 The main vehicle for this “ontological reduction” is the theory of connotation, coupled with the related theory of “exposition.” The theory of exposition, which is not fully developed in Ockham, will become increasingly prominent in authors immediately after him. In effect, the theory of connotation is related to the theory of exposition as explicit definition is related to contextual definition. The notion of the “square” of a number can be explicitly defined, for example, as the result of multiplying that number by itself. Contextual definition operates not at the level of terms, but at the level of propositions. Thus, Bertrand Russell famously treated ‘The present king of France is bald’ as amounting to ‘There is an x such that x is a present king of France and x is bald, and for all y if y is a present king of France then y = x’. We are never given any outright definition of the term ‘present king of France’, but instead are given a technique of paraphrasing away seemingly referential occurrences of that term in such a way that we are not committed to any actually existing present kings of France. So too, Ockham tries to provide us, at the propositional level, with paraphrases of propositions that seem at first to refer to entities he sees no reason to believe  in.[33]