Such phrases do not contribute objects as the constituents of the singular propositions in which they occur.

Gov. Kingston's proposals for terms contained the following rather singular proposition:

But although the proposition is synthetical, it is nevertheless only a singular proposition.

Every affirmative existential proposition can thus, theoretically, be replaced by a disjunction of positive singular propositions.

Any meaningful singular proposition licences an "existential generalisation" of this sort, and if the former is true, so inevitably is the latter.

Thus only singular propositions are of subject-predicate form, and they are irreducibly singular, i.e. not reducible to a general proposition.

Similarly, negative existential propositions can be reproduced in terms of, and are theoretically interchangeable with, certain conjunctions of negative singular propositions.

It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal.

This singular proposition was of course refused: Blacklock remarking that he had no fear of the natives, if these were let alone; de Coetlogon refusing in the circumstances to recognise any neutral territory at all.

The two sentences do not differ in their contents, the singular proposition expressed by the statement that Superman/Clark Kent is a wimp, but by some implicitly referred to way of taking the proposition.

To claim that things of a certain sort exist, it might be said, is no different, truth-functionally at least, from claiming that a certain disjunction of singular propositions about entities of which the world happens to consist is true.

Yet even on the most charitable view of facts, one can hardly treat propositions like "Ruritania does not exist" as being on the same logical footing as any other synthetic true singular propositions without throwing into confusion the whole concept of existence.

If this is true, it follows of course that the use of inflected forms of to be in predicate places (as, for example, in "I think, therefore I am" ) must be rejected as ungrammatical; and similarly for the verb exist, especially in singular propositions.

Sentences with a proper name subject were regarded as universal in character, interpretable as 'every Caesar is a man'see e.g. the argument by the medieval logician William of Ockham that singular propositions are universal, in Summa Logicae III. 8 (??).

Should we assume that the meaningfulness of such a hypothesis necessarily depends on the possibility (in principle, at least) of turning the relevant propositional schema into a meaningful singular proposition, viz. by replacing the "bound" variable (the variable governed by the "existential quantifier" ) with an appropriate name, or a naming phrase?

But if we begin with the assumption, say, that there is at least one star in the heavens that never has been, or ever will be, discovered or talked about, then evidently no meaningful let alone true singular proposition can be produced in support of such an assumption, for no such object can be named.