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What was Quine's most famous dictum of ontological commitment?

  • "To be is to know a variable"

  • "To be is to act upon a variable"

  • "To be is to be the value of a variable"

  • "To be is to change a variable"

Answer

Quine's famous dictum of ontological commitment, "to be is to be the value of a variable," asserts that the entities we posit as existing are simply those that can be substituted for the variables in our statements without rendering them false. In other words, existence is equivalent to being able to assign a value to a variable in a meaningful way.
Quizzing the Quine: Unraveling the Mind of W.V. Quine, the Maverick Philosopher

Quizzing the Quine: Unraveling the Mind of W.V. Quine, the Maverick Philosopher

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