Empty Names and Negative Existentials

Quantificational logic and empty names

In a number of recent articles Timothy Williamson has built a strong case for the claim that everything necessarily exists. His argument rests on a combination of the derivability of this claim from quantificational logic, with standard modal principles and a robust understanding of the Kripke semantics for quantified modal logic. In this paper I defend a contingentist, non-Meinongian metaphysi...

Empty Names and Pragmatic Implicatures

Negative Existentials and Non-denoting Terms

Logical and semantical issues surrounding non-denoting terms have been investigated since ancient times, in both the Western and Indian philosophical traditions. And in a more applied formal setting, such issues have also gained importance in constructive mathematics, as well as computer science and software engineering. The paper first presents a strategic exploration of logical treatments of ...

Truths Containing Empty Names Abstract

On the Direct Reference thesis, proper names are what I call ‘genuine terms’, terms whose sole semantic contributions to the propositions expressed by their use are the terms’ semantic referents. But unless qualified, this thesis implies the false consequence that sentences containing names that fail to refer can never express true or false propositions. (Consider ‘The ancient Greeks worshipped...

Direct Reference, Empty Names and Implicature