Abstract
It is a shared opinion that Russell’s and Quine’s critiques were a definitive demolition of Meinongianism. It is not clear, though, exactly what Russell and Quine demolished. The Parmenidean philosophers may have wanted to dismiss both (a) the claim that there are nonexistent objects, and (b) the Unrestricted Comprehension Principle, in a single move. But the two should be kept distinct.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See Mally (1912).
- 2.
See Findlay (1963).
- 3.
- 4.
See Parsons (1980), p. 19 and p. 74. One can formally express the (NCP) in a second order language, just as we did with the unrestricted principle of the naïve theory. Let P! be a predicative variable ranging on nuclear properties, α a condition on properties with no free occurrences of y; then the (NCP) is phrased as: ΣyΛP!(P!y ↔ α).
- 5.
- 6.
Formally, second order: x = y ↔ ΛP!(P!x ↔ P!y).
- 7.
What these are depends on one’s theory of properties, specifically, on which (nuclear) properties there are – and Parsons has an articulated view on this. How comprehension principles for objects and properties interact in a general theory of nonexistent objects is a subtle issue for any kind of neo-Meinongianism. Generous principles for both objects and properties are jointly threatened by paradoxical constructions akin to the classical logical paradoxes. One such construction is the Clark-Rapaport paradox, reported in Rapaport (1978), and discussed e.g. in Zalta (1983), Appendix A, and Jacquette (1996), Chapter II. Technical solutions are usually available, though. Critics of neo-Meinongianisms have focused more on their purely philosophical difficulties. Not answering to these is taken as more troublesome for a theory of objects than being subject to a quick formal paradox (which usually has quick technical solutions).
- 8.
See e.g. Reicher (2010), Section 5.2.
- 9.
Routley (1980), quoted in Parsons (1979b), p. 652. The same view is held by Jacquette (1996), p. 91.
- 10.
- 11.
I say “largely tentative”, for the (perhaps fuzzy) border between semantics and pragmatics is also one of the borders of my competences. I am confident that ontological issues concerning a general theory of nonexistent objects are to some extent orthogonal to the linguistic issues to be discussed here.
- 12.
See Donnellan (1966).
- 13.
See Kripke (1977).
- 14.
For similar criticisms of Parsons, but pointing at an anti-Meinongian direction (i.e., neither speaker referring to anything), see Wettstein (1984).
- 15.
For criticisms of Kripke, see e.g. Reimer (1998), Devitt (2004). For a defense, see Neale (1990), Ch. 3.
- 16.
Parsons (1979b), p. 653.
- 17.
For an exposition of Frege’s and Carnap’s theories about this, See e.g. Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998), Ch. 12.
- 18.
“We are only fallible creatures and however we manage it that our words stand for things out there in the world, we can fail in cases. So even in cases where we try to talk about regular existing and concrete things there might be some errors involved that make the referential connection break down, and we end up talking about nothing.” (Hofweber 2000, p. 265).
- 19.
See Kroon (2003). The example was brought to my attention by Alberto Voltolini.
- 20.
See Meinong (1915), pp. 278–82.
- 21.
See e.g. Carnap (1956), p. 65.
- 22.
Well described in Smiley (2004), pp. 104–5.
- 23.
See Meinong (1915), p. 266.
- 24.
See Parsons (1980), p. 73.
- 25.
See Reicher (2010), Section 5.2. According to Parsons (1980), p. 44, “existing is not the only extranuclear property which has a watered-down version; being possible also has one. This temps one to wonder if all extranuclear properties have nuclear watered-down versions. That will depend, of course, on what ‘watered-down’ means. In Meinong’s theory it is not clear (at least to me). He speaks of the watered-down version of a property as got by removing the ‘modal moment’ from ‘full-strength factuality.’ I am not sure what this means.” See also Jacquette (1996), Chapter VI, for an exposition of the Meinongian theory of the Modalmoment.
- 26.
See Routley (1980), p. 496; Jacquette (1996), pp. 85–6.
- 27.
Jacquette (1996), p. 91.
- 28.
“Our historical situation yields a very rough kind of decision procedure for telling whether a predicate is nuclear or extranuclear. It’s this: if everyone agrees that the predicate stands for an ordinary property of individuals, then it’s a nuclear predicate, and it stands for a nuclear property. On the other hand, if everyone agrees that it doesn’t stand for an ordinary property of individuals (for whatever reason), or if there’s a history of controversy about whether it stands for a property of individuals, then it’s an extranuclear predicate, and it does not stand for a nuclear property.” (Parsons (1979a), p. 102).
- 29.
Priest (2005), p. 83.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 84.
- 31.
The principle that a purely fictional character has the nuclear properties attributed to it in the stories it is native to is called the Link Hypothesis (see Parsons (1980), pp. 54–5; Fine (1984), pp. 101–2). Its purpose is to provide a bridge between the fictional worlds of stories and the real world: the Link Hypothesis is supposed to explain the intuition that “Holmes is a detective” or “Gandalf is a wizard” are somehow true.
- 32.
See Woods (1974), pp. 41–2.
- 33.
See Fine (1984), pp. 103–4.
- 34.
It may be objected that one has the property of being called “Dum”, which the other, Dee, doesn’t have. According to Fine (Ibid) this can be fixed by envisaging a story such that the two characters bear no name at all within the story – people in the story may communicate by telepathy and need no languages with names tagged to people.
- 35.
The issue is discussed in Reicher (2005).
- 36.
See Mally (1912).
- 37.
See Rapaport (1978).
- 38.
- 39.
This is not quite right: some minimal restriction is motivated by the need to avoid a version of the Clark-Rapaport paradox I referred to some footnotes ago. I will skip this complication, though.
- 40.
See e.g. Zalta (1988), p. 19. The (DCCP) as well is second order formally expressible: if A stands for the property of being abstract, α is any condition on properties expressible in the language and with no free occurrences of y, P is a predicative variable, we have: Σy(Ay ∧ΛP(yP ↔α).
- 41.
Formally: Ax ∧Ay → (x = y ↔ΛP(xP ↔yP)).
- 42.
- 43.
Dual copula Meinongianism, thus, looks structurally similar to realist-abstractionist theories of fictional objects in van Inwagen-Thomasson’s fashion. In both cases, one has abstract objects (with the important difference that, for realist Parmenidean theorists, they exist; in the Zaltian theory, in the standard interpretation, they do not); and in both cases, some kind of ambiguity is postulated in the structure of ordinary predication. As I have hinted at in the previous Chapter, though, according to van Inwagen his relation of (intra-fictional) ascription of properties to fictional characters does not constitute a special kind of predication, similar to Zalta’s encoding: van Inwagen’s existing abstract objects are not determined in any sense by the properties (intra-fictionally) ascribed to them.
- 44.
There are, however, non-standard theories of sets admitting so-called non-well-founded sets, for which something of this sort happens: see Aczel (1988).
- 45.
See Fine (1984), p. 98.
- 46.
See Zalta (1983), pp. 38–9.
- 47.
Ibid, p. 38.
- 48.
Byrd (1986), p. 247.
- 49.
Jacquette (1996), p. 15. Routley expresses a similar negative view in Routley (1980), pp. 457–70. Jacquette also proposes a reduction of the dual copula approach to the nuclear one (See Ibid, pp. 20–1).
- 50.
See Byrd (1986), p. 247.
- 51.
Perhaps it is time to stress again that I’m taking for granted a plain view of the opposition between concreta and abstracta. The wider discussion of the abstract/concrete distinction, promised several pages ago, will have to wait until Chap. 9.
- 52.
Tomberlin (1996), p. 275.
- 53.
See Sainsbury (2010), p. 111–3. The same objection can apply to realist theories of fiction, à la van Inwagen-Thomasson, that take them as existent abstract artifacts.
- 54.
See Zalta (1983), pp. 50–1.
- 55.
Orilia (2002), p. 175 (my translation from Italian).
- 56.
See for example the special issue 38(1997) of the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, entirely devoted to impossible worlds; see also Priest (1992) and Berto (2006), Chs. 6 and 9, and, for a general introduction, Berto (2009).
- 57.
- 58.
See Nolan (1998) and Griffin (1998).
- 59.
See Priest (2005).
- 60.
See Linsky and Zalta (1994).
- 61.
The best book on the subject I am aware of is by far Divers (2002).
- 62.
With some exceptions, e.g., Mortensen (1989).
- 63.
For similar justifications of impossible worlds, see Salmon (1984), Yagisawa (1988), Restall (1997), and Beall and van Fraassen (2003).
- 64.
On these themes, see Priest (2001), Chapters 4, 9, 10, 18, 23, 24. A note for logical maniacs: non-normal worlds were introduced by Kripke in order to provide world semantics for modal logics (called “non-normal” in their turn) weaker than the basic normal modal system K, such as C.I. Lewis’ systems S2 and S3: see Kripke (1965). Kripke’s non-normal worlds are such that the modal operators of necessity and possibility behave at them in an anomalous way: all necessitations are false, and all possibilizations are true. One may then pictorially describe Kripke’s non-normal worlds as worlds where nothing is necessary, and everything is possible. In the next Chapter we will meet non-normal or impossible worlds of more anarchic kinds.
- 65.
See Reicher (2010), Section 5.1.
- 66.
See Berto (2008, 2011). I find an anticipation of the (QCP) in a comprehension principle for objects proposed by Kit Fine in his critical discussion of nuclear Meinongianism: “For any class of properties, there is an object and a context such that the object is native to that context and has in that context exactly the properties of the class” (Fine 1984, p. 138). Leaving the nativeness of the object aside, Kit Fine’s “contexts” bear some resemblance to worlds that are occasionally inconsistent and/or incomplete. Fine claims that, by parameterizing the having of properties by objects to contexts, one needs no restrictions on the properties that can appear in the characterizing conditions, so that “the whole apparatus of nuclear properties can drop out as so much idle machinery” (p. 139). See also Fine (1982), pp. 108–9.
- 67.
Priest (2005), p. 84.
- 68.
A beautiful collection of essays on the topic is Gendler and Hawthorne (2002).
- 69.
Yablo (1993), p. 5.
- 70.
Putnam (1975), p. 233.
- 71.
See Wittgenstein (1958), p. 39.
- 72.
See Wright (2002).
- 73.
Ibid, p. 436.
- 74.
Ibid, p. 437.
- 75.
An authoritative essay on these topics is Bealer (2002).
- 76.
As hinted at above, I have found the idea in Linsky and Zalta (1994). In fact, they talk about properties that entail concreteness, not existence. Their view, however, is largely isomorphic to the modal Meinongianism I am introducing, and it is easy to supply a (partial) translation from one to the other. To such issues of translation, that constitute a complex topic especially for modal Meinongianism, I will get back in Chap. 9.
- 77.
Salmon (1998), pp. 290–1. Similarly, Murray Kiteley says: “The doctrine, that predication entails existence (…) is meretricious. Its false appeal comes from the inability to distinguish the truistic observation ‘If you are going to talk (predicate, refer, state), you have got to talk about something’ from the quite erroneous statement ‘Whatever you talk about (predicate of, refer to, make statements about) must exist’. The first of these statements, when a statement, is genuinely truistic. It comes to little more than a gratuitous observation on the fundamentally subject- predicate character of our talk. (…) The second of these statements is a false observation on what we can talk about, an observation which cannot, I should think, be corrected by the expedient of giving everything honorary existence, in intellectu or elsewhere.” (Kiteley 1964, p. 366).
- 78.
I picked up the example from Yablo (1987).
References
Aczel P. [1988], Non Well-Founded Sets, CLSI Lectures 14, Stanford, Ca.
Bealer G. [2002], “Modal Epistemology and the Rationalist Renaissance”, in Gendler and Hawthorne [2002] (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford U.P., Oxford, pp. 71–125.
Beall JC, van Fraassen B. [2003], Possibilites and Paradox. An Introduction to Modal and Many-Valued Logic, Oxford U.P., Oxford.
Berto F. [2006], Teorie dell’assurdo. I rivali del Principio di Non-Contraddizione, Carocci, Rome.
Berto F. [2008], “Modal Meinongianism for Fictional Objects”, Metaphysica, 9, pp. 205–18.
Berto F. [2011], “Modal Meinongianism and Fiction: The Best of Three Worlds”, Philosophical Studies, 153, pp. 313–34.
Berto F., Priest G. [2008], “Dialetheism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, CSLI, Stanford, Ca., http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism.
Byrd M. [1986], “Review of Zalta’s Abstract Objects”, Journal of Symbolic Logic, 51, pp. 246–8.
Carnap R. [1956], Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, 2nd, expanded ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Devitt M. [2004], “The Case for Referential Descriptions”, In Bezuidenhout and Reimer [2004] (eds.), Descriptions and Beyond: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays on Definite and Indefinite Descriptions. Oxford UP, Oxford, pp. 280–305.
Divers J. [2002], Possible Worlds, Routledge, London-New York.
Donnellan, K. [1966], “Reference and Definite Descriptions,” Philosophical Review, 77, pp. 281–304.
Findlay J.N. [1963], Meinong’s Theory of Objects and Values, Oxford, New York.
Fine K. [1982], “The Problem of Non-Existents, I: Internalism”, Topoi, 1, pp. 97–140.
Fine K. [1984], “Critical Review of Parsons’ Nonexistent Objects”, Philosophical Studies, 45, pp. 94–142.
Fitting M, Mendelsohn R.L. [1998], First-Order Modal Logic, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Gendler T.S., Hawthorne J. [2002] (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford U.P., Oxford.
Griffin N. [1998], “Problems in Item Theory”, talk given at the workshop of the Australasian Association for Logic.
Hofweber T. [2000], “Quantification and Non-Existent Objects”, in Everett and Hofweber [2000] (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, CSLI, Stanford, pp. 249–78.
Jacquette D. [1989], “Mally’s Heresy and the Logic of Meinong’s Object Theory”, History of Philosophical Logic, 10, 1–14.
Jacquette D. [1996], Meinongian Logic. The Semantics of Existence and Nonexistence, De Gruyter, Berlin-New York.
Kiteley M. [1964], “Is Existence a Predicate?”, Mind, 73, pp. 364–73.
Kripke S. [1965], “Semantical Analysis of Modal Logic, II: Non-Normal Modal Propositional Calculi”, in Addison et al. [1965] (eds.), The Theory of Models, Amsterdam, North-Holland, pp. 202–20.
Kripke S. [1978], Time and Identity, unpublished MS.
Kroon F. [2003], “Quantified Negative Existentials”, Dialectica, 57, pp. 149–64.
Linsky B., Zalta E. [1994], “In Defense of the Simplest Quantified Modal Logic”, Philosophical Perspectives, 8, pp. 431–58.
Mally E. [1912], “Gegenstandstheoretische Grundlagen der Logik und Logistik”, Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 148, Ergänzungsheft, Leipzig.
Meinong A. [1915], Über Moglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit: Beiträge zur Gegenstandstheorie und Erkenntnistheorie, J.A. Barth, Leipzig, then in Haller and Kindinger [1972] (eds.), Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe vol. VI, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, XIII–XXII, pp. 1–728.
Mortensen C. [1989], Anything is Possible, “Erkenntnis”, 30, pp. 319–37.
Neale S. [1990], Descriptions, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Nolan D. [1998], “An Uneasy Marriage”, talk given at the workshop of the Australasian Association of Philosophy.
Orilia F. [2002], Ulisse, il quadrato rotondo e l'attuale re di Francia, Edizioni ETS, Pisa.
Parsons C. [1979], “Mathematical Intuition”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 80, pp. 145–68.
Parsons T. [1979a], “Referring to Nonexistent Objects”, Theory and Decision, 11, pp. 95–110.
Parsons T. [1980], Nonexistent Objects, Yale U.P., New Haven, Conn.
Parsons T. [1982], “Are There Nonexistent Objects?”, American Philosophical Quarterly, 19, 365–71.
Priest G. [1992], “What is a Non-Normal World?”, Logique et Analyse, 35, pp. 291–302.
Priest G. [2005], Towards non-Being. The Logic and Metaphysics of Intentionality, Oxford U.P., Oxford.
Priest G., Tanaka K. [2009], “Paraconsistent Logic”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, CSLI, Stanford, Ca, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent
Putnam H. [1975], Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers ii, Cambridge U.P., Cambridge.
Rapaport W. [1978], “Meinongian Theories and a Russellian Paradox”, Noûs, 12, pp. 153–80.
Reicher M.E. [2005], “Russell, Meinong and the Problem of Existent Nonexistents”, in Imaguire and Linsky [2005] (eds.), On Denoting 1905–2005, Philosophia, München, pp. 187–93.
Reicher M.E. [2010], “Nonexistent Objects”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, CSLI, Stanford, Ca., http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects
Reimer M. [1998], “Donnellan’s Distinction/Kripke’s Test”, Analysis, 58, pp. 89–100.
Restall G. [1997], “Ways Things Can’t Be”, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 38, pp. 583–96.
Routley R. [1966], “Some Things Do Not Exist”, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 7, pp. 251–76.
Routley R. [1980], Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond, Australian National University RSSS, Canberra.
Routley R. [1982], “On What There Is -- Not”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 43, pp. 151–78.
Routley R. [2003], “The Importance of Nonexistent Objects and of Intentionality in Mathematics”, Philosophia Mathematica, 11, pp. 20–52.
Sainsbury M. [2010], Fiction and Fictionalism, Routledge, London & New York.
Salmon N. [1984], “Impossible Worlds”, Analysis, 44, pp. 114–7.
Salmon N. [1998], “Nonexistence”, Noûs, 32, pp. 277–319.
Smiley T. [2004], “The Theory of Descriptions”, in Baldwin and Smiley [2004] (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Logic and Knowledge, Oxford U.P., Oxford, pp. 131–61.
Tomberlin J. [1996], “Actualism or Possibilism”, Philosophical Studies, 84, pp. 263–81.
Wettstein H. [1984], “Did the Greeks Really Worship Zeus?”, Synthese, 60, pp. 439–49.
Wittgenstein L. [1958], The Blue and Brown Books, Harper Torchbacks, New York.
Woods J. [1974], The Logic of Fiction: a Philosophical Sounding of Deviant Logic, Mouton, The Hague.
Wright C. [2002], “The Conceivability of Naturalism”, in Gendler and Hawthorne [2002] (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford U.P., Oxford, pp. 401–39.
Yablo S. [1987], “Identity, Essence, and Indiscernibility”, Journal of Philosophy, 84, pp. 293–314.
Yablo S. [1993], “Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 53, pp. 1–42.
Yagisawa T. [1988], “Beyond Possible Worlds”, Philosophical Studies, 53, pp. 175–204.
Zalta E. [1983], Abstract Objects: an Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Zalta E. [1988], Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intentionality, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Berto, F. (2013). Meinongianisms of the First, Second, and Third Kind. In: Existence as a Real Property. Synthese Library, vol 356. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4207-9_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4207-9_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4206-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4207-9
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)