The Truth About Pegasus

--- by J. L. S.
----- for the Grice Club.

The truth is that, other than Roger Bishop Jones (vide his "Grice on vacuous names"), J, and J. L. Speranza, nobody cares for Grice no more!

The other day -- a couple of years back, I read that Everett was compiling a book on empty names. I wrote to him and say, "Why bother when Grice said about them all we need to keep us a healthy empty head on them?". He never replied!

In any case, the other day S. R. Bayne was wondering about the limit of a function, and how if the limit is open, the thing can subsist Universal Generalisation. Jones replied and so did I. In doing so, I traced back the content of Everett's book, I'll see if I can retrieve it and paste it here.

Some things never change!

----

Content of Book on "Empty Names"

---- (missing from my bookshelf, as I write this!):

Everett/Hofweber:

Essay No. 1.

by Stephen R. Schiffer (born Atlantic City, New Jersey):

"Pleonastic Fregeanism and Empty Names"

"Schiffer discusses the most empty name of all: "Gotlob Frege" -- a complex one, to boot!"

Essay No. 2, by

Professor K. A. Taylor

"Emptiness without compromise"


------

"Professor Taylor discusses the distinction, in terms of implicature, "I would marry you, if I were single", "But then you wouldn't be single WHILE you would be marrying me?". He defends a Quinean view of 'compromise' without 'empty ontological existence' -- and fails!

Essay No. by Prof. A. Everett:

"Referentialism and empty names"

"Mill presented a theory which Ryle called "the 'Fido'-Fido theory of meaning. In this essay, Professor Everett argues for a "Mill"-Mill theory of Ryle. "If Ryle HAD read Mill, it would not have been true that he never read it!".

Essay No. 4, by A. Faderman, graduate student at CUNY:

"The myth of vacuity"

"Some say that "Pegasus, the flying horse" is a myth; I argue that Professor Quine is a myth -- or has become one!"

----

Essay No 5, by K. Walton

"Existence as metaphor?"

----

"Some say that 'Pegasus does not exist', but when you inquire further into what these people think when they say 'exist', you realise there does not exist any clear idea on the topic! 'Pegasus' is a metaphor for all things that, while horses, can still fly".


Essay No. 6, by F. Kroon:

"Negative existentials"

"Bush said that there were weapons of mass destruction -- a verifiable statement; on the other hand, to hold that there exist none of such proves -- metaphysical -- if not in retrospect!"


Essay No. 7, by E. N. Zalta,

"Pretense theory and abstract object theory"


"While Pegasus may not exist -- thus rendering "Pegasus is identical with Pegasus" a tautology --, we may pretend as if it may NOT exist -- and not just pretend as if it MAY exist. While Pegasus is not abstract, your brain will become so if you keep thinking about this adorable flying non-existent horse."


Essay 8, by H. Deutsch

"Making up stories"


"Apparently, a horse could fly, even if Pegasus never did -- because he never existed, not to start this made-up story with."

Essay No. 9, by S. Friend

"Real people in unreal contexts"

"My corpus will be the screenplay for "A piece of work", with Joan Rivers".


--- Essay 10, by M. Richard:

"Semantic pretense"

---- "My focus will be Grice's seminar on 'as if', as if I had attended it!"



--- Essay 11, by P. van Inwagen:

"Quantification and fictional discourse"

"There are two types of quantifiers. I shall call them 'real quantifiers' and 'irreal quantifiers'. In fairy tales, and other variants of fictionalised narratives, the trick is to turn the 'irreal' quantifier into a real domain -- real for fun, really!"

Essay 12, T. Hofweber

"Quantification and non-existent objects"

"Pegasus is not really an 'object' -- but a horse. I will disqualify this distinction. In non-substitutional inexistential quantification, the difference is indeed inexistenting."

Essay 13 S. Yablo:

"A paradox of existence."


------"If Pegasus does not exist, how come Pegasus can't fly?".