Quine

Willard Van Orman Quine was a philosopher who challenged traditional ideas about language and meaning. He argued that our understanding of words doesn't rely solely on their definitions but is influenced by the entire web of beliefs and experiences we have. Quine famously said that "to be is to be the value of a variable," suggesting that understanding reference (what words point to) is deeply interconnected with the context of how language functions in practice. His work emphasized that meaning is not fixed, but rather fluid and shaped by our broader understanding of the world.