Grice on "there exists an object"

Grice wants to restrict the locution,

"there exists an object"

to existential-commitment formula.

The intuition behind this is that "an E-quantified formula, Ewnphi will represent a claim that there EXISTS an object which satisfies the condition specified in phi iff phi(a/w) is e-committal for a".

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Consider this pair:

~2F1a3 --- Pegasus does not fly.
~3F1a2 --- Pegasus does not fly.

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Since only the former is e-commital for 'a' (is true only if a exists), the formula can be read as a claim that there EXISTS something which is not F.

The latter is not commital for a, and it thus cannot be read thus.

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