Negative Existentials

In Chapter 5 , Davidson takes up the issue of negative existentials. He begins by considering three different arguments that there cannot be true negative existential sentences. He then turns to a number of different replies to these arguments, including a gappy proposition reply and a metalinguistic reply. He argues that a reply on which one denies serious actualism is to be preferred to the other canvassed replies. He then takes up the issue of existentialism, the view that singular propositions cannot exist independently of objects they are about. He considers various replies that one might make to the main anti-existentialist argument from Alvin Plantinga&s;s paper “On Existentialism.” He argues that if one is going to be an existentialist, one should allow propositions to be true in worlds without existing in those worlds. He concludes the chapter by examining an argument from Kenneth Boyce that the existentialist cannot allow that there are merely quidditative differences between possible worlds. Davidson argues that some existentialists can allow for worlds to differ only quidditatively.