Abstract
As outlined in the Prologue, showing how the conception of existence opposed to Parmenideanism can be good and useful may be more fruitful than just criticizing the received view. However, the received view has its own difficulties, the most notable of which I shall list in this chapter, in no specific order. Some problems will turn out to be more compelling than others. Taken collectively, though, they should have enough weight to move the dialectical situation to the point at which investigating the alternative becomes a promising idea. This will happen in the following parts of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
The symbol “λ”, called lambda-operator or lambda-abstractor, stands here for an operator derived from Alonzo Church’s lambda-calculus, which can be used to build structured predicates out of formulas. If α is a formula and x a variable, “λx.α” can be thought of as the predicate “abstracted” from the formula, and read as: “the property of being an x, such that α”.
- 2.
Salmon (1987), p. 64. See also the arguments in Evans (1982), Ch. 10. Also for Evans “there seems to be very strong evidence that the English word ‘exists’ is used, at least on some occasions, to signify a first-level concept, true of everything” (p. 345).
- 3.
Wittgenstein (1921), p. 23.
- 4.
Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998), p. 174.
- 5.
Miller (2002), Sections 3 and 5.
- 6.
To be sure, two alternative strategies are available to the Parmenidean here: first, she can make the surprise move of claiming that Gandalf or Marvel super-heroes do exist! (Children may be happy to know this – until they hear the full-fledged story, to be recounted later on, of exactly what the Parmenidean admits the existence of here). Second, she can say that all those statements are not literally true, and commit us to nothing, whether existent or not. The two strategies are not even exclusive: the Parmenidean can allow herself a combination of both. She can declare that those things exist, some claims on them are literally true, others, that would be embarrassing if taken as literally true, are not so and do not involve reference to anything. We shall come back to these issues at length.
- 7.
Miller (2002), Section 5. Also see Miller (1975).
- 8.
McGinn (2000), p. 29.
- 9.
- 10.
This point is made by Miller (1975), p. 342 and p. 353: “That there is a difference between Socrates being Socrates and Socrates existing is evident from the fact that, once true, ‘Socrates is Socrates’ can never be false, whereas ‘Socrates exists’ can”.
- 11.
Meyer and Lambert (1968), p. 10.
- 12.
See Montague (1973).
- 13.
As appropriately pointed out in Moltmann (2009).
- 14.
The objection is as old as Sellars (1952).
- 15.
See e.g. Donnellan (1974).
- 16.
See Plantinga (1974), pp. 146–7.
- 17.
The example is due to Gareth Evans: see Evans (1982), p. 344.
- 18.
See Kroon (2000), pp. 98–9.
- 19.
The Russellian thesis that definite descriptions are not genuine singular terms, and can be paraphrased away into quantificational constructions, has been the subject of controversy, famously from Strawson (1950) onwards. Some take the whole Russell/Strawson debate as a mere clash of intuitions (e.g., Thomason 1990, p. 326). For a recent defense of the view that at times descriptions work semantically like proper names, see Recanati (1993).
- 20.
This is the view pursued, e.g., by serious actualist Plantinga in Plantinga (1974), Ch. VIII.
- 21.
Williams (1981), p. 126.
- 22.
David Braun has claimed: “Like most philosophers, I will assume that, other things being equal, we should not hypothesize nonexistent objects to solve semantic problems” (Braun 1993, p. 453). “Other things being equal” is at stake.
- 23.
See for instance Barnes (1982), p. 173.
- 24.
Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998), p. 172.
- 25.
See Kripke (1972). This is often called “strong” descriptivism on proper names, as opposed to a weaker thesis. Weak descriptivism admits that descriptions do not give the meaning of the name, but makes two other claims: that they fix its reference, and that they express information known to the competent speaker who uses the name to refer to the right thing. Kripke grants the first, but just for some names; and rejects the second.
- 26.
Cfr. Searle (1958), pp. 254–5.
- 27.
In Kripkean jargon, proper names like “eight” are “rigid designators”: they designate the same object at all possible worlds (we will discuss possible worlds from Chapter 6 onwards); descriptions like “the number of planets” typically don’t. Some descriptions are indeed rigid, for they are phrased in terms of necessary properties: “the second power of two” denotes the number four rigidly, as it refers to a property the number four has at all possible worlds. Some have therefore suggested that proper names could be equivalent to rigid descriptions, or “rigidified” ones. I find the view not very plausible, but will not argue for this here.
- 28.
- 29.
With the aforementioned caveat: the Parmenidean may go for the surprise claim that Holmes and Gandalf do exist after all, and “Holmes” and “Gandalf” refer to them.
- 30.
See Evans (1982), pp. 348 ff.
- 31.
See Ibid, p. 349.
- 32.
van Inwagen (1977), p. 302.
- 33.
Strawson (1967), p. 195.
- 34.
Sainsbury (2010), p. 101.
- 35.
Again, recall the caveat: an alternative option for the Parmenidean may be to admit that (purely) fictional or mythical characters really exist, and then explain their manifest ontological difference with respect to ordinary objects by saying that they are things of an exotic kind. This is carried out in the so-called realist theories of fictional objects, which we will meet in the next Chapters.
- 36.
- 37.
This is not uncontroversial. Some revisionary ontological approaches only grant a looser connection between the original sentence and the required paraphrase: for instance, Sainsbury (2010), p. 102, seems to demand such a non-demanding attitude towards the paraphrases proposed by anti-realists on fictional objects. If the ontologist’s aim is not so much to make clear the actual ontological import of people’s everyday talk (taken as unknown to them!), as to reform our imprecise language so that it better sticks to what actually is out there, she may not want her translations to do what we normally expect from a good translation. These two attitudes, clarification vs. reformation, correspond to the distinction between hermeneutic and revolutionary ontological reconstructivism, as introduced in Burgess and Rosen (1997). Though I cannot argue it here, I think that revolutionary reconstructivism can find its test cases only in the comparison of its paraphrases with the commonsensical image of the world given by our imprecise everyday talk. Carrara and Varzi argue this extensively in the aforementioned works.
- 38.
As John Woods has appropriately claimed: “If you say that Holmes lived in Baker Street I may wager that you are mistaken. [But] even if I were careful to hedge my bet, by counterclaiming only that Holmes did not live in Baker Street, what you say wins; what I say loses.” (Woods 1974, p. 13).
- 39.
Fine (1982), p. 99.
- 40.
See e.g. Zalta (1988), pp. 7–8.
- 41.
See Priest (2005), p. 60.
- 42.
See Priest (2007).
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Berto, F. (2013). Troubles for the Received View. In: Existence as a Real Property. Synthese Library, vol 356. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4207-9_3
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