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Full Idea
The objects of a theory are not properly describable as the things named by the singular terms; they are the values, rather, of the variables of quantification. ..So a referentially opaque context is one that cannot properly be quantified into.
Gist of Idea
Objects are the values of variables, so a referentially opaque context cannot be quantified into
Source
Willard Quine (Three Grades of Modal Involvement [1953], p.174)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Ways of Paradox and other essays' [Harvard 1976], p.174
A Reaction
The point being that you cannot accurately pick out the objects in the domain
| 12219 | Whether a modal claim is true depends on how the object is described [Quine, by Fine,K] |
| 10921 | Necessity can attach to statement-names, to statements, and to open sentences [Quine] |
| 10922 | Objects are the values of variables, so a referentially opaque context cannot be quantified into [Quine] |
| 10923 | Aristotelian essentialism says a thing has some necessary and some non-necessary properties [Quine] |
| 10924 | Necessity is in the way in which we say things, and not things themselves [Quine] |