Quantifier-Variance is the doctrine that there are alternative, equally legitimate meanings one can attach to the quantifiers – so that in one perfectly good meaning of ‛there exists’, I may say something true when I assert ‛there exists something which is a compound of this pencil and your left ear’, and in another, you may say something true when you assert ‛there is nothing which is composed of that pencil and my left ear’. And on one view – perhaps not the only possible one – the general significance of this variation in quantifier meanings lies in its deflationary impact on ostensibly head-on disagreements about what kind of objects the world contains: [it may be] a matter of their protagonists choosing to use their quantifiers (and other associated vocabulary, such as ‛object’) to mean different things – so that in a sense they simply go past each other. — Bob Hale and Crispin Wright
(i) quantifiers cannot vary their meaning extensionally by changing the domain of quantification; (ii) quantifiers cannot vary their meaning intensionally without collapsing into logical pluralism; (iii) quantifier variance is not an ontological doctrine; (iv) quantifier variance is not compatible with charitable translation and as such is internally inconsistent.
In contemporary metaontological discussions, quantifier variance is the view according to which there is no unique best language to de- scribe the world. Two equivalent descriptions of the world may differ for a variety of pragmatic purposes, but none is privileged as providing the correct account of reality. — Finn and Bueno
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