Can we quantify over everything: absolutely, positively, definitely, totally, every thing? Some philosophers have claimed that we must be able to do so, since the doctrine that we cannot is self-stultifying. But this treats restrictivism as a positive doctrine. Restrictivism is much better viewed as a kind of militant quietism, which I call dadaism. Dadaists advance a hostile challenge, with the aim of silencing everyone who holds a positive position about ‘absolute generality’.

A variant of Hilary Putnam's model-theoretic argument against metaphysical realism appears to show that our quantifiers do not determinately range over absolutely everything. This paper argues that some recent attempts to respond to the quantificational skeptic are unsuccessful and offers an alternative response: the key to answering the skeptic is not to refute her argument but to realize that the argument's setup prevents it from being convincing to those it is directed at.

This paper argues for the thesis that, roughly put, it is impossible to talk about absolutely everything. To put the thesis more precisely, there is a particular sense in which, as a matter of semantics, quantifiers always range over domains that are in principle extensible, and so cannot count as really being ‘absolutely everything’. The paper presents an argument for this thesis, and considers some important objections to the argument and to the formulation of the thesis. The paper also offers (...) an assessment of just how implausible the thesis really is. It argues that the intuitions against the thesis come down to a few special cases, which can be given special treatment. Finally, the paper considers some metaphysical ideas that might surround the thesis. Particularly, it might be maintained that an important variety of realism is incompatible with the thesis. The paper argues that this is not the case. (shrink)

Yagisawa (2005) considers two old arguments against the existence requirement. Both arguments are significantly less appealing than Yagisawa suggests. In particular, the second argument, first given by Kaplan (1989: 498), simply assumes that existence is contingent (§1). Yagisawa’s ‘new’ argument shares this weakness. It also faces a dilemma. Yagisawa must either treat ‘at @’ as a sentential operator occupying the same grammatical position as ‘∼’ or as supplying an extra argument place. In the former case, Yagisawa’s argument faces precisely the (...) problems he concedes that Kaplan’s argument does (§2). In the latter case, though the argument does not face these problems, it renders the sense in which things exist contingently no threat to (E) properly understood (§3). (shrink)

Here I first raise an argument purporting to show that Lewis’ Modal Realism ends up being completely trivial. But although I reject this line, the argument reveals how difficult it is to interpret Lewis’ thesis that possibilia “exist.” Four natural interpretations are considered, yet upon reflection, none appear entirely adequate. In particular, under the three different “concretist” interpretations of ‘exist’, Modal Realism looks insufficient for genuine ontological commitment. Whereas under the “multiverse” interpretation, Modal Realism ends up being incompatible with each (...) of axioms S5 and B. I close by entertaining a more general problem from which the present interpretive issues seem to arise. -/- . (shrink)

The problem of absolute generality has attracted much attention in recent philosophy. Agustin Rayo and Gabriel Uzquiano have assembled a distinguished team of contributors to write new essays on the topic. They investigate the question of whether it is possible to attain absolute generality in thought and language and the ramifications of this question in the philosophy of logic and mathematics.

In conversations between native speakers, words such as ‘same’ and ‘identical’ do not usually cause much difficulty. We take it for granted that others use them with the same sense as we do. If it is unclear whether numerical or qualitative identity is intended, a brief gloss such as ‘one thing not two’ for the former or ‘exactly alike’ for the latter removes the unclarity. In this paper, numerical identity is intended. A particularly conscientious and logically aware speaker might explain (...) what ‘identical’ means in her.. (shrink)