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la xod cusku di'e
Does it make sense to want or need things that don't exist? It could be said that the sentence takes the speaker to an imaginary world where the item exists; it's hypothetical anyway, so why be fussy about truth values? The nonexistent item exists to the extent that it's being discussed as a real item, and desired based on those properties.
Existence is not the real issue here. We all know that boxes
exist, and still there is a difference between the opaque and
transparent readings of "I need a box". Existence examples are
just useful because non-existents make sense with the opaque
reading but not with the transparent reading, but existence is
not the point of the distinction.
{mi nitcu lo tanxe} says that if you take the set of all boxes,
examine each box, and you put on one side those that satisfy
the sentence and on the other side those that don't satisfy the
sentence, then in the end the side with those that do satisfy it
is not empty. That's the transparent reading of "I need a box".
The opaque reading on the other hand tells you nothing about each
box. When you need any box, you don't need any one in particular,
it is not possible to use that sentence and test each box to see
whether it makes the sentence true, because the sentence is not
about each box. The sentence uses the meaning "box" but it does
not make any claim about particular boxes.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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