Quine on de re and de dicto modality

Abstract

Key text W. V. O. Quine, ‘Three Grades of Modal Involvement’, reprinted in Quine's The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays , 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976). Introduction In the last two chapters we've looked at the works at the centre of a revolution in our thinking about reference and necessity. So far I've represented the revolution as being against views to be found in Frege, Russell, and Locke. But there was a more recent target than any of these: the great American philosopher and logician, Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine dominated the English-speaking philosophical world in the middle years of the twentieth century, with an enormous influence on both doctrine and style, in the United States in particular. Quine followed Russell in his treatment of definite descriptions and proper names. Indeed, he went even further, proposing that all singular terms be replaced by, or reconstrued as, definite descriptions. He was also an ardent advocate of what he and his followers called extensionalism . Recall the core of Frege's conception of meaning, the part to which the notion of Sense is added. According to this, what matters about the meaning of various types of expression can be summarized as follows: For sentences – whether they are true or false; For singular terms – which objects they refer to; For predicates – what difference they make to the truth and falsity of sentences, given any particular choice of names in place of the variables.