ABSTRACT
Quine talks about conceptual schemes; Wittgenstein refers to language-games. For Quine, a conceptual scheme includes an ontology: ‘One’s ontology is basic to the conceptual scheme by which he interprets all experiences’ (OWTIa 10). Moreover, different conceptual systems invoke different ontologies: ‘disagreement in ontology involves basic disagreement in conceptual schemes’ (ibid., 16). For Wittgenstein, different language-games involve different grammatical rules, and, accordingly, different essences, since essence is expressed by grammar (PI §371). For two or more people to disagree over the essence of something is for them to operate with different grammatical rules. For both Quine and Wittgenstein, meaning is not to be equated with naming: a word doesn’t have to be a name in order to be meaningful. In the minds of both, the confusion of meaning and naming is responsible for numerous confused ontological or metaphysical claims.
