Entitiessuch

Entitiessuch is a neologistic term used in ontology and philosophical semantics to denote the class or collection of entities that satisfy a given description introduced by a qualifying phrase such as “such” or “such as.” In this framework, entitiessuch(P) designates the extension of a property or description P across a specified domain, forming the set of all entities that meet P.

Formalization: In symbolic terms, entitiessuch(P) ≡ { e | P(e) is true in domain D }. The construction is analogous to set-builder notation and to the extension of a predicate in formal logic. It provides a way to talk about the reference of descriptive phrases in a mathematically tractable form.

Origins and usage: The term is not widely standardized and appears mainly in theoretical notes and experimental discussions about reference, description, and description-driven inquiry. It is sometimes employed pedagogically to illustrate how natural-language qualifiers map to extensions in a model, and occasionally appears in thought experiments exploring how language tracks collections of objects.

Examples: entitiessuch(red, round objects) would denote all objects that are red and round within the domain D. More complex forms, such as entitiessuch(largeness and age > 1000 years), illustrate multi-property descriptions and their resulting extensions.

Relations and limitations: Related notions include class, set, extension, predicate, and description logic. Entitiessuch serves as a bridge between linguistic description and mathematical collection. Limitations include potential ambiguity in how to interpret “such” phrases, context-sensitivity, and the possibility of empty extensions in certain domains.