Existence as the Possibility of Reference Abstract The mere fact that ontological debates are possible requires us to address

the question, what is it to claim that a certain entity or kind of entity exists; what do we do when we make an existenceclaim? I develop and defend one candidate answer to this question, namely that to make an existence-claim with regard to Fs is to claim that we can refer to Fs. I show how this theory can fulfil the most important explanatory desiderata for a theory of existence; I also defend it against the charges of illegitimate semantic ascent and of forcing us to recognize the existence of fictional characters, mere possibilia, and other disreputable entities to which it seems we might be able to refer.

Suppose there are such things as ontological debates: discussions in which one party puts forward the view that such-and-such entities exist, while another party disagrees. If such debates are possible, then there must be a distinctive kind of speech-act which Ill refer to as the act of making an existence-claim. This kind of speech-act will be distinctive in the sense that, at least sometimes, it must be possible for parties to a debate to know that an act of that kind has taken place for there would be no sense in claiming that genuine ontological debates occur unless it made sense to say that, at least sometimes, participants in the debate could identify that an existence-claim (or non-existence claim) had been made. The view that there is such a distinctive kind of speech-act is, I take it, relatively uncontroversial: it is common ground between those who believe that existence is simply existential quantification, those who treat existence as a predicate or even a genuine property of individuals, and those who claim it to be a second-order concept. Moreover, it is arguably a view shared even by those who say that assertoric uses of the verb exist do not always function to make a genuine existence-claim for in stating the doctrine that a certain form of words does not involve the speaker in making an existence-claim, the theorist must himself employ a form of words which genuinely do concern existence, simply to be able to say what it is that the target words or phrases do not succeed in doing. For similar reasons, a belief that there is such a speech-act as making an existence-claim may plausibly be attributed even to those ontological superficialists (Hawthorne 2009) who propose conciliatory semantics according to which apparent rivals in ontological debate can be interpreted as recognizing the same number of entities: to say that one theory is ontologically commensurate with another is not to claim that neither theory succeeds in making any genuine existence claim, merely to say that, properly understood, both theories are despite appearances claiming the existence of the same entities.

Thus the main aim of a theory of existence is, or ought to be, to clarify what we do when we make an existence-claim: to give an account of what kind of speech-act the act of making an existence-claim is. This is not the same as giving an account of the semantics of the verb exist, for some would say that this verb does not always serve to make an existence-claim, and many would say that it is possible to make an existence-claim without using exist, relying instead on there is or using the formal apparatus of existential quantification ().1 Nor is the current project directed towards giving an account of ontological commitment: as I have argued elsewhere, ontological commitment is best understood as a matter of the ontological costs or preconditions of a statement, and so does not directly concern whether or not a given statement counts as an act of making an existence-claim (Authors paper 2010). Moreover, in the absence of any account of what it is to make an existence-claim, it might seem impossible even to begin the subsidiary debate about whether forms of words such as exists or there is are reliable indicators that an existence-claim is being made, as it is not clear that it makes sense to debate whether certain forms of words have a particular function while unable to say anything at all to characterize that function. The purpose of the current paper is to highlight the advantages of one candidate account of the nature and function of existence-claims in natural language; it is an account that has not recently received sustained defence and elaboration,2 although it may already be present in some remarks of Freges. 3 The basic idea is that to make an existence-claim is in a sense to license the use of a noun or general term in debate; in particular the function of an existence-claim is to convey the idea that use of the word(s) in question is legitimate because those words indicate an entity or kind of entity to which we have it in our power to refer. In short, to say that a exists is to indicate that it is possible to refer to a (whether through using the name a or by using other means of identification); to say that a does not exist is to indicate that we cannot refer to a. Existence-claims made using a particular name thus license the further use of that name in substantial debate; conversely, making a non-existence claim with regard to a particular name functions to shut off further debate using that name, since such a claim indicates that the name has
Some would also say that existence-claims can be made by using predicates other than exist, for example occur (Moltmann 2011) 2 Thomasson (2007:64-67; 2008: 45-8) considers and endorses a metasemantic account of existence similar to the one presented here; an account of non-existence statements in terms of failure of reference is also proposed by Donnellan (1974: 35). Both authors recommend the account primarily on the basis of its ability to provide a coherent account of the truth conditions of negative existentials; however, as I argue below, the ability to deal with such statements is common to many rival theories of existence and consequently does not do much to establish one candidate account as preferable to another. 3 See especially his remarks in the Dialogue with Pnjer on Existence in Frege 1979, where he considers the view that Sachse exists is supposed to mean 'The word "Sachse" is not an empty sound, but designates something.
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no reference and so any further literal use of it is likely to be false or meaningless, depending on which semantics for empty names applies to the sentence in question. That is at best an outline of a theory; in the following discussion I shall attempt to fill in the details of the account, by considering the desiderata for a theory of existence, and showing how this theory can meet them. First, however, I should deal with two obvious objections to the attempt to give such an account of existence claims: one is that everything we could usefully say about existence is captured by the extensional equivalence between existence-claims and the corresponding existentially quantified sentences; the other, that existence is in some sense conceptually basic, and so no further elucidation of it is possible. Preliminary Objections Existence is what existential quantification expresses. So said Quine (1969: 97), and his laconic utterances have inspired a philosophical orthodoxy: that, in so far as we understand what it is to make an existence-claim, we do so because we understand the apparatus of existential quantification that is used to represent existence claims in formal notation. Thus we understand the existence-claim that we might make by using the sentence dogs exist because we understand the apparatus of existential quantification in the formalized counterpart () is a dog. It might be thought that an explanation of existence along these lines is no explanation at all, on the grounds that the apparatus of quantification was introduced precisely by stipulating that it should function to represent existence, and we cannot elucidate the meaning of natural language idioms by appealing to artificial idioms whose meaning is in fact parasitic on those natural language idioms. Not so: the meaning of the existential quantifier does not have to be stipulated with reference to existence, since we can understand the quantified sentence as saying that something is a dog (Dummett 1981: 36), or (if we want to treat the existential quantifier on a par with other quantifier expressions such as at least three), as saying that at it is true of at least one thing that it is a dog (Van Inwagen 2009: 496), or even as making a higher-order assertion, either about the predicate governing the bound variable of quantification, or about the concept represented by that predicate, saying that the predicate is a dog is satisfied or that the concept x is a dog is instantiated a view which of course originates with Frege. So it is by no means an empty gesture to claim that existence is to be understood by understanding existential quantification; rather, such a hypothesis enables the theorist to explain what is achieved by the speech-act of making an existence-claim, by claiming (for

example) that this speech-act is the same kind of speech-act as the speech-act of claiming that at least one thing satisfies the predicate in question. Unfortunately, although this suggestion offers several plausible ways in which one might go about explaining what it is to make an existence-claim, it cannot be correct, because not every sentence apt for formalization using an existential quantifier can be construed as a sentence which is used to make an existence-claim. Consider these candidate existentially quantified sentences: (1) The King of France is bald! (2) Someone stole my bicycle! (3) Everybody loves somebody. (4) Jones buttered the toast slowly at midnight. I take it that at most these sentences might convey a strong presupposition and/or conversational implicature of the existence of the things they refer to moreover, they might entail a different sentence which can be used to make an existence-claim; but this is not to say that they themselves are sentences that are fit for use in making existence-claims: (1) and (2) no more claim that a King of France, or a bicycle-thief, exists, that a sentence like Adam is bald or Adam stole my bicycle can be used to claim that Adam exists. This is even more apparent in a sentence such as (3), where the bound variable of existential quantification occupies second place in the predicate loves; anyone who believed that uses of (3) function to make existence-claims would be someone who could no longer distinguish when they were engaged in ontological debate and when they were discussing universal truths of human nature. Sentence (4) is more controversial, since its structure conceals an underlying quantified structure only if we accept Davidsons proposal that the logical form of such action sentences must involve existential quantification over events (Davidson 1967). Nevertheless, it should give pause even to those who reject Davidsons proposal for even those who reject the analysis do so for better reason than simply that (4) does not function to assert or claim that events exist. The mere fact that a sentence cannot be used in ontological debate to claim that an entity exists is a poor reason to deny that the sentence can have an existentially quantified underlying form which just goes to show that making an existence-claim is not merely a matter of having an existentially quantified underlying form. At best, the sentences which are apt for making existence-claims fit for use in ontological debates constitute a proper subset of the sentences with an existentially quantified underlying form; in which case we cannot

explain what it is to make an existence-claim merely by gesturing to the presence of an existentially quantifier in the analysis. Genuine existence-claims must be doing something more than merely quantifying over the entities they claim to exist. 4 A second objection to the current project is this: existence is conceptually basic, a concept which we rely on in elucidating other concepts; there is no other, more basic, concept in terms of which existence could be explained; therefore, there is no prospect of arriving at a theory of existence. This is an argument of which we might grant the premises while denying the conclusion: even if existence is a basic concept in this sense, it does not follow that it is impossible to work towards a theory of existence by elucidating its connection to other concepts. In fact, this situation ought to be familiar from recent debates on knowledge and truth: even if we assign conceptual priority to knowledge (Williamson 2002) it still makes sense to try to come to a better understanding of what knowledge is by asking, for example, whether knowing that p entails believing that p, whether knowing that p entails having some form of internalist justification that p, whether the KK principle should be accepted, and so on. Someone who (as Williamson does) arrives at answers to these questions may be interpreted as having advanced a theory of knowledge (in Williamsons phrase, a modest positive account (2002: 33)) even if it is granted that knowledge itself is conceptually prior to other concepts in the vicinity. An explicit formulation of this kind of approach is offered by Crispin Wright in the course of his reflections on truth: even if the target concept cannot be analysed in terms of more fundamental concepts, we can still aim towards the assembly of a body of conceptual truths which, without providing a reductive account, nevertheless collectively constrain and locate the target concept and sufficiently characterize some of its relations with other concepts and its role and purposes to provide the sought-for reflective illumination. (Wright 1999: 226) Just such an approach seems appropriate in the case of existence: it still makes sense to investigate the connection between our target concept and other concepts, even if those other concepts themselves presuppose a prior understanding of the target concept itself. For example, it should not be suggested that the current proposal that existence should be explained in terms of reference collapses into
Of course, someone in the grip of an intensional theory of meaning who thinks that the significance of a sentence is exhausted by its association with a function from possible worlds to truth-values is duty-bound to say that a sentence such as The King of France is bald in fact has the same significance as its conjunction with a sentence which does make an existence-claim, i.e. The King of France is bald and the King of France exists. Im inclined to think that this shows merely that an intensional semantics lacks the resources to explain what it is to make an existence-claim; so much the worse for intensional semantics. (For more on the disadvantages of such an approach, see Hawthorne 2009, p.224ff.)
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incoherence on the grounds that it is impossible to explain the notion of reference save in terms which presuppose a prior understanding of the target concept, existence. That may be so, yet the proposed characterization may provide reflective illumination of the kind envisaged by Wright and Williamson. Moreover, in the case of existence there is the prospect of the project becoming more tractable as a result of the method used: we can hope to understand the concept of existence through addressing the rather more practical question of what it is to make an existence-claim; if it were not the case that the notion of existence is so tightly intertwined with the idea of this distinctive kind of speech-act we might be hardpressed even to grasp how we should understand the question what is existence? Criteria for an adequate account Any adequate account of existence must attempt to explain some of the distinctive features of existenceclaims; here I outline some of the most significant and show how the current proposal addresses them. First, an account of existence should explain the intuitive validity (in most contexts) of the inference from Fa to a exists the fact that a conviction of the truth of any predicative statement concerning a seems to license us in making the corresponding existence-claim. Moreover, a comprehensive account should also explain why some people reject the universal validity of this inference, in a way which does not convict them of simple blindness to the laws of logic. The current proposal can explain both features. If claiming that a exists is a matter of asserting that we have it in our power to refer to a, then it is easy to see why such a claim can seem appropriate in every situation in which we are inclined to treat Fa as true for most would say that such a sentence can be true only if a has a referent. Nevertheless, there is a principled way to deny the universality of the inference, should we feel so inclined: if we are prepared to accept that there can be true sentences of the form Fa in which a lacks a referent, then we have a reason to refrain from making the corresponding existence-claim in such a circumstance, for to do so would be to attribute a referent to a which it in fact lacks. For example, if one were inclined to say that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective expresses a literal truth even though Sherlock Holmes lacks a referent, then one ought to refrain from making the corresponding existence-claim; one should then treat this sentence as a counter-example to the principle Fa a exists. So-called neo-Meinongians will object to this position: according to them, it is possible to refer to entities which do not exist; the predicate exist thus serves to indicate a proper subset of the things that are or have being (Parsons 1980; McGinn 2002). However, the neo-Meinongian position can be accommodated within the current suggestion along lines parallel to David Lewis Allism (Lewis 1990).

When a neo-Meinongian says that the realm of things that are extends beyond merely those things that exist, he has in fact made an existence-claim, in the sense of existence-claim used in this paper: to say that there are such non-existent things is to make a positive move in an ontological debate, asserting that such things should be admitted to our ontology; and to counsel the admission of such-and-such things to an ontology just is to make an existence-claim in the current sense. No matter that the neoMeinongian withholds the predicate exists from certain entities; this does not change the fact that (in the current sense) the neo-Meinongian makes an existence-claim a positive ontological move, as it were with regard to every entity to which we can refer. A second criterion for any adequate account is this: the account should show existence-claims can be made not only using names of objects (Prince Charles exists) but also with bare plurals and mass nouns, e.g. Tables exist Cheese exists The hardened Realist or Trope Theorist might argue that these sentences serve to assert the existence of abstracta universals or sets of tropes but their interaction with tenses makes this implausible: a natural disaster wiping all tables off the face of the planet might lead us to say that tables no longer exist, even though the universal tablehood continued to exist unperturbed.5 Better, perhaps, to read such sentences as making a claim about the instances of such general terms, a move also endorsed by proponents of the quantificational view of existence: to say that tables exist is to assert the existence of at least one entity to which the word table applies. According to the current proposal, then, to say that tables exist is to say that we can refer to some entity which is a table although that reference might have to be achieved through a definite description, for example if the sole remaining table is on the other side of the world. This suggestion raises an apparent problem for tensed non-existence claims: we can still refer (descriptively) to dinosaurs, although it is true that dinosaurs do not exist these days. But if we understand the claim that dinosaurs do not exist these days as making the claim that (1) These days, we cannot refer to dinosaurs

This would be true even for aristotelian theories of universals which depend on their instances for their existence: such theories usually say that a universal exists in a world so long as it has an instance somewhere in the temporal history of that world, whether or not it is instantiated now.
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then the theory collapses, since we have no way of explaining how a present-tensed non-existence claim could ever be true if it concerned something to which reference is still possible. To solve this problem, we have to treat any tense marker as forming part of the description of the thing to which we cannot refer, along these lines: (2) We cannot refer to [dinosaurs these days] Since there is no entity which satisfies the description of being a dinosaur these days, our claim can be read as true even though reference to dinosaurs which existed in days gone by remains possible. This approach also enables us to make sense of location-relative existence claims (Moltmann 2011) such as badgers exist in Devon; we can read this as the claim that we can refer to entities satisfying the description badger in Devon rather than as a claim that, in Devon, reference to badgers is possible. A third criterion for a satisfactory theory of existence-claims is that it should explain our divergent intuitions about the triviality or significance of positive existence-claims, and about the apparent redundancy or self-defeating nature of non-existence claims. The orthodox Quinean view is that ontic decision decision about what exists can be achieved only at the end of an arduous process: not only must we arrive at our best overall theory; we must then translate that theory into an ontologically perspicuous canonical formulation, perhaps adjusting that theory in the course of translation to achieve maximal ontic economy (Quine 1960: 242). Thus finding out what exists is a considerable challenge, requiring success in both total science and philosophy of language. An alternative view is that disputed questions about ontology for example, whether numbers, propositions or universals exist can be decided quite straightforwardly, simply by paying attention to the kinds of utterance that are treated as legitimate within our current common-sense, scientific or mathematical discourse. Thus, for example, the existence of prime numbers might be taken as established simply by the fact that everyone accepts the truth of there are prime numbers greater than five. A natural corollary of this view is that the existence-claims concerned, because obvious, are insignificant or trivial, although not every defender of the easy approach to ontic decision accepts that.6 The current proposal offers an account of why existence-claims can seem trivial. If claiming that something exists is simply licensing the use of a name or general term, on the grounds that we can refer
The suggestion that apparent ontological disputes can be trivially settled within a discourse originates with Carnap (1956) and has been defended more recently by Stephen Yablo (1998). Van Inwagen (2004) suggests that the existence of properties can be settled quickly, but rejects the suggestion that the conclusion reached is ipso facto trivial.
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to that thing or to things of this kind, then our right to make such an existence-claim is secured simply by the fact that we have a right to use the name or general term in the first place. A statement such as mammals exist can seem trivial because its truth is suggested by the use of the word mammals to use such a word in most contexts is already to suggest that reference to entities of that kind is possible. This also explains in what sense an existence-claim can be described as internal to a discourse in roughly the sense intended by Carnap: anyone who engages in a discourse in which free use is made of some general term Fs ought already to be committed to the view that it is possible to refer to Fs, in which case she should also be prepared to claim that Fs exist, since the purpose of such a claim is precisely to suggest that such reference is possible. Thus existence-claims are internal to a discourse in the sense that anyone who accepts that names and general terms associated with the discourse have a genuinely referential use should thereby be prepared to endorse the corresponding existence-claims. What, then, of the contrary intuition, that existence claims are deep, significant, and hard to adjudicate? That can also be accommodated: although existence-claims seem trivial, since acceptance of the claim that Fs exist is mandatory for anyone who accepts that reference to Fs is possible, it follows neither that they are insignificant, nor that they must be easy to adjudicate. Determining whether a given existenceclaim should be accepted is just as hard as determining whether we can refer to the entity or kind of entity indicated, and this may be a matter of serious empirical investigation (as in the case of Phlogiston), or complex philosophy of language (as in the debate over our alleged ontological commitment to universals). Moreover, claiming that a certain kind of entity exists is a speech-act of immense significance, in so far as it licenses continued free use of the names and general terms contained within our current discourse. Conversely, claiming that something does not exist is significant because it functions to close down debate: the importance, for example, of my telling someone that Phlogiston does not exist is that, if the claim is accepted, all further substantial discussion of Phlogiston ought to cease, unless we decide that we will continue to use the word in a context where words may be used although known to lack a referent, such as fiction. (It is, of course, consistent with the current approach to allow that some uses of such a word may continue, since to say that the function of an existence-claim is to express the possibility of referring to an entity is not yet to say that there is no context in which a word or phrase which lacks a referent can be used.) A surprising feature of non-existence claims is that they can be made using sentences which are guaranteed to be true precisely when the subject-expression lacks a referent; this strikingly distinguishes them from normal predicative sentences, for our usual intuition would be that when such a sentence 9

lacks a referent it either lacks a truth-value or expresses a falsehood. Indeed, this feature of non-existence claims has been proposed by Moltmann (2011) as a test for whether an expression should be counted as an existence-predicate. Famously, Quine used the term Platos Beard to name the puzzle of explaining how a non-existence claim could express a truth, since using a subject-expression in the first place seems to commit us to view that the subject-expression has an existing referent, and thus a non-existence claim presupposes what it seeks to deny (Quine 1948: 1). In fact, Platos Beard can be solved in a way compatible with any theory of existence, in a two-stage process. First, it is noted that claims of non-existence are to be understood as the (wide-scope or external) negation of the corresponding existence-claim, so Pegasus does not exist is read as (Pegasus exists) rather than as ascribing some special nonexistence predicate to Pegasus. Then the problem of explaining how a claim of non-existence can be true reduces to the problem of explaining how the corresponding existence-claim can be false; for as long as we understand how it can be false to claim that Pegasus exists, we thereby also understand how it can be true to make the non-existence claim which is simply the wide-scope negation of the former statement. One way to achieve such an explanation of how Pegasus exists expresses a falsehood is offered by Sainsbury (2004: 196): he counsels that we adopt the framework of Negative Free Logic (NFL), according to which all un-negated subjectpredicate statements with a nonreferring subject expression are counted as false. Thus Pegasus exists is false for the same reason as any statement of the form Pegasus Fs is false that any such statement is to be counted as false so long as Pegasus lacks a referent. Such a suggestion, of course, is compatible with explaining existence in any way we like. Let E stand for a candidate explanation of existence (whatever it happens to be). Then E(Pegasus) will count as false, and E(Pegasus) true, no matter what account of existence is proposed. However, a demerit of appealing to NFL in this way is that it leaves a hostage to fortune: the ability of a non-existence statement to express a truth depends on a decision to treat all unnegated sentences containing referential failures as false, although for some such sentences it may be overwhelmingly more plausible to count them as true: in particular we might notice the variety of sentences that apparently convey the idea that Pegasus does not exist while apparently involving no negation whatsoever, viz. Pegasus is merely a mythical beast; Pegasus is imaginary; Pegasus is a fictional creation, etc. Adopting NFL would require us to count these as literally false if Pegasus lacks a referent although at least prima facie they are used to make claims that are literally true if Pegasus does not exist.

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Better, then, to try to explain the falsity of Pegasus exists without appealing to a universal stipulation that failure of reference entails falsehood. On the current account, this can be done easily: if claiming that Pegasus exists is a matter of asserting that we can refer to Pegasus, then it is obvious that this claim is false; likewise, if claiming that Pegasus does not exist is a matter of asserting that it is not the case that we can refer to Pegasus, then it is easy to see how this claim can be true: if the word Pegasus lacks a referent, then we cannot refer to Pegasus! Indeed, We can refer to x passes Moltmanns proposed test for an existence predicate already mentioned. On her account, a predicate E is an existence predicate iff the result of combining it with a non-referring subject-expression a and a negation operator yields truth rather than a truth-value gap: if Ea is true even though a lacks a referent then E is an existencepredicate. If Moltmann is right, then we can refer to is indeed an existence-predicate, since substituting it for E in the formula yields truth precisely when a does not refer. Objections There are two major objections to the project of explaining existence-claims in terms of reference: one is the accusation that it involves illegitimate semantic ascent, turning existence-claims into metalinguistic assertions about words in one particular language; another that the proposed account would lead to an objectionably prolific ontology, which recognized the existence of possibilia, intentional objects of thought, fictional characters and so on. I shall deal with the problem of semantic ascent first. Suppose that the proposal were slightly different, namely that the function of an existence-claim is to make an assertion about a particular word or phrase in the language, thus: The present king of France does not exist means that the phrase The present king of France does not have a referent. This proposal is clearly unsatisfactory, for reasons outlined by Salmon (1998: 284; Salmon attributes the original insight to Church): the analysans (The present King of France does not have a referent) cannot mean the same as the analysandum (The present King of France exists), since when translated into another language, they both clearly say different things, viz. Le roi prsent de France nexiste pas. The present king of France ne fait rfrence rien [en anglais]. The suggestion should not have been very appealing in the first place: when we make an existence-claim we are saying something whose significance extends beyond a feature of one word or phrase in our 11

language. The evidence for that is as follows: first, if I say that the Prime Minister exists, I thereby license the use of any form of words by which we might refer to him, not merely the use of the phrase the Prime Minister; second, the same existence-claim can be made in different languages and hence using different words (this point is already implicit in Salmons objection); third, as Dummett points out, where the reference of a name is fixed partly by context, that name may in fact have many candidate referents even though in the current context of use that name may coherently be used in a claim of non-existence: someone who said Socrates did not exist would not be meaning to exclude the possibility that anyone was ever called Socrates; his assertion would be consistent with there having been millions bearing that name (Dummett 1983: 282). Thus attributing non-existence to Socrates cannot be the same as saying that Socrates lacks a referent for one can do the former while recognizing an abundance of referents for the word Socrates. Clearly the issue here is the semantic ascent itself: our explanation of what it is to say that Socrates exists, or does not exist, must use the word Socrates in the same way it is used in the sentence used to make the original existence-claim; it is no good to present the word as used in a different way (e.g. in quote marks, referring to the word itself rather than to that words normal referent). This might be thought to present an insuperable obstacle to any account which does preserves the name in question as a name, rather than replacing it with a predicate in the manner suggested by Quine (i.e. reading Socrates exists as Something Socratizes). If we suppose that a names contribution to the truth-conditions of statements in which it occurs is exhausted by its having the referent that it does something that can seem reasonable even to those, like Frege, who credit names with sense as well as reference then an empty name which lacks a referent cannot contribute anything to those truth-conditions, and presumably any statement including a use of that name has an undetermined truth-value. So given that (i) any candidate explanation of a exists must use the name a in the same way as it is used in the target sentence, on pain of illegitimate semantic ascent, and (ii) when a lacks a referent under a certain use any sentence using that name in that way will lack a truth value, it seems to follow that any acceptable explanation of existence-claims will be committed to the view that there can be no true non-existence statements on pain of contradiction: if a does not exist is true, then a lacks a referent, in which case a does not exist must lack a truth-value. One proposal to meet this problem is offered by Thomasson; she suggests that:

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We can use star quotes to pick out terms individuated not phonologically or typographically, but on the basis of meaning (2008: 65) The proposed account is then metasemantic rather than metalinguistic: our explanation will have the following form: Ks exist iff *K* refers (2008:65) Since the use of star quotes guarantees that the expression *K* picks out the term K with the very meaning it has when used in Ks exist, there is no chance of a situation such as that envisaged by Dummett, where K exists is false but *K* refers must be counted as true because the term K has a referent in a different context of use from the one intended. However, this suggestion does not address the original Salmon/Church objection: even when using star quotes to individuate terms according to their meaning, the translation of the analysandum Ks exist into French will obviously have a different meaning from the translation into French of the analysans *K* refers, since the French version of the latter and not the former will then be a statement about a term in English. Using star quotes rather than normal quotes does not get round the fact which the Salmon/Church objection highlights: an existenceclaim is not a statement about a term in one particular language. However, the current proposal can meet these objections. First, it does not commit the error of semantic ascent: when we say that claiming that a exists is a matter of saying that we can refer to a, we make the same use of the term a in both explanans and explanandum; there is no shift of context from talking about the thing itself to talking about the word which attempts to refer to it. Moreover, as noted above, we can explain how the sentence we can refer to a can express a truth although a does not refer, without violating the principle that the contribution made by this name is exhausted by its connection to a referent. Again, a suggestion of Dummetts is germane: we should take the semantic role of an empty name to consist in its having no bearer (1983: 295). Thus a name with no referent does not fail to make a contribution to the truth-conditions of statements in which occurs; rather we should say, in line with the principle, that the contribution of an empty name to the truth-conditions of statements in which it occurs must be limited to the fact that the name has no bearer. For most statements, of course, the consequence will be the same as if we treated the name as making no contribution at all: for any predicate F such that the applicability of the predicate is not decided by the fact that the name has no bearer, a sentence Fa will have an undetermined truth-value when the name a is empty, since the contribution made by the empty name is insufficient to determine the truth or falsity of the sentence. 13

However, in a sentence such as we can refer to a or reference to a is possible, the minimal contribution to truth-conditions made by the empty name the mere fact that the name lacks a referent is sufficient to determine that the sentence is false when a is an empty name. As long as we interpret the principle as saying that an empty name can contribute to truth-conditions only the fact that it lacks a referent, rather than as saying that an empty name fails to make any contribution whatsoever, we can explain how this sentence can be false rather than undecided when the name a is empty. The second objection to the current proposal was that it would lead to an unsightly ontological proliferation: if existence is merely the ability to be referred to, then many more things seem to exist than at first we thought, for we can apparently refer to many more things than the sober-minded ontologist would feel comfortable accepting. One version of this objection is relatively easy to deal with, by exploiting a distinction between specifying an entity and actually referring to it i.e. the words actually having a referent. We can certainly use words to specify more things than actually exist; this is just to say that we can use words in such a way that there would be no doubt about which entity counted as the referent of the term if it had a referent. But that is not the same thing as accepting that these terms do have a referent. For example, there would be no doubt about which entity would be referred to by The present King of France, or Julius (Gareth Evans stipulated name for the unique inventor of the zip if there were one Evans 1979) if these expressions had referents. But the mere fact that these expressions succeed in being that specific does not yet force us to conclude that they have a referent i.e. that they bear the reference-relation to some entity. To explain existence in terms of reference is not to say that every term which is determinate in this way has a referent, and therefore it does not force us to concede that the (apparent) referents of such terms exist. This also explains why the current proposal does not force us to accept the existence of other specifiables for example possible worlds other than our own. We might be able to specify a possible world (e.g. by using the definite description the world most similar to our own in which donkeys talk); but this does not mean that such a world exists unless we also believe that our success in specifying such a world is accompanied by the further success of the words used having a referent. An alternative way of formulating the objection is inspired by Frege: for a word to have a reference is merely for it to make a systematic contribution to the truth-conditions of sentences in which it occurs; thus any word which makes such a contribution has a reference; thus we must recognize the existence of an entity to serve as the referent of every word which makes a contribution to truth-conditions,

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including predicates.7 However, this is merely to redefine reference in such a way that it is no longer essentially relational in such a way that a having a referent is not a necessary condition of having a reference. Under this new account of reference as semantic role (reference S) it does not follow from the fact that a term has a referenceS that the term refers to an entity. That much is clear from the fact that even logical operators such as and or not have a reference S in virtue of the systematic contribution they make to truth-conditions, even though there is nothing to which they refer in the usual sense of being related to some entity. But as long as we stipulate that our account of existence in terms of reference is to be understood in terms of this normal, relational kind of reference rather than as referenceS, there is no danger of having to recognize the existence of a referent for every semantically significant term in the language: such expressions may have reference S without counting as referring in the sense at issue in the proposed account of existence. Perhaps the most persuasive version of the too many entities objection, however, is that which accuses the proposal of forcing unwarranted acceptance of the existence of mere possibilia. If claiming that Fs exist is to say that we can refer to Fs that it is possible for us to refer to Fs then surely we must accept the existence of anything such that it could have been possible for us to refer to it. Since merely possible individuals are entities which we could have referred to (if things had been different and their world had been actual), surely it follows that they exist for we could have referred to them, and on the current account to say that we can refer to something is to say that it exists. Here a first thing to say is that the threat is not as great as we might think: it is notoriously difficult to specify a merely possible individual in such a way that the terms ability to refer is guaranteed, as in the case of Quines famous possible bald man in that doorway (1948: 23). Many mere possibilia will be such that we cannot refer to them, even if they exist, as we do not have resources to ensure that we refer determinately to one rather than the other. However, there is a more serious flaw with this objection, namely that it makes an illegitimate shift from a claim about what we have it in our power to do (we can refer to a; it is possible to refer to a) to a claim about metaphysical possibility (we could have referred to a; reference to as could have been possible). This shift might seem tempting, as there is a pernicious tendency to express metaphysical possibility with the words it is possible that when in fact this form of words expresses no such thing in natural English. The current proposal is this: claiming something exists is to say that we can refer to it; that we have the resources to refer to it; that reference to it is possible in the sense that it is something
See Dummett 1981, p.245-6 for the view that having reference is merely having a semantic role of this kind, but cf. Dummett 1981, p.523 for the denial that having a reference of this kind entitles us to assert the existence of an entity which is the referent of the term in question.
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that we have within our grasp to achieve. None of this brings with it the commitment to entities that we could have referred to if some counterfactual circumstance had been actual. Now it might be objected that, without an analysis in terms of possible worlds, such talk of things we can refer to is opaque and mysterious. Not so the idea of having it within our ability to do something is not something that we need find problematic. The sense of can at issue is precisely that in I can ride a bicycle: not that in some possible world I might be a cyclist (though I am not one here), but rather that cycling is among the things that I can do should I choose. Just so, to claim that a exists is to say that referring to a is something I can do should I wish. Such a claim is compatible with the view that we cannot (in that sense) refer to merely possible objects, and thus compatible with thorough-going actualism. Surely, though, a converse problem threatens: isnt it intuitively correct, on this sense of can, that there exist entities to which we cannot refer perhaps because they are too remote to be individuated or because we are unaware of their existence in the first place? Here the correct answer seems that, although singular reference to such entities (e.g. by giving each a unique name) might be impossible, what we might call descriptive reference is something that is within our grasp for any existing entity. For example, we can refer to the entities to which we cannot achieve singular reference by using the plural description the entities to which we cannot achieve singular reference. Indeed, when Quine answered the question What is there? with the one word Everything, he in a sense succeeded in referring to everything to which one can refer that is to say, everything that exists. Conclusion Quine said that to be is to be the value of a variable (1948: 15). Later this was amended by Susan Haack and others, substituting to be said to be is to be the value of a variable (Haack 1978: 49). This adjustment was undoubtedly needed: the first question of ontology is not What exists?, but rather What is it to claim that something exists? Here I have sketched the beginnings of a defence of one answer to that question: to claim that something exists is to assert that we can refer to it that we have it in our power to achieve reference to it, whether using the same term as in the original existence-claim, or by using another which shares the same referent. I have suggested that this account gives an explanation of the way existence-claims function in debate, licensing some ways of speaking and ruling others unsuitable for literal-minded discourse; it also enables us to explain the most important formal features of existence-claims in ordinary language. Finally, I have tried to show how this account can begin to deal

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with the most pressing objections to it. At the very least, it seems, this account is worthy of further serious consideration.

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References Carnap, R. 1956. Empiricism, semantics and ontology. In Meaning and Necessity. University of Chicago Press. Davidson, D. 1969. The Logical Form of Action Sentences. Reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donnellan, K. S. 1974. Speaking of Nothing. In The Philosophical Review 83: 3-31. Dummett, M. 1981. Frege: Philosophy of Language. 2nd edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dummett, M. 1983. Existence. In The Seas of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, G. 1979. Reference and Contingency. In The Monist 62: 161-189. Frege, G. 1979. Posthumous Writings, trans. Long and White, ed. Hermes, Kambartel, & Kaulbach. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Haack, S. 1978. Philosophy of Logics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawthorne, J. 2009. Superficialism in Ontology. In Chalmers, Manley & Wasserman (eds.) Metametaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, D. K. 1990. Noneism and Allism. In Mind 99: 23-31. McGinn, C. 2002. Logical Properties: Identity, Existence, Predication, Necessity, Truth. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Moltmann, F. 2011 On the Semantics of Existence Predicates. In I. Reich (ed.): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 15 (2010), Universitaet Saarbruecken. Parsons, T. 1980. Nonexistent Objects. Newhaven: Yale University Press. Quine, W. V. O. 1948. On What there is. Reprinted in From a Logical Point of View (1980), 2nd edition, revised. London: Harvard University Press. Quine, W. V. O. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press. Quine, W. V. O. 1969. Quantification and Existence. In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Sainsbury, M. 2004. Reference without Referents. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salmon, N. 1998. Nonexistence. In Nos 32: 277-319. Thomasson, A. L. 2007. Ordinary Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomasson, A. L. 2008. Existence-Questions. In Philosophical Studies 141: 63-78. Van Inwagen, P. 2009. Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment. In Chalmers, Manley & Wasserman (eds.) Metametaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williamson, T. 2002. Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, C. 1999. Truth: A Traditional Debate Reviewed. In Blackburn and Simmons (eds.) Truth. Oxford: OUP

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Yablo, S. (1998). Does ontology rest on a mistake? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 72:229261.

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