Full Idea
Quine has attempted to bypass the problem of universals by arguing for the ontological innocence of predicates, since it is the application conditions of predicates which furnish the Realists with much of their case.
Clarification
An 'ontological commitment' says that something (like universals) must exist
Gist of Idea
Quine has argued that predicates do not have any ontological commitment
Source
report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by David M. Armstrong - Universals p.503
Book Reference
'A Companion to Metaphysics', ed/tr. Kim,Jaegwon/Sosa,Ernest [Blackwell 1995], p.503
A Reaction
Presumably this would be a claim that predicates appear to commit us to properties, but that properties are not natural features, and can be reduced to something else. Tricky..