---
date: '2025-12-24'
description: the mode of existence.
id: Ontology
modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:12 GMT-04:00
tags:
  - philosophy
title: Ontology
created: '2025-12-24'
published: '2025-12-24'
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---
Ontology asks what exists. Quine makes it concrete: if I accept a claim, what objects must my variables range over for the claim to be true?

Put the claim into quantified form, then ask what the variables range over. “There is a prime between $1000$ and $1010$” commits me to numbers. “Pegasus does not exist” needs a paraphrase that does not smuggle in a nonexistent Pegasus as an object.

Ontology belongs near logic and language because quantification makes these commitments explicit.

re [ontological commitment](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-commitment/) and Quine’s [“On What There Is”](https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHS688/Metaphysics_Bibliography/Quine%20%281948%29%20On%20What%20There%20Is.pdf)