I hold that the things best scientific theory quantifies underexist. They are the hollow men, heads filled with straw etc. What? Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you said …

So it would be a little troubling if best scientific theory started quantifying over imaginary friends.

All product branding, and the concomitant implicit agency of the brand, is imaginary. But it has quite an impact. This is an observation of no small consequence to contemporary society. The philosophical issues are analogous to the trivial example of children’s fanciful playmates.

She [the study director] conceded that imaginary friends might not be assets for a child in a confrontation with a bully.

“Might” not?

That doesn’t seem quite right to me—a product’s brand is a (actual, physical) insignia on the product (or its packaging) which conveys a particular meaning, namely that the product is being sold by some particular company. This seems no more imaginary to me than language in general. Granted there is some kind of large imaginary structure built around many brands that I’m not sure how to describe—is that structure intrinsic to the branding itself? or am I missing your point?

At least, that’s what I got from “Two Dogmas.” I’m not very familiar with his philosophical development after that.

Psychologists who create our current scientific theories are more concerned about the effects of a phenomenon like “imaginary friends” than with the precise ontological status of the phenomenon, so their theories might not be the best guide to what things exist. The definition of “best scientific theory” can probably take this into account, possibly by demanding that different branches of science combine to form a coherent theory. For instance, considerations of the physics of imaginary friends could help refine psychologists’ views of their ontology.

Roughly, we should paraphrase “Brock as a child had an imaginary friend, a pegasus named Peter” as something like “It is to be imagined that Brock as a child had a pegasus named Peter as a friend.”

The odd thing about the sentential operator “It is to be imagined that” is that it is only partially opaque, to use Quine’s terminology. We might call it “translucent.”

That is to say, I can quantify into some of the places, but not others. There was a boy for whom it is to be imagined that he had a pegasus named Peter for a friend. But there has never been a pegasus named Peter of whom it is to be imagined that Brock had him for a friend.

Unless there’s something deeply objectionable about translucent sentential operators (and I admit they are rather odd), this seems to be the sort of solution a Quinean should accept.

You must definitely be academic parasites on some kind of tenure or grant system.

What do you call a bus of a hundred liberals going over a cliff with two seats empty? A crying shame.

How can you tell a dead dog from a dead liberal? Skid marks in front of the dog. Reverse marks after the liberal.

What do you say to a liberal who draws down a paycheck in the private sector? Fries and a coke, please.

When liberals die, why do they end up in limbo? Because even hell has standards.

I was independently wealthy by the time I was 34 from software development. No college education, in fact no formal education of any kind.

You keep studying obscure navel gazing metaphysics, dude, I just know that is going to pay off for you one of these days. There’s a huge demand for that stuff amongst other navel gazers, alas, who tend to be dead broke professors and other assorted uni losers and parasites. Remember, it’s all about figuring out how to never actually graduate. That way you’ll never have to become a man, abandon your hebephrenic and neurotic fixation on rubbish or stop collecting Pez dispensers and go to get a job.