The Many and the One, Ch. 2
Chapter 2, ‘Taking Plurals at Face Value’, continues at an introductory level.
Oddly, Florio and Linnebo give almost no examples of the full range of plural expressions which they think a formal logic of plurals might aim to regiment (compare, for example, the rich diet of examples given by Oliver and Smiley in §1.2 of their Plural Logic, ‘Plurals in Mathematics and Logic’). Rather F&L start by immediately sketching three singularist strategies for eliminating plurals, starting the with familiar option of trading in a plural term denoting many things for a singular term denoting the set of those things.
They will be returning to discuss these singularist strategies in detail later. But for now, in their §2.2, F&L introduce the rival idea that “plurals deserve to be understood in their own terms by allowing the use of plural expressions in our regimenting language”. §2.3 then announces “the” language of plural logic. But that’s evidently something of a misnomer. It is a plural formal language, but — for a start — it lacks any function expressions (and recall how central it is O&S’s project to have a workable theory account of function expressions which take plural arguments).
F&L leave it open whether one should “require a rigid distinction between the types of argument place of predicates. An argument place that is open to a singular argument could be reserved exclusively for such arguments. A similar restriction could be imposed on argument places open to plural arguments.” But why should we want such selection restrictions? O&S remark very early on (their p. 2) that — bastard cases aside — “every simple English predicate that can take singular terms as arguments can take plural ones as well.” Are they wrong? And if not, why should we want a formal language to behave differently?
F&L seem think that not having selection restrictions would depart from normal logical practice. They write
In the philosophical and logical tradition, it is widely assumed that if an expression can be replaced by another expression salva congruitate in one context, then it can be so replaced in all contexts. This assumption of “strict typing” is true of the language of first-order logic, as well as of standard presentations of second-order logic.
But that’s not accurate. For example, in a standard syntax of the kind F&L seem to assume for singular first-order logic, a name can be substituted salva congruitate for a variable when that variable is free, but not when it is quantified. (As it happens, I think this is a strike against allowing free variables! — but F&L aren’t in a position to say that.) Any anyway, there is a problem about such selection restrictions once we add descriptions and functional terms, as Oliver and Smiley point out (Plural Logic, p. 218). If we allow possibly plural descriptions and possibly multi-valued functions (and it would be odd if a plural logic didn’t) it won’t in general be decidable which resulting terms are singular arguments and which are plural; so having singular/plural selection restrictions on argument places will make well-formedness undecidable. (If F&L don’t like that argument and/or have a special account of ‘singular’ vs ‘plural argument’, which they haven’ previously defined, then they need to tell us.)
Moving on, §2.4 presents what F&L call “The traditional theory of plural logic”. I’m not sure O&S, for example, would be too happy about that label for a rather diminished theory (still lacking function terms, for a start), but let that pass. This “traditional” theory is what you get by adding rules for the plural quantifiers which parallel the rules for the singular quantifiers, plus three other principles of which the important one for now is the unrestricted Comprehension principle: ∃xφ(x) → ∃xx∀x(x ≺ xx 
φ(x)) (if there are some φs, then there are some things such that an object is one of them iff it is φ).
Evidently unrestricted Comprehension gives us some big pluralities! Take φ(x) to be the predicate x = x, and we get that there are some things (i.e. all objects whatsover) such that any object at all is one of them. F&L flag up that there may be trouble waiting here, “because there is no properly circumscribed lot of ‘all objects whatsoever’.” Indeed! This is going to be a theme they return to.
§2.5 and §2.6 note that plural logic has been supposed to have considerable philosophical significance. On the one hand, it arguably is still pure logic and ontologically innocent: “plural variables do not range over a special domain but range in a special, plural way over the usual, first-order domain.”
And pressing this idea, perhaps (for example) we can sidestep some familiar issues if “quantification over proper classes might be eliminated in favor of plural quantification over sets”. On the other hand, a plural logic is expressively richer than standard first-order logic which only has singular quantification — it enables us, for example, to formulate categorical theories without non-standard interpretations. F&L signal scepticism, however, about these sorts of claims; again, we’ll hear more.
The chapter finishes with §2.7, promisingly titled ‘Our methodology’. One of the complaints (fairly or unfairly) about O&S’s book has been the lack of a clear and explicit methodology: what exactly are the rules of their regimentation game, which pushes them towards a rather baroque story? Why insist (as they do) that our regimented language tracks ordinary language in allowing empty names while e.g. cheerfully going along with the material conditional with all its known shortcomings? (If conventionally tidying the conditional is allowed, why not tidying away the empty names?) Disappointingly, despite its title, F&L’s very short section doesn’t do much better than O&S. “We aim to provide a representation of plural discourse that captures the logical features that are important in the given context of investigation.” Well, yes. But really, that settles nothing until the “context of investigation” is articulated.
To be continued.
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