Mac’s Reviews > From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays > Status Update

It does seem to me that Quine's essay "On what there is" is largely pointless. It doesn't add anything interesting atop of Russell's definite descriptions. We should not talk about "The unicorn" and other metaphysical entities as real because there is no such unique unicorn x for all beings y, in the domain of known beings, that is a that unicorn y. What we're having is a sense without reference, as Frege points out.

Fresh after reading "Two Dogmas..." Essay. Quine should be most accurately described as The Destroyer, as one of the other reviews concluded. He, single-handedly, destroyed all the hopes for analyticity and purely logical vision of science (Carnap). Despire the general acceptance of Quine's scientific method (confirmation holism) there isn't many programmes actively doing it (apart from Fodor), which is surprising.