Quine and his followers claim not to understand this substantial property of existence, a property that is conceptually independent of the quantifiers (Quine 1948; van Inwagen 1998). For Quine, the existence predicate, ‘Exists(x)’, should be defined simply as ‘∃y y = x’. Thus, for Quine, to say that some thing doesn't exist is to say that some thing is such that no thing is identical with it—a logical contradiction. But, Quine claimed, whether or not to accept the Meinongian account of existence is a sideshow when it comes to the question of ontological commitment. In responding to the fictional Meinongian Wyman, Quine offers “to give Wyman the word ‘exist’.  I'll try not to use it again; I still have ‘is’” (Quine 1948: 23). That is to say, theories are ontologically committed to Ks if they entail that there are Ks, whether or not they entail that Ks exist. Indeed, Quine could also have given the (radical) Meinongian the word ‘is’ and any other predicate that purports to impose an ontological restriction on the quantifier; for what is central to Quine's criterion is that one cannot quantify over entities without incurring ontological commitment to those entities. To use quantifiers to refer to entities while denying that one is ontologically committed is to fail to own up to one's commitments, and thereby engage in a sort of intellectual doublethink. Quantification is the basic mode of reference to objects, and reference to objects is always ontologically committing.