Quine, "Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis" — Primer

Listen to this first if you want the background before the paper itself; skip it with our blessing if you already hold this ground. None of it is the paper—that's Parts 1 and 2.

A primer is background laid down before the episode proper. Today, neither host opens the paper at all: Quine's "Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis" is thirteen entirely lucid pages that decline to introduce their own room, assuming you know which argument it walked into and who was already standing there. So Solomon brings three things, and Clementine tests them.

1: The universals debate as a live argument rather than two glossary words. A floor tile, a napkin folded over once, a window pane—what makes one word do work three times? Two flavours of realism a nominalist must refuse, and four nominalis ...