PREMIUM-Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
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The Problem With Denoting Descriptions
When you say Santa Claus is jolly, it's not like for that sentence to be meaningful, there has to be a referent for Santa Claus. So the solution he gives is the one from Bertrand Russell in his essay on denoting. The only way you commit yourself to the existence of something is by using this there exists an X type phrase. That would ultimately fix him as the entity as that right man.
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