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Leibniz and Russell on Existence and Quantification Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jeffrey Skosnik
Jeffrey Skosnik*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
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Extract

Never shall this be proved, that things that are not are. Parmenides

To say that something does not exist, or that there is something which is not, is clearly a contradiction in terms; hence “(∀x) (x exists)” must be true. Moreover, we should certainly expect leave to put any primitive name of our language for the “x” of any matrix “ … x … ”, and to infer the resulting singular statement from “(∀x) ( … x … )”; it is difficult to contemplate any alternative logical rule for reasoning with names.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 681 - 720
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1980

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