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NON-NOMINAL QUANTIFICATION 37
quantificational definition of truth, on the basis that truth appears in the truth conditions
(Davidson 1996: 273; Platts 1997: 14–5; Künne 2003: 357–60; but see Soames 1999: 42).
Likewise, the account of quantifications as potentially infinite conjunctions or disjunctions of
substitution instances has been criticised on the basis that the resulting sentences would
outstrip the comprehension of speakers (Inwagen 2002: 214–6). Moreover, the interpretation
of the quantifiers is often thought to reveal the ontological commitments of someone holding
sentences of the object language to be true. The significance given to the interpretation of
quantification can only be justified if it in some way reflects what we mean when we make
quantified assertions.
If the objectual interpretation of non-nominal quantification is taken to reveal what our
understanding consists in, then one might conclude that at some level all quantification is
nominal quantification, quantification over objects, or even that it might be possible to
communicate understanding of non-nominal quantification in an explanation that only
employs nominal quantification. But this would be a mistake, since, as we have seen, the
objectual interpretation only suffices to capture our understanding of non-nominal generality
by employing concepts whose implicit non-nominal generality it does not make explicit. An
interpretation of non-nominal quantification which itself employs non-nominal
quantification, as proposed by Hugly and Sayward (1996) or Williamson (1999), would have
the merit of displaying the fact that an understanding of one form of generality cannot be
reduced to any other: it is in this sense that each form of generality is ineliminable. 4
David Dolby
University of Zurich
dolby@philos.uzh.ch
References
Davidson, D. 1996: ‘The Folly of Trying to Define Truth’, The Journal of Philosophy 93.6,
263–78.
Glock, H.-J. 2003: Quine and Davidson on Language, Thought and Reality. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hugly, P. & C. Sayward. 1996: Intentionality and Truth. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Inwagen, P. van. 2002: ‘Generalizations of Homophonic Truth-Sentences’, in What is Truth?
ed. R. Schantz. Berlin: De Gruyter, 205–222.
— 2004: ‘A Theory of Properties’, in D. Zimmerman (ed.): Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Vol.
1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 107–138.
Künne, W. 2003: Conceptions of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
— 2005: ‘The Modest Account of Truth Reconsidered: with a Postscript on Metaphysical
Categories’, Dialogue 44, 563-96.
— 2008a: ‘The Modest, or Quantificational, Account of Truth’, Studia Philosophica
Estonica 1, 122-168.
— 2008b: ‘Précis of Conceptions of Truth and Replies to Commentators’, Dialectica 62 (3),
355–7 & 385-401.
— 2010: ‘Replies to Paul Boghossian and Kevin Mulligan’, Dialectica 64:4, 585–615.
4
I am grateful to Kai Büttner, Max de Gaynesford, Hanjo Glock, Christoph Pfisterer, Constantine Sandis
and Severin Schroeder for helpful discussion.