Willard Van Orman Quine

122 peter hylton
II
Reference, for Quine, is thus not the fundamental relation that language
has to the world. It is, however, a notion of great importance.
Our cognitive discourse is, or aims to be, about the world; a particular
utterance is, or aims to be, about some portion of the world,
typically about some object or objects. That reference is not fundamental
means that there is an explanation, in other terms, of how
it comes about; it does not mean that reference is unimportant. And
for Quine an understanding of the referential capacities of our cognitive
language is the crucial step in the clarification of that language.
We have already seen Quine’s emphasis, in the preface to Word and
Object, on “the development and structure of our own referential apparatus”
(WO ix). Later in the book he speaks of understanding the
referential work of language and clarifying our conceptual scheme.
These for Quine are not separate endeavors: Understanding reference
is an important step toward conceptual clarification.
Taking our language as a going concern, then, how are we to understand
its referential function – our ability to speak about objects?
What is the aboutness relation here? The fact that reference is, in
the sense we have discussed, not fundamental shows itself in the
fact that we must begin with a set of true sentences, a body of theory
that is true, or at any rate accepted as true. Only when the truths are
in place can we raise the question of existence. In this sense, acceptance
of sentences is prior to reference, and truth is prior to existence.
Those objects that a given body of theory is about are presumably
the ones that must exist if that body of theory is to be true. They
are, in Quine’s words, the ontological commitment of that body of
theory. How are we to understand this idea? For Quine, the answer
is quantification theory, which has first-order logic at its heart. 10
I shall give a very brief explanation of the relevant aspect of logical
notation. An open sentence is obtained from a sentence containing
names by replacing one or more of those names by a variable, that
is, a lowercase italicized letter from near the end of the alphabet.
Thus we obtain ‘x is human’ from ‘Socrates is human’, ‘If x is human,
then x is mortal’ from ‘If Socrates is human, then Socrates is
mortal’, and so on. A name need not be replaced at every occurrence,
nor need every name be replaced. An open sentence contains one
or more variables and may also contain names. An open sentence,
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