Quine's criterion of ontological commitment requires that predicates appearing in canonical scientific notation carry no ontological weight unless bound by existential quantifiers.
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Words or phrases that describe properties or characteristics of something—like 'is red' or 'is tall' in the sentence 'The ball is red.'
Quine(as a proper name referring to the philosopher whose theory is being discussed)
Willard Van Orman Quine was a 20th-century American philosopher who wrote about how we know things and how language works. In this statement, we're discussing one of his specific ideas about observation.
existential quantifiers(logic)
Logical phrases that claim something exists, like when you say 'there are unicorns' or 'some things are red'—it's how philosophers formally talk about what does or doesn't exist.
ontological commitment(Used to derive that literal truth of 'a is F' entails existence of a)
The criterion by which acceptance of a sentence as literally true commits one to the existence of the objects referred to by singular terms in that sentence, provided the sentence cannot be paraphrased away.