Abstract
Abstract This introductory chapter surveys plural phenomena and argues for their logical significance. Terms may be classified as singular or plural, according to the number of things they are capable of denoting. Predicates and function signs may take plural terms as arguments, and function signs may express multivalued functions and produce plural functional terms (the wives of Henry VIII). Received philosophical and formal logic, however, makes no place for these plural phenomena. Strategies for a logic of plurals can therefore be broadly classified as singularist or pluralist. The singularist forces plurals into the old singular mould, whereas the pluralist develops a new plural logic that directly accommodates plural terms, plural predicates, multivalued functions, and plural quantification. In Chapters 3 and 4, general singularist strategies are eliminated. In this chapter, Michael Dummett’s more piecemeal singularist attempts to deal with plural phenomena are criticized.
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