In each case, the senses I am talking about needn’t be actually realized in ordinary
language; they might be merely possible senses. But from a metaphysical perspective,
a language that housed them would be a better one to speak.
Let’s contrast these views with PEP, which we can provisionally formulate as:
PEP = the view that there are two semantically primitive restricted quantifiers,“ (^9) p”and“ (^9) c,”thefirst of which ranges over all and only past objects whereas the
second of which ranges over all and only present objects. Both quantifiers are
metaphysically fundamental. There is no fundamental quantifier that ranges over
both past and present objects.
PEP distinguishes between two kinds of existence: the way that past things exist,
represented by“ (^9) p,”and the way that present things exist, represented by“ (^9) c.”
According to PEP, there is a sense in which both present and past things exist:
this is represented by the generic quantifier“ 9 ,”the domain of which is the disjunc-
tion of the domains of these two quantifiers. But this generic quantifier is not a
perfectly natural expression, but rather is analogous.
There is a second way of understanding PEP and other ontologically pluralist views.
In section 1.2, I called the fundamental quantifiersrestrictedbecause each individually
does not range over all that is ranged over by the“some”of ordinary English, even
though none of them is defined in terms of the ordinary English“some”and restricting
predicates. This is a legitimate use of“restricted quantifier.”However, it’s also legitimate
to say that a quantifier is restricted if and only if its domain is a proper subset of
the domain of afundamentalquantifier. On the view defended here, the ordinary English
“some”is not metaphysically fundamental. Neither“ (^9) p”nor“ (^9) c”is restricted in this
second sense. This suggests that a second way of understanding ontological pluralism is
as the doctrine that there ismore than onemetaphysically fundamental meaning available
for the unrestricted“ 9 .”^11 Accordingly, a second way of understanding PEP is as:
PEP = the view that there are two metaphysically fundamental (possible) mean-
ings for the unrestricted quantifier“ 9 ”:“ (^9) p”ranges over all and only past objects,
whereas“ (^9) c”ranges over all and only present objects. There is no fundamental
quantifier that ranges over objects in both domains.^12
As before, each meaning might be merely possible rather than actually possessed by
expressions in ordinary language.
(^11) See Turner (2010) for further discussion of these issues. Views that allow for nesting of fundamental
quantifiers (such as the version of Meinongian presentism discussed in section 3.3) raise additional thorny
questions. Such views will have fundamental quantifiers that are restricted both in the sense of not ranging
over everything ranged over by the“there is”of ordinary English and in the sense of ranging over only
some of what a fundamental quanti 12 fier ranges over.
I’m not sure whether the quantifiers embraced by PEP are appropriately titled“primitive tensed
quantifiers”in the sense of Lewis (2004: 11–12). Note that the friend of PEP* does not deny that these
quantifiers have domains.