Skolem fragments (Q1077397)

The Skolem fragment of a theory T is defined as the set of all its theorems that are (nonvacuously) existentially quantified. The empty domain is admitted as a possible model. It is held that if every model of T contains some, or some number of, objects (or objects of some kind A), then the same holds for its Skolem fragment. And it is suggested that this provides a syntactic form of one of Quine's various ''criteria of ontological commitment''. For theories without identity the proof offered wobbles at the crucial point, in that it rests on the mere assertion that ''any theory committed to the existence of n objects must be able to discriminate them pairwise'' (p. 230) by means of monadic formulas. (A counterexample seems to be the theory of dense ordering without endpoints formulated in a language devoid of constants.) This is not to say that the stated result does not hold; only that a general proof is wanting.