Ontological Commitment and Paraphrase

This video provides an introduction to ontological commitment, Quine's theory of ontological commitment, and paraphrase.

00:00 Ontological Commitment (Introduction)
03:30 Quine's Theory
14:23 What Theories Should I Accept?
15:37 A Problem!
19:10 Paraphrase as a Solution

Correction: One of the paraphrases I use involving George Washington existed, I accidentally keep the tense in the sentence.

Sources and Credits:
•Bricker, Phillip, "Ontological Commitment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
• Tatjana von Solodkoff . 2014. Paraphrase Strategies in Metaphysics. Philosophy Compass 9(8): 570 580.
• Van Inwagen, Peter. 1988. Meta Ontology. Erkenntnis . 48(2/3): 233-255.

[linhgia]

OMG you saved my grade in Intro to Metaphysics. Thank you so much !!!!

[LogicPhilosophy]

Q1. How would you define ontological commitment?
Q2. What principal problem is there with ontological commitment?
Q3. Do you have any examples where a theory commits you to Ks but you don't want to be committed to Ks? Can you find a way out of by paraphrasing?

[ZoiusGM]

I have two problematic thoughts that I would be glad if they were answered by somebody:
1. 5:50 The sentence 'There are rabbits' clearly means that there is more than one rabbit but when the sentence is translated in predicated logic it changes its meaning saying that 'there is at least one rabbit'; shouldn't the second, translated sentence say and mean that there are more than one rabbits?

2. 26:58 + 22:01 Since the original sentence and its paraphrased ones mean exactly the same thing, they are synonymous, that should mean that the commitment is the same. In other words, it should mean that you are still comitted to the 'abstract entities' such as '1.93 children' and 'average families'. It does not make sense to me if it was otherwise; if you were not comitted to these entities even after the paraphrase. Has this kind of criticism been made before about Quine's theory or I am the first one - if I was I would be surprised.

[nachiketh]

Those eyes, I apologize in advanced if you have a condition, are incredibly distracting. The quality of content is incredible!

[batsy]

But it seems to me that it is saying there are at least two rabbits.... Plural. I guess if there are two there is also one. Thanks for the video BTW!