Marmaduke Bloggs

Grice's "Vacuous Names" is a joy to read.

He uses arguments by Parsons (He of "Why Frege should not have said ..."), and other logicians of note. Notably Mates, and Myro. The symbolism is that of Mates, "Elementary Logic".

Myro was so taken by the system that he expanded into what in later writings he called "System G" in honour of Grice -- and which I have relabelled in lectures and
unpublications as "System G-hp", a hopefully plausible, highly powerful variant
on System G".

System G allows you to say things like

"The king of France = The King of France"

even when she (France) no longer exists, and other idiocities beloved by philosophers.

Grice purposively takes a very minimal account of 'existence' as 'spatio-temporal continuant'. And one of his famous examples involves

Marmaduke Bloogs

as not attending the party in his honour.

For, you see, Marmaduke Bloggs was _invented_ by the journalists (as having climbed Mt. Everest on hands and knees).

But the Merseyside Geographical Society still _had_ her party!

JLS