One Man's Antinomy Is Another Man's Falsidical

How Are We To Adjudicate Among Rival Ontologies? Certainly The Answer Is Not Provided By The Semantical Formula "to Be Is To Be The Value Of A Variable"; This Formula Serves Rather, Conversely, In Testing The Conformity Of A Given Remark Or Doctrine To A Prior Ontological Standard.

Linguistically, And Hence Conceptually, The Things In Sharpest Focus Are The Things That Are Public Enough To Be Talked Of Publicly, Common And Conspicuous Enough To Be Talked Of Often, And Near Enough To Sense To Be Quickly Identified And Learned By Name; It Is To These That Words Apply First And Foremost.

To Call A Posit A Posit Is Not To Patronize It. A Posit Can Be Unavoidable Except At The Cost Of Other No Less Artificial Expedients. Everything To Which We Concede Existence Is A Posit From The Standpoint Of A Description Of The Theory-building Process, And Simultaneously Real From The Standpoint Of The Theory That Is Being Built.

Students Of The Heavens Are Separable Into Astronomers And Astrologers As Readily As The Minor Domestic Ruminants Into Sheep And Goats, But The Separation Of Philosophers Into Sages And Cranks Seems To Be More Sensitive To Frames Of Reference.

My Position Is A Naturalistic One; I See Philosophy Not As An A Priori Propaedeutic Or Groundwork For Science, But As Continuous With Science. I See Philosophy And Science As In The Same Boat--a Boat Which, To Revert To Neurath's Figure As I So Often Do, We Can Rebuild Only At Sea While Staying Afloat In It. There Is No External Vantage Point, No First Philosophy.