  A basic idea here (e.g., in Routley 1980) is to reassess the status of the existential quantifier: \(\exists\). It is commonplace amongst logicians, especially since Russell 1905 and especially Quine’s article “On What There Is”, to read this as ontologically loaded; so if \(\exists x Ax\) is true then some \(x\) exists and has property \(A\). Sylvan urges that we distinguish between particular claims (‘some \(x\) is \(A\)’) and existential claims (‘an existing \(x\) is \(A\)’). With the latter existential reading, it is impossible to claim that some things just do not exist; that amounts to saying something both exists and does not exist, so it exists after all. But with the former particular reading, the claim ‘some things do not exist’ comes out as intended, with its apparent natural language meaning. Because the existential interpretation of the backward ‘E’ symbol has become hopelessly entrenched, Sylvan introduced new symbols, ‘P’ (for particular) and its dual ‘U’ (universal), to act as neutral quantifiers. Thus the logical ground was laid for subsequent work in neo-Meinongian metaphysics (cf. Section 3).