Workshop: Semantic Paradox, Context, and Generality
June 26-28, 2019, University of Salzburg

Abstract: Absolutism about quantifiers is the view that quantifiers sometimes range over an absolutely comprehensive domain. Relativists about quantifiers often oppose this view on the grounds that concepts such as set are ‘indefinitely extensible. To assuage doubts about the coherence of this view, relativism and the argument from indefinite extensibility may be regimented with the help of ‘modalized quantifiers’. But what is the status of these putatively relativist-friendly generalizing devices? Some relativists may be tempted to combine their quantifier-relativism with a species of absolutism about modalized quantifiers. I argue that this hybrid view faces a revenge problem.

See also: Everything, More or Less, §7.5

Slides [.pdf, new tab]