existence

["John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>]

             Leaving _lo_ aside as a confusing factor, I see the question
        of the range of quantifiers thusly. In most languages I know
        about -- and in logic -- quantifiers range over the "universe of
        discourse," the things we want to talk about, the things we are
        willing to name or describe in the present conversation (being
        named is a sufficient condition for being in the range of a
        quantifier usually). This universal has no fixed relation to the
        real-only world (assuming that even that is fixed -- or to any of
        the real-only universes, if not): it may be wholly included in
        that universe (as it usually is for hard sciences), wholly out-
        side it (as at a trekky convention) or overlap it in any number
        of ways (as usual in casual conversation).  We have in most
        languages a number of expressions which we apply to things in our
        universe of discourse to indicate that they are not in the(a)
        real-only world: nonexistent, unreal, imaginary, fictional,
        mythological, and so on.  Yet we can often say of any of these
        categories that there is something in it, showing that the limits
        of the existent/real/literal/etc. is not the limits of the quan-
        tifiers. Although, occasionally, we may use one of these terms
        explicitly to put something outside the universe of discourse as
        well.  The various categories of unreal are probably also differ-
        ent from one another, although it is not always clear what these
        differences are.
             From a strictly logical point of view, we do not have to
        have that things which are unreal in one possible world but are
        mentioned there are real in some other possible world.  Something
        which is imaginary (say) in every world in which it occurs at all
        is not a contradictory concept, though the object that had that
        property very likely would be. Admittedly, the more standard ways
        of doing possible world semantics would seem to require that what
        is imaginary in one world be real in some, but that seems to be a
        part of a rather involved metaphysical prejudice at the heart of
        most standard logicians who wander into modal logic without
        really believing in it.
pc>|83