ABSTRACT
I start with Quine’s essay “Ontological Relativity” (1969c), where he first applied proxy functions to a non-mathematical context. Quine begins by reviewing the “gavagai” example from his Word and Object (1960). A rabbit hops by, a native exclaims “Gavagai,” and we wonder what’s being referred to.1 The famous problem is “that a whole rabbit is present when and only when an undetached part of a rabbit is present; also when and only when a temporal stage of a rabbit is present” (1969c: 30). As a result, “we can never settle the matter simply by ostension … simply by repeatedly querying the expression ‘gavagai’ for the native’s assent or dissent in the presence of assorted stimulations” (ibid.: 30-1). Why not? Because “[t]he only difference is in how you slice it. And how to slice it is what ostension or simple conditioning, however persistently repeated, cannot teach” (ibid.: 32).
