Professor Quine and Real Classes

Abstract

Symbolic logic was committed by its founders to the theory of real classes, but nominalism, which at the time prevailed in other philosophical enterprises, soon reasserted itself in logic. The result was that the theory of real classes was difficult to maintain. This difficulty is best exemplified by the work of Professor Quine, and I propose to show it. Quine early on had the advantage of study with Whitehead, the realist, but it was not easy for a thinker trained in the tradition of nominalism to hold to the recognition of the reality of classes, since such a concept is the very contradictory of the nominalistic notion of their unreality. Frege had signalled a change from the nominalistic tradition in a return to realism, but Russell and Whitehead working together had difficulty in holding to it. Professor Quine’s early work therefore is nominalistic despite the influence on him of the realism of his teacher, Whitehead.