Editing Plural quantification (section)

== History ==
The view is commonly associated with [[George Boolos]], though it is older (see notably [[Peter Simons (academic)|Simons]] 1982), and is related to the view of classes defended by [[John Stuart Mill]] and other [[Nominalism|nominalist]] philosophers.  Mill argued that universals or "classes" are not a peculiar kind of thing, having an objective existence distinct from the individual objects that fall under them, but "is neither more nor less than the individual things in the class".  (Mill 1904, II. ii. 2, also I. iv. 3).

A similar position was also discussed by [[Bertrand Russell]] in chapter VI of Russell (1903), but later dropped in favour of a "no-classes" theory.  See also [[Gottlob Frege]] 1895 for a critique of an earlier view defended by [[Ernst Schroeder]].

The general idea can be traced back to [[Leibniz]]. (Levey 2011, pp.&nbsp;129–133)

Interest revived in plurals with work in linguistics in the 1970s by [[Remko Scha]], [[Godehard Link]], [[Fred Landman]], [[Friederike Moltmann]], [[Roger Schwarzschild]], [[Peter Lasersohn]] and others, who developed ideas for a semantics of plurals.