We often speak as if there are merely possible people—for example, when we make such claims as that most possible people are never going to be born. Yet most metaphysicians deny that anything is both possibly a person and never born. Since our unreflective talk of merely possible people serves to draw non-trivial distinctions, these metaphysicians owe us some paraphrase by which we can draw those distinctions without committing ourselves to there being merely possible people. We show that such paraphrases are unavailable if we limit ourselves to the expressive resources of even highly infinitary first-order modal languages. We then argue that such paraphrases are available in higher-order modal languages only given certain strong assumptions concerning the metaphysics of properties. We then consider alternative paraphrase strategies, and argue that none of them are tenable. If talk of merely possible people cannot be paraphrased, then it must be taken at face value, in which case it is necessary what individuals there are. Therefore, if it is contingent what individuals there are, then the demands of paraphrase place tight constraints on the metaphysics of properties: either (i) it is necessary what properties there are, or (ii) necessarily equivalent properties are identical, and having properties does not entail even possibly being anything at all.

中文翻译：

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计算不可能的

我们经常说好像只有可能的人一样——例如，当我们声称大多数可能的人永远不会出生时。然而，大多数形而上学家否认任何事物都可能是一个人，而且从未出生。由于我们对仅可能的人的不加反思的谈话有助于得出不平凡的区别，因此这些形而上学家欠我们一些解释，我们可以通过这些解释来得出这些区别，而无需承诺只存在可能的人。我们表明，如果我们将自己限制在甚至高度无限的一阶模态语言的表达资源上，这样的释义是不可用的。然后我们争辩说，只有在关于属性的形而上学的某些强假设下，才能在高阶模态语言中使用此类释义。然后我们考虑替代的释义策略，并争辩说它们都站不住脚。如果仅仅谈论可能的人是无法解释的，那么就必须从表面上看，在这种情况下，有哪些人是必要的。因此，如果个体的存在是有条件的，那么释义的要求对属性的形而上学施加了严格的限制：要么（i）有什么属性是必要的，要么（ii）等价的属性必须是相同的，并且具有属性根本不需要甚至可能是任何东西。