the sortal might be. And assertions in empirical frameworks are synthetic, whatever their generality might be. Quine’s interpretation has Carnap claiming that a sentence turns analytic when the sortal’s scope widens far enough for it to count as a universal word. But Quine was wrong. Nevertheless, Carnap did think that mathematical existentials are analytic, and Quine did disagree, and that is a fundamental difference between them. But Carnap did not claim that these sentences ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY 107 are analytic in order to avoid ontological commitment. He did not object to the ontologist’s demand that the answers to her questions of existence be synthetic. Ontologists ask such questions about factual frameworks as well. And Carnap continued to disparage those questions, even while holding that the answers to the corresponding internal questions are synthetic. Carnap’s repudiation of external questions applies to analytic and factual frameworks equally. The role of the analytic/synthetic distinction in ESO is independent of the internal/external distinction and of Carnap’s repudiation of external questions. Quine understood their (apparent) disagreement over ontology to be a manifestation of their disagreement as to the viability of the analytic/synthetic distinction. But his mistake was to see Carnap’s views as flowing from Carnap’s acceptance of the analytic a priori which Quine opposed and not from Carnap’s rejection of the synthetic a priori which Quine endorsed.44 VI. PRAGMATIC AND EPISTEMIC Carnap said that framework-choice is a pragmatic matter of language engineering. Adopting a framework, he said, “does not need any theoretical justification because it does not imply any assertion of reality.”45 “Above all”, he insisted, “it must not be interpreted as referring to an assumption, belief or assertion of ‘the reality of the entities’.”46 Quine understood him to be claiming that quantification over abstract entities is not an acknowledgment that such entities exist. In response, Quine emphasized the impact that framework-choice has on the corpus of belief: it plays a substantial role in determining what existentials will be affirmed within it. Framework-choice therefore has consequences for what to believe there is. And since an epistemic reason is a reason that is relevant to the question what to believe, those reasons that are relevant to choice of framework are also epistemic. But this misses the point. When Carnap denied that framework choice reflects a belief as to the “reality of the entities,” he was denying that framework-choice is made in light of already-formed views concerning what there is; he was not denying that it has implica108 M. ALSPECTOR-KELLY tions for what there is. He simply did not care what the implications were, and was exhorting his fellow empiricists to adopt the same tolerant attitude. The already-formed views concerning what there is, to which framework choice is thought to be held accountable, are answers to external questions. The doctrinal implications of framework choice are answers to internal questions. And Carnap’s position was that external questions are incoherent, and that the only answers to questions of existence are internal answers. It does not, in fact, make sense to ascribe to Carnap the position that the decision to quantify over abstract entities is merely pragmatic in a sense that vitiates the ontological commitments that flow from the internal existentials. Quine suggests that Carnap called framework choice pragmatic in order to disarm those existentials because he was unwilling to endorse commitment to them. But Carnap’s supposed aversion to abstract entities would amount to an existential judgement, delivered, now, from the external standpoint. Carnap could not, in that case, maintain that existential issues only coherently arise within frameworks. But that they do coherently arise only within frameworks is Carnap’s whole point. When Carnap characterized the reasons that figure in framework choice as pragmatic, he was not attempting to wash his hands of the foreseeable ontological consequences of such choices. Admittedly, he was not very happy with the terms “ontology” and “ontological commitment”; as we will see, he could not help noticing their firstphilosophical overtones. But insofar as such terms are divested of their first-philosophical origins, he would have had no problem with the suggestion that he is ontologically committed to abstracta. In fact, his entire purpose was to suggest that there is no specifically philosophical reason for being concerned with such commitment, and that his empiricist nominalist critics were wrong in thinking that there is. Perhaps Quine’s accusation that Carnap was trying to dodge ontological commitment does not stick. Nevertheless, it might be objected that Carnap did characterize the reasons for framework choice as pragmatic. And Quine did characterize those reasons as evidential. Surely this is still a difference between them. And surely Quine was right to reject Carnap’s characterization of those reasons ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY 109 as merely pragmatic, in light of their role in determining the content of the corpus of belief. As Yablo puts the criticism on Quine’s behalf, Carnap fell prey to a false dichotomy. He took the options to be either endorsement of ontological insight constraining framework choices, or recognition of the pragmatic character of the considerations that weigh in for such choices. Since Carnap rejected the first option, and since pragmatic considerations rationalize change in action or policy, Carnap denied that framework choice constitutes a change in doctrine.47 “This”, Yablo says, “is where push famously comes to shove.” Efficiency and the rest are not for Quine ‘practical considerations’, not if that is meant to imply a lack of evidential relevance. They are exactly the sorts of factors that scientists point to as favoring one theory over another, hence as supporting this or that view of the world.48 Yablo then cites Quine: “Carnap maintains that ontological questions. . . . are questions not of fact but of choosing a convenient conceptual scheme or framework for science; and with this I agree only if the same be conceded for every scientific hypothesis.”49 Quine’s argument, in effect, is that we can no more view framework choice as merely pragmatic, and therefore as evidentially irrelevant, than we can view the reasons that scientists adduce for their hypotheses as evidentially irrelevant. Carnap will certainly not want to deny the evidential relevance of scientific theorizing. So he has no choice but to regard those reasons as evidential for whatever they rationalize, even when what they rationalize is choice of framework. Whatever effect this parity-of-reasoning argument might have on Carnap, it does not license the conclusion that such reasons are evidential. Indeed, the concession that Quine demands would initially suggest a far more pessimistic conclusion. Carnap was right to recognize that choice of basic ontology is guided by considerations that lack evidential relevance. But he did not recognize the extent to which such epistemically irrelevant considerations have infiltrated scientific theorizing. It turns out that every scientific hypothesis – not just basic ontology – is subject to the malign influence of merely practical considerations irrelevant to its truth! The optimistic conclusion that Quine wants to draw requires a missing premise: that simplicity, conservatism, inferential tractabil110 M. ALSPECTOR-KELLY ity, and the rest, do really increase the likelihood that the claims they are taken to support are true, whatever those claims might be. And one might be skeptical. Such considerations, after all, often wear their practical benefits on their sleeves: simple theories are easier to keep track of, conservatism indulges a kind of theoretical laziness, inferential tractability makes for easier derivation of consequences, and so on. As Yablo says, Quine will point out that these are the sort of factors that scientists point to as favoring one theory over another, “hence as supporting this or that view of the world.” But this does nothing to determine whether the support in question is pragmatic or epistemic. Why should we not think that it is the practical benefits these considerations confer on the believer, not their relevance to the truth of the belief, that accounts for their role in determining scientific doctrine? Quine will at this point appeal to his naturalism. He might ask us to consider what answering this question would require. Certainly the local evidence that might be appealed to in support of particular claims – calculation for the existence of primes, observation for the existence of brick houses, and the like – would be dismissed out of hand. For the question is precisely whether such supposed evidence really is evidence, rather than merely an elaborate game the playing of which is motivated by the practical benefits accruing to the players but unrelated to the truth. And it will do no good to reiterate the very considerations at issue – simplicity, conservatism, and so on – that motivate the playing. It is precisely the epistemic status of such considerations that is at stake. But nothing else figures into scientific theorizing itself. So the question could only be answered by conducting a super-scientific inquiry into the epistemic credentials of scientific method. And the dream of such an inquiry is what Quine insists must be renounced as a philosophical fantasy.50 So when Quine says that the reasons relevant to framework choice are evidential, he certainly does not mean to suggest that he has conducted such an inquiry, and reports the happy news that those reasons live up to their epistemic pretensions and so are not merely pragmatic. That application of the pragmatic/epistemic distinction, Quine would say, or at least should say, goes by the board with the naturalistic turn, since it presupposes a first-philosophical epistemological project that Quine rejects as incoherent. ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY 111 Now back to Carnap. When Carnap said that the reasons relevant to framework choice are pragmatic, he certainly did not mean to suggest that he had conducted such an inquiry, and reports the unhappy news that those reasons failed to live up to their epistemic pretensions and so are merely pragmatic. That application of the pragmatic/epistemic distinction, Carnap would say, or at least should say, goes by the board with the repudiation of the external question of existence. The issue is whether a substantial part of scientific discourse – that part concerning numbers, say – amounts to a merely discursive game the playing of which is motivated on merely pragmatic grounds irrelevant to the truth of the asssertions made in play, or whether the “evidence” for existential assertions within the game is really evidence for the existence of the entities. And that is just a variant of the very external question concerning the fidelity of the framework as a whole to reality that Carnap rejected as unacceptably metaphysical on the basis of its detachment from, and irrelevance to, the empirical scientific endeavor.51 Carnap was certainly not suggesting that the epistemic status of the framework itself, and therefore of the existentials within it, is sadly unresolved by the merely pragmatic considerations that determine whether the framework is adopted. His characterization of framework-choice as pragmatic was precisely meant to oppose the idea that any such external assessment of the legitimacy of the framework is possible. It even precludes an assessment of the reasons that govern framework choice as merely pragmatic and therefore inadequate from an external epistemological point of view. Quine did call framework-choice epistemic, but only because he was emphasizing its role in the evolution of the corpus of belief. Carnap did call framework-choice pragmatic, but only because he was emphasizing the freedom of science to consider the virtues of such a choice unencumbered by metaphysical prejudice. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say on behalf of both that the pragmatic/epistemic distinction does not apply to the reasons that determine framework-choice, since its application would presuppose the legitmacy of a first-philosophical, non-empirical project that they both reject. 112 M. ALSPECTOR-KELLY But insofar as the pragmatic/epistemic distinction is forced on the reasons for framework-choice, I think it is Carnap’s emphasis of the pragmatic dimension of such decision-making that looks more reasonable from the point of view of Quine’s own naturalistic orientation. In calling those reasons epistemic, Quine is in danger of appearing to suggest that there must be something more to recommend such choices than the considerations that are typically appealed to in making them. In so doing, he threatens his own naturalism. Quine, it seems, agreed. [I]t is meaningless, I suggest, to inquire into the absolute correctness of a conceptual scheme as a mirror of reality. Our standard for appraising basic changes in conceptual scheme must be, not a realistic standard of correspondence to reality, but a pragmatic standard. Concepts are language, and the purpose of concepts and of language is efficiency in communication and prediction. Such is the ultimate duty of language, science, and philosophy, and it is in relation to that duty that a conceptual scheme has finally to be appraised.52 If this passage is to be read in a way that does not conflict with Quine’s insistence that simplicity, conservatism, and so on are evidential and not merely pragmatic, then we should be equally charitable in our reading of Carnap when he says that such reasons are pragmatic while recognizing their impact on the corpus of belief. I suggest that we be charitable in our reading of both. Carnap can be rightly accused of attempting to dodge ontological commitment only if ‘ontological’ and ‘first-philosophical’ are taken to be synonymous. Assuming with Quine that opposition to first philosophy does not invalidate the notion of ontological commitment, there is no real contradiction in maintaining that framework-choice is both evidential and pragmatic as Quine and Carnap intended these claims to be understood. It is evidential in the sense that it plays a legitmate role in determining what existentials we affirm and therefore what we believe there is. And it is pragmatic in the sense that it is not answerable to an independent investigation into the correspondence between framework (ontology, conceptual scheme) and reality, an inquiry both have rejected as intolerably first-philosophical. Carnap would no more need to deny that it is evidential in the former sense than Quine needs to deny than it is pragmatic in the latter sense. ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY 113 Notwithstanding their apparent disagreement over the status of framework-choice, I suggest that Quine’s naturalistic reorientation of ontological issues and Carnap’s repudiation of external questions are the same basic maneuver: the repudiation of the first-philosophical pretensions of traditional metaphysics and epistemology and the determination to protect the freedom of scientific inquiry from metaphysical prejudice masked as ontological insight. We will soon find reinforcement for discerning this common ground between them. VII. NATURALISM AND THE NOMINALIST PROJECT Carnap commented on Quine and Goodman’s nominalist project in Meaning and Necessity: I agree, of course, with Quine that the problem of “Nominalism” as he interprets it is a meaningful problem; it is the question of whether all natural science can be expressed in a “nominalistic” language, that is, one containing only individual variables whose values are concrete objects, not classes, properties, and the like. However, I am doubtful whether it is advisable to transfer to this new problem in logic or semantics the label “nominalism” which stems from an old metaphysical problem.53 Carnap explained his dissatisfaction with such terms as ‘nominalism’, ‘ontology’, and ‘ontological commitment’ in the same section. “I should prefer,” he said, “not to use the word ‘ontology’ for the recognition of entities by the admission of variables. This use seems to me to be at least misleading; it might be understood as implying that the decision to use certain kinds of variables must be based on ontological, metaphysical convictions.”54 The sort of convictions he had in mind are those that motivated Quine and Goodman’s nominalist project. Carnap endorsed the project itself,55 but only so long as the play of such convictions is barred from the scene. As I mentioned earlier, Quine himself gave up the project, convinced that it cannot be completed. But, more importantly, he also renounced the philosophical intuition that he and Goodman had expressed as their reason for pursuit of the project.56 At least he did so officially, although he has always surveyed the difficulties attending the nominalist project with regret. But such sentiment plays no 114 M. ALSPECTOR-KELLY role in the process by which Quine has told us that we are to determine our ontological commitments. Instead of asking, first, what there really is or could really be, and then shaping scientific doctrine in order to conform to that determination, we first ask what the best scientific doctrine is to date, and then determine what that doctrine says there is by asking what entities must exist for it to be true. The first move is naturalism. Scientific inquiry being the best, and indeed the only, epistemological game in town, we can do no better than endorse its results with no more reservation than scientific fallibility in general allows. The second move is the application of his criterion of ontological commitment.57 Quine described the nominalist project within this naturalistic orientation as follows. As a thesis in the philosophy of science, nominalism can be formulated thus: it is possible to set up a nominalistic language in which all of natural science can be expressed. The nominalist, so interpreted, claims that a language adequate to all scientific purposes can be framed in such a way that its variables admit only of concrete objects, individuals, as values – hence only proper names of concrete objects as substituends.58 This thesis, and the corresponding nominalist project, is what Carnap said is meaningful and worth pursuing. It concerns, as Carnap said, whether natural science can be expressed in a nominalistic language. If this is what the nominalistic thesis comes to “as a thesis in the philosophy of science”, then Carnap would be perfectly happy with it. What he objected to was Quine and Goodman’s suggestion that the project is reasonably motivated by a prior existential conviction that “[a]ny system that countenances abstract entities . . . [is] unsatisfactory as a final philosophy.” Quine now agrees that the answer to the question whether we are to believe in the existence of abstract entities is one to which we come as a product of this process, not a constraint on it in light of philosophical intuition. And he concedes that this naturalistic rendering of nominalism undermines his and Goodman’s earlier declaration of nominalistic insight. [T]he question whether to treat [a word] as a term is the question whether to give it general access to positions appropriate to general terms . . . . Whether to do so may reasonably be decided by considerations of systematic efficacy, utility for theory. But if nominalism and realism are to be adjudicated on such grounds, ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY 115 nominalism’s claims dwindle. The reason for admitting numbers as objects is precisely their efficacy in organizing and expediting the sciences.59 Carnap was right to reject first philosophy, Quine thought, but Carnap’s pathetic attempt to dodge ontological commitment is quite unnecessary now that Quine has shown that ontological questions of existence can find a home in the naturalistic framework. Quine did not consider the revival of ontological inquiry in naturalistic guise to be a reversion to traditional metaphysics because he did not consider the first-philosophical aspect of ontology to be essential to it. As he said in “On What There Is”, he is after all “no champion of traditional metaphysics.”60 But he had not really given new meaning to terms like ‘ontology’ since “the sense in which I use this crusty old word was nuclear to its usage all along.”61 But Carnap was not trying to dodge ontological commitment to abstracta. Quine’s interpretation of Carnap’s view of ontological existentials – that they are analytic shadows in the object language of metalinguistic attributions of syntactic structure – originates in a misconception of Carnap’s intent. And this opens the possibility that the remaining dispute between them was merely verbal. Unlike Quine, Carnap felt that the terms ‘ontology’, ‘nominalism’ and so on are so closely wedded to the first-philosophical metaphysical project that to suggest that ontological issues somehow survive the naturalistic turn is seriously misleading.62 But their difference of opinion as to the recommended use of these terms only reflects their distinct rhetorical circumstances. No significant disagreement with respect to what happens to first-philosophical metaphysics, and how existential queries are answered, appears to remain. Carnap himself always suspected that their dispute over ontological issues might be merely verbal.63 After all, Quine echoed Carnap’s plea for tolerance of frameworks (or ontologies): “The question what ontology actually to adopt”, Quine said in “On What There Is”, “still stands open, and the obvious counsel is tolerance and an experimental spirit.”64 Carnap was very encouraged by this comment. In a letter to Quine, he suggested that they had independently come to the same position on ontological issues. I read with great interest your paper “On What There Is”. I was very glad to find at the end your plea for “tolerance and experimental spirit”. This is exactly the 116 M. ALSPECTOR-KELLY same attitude for which I plead in my paper (and which I expressed almost in the same terms, even before having read yours).65 Carnap was enthusiastic enough to cite Quine’s comment directly in ESO66 and allude to it later in his autobiography.67 He was, I think, mystified by Quine’s adamant opposition to his views; and perhaps he was right to be so. The attitude toward ontological questions of existence that Quine and Carnap may well have shared is not, however, standardly taken to be Quine’s contribution. Quine and Goodman’s rejection of any system that countenances abstract entities as “unsatisfactory as a final philosophy” was echoed recently by Hartry Field. Field also denies “that it is legitimate to use terms that purport to refer to such entities, or variables that purport to range over such entities, in our ultimate account of what the world is really like.”68 But since he is committed to scientific doctrine as telling us what the world really is like, and since the latter doctrine, as it stands, includes abstract existentials, Field needs to show that scientific doctrine can be rewritten without quantification over abstracta in order to avoid what he calls “intellectual doublethink.”69 Carnap would object to Field’s suggestion that we are reasonably motivated to explore the nominalist project in light of a prior conviction as to what there is and therefore that demonstration of the dispensability of abstracta constitutes an argument in favour of that prior conviction. Quine’s renunciation of his and Goodman’s earlier declaration of philosophical insight suggests that he would share Carnap’s rejection of the sort of conviction that motivates Field, even while Field ascribes to Quine the recognition of the role of dispensability arguments in defending such convictions. And Field is not alone. Dispensability arguments are now standard weapons in the defense of various ontological convictions, and Quine is typically praised for advocating their use. Suppose that Quine does share Carnap’s repudiation of traditional metaphysics, understood as the influence of prior ontological convictions on our attitude to, and interpretation of, scientific doctrine. Then it appears that his misinterpretation of Carnap’s position resulted in his overemphasizing the continuity of metaphysics in its classical and modern guise. This in turn led to misinterpretation of his own attitude toward the fate of traditional metaphysics: instead ON QUINE ON CARNAP ON ONTOLOGY 117 of rejecting such prior convictions as irrelevant to the development of scientific doctrine, he is seen to have provided the means by which such convictions can be defended, namely, by the proffering of dispensability arguments. If this is right, then Quine’s misinterpretation of his mentor’s position on ontology condemned his own to being misunderstood because of his preoccupation with the one issue – the cogency of the analytic/synthetic distinction – that separated them. A tragic play of misunderstanding would then appear to have taken place at the center of the transition from positivist to post-positivist analytic philosophy, one which persists in the current perception of Quine as having rescued ontological inquiry from Carnap’s anti-metaphysical dogmatism.