Grice's representation of 'a+exists'

--- where Grice uses square corners for ' and '.

Grice wants to define 'a+exists' in terms of the horseshoe as follows:

Consider

Fa

With the proper subscripts, this becomes

F1a2

Surely we can apply the horseshoe and yield:

F1a2 )3 F1a2

Now,

"F1a2 )3 F1a2", Grice says, 'is true whether or not 'a' is vacuous.'

---

The truth of that ) formula, then, in which "a" is dominant,

'requires only that a exists'.

So, the horseshoe formula

"may be taken as one representation of 'a exists'".

He wants to define this in terms of variables for subscripts and not the boring 1,2 and 3.

In the general terms, it reads:

If, for some n) alpha is the

ONLY individual constant in phi[n](alphan) and phi is

psi ) psin-m,

phi is 'a exists'.