Erkenn

DOI 10.1007/s10670-016-9848-0

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Blurring Boundaries: Carnap, Quine, and the

Internal–External Distinction

Sander Verhaegh1

Received: 20 February 2016 / Accepted: 6 October 2016

 The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract Quine is routinely perceived as saving metaphysics from Carnapian

positivism. Where Carnap rejects metaphysical existence claims as meaningless,
Quine is taken to restore their intelligibility by dismantling the former’s internal–
external distinction. The problem with this picture, however, is that it does not sit
well with the fact that Quine, on many occasions, has argued that metaphysical
existence claims ought to be dismissed. Setting aside the hypothesis that Quine’s
metaphysical position is incoherent, one has to conclude that his views on meta-
physics are subtler than is often presupposed; both the received view that Quine
saved metaphysics and the opposite view that Carnap and Quine are on the same
anti-metaphysical team seem too one-sided if we take seriously Quine’s own pro-
nouncements on the issue. In this paper, I offer a detailed reconstruction of Quine’s
perspective on metaphysical existence claims. Scrutinizing his published work as
well as unpublished papers, letters, and notebooks, I show how Quine is able to both
blur the boundary between scientific sense and metaphysical nonsense and to argue
that we cannot ask what reality is really like in a distinctively philosophical way. I
argue that although Quine’s position is much closer to Carnap’s than the received
view suggests, it still differs in two crucial respects.

1 Introduction

Most metaphysicians agree that we should not rest content with our ordinary
ascriptions of existence. Although in everyday life and in the sciences we may
freely talk about elephants, electrons, and empty sets, as philosophers we must

& Sander Verhaegh

[email protected]
1
Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS), Tilburg University, Dante
Building (Second Floor), Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB Tilburg, The Netherlands

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investigate whether these objects really exist.1 Carnap, as is well known, argues that
these philosophical questions of existence are devoid of cognitive content. In his
seminal ‘‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’’ (ESO), he argues that existence
claims only make sense internal to a linguistic framework and that we cannot ask
whether an entity is ‘real’ in an (external) framework-independent way; ‘reality’
itself is a concept internal to a framework and as such ‘‘cannot be meaningfully
applied to the [framework] itself’’ (1950, 207). Instead, Carnap proposes to
reinterpret metaphysical questions as practical questions about which frameworks
scientists ought to adopt.
Quine believes that Carnap’s strict distinction between internal and external
questions cannot be maintained. According to Quine, no question is purely
theoretical or purely practical; just like one’s decision to adapt a hypothesis in the
light of new experiential data, one’s decision to adopt a certain framework will be
informed by both theoretical knowledge and pragmatic criteria. The question
whether or not to accept a certain entity as ‘real’ therefore is a meaningful question
that can be answered by ordinary scientific means. Ontological questions, in other
words, are ‘‘on a par with questions of natural science’’ (1951a, 211).
This little stick-figure summary of the Carnap–Quine debate suggests that Quine
breathed new life into the metaphysical project that was deemed meaningless by
Carnap and his fellow positivists. For where Carnap rejects philosophical existence
claims as meaningless, Quine seems to restore their intelligibility by dismantling the
former’s internal–external distinction. Indeed, this seems to be Quine’s own
perspective on his debate with Carnap:
I think the positivists were mistaken when they despaired of existence […] and
accordingly tried to draw up boundaries that would exclude such sentences as
meaningless. Existence statements in this philosophical vein do admit of
evidence, in the sense that we can have reasons, and essentially scientific
reasons, for including numbers or classes or the like in the range of values of
our variables. (1968, 97, my emphasis)
When quantifying over a class of entities is indispensable for the formulation of our
best scientific theories, Quine argues, we are to countenance these entities as real.
As a result, Quine blurs the ‘‘boundary between scientific sense and metaphysical
nonsense’’ (1987a, 144) and concludes that Carnap and his positivistic comrades
were simply ‘‘wrong if and when they concluded that the world is not really
composed of atoms or whatever’’ (1992, 405).
The picture that Quine revived the legitimacy of philosophical existence claims is
often defended in the literature as well. In his introduction to the history of analytic
philosophy, for example, Avrum Stroll argues that Quine blurs ‘‘the boundary
between speculative metaphysics and science, thus giving a kind of credibility to
metaphysics that Carnap would never have countenanced’’ (2000, 200). Similarly,
Nicholas Joll claims that ‘‘Quine saves metaphysics from positivism’’ (2010) and

1
See, for example, Berto and Plebani (2015, 8): ‘‘Mathematicians talk about prime numbers; biologists
talk about cross-fertile biological species; astrophysicists deal with solar flares. But, qua scientists, they
will not typically wonder whether there are really prime numbers, species, properties or events’’.

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Carnap, Quine, and the Internal–External Distinction

Stephen Yablo argues that Quine, unlike Carnap, provides us with a way to attach
‘‘believable truth values to philosophical existence claims’’ (1998, 259).2
Yet, there is something puzzling about this picture. For it does not sit well with
the fact that Quine, on many occasions, does seem to argue against the intelligibility
of metaphysical existence claims. Quine has argued, for example, that he is ‘‘[n]o
champion of traditional metaphysics’’ (1951a, 204) and that the question ‘‘what
reality is really like […] is self-stultifying’’ (1992, 405). On a few occasions, Quine
even argues that the ‘‘[p]ositivists were right in branding such metaphysics as
meaningless’’ (ibid.).3 Even more surprising from the above sketched perspective is
that Quine often appeals to the very same argument Carnap gives in ESO, viz. the
argument that the notion of ‘reality’ cannot be legitimately applied outside the
system of which it is an element. We simply ‘‘cannot significantly question the
reality of the external world’’, Quine argues, ‘‘for to do so is simply to dissociate the
[term] ‘reality’ […] from the very applications which originally did most to invest
[this term] with whatever intelligibility [it] may have for us’’ (1954b, 229).
Setting aside the hypothesis that Quine’s metaphysical position is incoherent, one
has to conclude that his views on metaphysics are subtler than has often been
presupposed; both the received view that Quine restored the intelligibility of
metaphysics by dismantling Carnap’s internal–external distinction and the opposite
position that ‘‘[f]or all practical purposes, Quine does agree with Carnap about the
status of metaphysical issues’’ (Price 2007, 391) are too one-sided if we take
seriously Quine’s own pronouncements on the issue.4 As of yet, however, little
work has been devoted to spelling out the exact details of Quine’s perspective on the
status of metaphysical existence claims.
In this paper, I offer a first attempt to show how Quine is able to both blur the
boundary between ‘‘natural science’’ and the ‘‘philosophical effusions that Carnap
denounced under the name of metaphysics’’ (1984, 127–128) and to argue that it ‘is
self-stultifying to ask what reality is really like’ (1992, 405).5 What I offer, then, is a
detailed historical reconstruction of Quine’s perspective on metaphysical existence
claims. I show that although Quine’s position is much closer to Carnap’s than the
2
Price (2007, 380) aptly summarizes the above perspective on the Carnap-Quine debate by claiming that
Quine is traditionally regarded as ‘‘the savior of a more robust metaphysics’’ by driving ‘‘a stake through
the heart of ESO, […] thus [dispatching] the last incarnation of the Viennese menace’’. See also Eklund
(2013, 229), who argues that the above perspective also dominates contemporary debates in
metaontology. Alspector-Kelly (2001) and Price (2007, 2009) are exceptions to the received view;
they were the first to suggest that the standard conception of the Carnap–Quine debate is misguided.
3
See also, for example, Quine (1986b, 337): ‘‘if some scientifically undigested terms of metaphysics […]
were admitted into science along with all their pertinent doctrine […] [i]t would be an abandonment of
the scientists’ quest for economy and of the empiricists’ standard of meaningfulness’’.
4
To be fair, Price does not aim to provide a complete and detailed interpretation of Quine’s view on
metaphysics. Rather, his main aim is to show that Quine’s ‘‘position on ontological commitment […]
favors, or at least leaves open, a view much closer to that of Carnap’’ (Ibid., 378, my emphasis).
5
In doing so, I will rely significantly on unpublished notes, drafts, and lectures that are stored at the W.
V. Quine Papers at Houghton Library. For where Quine’s published work on metaphysics, especially his
discussions of Carnap’s view, is mostly concerned with ontology narrowly conceived, the Houghton
archives, as we shall see, contain a wealth of unpublished material in which he reflects more broadly on
the nature of metaphysics. In transcribing Quine’s autograph notes, drafts, and lectures, I have aimed to
minimize editorial interference and chosen not to correct ungrammatical shorthand.

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received view suggests, it still differs from the latter’s position in two crucial
respects. This paper will be structured as follows. After introducing Carnap’s
position in ESO as well as Quine’s arguments against the former’s position (Sect.
2), I argue that the standard interpretation of Quine’s views is incorrect because it
rests on an equivocation between two different internal–external distinctions (Sect.
3). Next, I show that although Quine rejects both these distinctions, he agrees with
Carnap that metaphysical existence claims ought to be dismissed (Sect. 4). Finally, I
argue that although Quine is as sceptical as Carnap about metaphysical existence
claims, there is still a significant difference between the two because they
fundamentally disagree about why such claims ought to be dismissed (Sect. 5).

2 Internal and External Existence Claims

Carnap’s problems with philosophical existence claims are deep-rooted. Already in

his pre-Vienna period, he considered metaphysical disputes to be ‘‘sterile and
useless’’ (1963a, 44). Influenced by the early Wittgenstein, Carnap developed the
view that metaphysical theses are without cognitive content, arguing that they are
pseudo-sentences because they ‘‘cannot in principle be supported by an experience’’
(1928, 328). Where metaphysicians will usually agree about whether or not a certain
entity is real in an everyday empirical sense, they rely on a ‘‘nonempirical
(metaphysical) concept of reality’’ when they are involved in a philosophical dispute
(ibid., 340).
Although Carnap has never felt any qualms about these early arguments against
metaphysics,6 he later felt the need to return to the subject and explain his position
once more. Carnap wrote ESO in response to critical empiricists who objected that
he referred to abstract objects without having shown that they ‘‘actually exist’’ and
argued that these empiricists ‘‘[neglect] the fundamental distinction’’ between
ordinary and philosophical ascriptions of existence (1963a, 65–66).7
It is in ESO that Carnap differentiates between internal and external questions in
order to capture this distinction. Ordinary questions of existence with respect to, for
example, numbers or physical things, Carnap argues, should be viewed as questions
internal to linguistic frameworks containing the rules for our use of the concepts
‘number’ and ‘physical thing’. Philosophical questions of existence about numbers
and physical things, on the other hand, are to be viewed as external questions asked
prior to the adoption of any such framework. These latter questions are the questions
that Carnap’s fellow empiricists had in mind when they questioned whether Carnap
is justified in using a framework that quantifies over abstract objects without having
shown that they actually exist. According to Carnap, however, such external
questions are meaningless. For, and here his argument is similar to the one

6
See Carnap’s (1950, 215) and (1963b, 870).
7
See Alspector-Kelly (2001) for a more detailed discussion of Carnap’s motives in ESO. As the present
paper deals with Quine’s ideas about metaphysics, I will mostly limit myself to a discussion of Quine’s
interpretation of Carnap, acknowledging that this reading might not do justice to the historical Carnap.

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developed in his early work, the very concept of ‘reality’ appealed to in

metaphysical questions cannot be given a meaningful interpretation:
The concept of reality occurring in […] internal questions is an empirical,
scientific, non-metaphysical concept. To recognize something as a real thing
or event means to succeed in incorporating it into the system of things […]
according to the rules of the framework. From these questions we must
distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself. In
contrast to the former questions, this question is […] framed in a wrong way.
To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system; hence
this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the system itself. (1950, 207)
Concepts, according to Carnap, only make sense in as far as the rules for their use
are specified within a framework. As a result, the concept of ‘reality’ itself will only
make sense within a linguistic framework and hence philosophers fail ‘‘in giving to
the external question and to the possible answers any cognitive content’’ (ibid.,
209).8
Because external questions fail to be meaningful when interpreted as theoretical,
Carnap proposes that we should view them as practical questions, as matters ‘‘of
practical decision concerning the structure of our language’’ (ibid., 207). Rather
than asking whether or not a certain entity x really exists, we should ask whether or
not it is useful to adopt one or another x-related framework, a question that will be
guided by pragmatic criteria. According to Carnap,
the introduction of [a] framework is legitimate in any case. Whether or not this
introduction is advisable for certain purposes is a practical question of
language engineering, to be decided on the basis of convenience, fruitfulness,
simplicity, and the like. (1963a, 66)
As a result, although Carnap considers external questions to be devoid of cognitive
content, such questions can still be given ‘‘a meaning by reinterpreting them or,
more exactly, by replacing them with the practical questions concerning the choice
of certain language forms’’ (Carnap 1963b, 869). Carnap’s internal–external
distinction, in short, becomes a distinction between the theoretical and the practical
when external questions are reinterpreted as questions about whether or not to adopt
a certain framework.
Quine rejects Carnap’s distinction between the internal and the external. In fact,
he develops two arguments against the distinction: one in which he reduces it to the
analytic-synthetic divide, and one in which he argues that both internal and external
statements are partly theoretical and partly practical in nature.9 Quine’s first

8
Of course, Carnap’s argument with respect to the concept of ‘reality’ applies equally to philosophical
notions that serve the same function. In their metaphysical inquiries, Carnap argues, philosophers might
also talk about ‘‘subsistence’’ or the ‘‘ontological status’’ of an entity. These alternative philosophical
notions, however, are also without content because philosophers have failed to explain their use ‘‘in terms
of the common scientific language’’ (ibid., 209).
9
Quine develops these arguments in ‘‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’’ (1951b, 45–46), ‘‘On Carnap’s
Views on Ontology’’ (1951a), and ‘‘Carnap and Logical Truth’’ (1954a, 132). In the second essay, Quine
also provides a third argument against Carnap’s distinction by reducing it to a dichotomy between

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argument is largely negative. He argues that ‘‘a double standard for ontological
questions and scientific hypotheses’’ requires ‘‘an absolute distinction between the
analytic and the synthetic’’, a distinction which he famously argues to be untenable
(1951b, 43–44).10 Quine’s second argument is more positive, and is based on his
constructive ‘‘empiricism without the dogmas’’ (1951b, §6). If, as Quine maintains,
science is a unified structure whose statements face experience only in clusters such
that no statement is in principle immune to revision, then all statements that are
relevant to science, including Carnap’s linguistic proposals, will be guided by both
theoretical and practical concerns. Just like the decision to adapt a hypothesis in the
light of new experiential data, one’s decision to adopt a certain framework will be
informed by theoretical as well as practical considerations:
The differences here are in my view differences only in degree and not in kind.
[…] Carnap maintains that ontological questions […] are questions not of fact
but of choosing a convenient conceptual scheme or framework for science;
and with this I agree only if the same be conceded for every scientific
hypothesis. (1951a, 211)
Quine, in sum, dissolves Carnap’s internal–external distinction; first by arguing that
it relies on the untenable analytic-synthetic divide, and second by arguing that a
more realistic model of theory change construes all revisions as guided by both
theoretical and practical considerations. In arguing that the difference between
scientific and ontological claims is only gradual, Quine therefore seems to blur the
boundary between metaphysics and science, a boundary that Carnap had propagated
in order to dismiss metaphysics as meaningless.

3 Two Distinctions

The question whether or not Quine’s arguments effectively undermine Carnap’s

internal–external distinction has been a matter of some controversy.11 In what
follows, however, I limit my discussion to a more specific, yet not entirely unrelated

Footnote 9 continued
category and subclass questions. According to Quine, external questions are concerned with the existence
of entities expressed by a category word (e.g. ‘Are there things?’ or ‘Are there numbers?’), whereas
internal questions are concerned with the existence of subclasses of them (e.g. ‘Are there rabbits?’ or
‘Are there prime numbers between 10 and 20?’). He then argues that the latter distinction is trivial,
because ‘‘there is no evident standard of what to count as a category’’ (1968, 92). As several scholars have
noted, however, Quine’s argument here misses the mark because the distinction between internal and
external questions of existence cannot be based on the category-subclass distinction; category as well as
subclass questions can be asked in both an internal and an external vein. In later work, Quine is somewhat
more careful in his reading of Carnap when he describes the latter’s ideas about category words (All-
wörter) and the related category-subclass distinction as ‘‘an early doctrine of Carnap’’ (1968, 91, my
emphasis), explicitly referring only to the latter’s The Logical Syntax of Language (1934, §76), not to
ESO.
10
Carnap himself also seems to have appreciated the close relation between the internal–external
distinction on the one hand, and the analytic–synthetic distinction on the other. See Carnap (1950, 215n5).
11
See Haack (1976, §3), Bird (1995), and Glock (2002, §5) for a critical evaluation of Quine’s
arguments. Yablo (1998, §§5–7) and Gallois (1998, §2), on the other hand, yield a more positive verdict.

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issue, viz. the question what type of internal–external distinction Quine aimed to
undermine. I argue that we ought to differentiate between two types of internal–
external distinctions and that Quine’s arguments apply to only one of them.
As we have seen in the previous section, Carnap differentiates three types of
questions of existence depending on whether we are concerned with the
metaphysician’s perspective or with Carnap’s practical reinterpretation:
(I) Internal questions about the existence or reality of a certain kind of entities,
asked after the adoption of a linguistic framework
(E1) External questions about the existence or reality of a certain kind of entities,
asked before the adoption of a linguistic framework
(E2) External questions about whether or not it is advisable to adopt a particular
linguistic framework
Although it is generally recognized that Carnap distinguishes between three types
of questions,12 E1 and E2-questions are often conflated under the general heading
‘external questions’ in discussions about the Carnap–Quine debate. As a result,
some have failed to realize that we cannot speak about ‘the internal–external
distinction’ in general. That is, scholars often ignore the fact that ESO contains two
such distinctions, depending on what type of external question one is talking about:
(I/E1) A distinction between meaningful internal questions and metaphysical
external questions without cognitive content
(I/E2) A distinction between internal questions of a theoretical and external
questions of a practical nature
I/E1 primarily distinguishes between the meaningful and the meaningless,
whereas the I/E2-distinction emphasizes the difference between questions of a
theoretical and questions of a practical nature.
Now, consider the question whether Quine was attacking I/E1 or I/E2. If one
believes that Quine, in criticizing the internal–external distinction, aimed to revive
metaphysical existence claims, one clearly presupposes that Quine was attacking
I/E1.13 For if Quine had really aimed to breathe new life into the metaphysical
project that was deemed meaningless by Carnap, he would have tried to show that
the distinction between I-questions and E1-questions should not be viewed as a
distinction between the meaningful and the meaningless. He would have tried to
show, in other words, that Carnap’s E1-questions can be given ‘‘a clear cognitive
interpretation’’ or can be given ‘‘a formulation […] in terms of the common
scientific language’’ (Carnap 1950, 209).
Yet Quine does not seem to be concerned with anything like this at all. Rather, as
we shall see, there are many reasons for thinking that he was concerned with
undermining not I/E1 but I/E2.14 Quine’s arguments against Carnap’s distinction
12
See, for example, Eklund (2013, 237): ‘‘Carnap is actually drawing a tripartite distinction: between
questions internal to a framework, questions about which framework we should choose to employ, and the
pseudo-questions’’.
13
See, for example Haack (1976, §3.1) and Bird (1995, §2), where Quine’s arguments are evaluated in
terms of their effectiveness in undermining I/E1.
14
Eklund (2013) correctly suggests that Quine attacks I/E2, although he does not argue for this claim.

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provide the first reason. Recall that Quine first reduces the internal–external
distinction to the analytic-synthetic divide and then argues that both scientific
hypotheses and Carnap’s linguistic proposals are guided by theoretical as well as
practical considerations. Now, if Quine were really aiming to undermine I/E1, then
neither of these arguments would have made sense. Since Carnap rejects E1-
questions as meaningless, they are neither analytic nor synthetic; an argument
against the analytic-synthetic distinction therefore has no relevance if one aims to
undermine I/E1. A similar conclusion can be drawn about Quine’s second argument.
Quine’s claim that the distinction between the theoretical and the practical is a
matter of degree, not kind, is not relevant had he targeted I/E1, since Carnap does
not view E1-questions as practical questions.15
If, on the other hand, we interpret Quine as arguing against Carnap’s I/E2-
distinction, his arguments begin to make sense. For the lack of a sharp distinction
between the analytic and the synthetic seriously undermines Carnap’s attempt to
draw a distinction between ‘‘the acceptance of a language structure and the
acceptance of an assertion formulated in the language’’ (1950, 215). Similarly, if
both scientific hypotheses and linguistic proposals are guided by theoretical as well
as practical considerations, Carnap cannot uphold his claim that the two can be
distinguished because I-questions are theoretical and E2-questions are practical.
Quine, in this interpretation, both shows that an I/E2-distinction cannot be
maintained and develops a positive theory in which the distinction between the
theoretical and the practical is a matter of degree.
A second reason for thinking that Quine was concerned with undermining I/E2
instead of I/E1 is the way in which he describes Carnap’s external questions. In his
critical papers on Carnap’s distinction, Quine consistently refers to those questions
as ‘linguistic proposals’. In ‘‘Two Dogmas’’, for instance, he argues that Carnap
sees ontological questions as concerned with ‘‘choosing a convenient language
form, a convenient conceptual scheme or framework for science’’ (1951b, 45).16
Describing external questions in this way only makes sense if Quine has in mind
Carnap’s E2-questions. E1-questions, after all, are certainly not linguistic proposals,
they are metaphysical questions concerning the reality of a certain class of entities.
Finally, my interpretation of Quine’s aims in rejecting the internal–external
distinction is supported by the background of the debate between Carnap and Quine.
I have already noted that Carnap wrote ESO in order to respond to critical fellow
empiricists who had objected that he referred to abstract objects without having
shown that they ‘‘actually exist’’. Now, as it turns it out, Quine was one of those

15
See also Price (2009, 326): ‘‘Quine’s claim is that there are no purely internal issues, in Carnap’s
sense. No issue is ever entirely insulated from pragmatic concerns about the possible effects of revisions
of the framework itself […] Quine’s move certainly does not restore the non-pragmatic external
perspective required by metaphysics. In effect, the traditional metaphysician wants to be able to say, ‘I
agree it is useful to say this, but is it true?’ Carnap rules out this question, and Quine does not rule it back
in’’.
16
See also Quine’s (1951a, 210) and (1954a, 132), where Carnapian external questions are described as
‘‘linguistic proposal[s]’’ and as ‘‘matter[s] […] of linguistic decision’’.

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critics.17 In the late 1930s, Quine developed his criterion of ontological commit-
ment, according to which we are committed to an entity ‘‘if and only if we regard
the range of our variables as including such an entity’’ (1939a, 199). Carnap, who
claimed to accept Quine’s criterion,18 however still maintained that his talk about
abstract entities should be seen as ‘‘a practical decision like the choice of an
instrument’’ (1947, §10). From Quine’s perspective, therefore, Carnap was dodging
his ontological commitments. That is, although Carnap accepted Quine’s ‘‘standard
for judging whether a given theory accepts given alleged entities’’ (Quine 1951a,
205), he still did not acknowledge that he was committed to abstract objects because
he viewed his ‘‘acceptance of such objects [as] a linguistic convention distinct
somehow from serious views about reality (Quine 1960, 275).19
If we take this background into consideration, it becomes clear that when Quine
attacked Carnap’s internal–external distinction in the early 1950s, he was not
concerned with the latter’s claim that the traditional metaphysician’s questions are
devoid of cognitive content, i.e. with the claim that E1-questions are meaningless.
Rather, his job was to argue that there is no proper distinction between the
ontological commitments internal to a framework and the linguistic conventions
upon which our framework choices are based, i.e. the distinction between
I-questions on the one hand and E2-questions on the other. Indeed, when Quine
first learned about the internal–external distinction in a 1949-letter from Carnap, he
scribbled on the back of this letter: ‘‘When are rules really adopted? Ever? Then
what application of your theory to what I am concerned with (language now)? […]
Say frameworkhood is a matter of degree, & reconciliation ensues’’ (Carnap and
Quine 1932–1970, 417). Whether or not this is consistent with Carnap’s intentions,
therefore, Quine from the very beginning interpreted Carnap’s distinction as one
between questions internal to a framework and questions regarding the choice of the
framework itself.
In sum, Quine was not out to attack the I/E1-distinction, but was concerned with
undermining Carnap’s I/E2-distinction. Quine did not aim to restore the legitimacy
of metaphysics, but rather to criticize the Carnapian view that ‘‘statements
commonly thought of as ontological are proper matters of contention only in the
form of linguistic proposals’’ (Quine 1951a, 210).20

17
In his ‘‘Intellectual Autobiography’’, Carnap lists Quine as one of the philosophers who rejected his
way of speaking as ‘‘a ‘hypostatization’ of entities’’ (1963b, 65).
18
See Carnap (1950, 214n3).
19
Quine’s discontent with Carnap’s position can be traced back at least to 1937, when he, in a lecture on
nominalism, suggests that although Carnap succeeds in avoiding metaphysical questions by rejecting
them as meaningless, he does not ‘‘provide for reduction of all statements to statements ultimately about
tangible things, matters of fact’’, and thereby fails to show how we can keep ‘‘our feet on the ground—
avoiding empty theorizing’’ (Quine 1937b). See Mancosu (2008, 28–29). See also Alspector-Kelly (2001,
§3): ‘‘As Quine understands it, Carnap endorsed Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment […]
Nonetheless, Carnap did not take himself to be committed to abstract entities, and so did not take himself
to be a Platonist, despite the fact that he quantified over abstract objects. Nor did he have any plan to show
that such quantification can be avoided’’.
20
Given this misunderstanding, it is not surprising that some scholars have concluded that ‘‘Quine’s
criticisms leave Carnap’s central points untouched’’ (Bird 1995, 41). For even if Carnap’s central point
was to distinguish between I-questions and E1-questions—a claim that might be doubted given the

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4 Quine on Metaphysical Existence Claims

If I am right in claiming that Quine aims to undermine I/E2 instead of I/E1 in his
critical papers on Carnap’s internal–external distinction, then a question that
remains to be answered is what is Quine’s position on I/E1, i.e. on the distinction
between ordinary and metaphysical existence claims. After all, the claim that Quine
aimed to criticize Carnap’s I/E2-distinction does not imply anything about Quine’s
views about the tenability of the I/E1-dichotomy. In the remainder of this paper, I
address this latter question.
Let me start by considering Quine’s views on E1-questions. From the very
beginning of his philosophical career, Quine has been sceptical about metaphysical
existence claims. In one of his early (1938) letters to Carnap, for example, he
already characterizes ‘‘metaphysical expressions’’ as ‘‘devoid of denotation, truth,
and falsehood’’ (Carnap and Quine 1932–1970, 247–248). This attitude did not
change when he developed his criterion of ontological commitment. For Quine has
always made clear that his criterion is concerned with questions of existence from
the point of view of a given language, or as he phrases it in ‘‘On What There Is’’:
We look to bound variables in connection with ontology not in order to know
what there is, but in order to know what a given remark or doctrine, ours or
someone else’s, says there is. (Quine 1948, 15)
The traditional metaphysician’s question of existence, in other words, falls outside
the scope of his theory of ontological commitment. Questions about what a theory
says there is, after all, are I-questions and not E1-questions.21 But whereas Carnap
has always advertised his dismissal of E1-questions, Quine, in those early stages of
his career, limited himself to brief remarks in his letters to Carnap22 and personal
notes.23 Quine’s first published remarks concerning his views about E1-questions, as
we shall see shortly, are from the 1950s.
Quine’s early reservations about rejecting metaphysical questions of existence
are explained by the fact that he took himself to be explicating the elements of
traditional metaphysics that are legitimate. Quine believed that his use of the
concept ‘ontology’ in his theory of ontological commitment had been ‘‘nuclear to its
usage all along’’ (1951a, 204). So although Quine, like Carnap, proposed to
reinterpret the traditional metaphysician’s questions, he did not, like Carnap,
explicitly distance himself from the concepts used by those traditional

Footnote 20 continued
background of the Carnap-Quine debate—Quine was simply not concerned with criticizing that
distinction.
21
To be more precise, questions about what a theory says there is are partly I and partly E2, according to
Quine, because he believes no statement to be purely theoretical or purely practical.
22
See also, for example, Quine’s letter to Carnap from May 1, 1947: ‘‘most metaphysical statements
simply mean nothing to me’’ (Carnap and Quine 1990–1970, 410).
23
In a notebook from the early 1940s, Quine argues that although the metaphysician ‘‘should seek points
outside the world that imprisons natural scientist[s] and mathematician[s]’’, making ‘‘himself independent
of the conceptual scheme which it is his task to study and revise’’, this cannot be done because there
simply ‘‘is no such cosmic exile’’ (November 5, 1944, my transcription). See my Verhaegh (forthcoming).

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Carnap, Quine, and the Internal–External Distinction

metaphysicians: ‘‘meaningless words’’, he claimed, ‘‘are precisely the words which I

feel freest to specify meanings for’’ (1951a, 203).
This difference in approach is illustrated by the way in which Carnap and Quine
dealt with the question of nominalism. Where Carnap rejected the issue of
nominalism ‘‘as meaningless because metaphysical’’, Quine believed that ‘‘the
problem of universals […] can be given, an important meaning’’ (1946, 9, my
emphasis):
As a thesis in the philosophy of science, nominalism can be formulated thus: it
is possible to set up a nominalistic language in which all of natural science can
be expressed. The nominalist, so interpreted, claims that a language adequate
to all scientific purposes can be framed in such a way that its variables admit
only concrete objects, individuals, as values. (1939b, 708)
Carnap agreed that Quine’s reinterpretation of nominalism ‘‘is a meaningful
problem’’ but doubted whether it is ‘‘advisable to transfer to this new problem in
logic or semantics the label ‘nominalism’’’, because the concept stems from the
‘‘old metaphysical problem’’ (1947, 43). Again, Carnap and Quine agreed about
which types of questions are legitimate, but disagreed about whether or not those
questions ought to phrased using the traditional metaphysician’s concepts.24 Carnap
believed it to be safer to introduce new concepts, whereas Quine wanted to
emphasize that he was explicating those elements of the traditional metaphysician’s
question that are significant.25
So although their positions seem to differ greatly at surface level, Carnap’s and
Quine’s views on E1-questions were actually remarkably similar in the 1930s and
1940s. Both dismissed metaphysical existence claims but accepted Quine’s theory
of ontological commitment as well as his reinterpretation of nominalism. They
differed only on whether Quine’s theories were to be viewed as faithful explications
of the traditional metaphysician’s questions. Carnap, as we have seen, proposed to
‘‘replace’’ them with ‘‘practical questions concerning the choice of certain language
forms’’ (1963a, 869), whereas Quine believed that there is no I/E2-distinction and
hence proposed to replace them by questions about ‘‘the ontological commitments
of a given doctrine or body of theory’’ (1951a, 203). That is, Carnap and Quine
agreed that E1-questions ought to be rejected but differed about whether to
reinterpret those questions as either I-questions (like Quine) or as purely E2-
questions (like Carnap).26 Quine’s reticence to be explicit about his views on E1-
questions has probably contributed significantly to the misunderstanding that he was
aiming to restore the intelligibility of metaphysical existence claims.

24
Cf. Alspector-Kelly (Alspector-Kelly 2001, §7).
25
See also, for example, Quine’s letter to Carnap from January 5, 1943, in which Quine talks about there
being a ‘‘kernel of technical meaning in the old controversy about reality or irreality of universals’’
(Carnap and Quine 1990–1970, 295). Somewhat related, in 1947 Goodman and Quine published their
joint paper ‘‘Steps towards a Constructive Nominalism’’ (1947). When Goodman proposed to dub the
joint position he and Quine defended ‘particularism’, Quine argued in a letter (June 12, 1947) that they
should stick with ‘nominalism’ because it is ‘‘a shame to disavow a noble tradition when we are squarely
in line with it’’ (Quine and Goodman 1935–1994). See also Mancosu (2008, 42).
26
But see footnote 21.

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 S. Verhaegh

In later work, however, Quine did become more explicit about the difference
between his views on ontology and the questions asked by traditional metaphysi-
cians. He came to accept that Carnap was right in claiming that philosophers who
treat questions of existence ‘‘as a serious philosophical problem […] do not have in
mind the internal question’’ (Carnap 1950, 209). That is, he explicitly recognized
that there are two ways to understand questions of existence, an ordinary one (e.g.
‘‘Are there numbers?’’) and a philosophical one (e.g. ‘‘Are there really numbers?’’).
The traditional metaphysician, Quine argued, is not interested in questions of
ontological commitment but rather wants to ‘‘inquire into the absolute correctness
of a conceptual scheme’’, wants to answer ‘‘[t]he fundamental seeming philosoph-
ical question, How much of our science is merely contributed by language and how
much is a genuine reflection of reality?’’ (1950, 78–79), wants to know ‘‘what
reality is really like’’ (1992, 405), or, in Kantian terms, ‘‘whether or in how far our
science measures up to the Ding an Sich’’ (1981, 22). In response to these questions,
Quine now explicitly argues against traditional metaphysics. According to Quine,
any inquiry into the absolute correctness of a conceptual scheme is ‘‘meaningless’’
(1950, 79) and any question about what reality is really like is ‘‘self-stultifying’’
(1992, 405) and senseless (1981, 22).
Yet, not only did Quine become more explicit about his position with respect to
E1-questions, he also started to develop an argument against them. And just as his
views on E1-questions are similar to Carnap’s, his argument against those questions
is in Carnapian spirit as well. As we have seen, Carnap’s argument against E1-
questions relies on the idea that the very concept of ‘reality’, which plays an
important role in the metaphysician’s question about whether a certain object really
exists, cannot be meaningfully applied outside the framework of which it is an
element. If we now replace Carnap’s talk about frameworks with Quine’s holistic
picture of science as a ‘‘man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along
the edges’’ (1951b, 42), we get a very similar argument. In the early 1950s, Quine
starts to argue that key philosophical concepts like ‘reality’ cannot be divorced from
their everyday scientific applications. When the traditional metaphysician asks us
what reality is really like, Quine argues, she ‘‘dissociate[s] the [term] ‘reality’ […]
from the very applications which originally did most to invest those terms with
whatever intelligibility they may have for us’’ (1954b, 229).27 According to Quine,
‘‘[t]here is no deeper sense of ‘reality’ than the sense in which it is the business of
science itself, […] to seek the essence of reality’’ (1996, 348). When the traditional
metaphysician asks us about the true nature of reality, in other words, she
presupposes that we can separate the term ‘reality’ from its ordinary scientific use.
According to Quine, however, this cannot be done.

27
This argument first occurs in Quine’s ‘‘On Mental Entities’’, where he speaks about ‘‘the ordinary
usage of the word ‘real’’’ (1952, 225). See also my Verhaegh (2014).

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Carnap, Quine, and the Internal–External Distinction

5 Scientific Sense and Metaphysical Nonsense

Let me sum up what we have established thus far. I have argued that we ought to
distinguish between two types of internal–external distinctions: I/E1 and I/E2. Quine
should not be viewed as aiming to attack I/E1, thereby breathing new life into the
metaphysical project that was deemed meaningless by Carnap, because he was
solely concerned with undermining I/E2. In fact, Quine’s perspective on E1-
questions, even in the early stages of his career, is remarkably similar to Carnap’s.
For although Carnap and Quine disagree about how to reinterpret E1-questions, they
both reject these questions and use similar arguments to show why they ought to be
dismissed.
In the light of these facts, one might conclude that Quine is committed to an I/E1
distinction himself. That is, one might conclude that Quine too is committed to a
distinction between scientific sense and metaphysical nonsense.28 This would be a
too hasty conclusion, however, as Quine has always maintained that he is ‘‘blurring
[…] the boundary’’ between ‘‘natural science’’ and the ‘‘philosophical effusions that
Carnap denounced under the name of metaphysics’’ as well (1984, 127–128).29
How can this be? How can Quine both dismiss metaphysical existence claims and
at the same time reject Carnap’s distinction between science and traditional
metaphysics? I believe that the answer can be found in Quine’s rejection of the
criterion of significance that underlies Carnap’s distinction. For although Quine
sometimes uses the term ‘meaningless’ in dismissing metaphysics,30 there is ample
evidence that he does not, like Carnap, subscribe to a strict, philosophically potent
distinction between the meaningful and the meaningless. In From Stimulus to
Science, for example, Quine explicitly dismisses the positivistic thesis that a
sentence ‘‘is meaningless unless it has empirical content’’ (1995, 48). Because of his
holistic view that no single statement has ‘‘distinctive content of its own’’ (1984,
125–126), Quine argues, no strict criterion of empirical content can be drawn.
Against the suggestion that a sentence q has empirical content if and only if it is a
supporting member of a set of sentences Q with critical mass such that if q is
withdrawn it deprives Q of empirical content, for example, he argues that on this
criterion any sentence whatsoever will have empirical content trivially:
Any sentence, even Russell’s ‘Quadruplicity drinks procrastination’, is a
supporting member of a set that implies an observation categorical. Let us
abbreviate Russell’s sentence as ‘q’, and some observational categorical as ‘c’.
The two-member set {‘q’, ‘q . c’} implies ‘c’, but the one-member set

28
Indeed, I used to think this myself. See Verhaegh (2015), in which I argue that Quine himself
presupposes something like an I/E1-distinction in his disquotational theories of truth and reference. I am
greatly indebted to Peter Hylton and Gary Ebbs for pressing some of the issues discussed in the present
section, which has led me to conclude differently.
29
See also Quine (1951b, 20), where he speaks about ‘‘a blurring of the supposed boundary between
speculative metaphysics and natural science’’ and (1987a, 144), where he dismisses the ‘‘boundary
between scientific sense and metaphysical nonsense’’ as ‘‘dubious’’.
30
For instance, when he claims that the ‘‘[p]ositivists were right in branding […] metaphysics as
meaningless’’ (1992, 405).

123
 S. Verhaegh

{‘q . c’} does not. So Russell’s sentence is a supporting member of {‘q’,

‘q . c’} (1995, 48).
Quine, in other words, knows no way to strictly distinguish between statements
with and statements without empirical content. More important given our purposes
here, however, is that Quine insists that even if it were possible to draw such a strict
distinction, he would not want employ it as a distinction between the meaningful
and the meaningless. For even statements that are completely without empirical
content, Quine argues, should not be dismissed as meaningless:
Even if I had a satisfactory notion of shared content, I would not want to
impose it in a positivist spirit as a condition of meaningfulness. Much that is
accepted as true or plausible in the hard sciences, I expect, is accepted without
thought of its joining forces with other plausible hypotheses to form a
testable set […] Positivistic insistence on empirical content could, if heeded,
impede the progress of science (Ibid., 48–49).
Quine, in sum, cannot dismiss metaphysical existence claims as meaningless,
because he does not subscribe to a philosophically interesting criterion of
significance at all.31
On what grounds, then, does Quine dismiss metaphysical existence claims? The
answer is surprisingly simple. As early as 1937, Quine provides a solution to this
question in one of his notebooks; metaphysical existence claims are not
meaningless, they are merely useless from a scientific perspective:
Meaninglessness must be abandoned as meaningless—at least insofar as it
might be used against metaphysics. Even supposing we would make sense
ultimately of an operational criterion, this would rule out all the non-
intuitionistic part of math[ematics] also. But we keep latter, because useful
algorithmically for science. We discard metaphysics because useless for
science. If part of met[aphysics] became useful for science, we might use it on
same grounds as non-constructive math[ematics]. (Quine 1937a, my
transcription)
This idea that metaphysical existence claims are not meaningless but useless for
science is something Quine held on to until the end of his career. In his unpublished
Notre Dame Lectures, for instance, Quine argues that although metaphysical
questions are ‘‘technically meaningful’’, they are ‘‘pragmatically empty and need
not arise’’ (1970, 12–13, my transcription). Similarly, in his 1986 paper ‘‘The Way
the World Is’’, Quine proposes that portions of science without empirical content
(e.g. higher set theory) should be accepted as meaningful because they ‘‘deal with
questions that can be formulated in the same vocabulary and the same idioms that
are also useful, in other combinations, elsewhere in science’’. He is not willing,
however, to grant metaphysics a similar position: ‘‘There are further reaches of
discourse […] for which not even these claims to a scientific status can be made.
One thinks here of bad metaphysics’’ (1986a, 169, my emphasis). Presumably the
31
For a more extensive argument for the thesis that ‘‘there is simply no idea of nonsense that is
defensible in Quinean terms which will play an significant philosophical role’’, see Hylton (2014).

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Carnap, Quine, and the Internal–External Distinction

reason is precisely that metaphysics cannot ‘be formulated in the same vocabulary’
as science, because the metaphysician appeals to concepts that are divorced from
their everyday scientific applications. The traditional metaphysician’s concepts, in
other words, are scientifically useless because in asking us about the true nature of
reality, she separates the term ‘reality’ from its ordinary scientific use. For Quine,
asking what reality is really like independently of our scientific system of the world
is ‘‘like asking how long the Nile really is, apart from parochial notions of miles or
meters’’ (1992, 405). Just like our notion of ‘length’ is useless if it is divorced from
related notions like ‘mile’ and ‘meter’ and some standards of measurement, our
notion of ‘reality’ is useless when one purports to use it in a way that is divorced
from our theory of the world and our scientific standards.
Quine, in conclusion, can both dismiss metaphysical existence claims and, at the
same time, reject Carnap’s strict distinction between science and metaphysics
because he, unlike Carnap, refuses to appeal to a strict criterion of significance.
Where Carnap requires a ‘‘metalinguistic tool’’ to distinguish between ‘‘the
meaningful claims of science and the meaningless claims of metaphysics’’ (Ebbs
2011, 198), Quine argues that we can get rid of metaphysical existence claims
without dismissing them as meaningless. In other words, where Carnap’s
metaphysical deflationism is still ‘‘a characteristically philosophical form of
deflationism’’ because he chooses not to ‘‘leave philosophy behind in favor of the
standpoint of the ‘working scientist’’’ (Friedman 1999, 214–215), Quine’s
naturalism entails that ‘‘we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the
midst of philosophizing’’ (1960, 24–25). This implies that Quine does not require an
external criterion to get rid of metaphysical existence claims; for from ‘‘within our
total evolving doctrine’’ (ibid. 25), we simply have no use for metaphysical
hypotheses.32

6 Conclusion

Carnap’s ‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’ contains two internal–external

distinctions: one between scientific sense and metaphysical nonsense and one
between questions internal to a framework and questions regarding the choice of the
framework itself. I have argued that although Quine dismisses both distinctions—
the former because there is no strict philosophically potent criterion of significance,
the latter because there is no strict distinction between the theoretical and the
practical—we should not interpret Quine as reviving the metaphysics that was
deemed meaningless by Carnap. For although Quine does not reject metaphysics as
meaningless, he dismisses metaphysical existence claims because they are useless
from a scientific point of view. In one sense, therefore, Quine and Carnap ‘‘are
playing for the same team’’ (Price 2009, 323n1). In another sense, however, they are
not. For in blurring the ‘‘supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and
32
Indeed, in a set of notes for a conference in Oberwolfach, Quine explains his position by referring to
Pierre-Simon Laplace’s famous reply to Napoleon about the existence of God: ‘‘What of mngless. of
metaphysics? Well, just danglers, not contributing to joint implications of observ’n. ‘Je n’ai pas besoin de
cette hypothèse’’’ (1987b, my transcription).

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 S. Verhaegh

natural science’’ (1951b, 20), Quine has effectively shown that we can get rid of
metaphysics without relying on an external criterion to distinguish between what
can and what cannot be meaningfully said. Where Carnap has always been actively
concerned with developing a definitive weapon against traditional metaphysics,
refusing even to use the traditional metaphysicians’ concepts when reinterpreted,
Quine was not especially worried about metaphysics. Quine dealt with metaphysical
existence claims like he dealt with all false statements: he simply dismissed them
from within.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Peter Hylton, Gary Ebbs, Hans-Johann Glock, Lieven Decock,
Jeanne Peijnenburg, Allard Tamminga, and the anonymous referees for this Journal for their valuable
comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Early drafts of this paper have been presented at the VAF
conference in Groningen, the OZSW conference in Rotterdam, and the MetaMetaphysical Club in
Rotterdam. I would like to thank the audiences at these conferences for their valuable suggestions. This
research is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Grant 322-20-001.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, dis-
tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were
made.

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