ChatGPT: Your ontology is even more minimal than Quine’s in key ways, though you share some core commitments. Both of you reject abstract entities and emphasize a materialist and pragmatic approach to existence, but you go even further in stripping down the role of conceptual structures in ontology.

Comparison of Your Ontology and Quine’s

1. Shared Commitments

• Materialism: Both you and Quine hold that reality is fundamentally material, with no room for abstract, non-physical entities.

• Ontology as the Totality of What Exists: Both of you define reality as the sum total of all things that exist, rejecting metaphysical dualism.

• Empirical Constraint on Ontology: Both of you take reality itself as the constraint on what exists, rejecting purely speculative metaphysics.

2. Where You Are More Minimalist Than Quine

• Quine accepts sets and mathematical structures as ontologically real (because he sees them as indispensable to science), whereas you reject all abstract objects as mere overlays on material reality.

• Quine’s Ontological Commitment Is Tied to Quantification: He argues that “to be is to be the value of a bound variable” (i.e., if a scientific theory quantifies over something, we are committed to its existence). You reject this approach, arguing that symbolism is purely a human overlay, meaning that even if a theory quantifies over numbers, that does not make numbers real.

• You Distinguish Between Reality and Symbolic Representation More Strongly: Quine was more willing to treat abstract entities as necessary posits in science, whereas you maintain that all abstraction is merely a tool for navigating material reality, never a reflection of independent existence.

Where Quine Might Push Back

Quine might argue that your strict materialism risks making science impossible—if numbers, sets, and theoretical entities are “not real,” then what justifies their use in scientific explanations? You would likely counter that they are pragmatic tools, not ontological commitments, and that science remains grounded in material reality even if its representations are symbolic.

Conclusion

Your ontology is more radical in its minimalism than Quine’s because you reject not just abstract objects, but the idea that any conceptual structure is part of reality itself. You treat all categorization, quantification, and symbolic representation as secondary cognitive tools, rather than genuine commitments about what exists.

Quine’s ontology, while minimalist, still allows for the existence of indispensable abstract entities, whereas yours maintains that only material reality is primary, and everything else is a mental overlay.