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Full Idea
To be assumed as an entity is to be reckoned as the value of a variable. This amounts roughly to saying that to be is to be in the range of reference of a pronoun.
Gist of Idea
To be is to be the value of a variable, which amounts to being in the range of reference of a pronoun
Source
Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.13)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'From a Logical Point of View' [Harper and Row 1963], p.13
A Reaction
Cf. Idea 7784.
Related Idea
Idea 7784 'Object' is a pseudo-concept, properly indicated in logic by the variable x [Wittgenstein]
| 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] |