On What There Is for Things to Be (Paperback)

Paperback. If Art is smart and Art is rich, then someone is both smart and rich - namely, Art. And if Art is smart and Bart is smart, then Art is something that Bart is, too - namely, smart. The first claim involves first-order quantification, a generalization concerning what kinds of things there are. The second involves second-order quantification, a generalization concerning what there is for things to be. Or so it appears. Following W.V.O. Quine, many philosophers have endorsed a thesis of Ontological Collapse about second-order quantification. They maintain that ultimately, second-order quantification reduces to first-order quantification over sets or properties, and therefore also carries the latter's distinctive ontological commitments.In this revised version of his doctoral dissertation, awarded the Wolfgang-Stegmuller-Prize in 2012, Stephan Kramer examines the major arguments for Ontological Collapse in detail and finds all of them wanting. Quantifications, he argues, fall into at least two irreducible kinds: those on what things there are, and those on what there is for things to be. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…