This isn't just one unfortunate reference to the group, a singular blip in an otherwise scrupulously sourced document.
The category of object, for example, is distinguished by reference to the linguistic category of proper name (Dummett 1973/1981, 55 56; cf. Wright 1983, 13 and Hale 1987, 3 4)—i.e., an object just is the correlate of a proper name, where proper names are held to include all singular terms (including singular substantival phrases preceded by the definite article).
This article was amended on 4 February 2015 to correct a reference to mitochondria from the singular to the plural.
This use is so well established that the OED gives it uncritically as sense 4 of the word "them": "In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun of undetermined gender: him or her".
Thus a reference to a singular contingent fact to explain why you never succeed in killing your younger self seems not to fulfil the requirement of being an explanation.
"I begged him to let me in, on my own terms, without reference to a singular god".
"I begged him to let me in, on my own terms, without reference to a singular god". Early Saturday evening Stallings' dance troupe named "glo" executed a site-specific dance installation at Paradise Garden that successfully linked the choreographer and folk artist's worlds.
Laycock attempts to dissolve the problem by attacking what led to it, viz., that all reference is singular reference, and mass reference is reference to singular sums (which have all of their parts essentially).
First, a sentence reports an intentional phenomenon if it contains a singular term that purports to refer to some object and it is such that neither it nor its negation implies that the purported reference of the singular term does or does not exist.
On the Fregean view, a thought or belief can be about a concrete individual (its reference), but what matters to the individuation (or the identity) of the thought's content is not the reference of the singular term, but the sense or mode of presentation of the reference, i.e., something abstract.
But, it is controversial whether definite reference to stuff is singular reference.
