A Contextualist Treatment of Negative Existentials

In this paper, I want to vindicate the contextualist treatment that is typically applied by artefactualists on fictional entities (ficta) both to general and to singular negative existentials. According to this treatment, the truth value of a negative existential, whether general or singular, changes according to whether the existential quantifier or the first-order existence predicate is contextually used as respectively ranging over and applying to a restricted or an unrestricted domain of beings. In (2003), Walton has criticized this treatment with respect to singular negative existentials in particular. First of all, however, as (Predelli, Stefano. 2002. ‘Holmes’ and Holmes. A Millian analysis of names from fiction. Dialectica 56. 261–279) has shown, this treatment can be applied to singular predications in general, independently of the existential case. Moreover, not only does applying it to singular negative existentials explain why we may contextually use the quantifier restrictedly in general negative existentials, but also it accounts for why comparative negative existentials, both singular and general, may have different truth values as well depending on the comparison group they mobilize.