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Full Idea
It is currently held that we are committed to a belief in the existence of anything over which we quantify.
Clarification
'Quantifying over' something is asserting that there is at least one instance with the relevant property
Gist of Idea
It is currently held that quantifying over something implies belief in its existence
Source
A.J. Ayer (The Central Questions of Philosophy [1973], IX.C)
Book Ref
Ayer,A.J.: 'The Central Questions of Philosophy' [Penguin 1976], p.204
| 2611 | It is currently held that quantifying over something implies belief in its existence [Ayer] |
| 19486 | We can use quantification for commitment to unnameable things like the real numbers [Quine] |
| 16963 | Existence is implied by the quantifiers, not by the constants [Quine] |
| 1610 | To be is to be the value of a variable, which amounts to being in the range of reference of a pronoun [Quine] |
| 5747 | "No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia] |
| 10700 | First- and second-order quantifiers are two ways of referring to the same things [Boolos] |
| 13877 | Singular terms in true sentences must refer to objects; there is no further question about their existence [Wright,C] |
| 12213 | Ontological claims are often universal, and not a matter of existential quantification [Fine,K] |
| 12440 | If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni] |