quantification is fundamental.^58 Once we recognize that these entities might be
beings by courtesy, should we shift focus away from the questions of whether these
entities exist and focus instead on the question of how they exist? Yes.
Let me illustrate this by way of a fable.^59 Our ancestors lived in a linguistic Eden in
which, for want of a better phrase, only actual concrete objects were named and
quantified over. Perhaps they quantified over types of concrete objects as well, if these
entities are not concrete themselves. But this won’t play a role in what follows.
But eventually they started telling stories to one another, perhaps in order to make
their nights infirelit caves more bearable. Atfirst, these stories were all true stories
about actual objects, but soon they began to tellfictional stories. And as these stories
became more popular, people began to say things like,“the characters in story A are
more interesting than the characters in story B”and“there was some character in
that story you told me last night that really stuck with me, but I can’t remember the
character’s name, what was it again?”And thus came the Fall.
Things got worse after that. Soon our ancestors were happily counting holes in
blocks of cheese, measuring the lengths of their shadows, describing hallucinatory
objects, and quantifying over all manner of unsavory creatures of darkness. We never
returned to paradise. Even today, we say things like,“there are seven holes in the
cheese,”and what’s even worse is that these sentences we utter are strictly and
literally true. Those among us who have studied our language have found little
reason to think that our phrase“some”has a different meaning when used in
“some pieces of cheese are stinky”than when used in“some holes are larger than
others.”And no plausible definition or analysis of this phrase (or others of its ilk) is
available to us. It is a semantically primitive quantifier in my sense.
In my parable, phrases can acquire different meanings in response to changes in
how they are used.^60 And this has happened with“some,”“there is,”“exists,”and
other“ontological expressions.”What we mean by“there is”is not what is meant by
“there is”in the mouths of our Edenic ancestors. We have forgotten the primordial
meaning of“being.”
And we cannot go home again. The expressive power of our current language is far
too addictive. Think about how one of our ancestors, if she could somehow com-
municate with us now, would try to express, in her language,“There are as many
holes in the cheese as there are colors in the coat of the unicorn I dreamed about last
night, but some of these holes are larger than any mouse I’ve ever seen.”We cannot
(^58) Thanks to Peter Finocchiaro for discussion here.
(^59) This fable has some important similarities to the fable told in Yablo (2005), but the lesson I draw from
it is very different. 60
Note that in order for speakers to use“exists”differently, they needn’t in advance have a theory about
what exists. Our Edenic ancestors did not need to believe thatfictional characters exist prior to changing
the terms in their language so that they could express thatfictional characters exist. Accordingly, I reject
van Inwagen’s (2014: 69) argument against the possibility of different meanings for ontological expres-
sions, which requires the truth of what I have just denied.