Abstract
What Herodotus called the ¢rc¾ kakîn, the beginning of troubles, in our case takes place with Parmenides of Elea, the Greek philosopher lived between sixth and fifth century B.C., who, in his poem On Nature , forbade to talk, and also to think, about what is not:
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Notes
- 1.
Parmenides, On Nature, fr. 2.
- 2.
See Ruggiu (1991).
- 3.
Not zero support: the thesis that being is eternal because, if it underwent change and becoming, it would not be (when it is not), is supported in Italy by the philosopher Emanuele Severino. I shall return to this view, labeled (somehow misleadingly) “neo-Parmenideanism”, in the third part of the book.
- 4.
What we have for sure is a historical site called Wilusa or Truwisa in Hittite, Ilion or Troia in Greek, located in Anatolia, and whose ruins have been brought to light by the excavations of various archaeologists. These have, in fact, revealed several past cities, built in chronological succession, and which have been numbered. What Schliemann came across is called Troy II, which he claimed to be Homer’s city. The generally agreed-upon candidate for that role is, however, Troy VII, built in the thirteenth century BC, and which appears to have been devastated by a war.
- 5.
Cartwright (1960), p. 21. Here is George Edward Moore’s formulation: “It seems as if purely imaginary things, even though they be absolutely self-contradictory like a round square, must still have some kind of being – must still be in a sense – simply because we can think and talk about them. […] And now in saying that there is no such thing as a round square, I seem to imply that there is such a thing. It seems as if there must be such a thing, merely in order that it may have the property of not being. It seems, therefore, as if to say of anything whatever that we can mention that it absolutely is not, were to contradict ourselves: as if absolutely everything we can mention must be, must have some kind of being.” (Moore 1953, p. 289)
- 6.
The intuition here is that things like Sherlock Holmes, not existing, cannot think about anything, whereas by being ordinary existing people we can think about him. On the other hand, within Doyle’s novels Sherlock Holmes performs various activities involving thought (Holmes reasons quite well there). “Sherlock Holmes thinks” might sound true, if not for stronger reasons, because such statements as “Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant detective with amazing capacities of observation and deduction” sound in some sense true, insofar as they are faithful reports of the contents of Doyle’s stories. Now if one is a brilliant detective with amazing capacities of observation and deduction, then he thinks. As we shall see later on, a plausible strategy is available for keeping together the two apparently clashing intuitions: Sherlock Holmes does not think, because he does not exist; Sherlock Holmes does think, for this is how he is portrayed in Doyle’s novels.
- 7.
Williams (1981), p. 3.
- 8.
See Ibid, pp. 6–7.
- 9.
See Ibid, pp. 10–2.
- 10.
See Miller (2002), Introduction.
- 11.
Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, 167a 4–6.
- 12.
See Kahn (1973), p. 294, p. 336.
- 13.
For instance by Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998), p. 167.
- 14.
Quine (1953), pp. 13–4.
- 15.
See Strawson (1950).
- 16.
See Searle (1968).
- 17.
Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998), p. 169.
- 18.
“Impressions, therefore, are our lively and strong perceptions; ideas are the fainter and weaker. […] All our ideas, or weak perceptions, are derived from our impressions, or strong perceptions, and […] we can never think of any thing which we have not seen without us, or felt in our minds.” (Hume 1740, p. 9).
- 19.
Hume (1739), p. 66.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Hume (1740), pp. 17–8.
- 22.
See Williams (1981), p. 19.
- 23.
See Malcolm (1960).
- 24.
Kant (1781), p. 505.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Ibid, p. 506.
- 27.
Ibid, p. 504.
- 28.
- 29.
“Frege, I believe […] gave a clear sense to the doctrine that Kant obscurely expressed (and then obscurely defended) in the sentence ‘Being is not a real predicate’. Frege’s account of the concept of existence is the correct one. It uncovers the grammatical rules according to which existential propositions are actually used, and were actually used by Kant. Kant did not, in the way Frege did, know how the word ‘exist’ is used; but he did know, as we all do, how to use it. And in discussing it he of course used it and allied expressions, ‘posit’, ‘actual’, ‘object’, ‘given’, etc., whose use can only be fully understood in the light of what Frege and his successors have said.” (Williams 1981, pp. 29–30).
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Berto, F. (2013). The Paradox of Non-Being. In: Existence as a Real Property. Synthese Library, vol 356. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4207-9_1
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