Translation is existentially dependent upon something to translate. In this case it is a common language expression. All translation is of that which is already meaningful. All meaningful statements sensibly rendered in/with common language presuppose truth, meaning, and existence.

Predicate logic cannot account for that.

To be meaningful is to be part of a mental correlation. Not all mental correlation places value upon a previously unbound variable and it's newly coined referent by drawing a correlation, association, and/or connection between the two.

To be the value of a bound variable is to be given a namesake, in common language terms. Namesakes are given to entities that already exist in their entirety prior to being named. This includes all metacognitive notions/constructs.

"Existence" is superfluous. I prefer the frame of existential dependency.

What's an ontologist?

:halo:

That would be a very quieer move for someone to make. Each and every day people say meaningful things in common language that are not amenable to logical translation. There are thought/belief governed by common language that cannot be aptly put into terms of being the value of a bound variable.

The semantics of common language is directly at odds with many a philosophical notion. "An abstract object of thought" is one such notion. Quine aimed at abstract objects of thought. "Existence" is held by some to be such an object. Quine had the right target. He did not have the right ammunition. — creativesoul

Again, as I remarked above, Quine's comments here are building upon Russell's theory of descriptions. Quine's comments are not going to make much sense outside of that context. So it's important to not only be familiar with Russell's theory of descriptions, but the motivation for Russell's theory of descriptions, which was Frege's "semantic puzzles" and the background to those. The background is largely the anti-psychologistic theories of reference that Frege endorsed (and that subsequent analytic philosophy has continued to endorse), where those theories create problems when it comes to the ability to refer to nonexistent entities for example (a la "The present king of France is bald"), as well as referring to entities where the referent is identical but the referring terms are not (a la Frege's morning star/evening star example).

I'd agree that ultimately the whole thing, including Russell's theory of descriptions, is rather silly, really, but it's because of the wrong turn of rejecting psychologism. That was the bad move that a lot of inane, rococo work is intended to patch up, and that's still ongoing. (The reasons for rejecting psychologism are deeply-rooted in analytic phil, though, stemming initially from wanting philosophy to be more like a science, since science was seen as the academic ideal, where it was believed that that goal is not possible by admitting individual psychological foundations.)

(On the positive side of all of this, though, an initially unintentional upshot of the work in question is that it's had a lot of practical benefits for computer programming.)

Granting the veracity of your account, it seems that Kripke was aiming at the same things... I'm unqualified to remark on the historical implications. Just a layman attempting to understand the professionals' accounts. Thanks.