Lexicon of Arguments

 

X 86
Definition Conservativity/substitution/variables/Harman/Quine: substitutions must be conservative. The grammatical structure and logical truth shall be preserved: i.e. the variable or lexicon word used in the object language must not already occur elsewhere in the context.
>Variables/Quine, >Substitution/Quine.
V 189
Theory/Ontology/Quine: how should a scientific theory look best? We want as many and good predictions as possible.
Guiding principles: Simplicity and conservativity.
V 190
A great simplification can justify a relatively great deviation. We need a compromise between the two.
Conservativity/Quine: conservativity is among other things due to our lack of imagination. But also wise caution against hypotheses.
Simplicity/Conservativity: both are already at work in language learning.
Language learning/Quine: does jumps and is always oriented towards similarities and analogies.
>Language Acquisition/Quine.
V 191
Short steps are conservative. They are guided by relative empiricism.
Def relative empiricism/Quine: do not venture further away from the sense data than necessary. Quine pro: this keeps the theoretical changes low.
QuineVsRadical Empiricism: we gave it up when we gave up hope of reducing the speech of the body to the speech of sense data.
N.B.: this requires sticking to the substitutional quantification of abstract objects. That appeals to the nominalistic mind. It is expressed in relative empiricism, because both are the same.
Nominalism: must not, however, overestimate the ontological harmlessness of the variables of substitutional quantification. In general, one can say that the values of variables make up the whole ontology if we only have object variables, truth functions and predicates.