Quine “On what there is”

looking, not at the beliefs but at the language used to express them. (The method of semantic ascent.) Certainly some language is highly subject to interpretation, and the method of semantic ascent may not be terribly helpful in such cases, but Quine is, or at least thinks he is, talking about simple clear cases:
Pegasus exists. False. The Pegasus-idea exists. True.
(Actually Quine thinks the second one is also false.) Quine grants that there is a Pegasus-idea for the sake of argument since his point is that, even if there were a Pegasus-idea, it would be a very different sort of thing from what Pegasus would be.

If Pegasus and the Pegasus idea both existed, how would they differ?

*One is physical and the other is not; it is, presumably mental.

*Only one of them has wings

*One exists at a particular time and place.

Quine argues, controversially, that possibilities don’t exist. (That is,

as mere possibilities; possibilities that are actual obviously do exist.) To say that it is possible that winged horses might exist is not the same as saying that there is a possibility, a possible world, in which Pegasus exists. Quine claims that to conclude the existence of possible worlds from the possibility that winged horses might exist is the same mistake as to conclude that Pegasus exists from the fact that Pegasus does not exist, that is, from getting tangled in Plato’s Beard.

Suppose you believe there are winged horses and I don’t. You can say, “There is some object such that Shaughan doesn’t believe that it exists.” What can I say to express my disagreement with you? If I say, for example, “Pegasus does not exist.” There seems to be a problem. What is it?

Pegasus exists.

Something Pegasizes.

There is an x such that Pegasizes(x).

Additional Problem: There is no round square.

Meaningless exists.

Pegasus doesn’t exist.

The round square exists.

There is some object x such that x is round and x is square.

-- ShaughanLavine - 18 Jan 2008