Ideas from 'A Plea for Substitutional Quantification' by Charles Parsons [1971], by Theme Structure

[found in 'Philosophy of Logic: an anthology' (ed/tr Jacquette,Dale) [Blackwell 2002,0-631-21868-8]].

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4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 4. Alethic Modal Logic

9470	Modal logic is not an extensional language

			Full Idea: Modal logic is not an extensional language.
			From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.159 n8)
			A reaction: [I record this for investigation. Possible worlds seem to contain objects]

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 4. Substitutional Quantification

9469	Substitutional existential quantifier may explain the existence of linguistic entities

			Full Idea: I argue (against Quine) that the existential quantifier substitutionally interpreted has a genuine claim to express a concept of existence, which may give the best account of linguistic abstract entities such as propositions, attributes, and classes.
			From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156)
			A reaction: Intuitively I have my doubts about this, since the whole thing sounds like a verbal and conventional game, rather than anything with a proper ontology. Ruth Marcus and Quine disagree over this one.

9468	On the substitutional interpretation, '(∃x) Fx' is true iff a closed term 't' makes Ft true

			Full Idea: For the substitutional interpretation of quantifiers, a sentence of the form '(∃x) Fx' is true iff there is some closed term 't' of the language such that 'Ft' is true. For the objectual interpretation some object x must exist such that Fx is true.
			From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156)
			A reaction: How could you decide if it was true for 't' if you didn't know what object 't' referred to?