Meinong thought. (Perhaps it is merely a quirk of our language or a consequence of
ourfinite cognitive abilities that we have latched on to this less natural sense of
“being.”We’ll revisit this question later in chapter 5.)
A second, more complicated move available to the Meinongian is to embrace a
view like the following. In a metaphysically ideal language—one in which every
expression is a natural expression (and every natural expression appears in the
language)—there are quantifiers, one that ranges over existent objects, and one that
ranges over subsistent objects. But there is no generic quantifier that has in its
domain more objects than are ranged over by the existential and subsistential
quantifiers. However, there aretermsin this language that play the same syntactic
roll as names, and some of these terms are such that there is no object ranged over by
either the existential quantifier or the subsistential quantifier that is a referent for that
term. In short, there are natural names in the metaphysically ideal language that
cannot be substitution instances for variables bound by any of the quantifiers in the
ideal language. Call such termsmetaphysically empty names.In the ideal language,
one can state truths using metaphysically empty names in subject-predicate sen-
tences. And these truths might form interesting patterns or laws whichwecan
articulate only by using a less-than-perfectly natural generic quantifier expression.
And this is why, when we try to articulate such laws, we are inevitably led to such
expressions as“there are things such that it is true that there are no such things.”
On this picture, the logic of such a metaphysically ideal language is something like
afreelogic.^59 This view seems difficult to motivate, but it is one that the Meinongian
who hates Quasisein but believes in the fundamental metaphysical importance of
Meinongian objects ought to consider.
Let’s confront other tricky questions. First, what should we say aboutplural
quantification? In addition to phrases such as“there is,”there is“there are.”The
position that plural quantifiers are really disguised singular quantifiers that range
over objects other than those they appear to range over used to be (and perhaps still is)
popular. On this view, when one says“there are some apples on the fridge”what one
says is something like“there is a set of apples on the fridge”or“there is something
made out of apples on the fridge.”I think the case for the semantic reduction of plural
quantifiers in English to singular quantifiers in English is weak, and moreover the
case against such a reduction is strong.^60 However, the case for treating singular
quantification as a special case of plural quantification (and more generally singular
predication as a special case of plural predication) is much more straightforward.^61
It might be then that, in English, the only semantically primitive quantifiers are
plural quantifiers. It is still possible that in a metaphysically ideal language the only
primitive quantifiers are singular quantifiers. (This seems to be the position Sider
(2011) favors.) For our purposes, the sticky question is what to say if both primitive
(^59) On free logics, see Nolt (2014). (^60) See McKay (2006) for more on plural quantification.
(^61) See McKay (2006: 58–60, 120–1) for discussion.