Abstract
In [1904] Meinong tries to demonstrate the legitimacy of his Theory of Objects as a separate science which investigates the totality of objects, regardless of whether or not they exist or subsist.1 In this chapter I wish to give an initial exposition of some of the main tenets of his theory. In [1904] he introduces two principles which are central to the development and understanding of his Theory of Objects, and for our purposes his nonexistent objects, viz. the principles of independence and indifference. In 2.1, I will give a brief exposition of these principles. In 2.2 and 2.3, respectively, I will state my initial reaction to them. The view that all objects have being of some kind threatens to undercut these principles, and it contravenes what is usually thought to be one of Meinong’s most distinctive doctrines, viz. that there are beingless objects. Meinong’s [1904] rejection of the view that there is some (third) mode of being which can be ascribed to nonexistents will be discussed in 2.4, along with texts which indicate a flirtation with, if not acceptance of, this “damaging” view. The chapter will conclude with a section in which I will briefly discuss how Meinong differs from his historical precursors, if he indeed held that there are beingless objects. Meinong’s principle of independence, which he borrowed from his student Ernst Mally,2 seems to have at least an ontological and a semantic formulation.
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Notes
Meinong later says, ‘... there exists the obvious need for a science which deals with entities [objects] without any restriction, especially without restriction for the special case of existence, so that it can be called existence-free. This science about entities [objects] as such, or about pure objects, I have called the Theory of Objects ’ ([1920], in Grossmann [ 1974a ], p. 224 ).
See section 3 of Mally [ 1904 ]. I will not pursue the extent to which Meinong and Mally had similar interpretations of the principle of independence and whether they shared the same view of the nature of objects (i.e. during the time when Mally subscribed to the principle of independence). The substance of this principle is found in Twardowski [1894]. See Grossmann’s Introduction to his translation for a clear discussion of the principle in Twardowski.
Cf. Lambert [1972], p. 37. The semantic formulation of the principle, interpreted by Lambert there (and in his [19831) as the principle that ‘is’ of predication does not imply the ‘is’ of existence (being), appears to imply rejection of the rule of existential generalization. Cf. also Chisholm [1973], pp. 209–10.
That mathematics is an existence-free science is also asserted later, e.g. in his [1906/7]. Incidentally, after thanking him for that ‘interesting article’ (and friendly letter), Russell tells Meinong in his letter of 5 October 1906 that he agrees with him that mathematics is an existence-free science (daseinsfreies Wissen) and truly belongs to the Theory of Objects.
Though it has become standard in recent years to impute to Meinong the view that possible and impossible objects do not have being of any kind, not all of his interpreters/translators agree. E.g., on Kalsi’s reading ([19721, p. xxxvi), the golden mountain, pink elephants, etc. subsist for Meinong. Similarly, fictional/mythological objects such as Pegasus and Dr. Faustus are said to be subsistent individuals for Meinong (p. xl), in which case they (like the golden mountain et al.) would also be complete objects, contra the standard interpretation of him. Impossible objects (e.g. the round square), on the other hand, merely have Aufiersein,though Kalsi (contra the standard interpretation) is also convinced that for Meinong Außersein is a genuine mode or class of being and all objects have being of some kind. See her [1972], p. xxxvii, and [1978], p. 7. In recent correspondence, she remains “unrepentent” about this, and I am strongly inclined to agree with her, for reasons that will emerge in section 2.4.
For a more detailed discussion of some of the points raised in this and the following paragraph, see Lambert [1983], p. 23f, and Routley [1980], passim. The phrase ‘lacks F’ would appear to mean (for Meinong) has the negation of F.
It is important to stress that while objects (objecta) are (allegedly) indifferent to being, Meinong insists that the Theory of Objects is not indifferent to being. As far as I am aware, Meinong never wavered on the notion that truth is a function of reference in the sense that objects (existent or nonexistent) are apprehended only through objectives, and for this the being of objectives is required. He says, ‘A judgment is true, however, not insofar as it has an Object that exists, or even one that has being, but only insofar as it grasps an Objective that has being. That there are black swans, but that there is no perpetuum mobile,are both true judgments; but the first concerns an existent object, the second a nonexistent object. In the one case, the being of the Object in question subsists; in the other case, its nonbeing subsists. Truth is always bound up with the being of Objectives and is therefore partially constituted out of it. The judgment would not be true if there were no Objective to which it referred’ (Chisholm edition, p. 90). Later on he says, ’all knowledge must have an Objective which has being; and if the Theory of Objects concerns itself with a Sosein which did not have being itself, then… it no longer has any claim to be a theory…. whether this or that Object is absurd by nature, whether it subsists or could equally well exist — these are questions which are actually of interest to the Theory of Objects and which are ultimately questions about being’ (pp. 108–9). Routley [1980a] concedes that Meinong may at times have ascribed to a weak version of the Ontological Assumption, but this is one point where he is eager to depart from the historical Meinong.
Regarding terminology, there are four main categories of Objects [Gegenstände] for Meinong: objecta, objectives, dignitatives and desideratives. For a brief discussion of these, see Kalsi [1978], pp. 7–10. For my purposes, I will ignore the latter two categories of objects.
In his [1915], pp. 179–80, Meinong will say that incomplete objects are incomplete or undetermined with respect to being (as long as ‘being’ is used in the usual sense, i.e. of existence or subsistence), unless their natures guarantee their nonbeing. He repeats this in [1920], p. 226, adding again that under favourable circumstances they have implexives Sein. This will be discussed in Chapter 3.
suspect that one of the guiding motivations for the development of his seemingly extreme realism with respect to nonexistents was his disdain for idealism, especially of the sort that was emerging in Husserl’s phenomenology.
], p. 176. See Findlay [1963], p. 176. In Routley’s theory of items, this distinction appears as the distinction between characterising and non-characterising properties. Parsons adopts the terminology of nuclear and extra-nuclear properties and tries in a number of places (e.g. in [1974], [1978] and [1980]) to make the distinction more precise. Among those contemporary philosophers whose theories might be called “neo-Meinongian”, those who focus on this distinction are, following Fine [1984], known as dual-property (neo-)Meinongians. For the purposes of this initial sketch of Meinong’s theory, I am disregarding the views of so-called “dual-copula” (neo-)Meinongians, who focus instead on another of Mally’s distinctions, viz. between a property determining an object and being satisfied by an object. In Chapters 3 and 5, I will suggest an interpretation of the nuclearextranuclear distinction according to which it is not a distinction between kinds of properties, but of ways of relating properties to complexes.
For a criticism of Grandy’s approach, see Burge [1974], for whom simple singular predications containing non-denoting terms are false and their negations are true.
For a detailed discussion of the role of the principle of independence in free logics, see Lambert [ 1983 ]. Lambert’s main thesis is that the philosophical difference of importance among free logicians has to do precisely with the principle of independence (in one or other of its semantic formulations), and that whatever support it has, and it has a great deal according to Lambert, transfers to positive free logic as the most adequate version of free logic.
Routley is clearly aware of this. See his [ 1980a ], ch. 1, especially sections 3 and 5. He distinguishes the (basic) Independence thesis, which on one formulation says that statements ascribing features to nonentities can be and are used without ontological commitment to them, from both the Characterisation Postulate and the Advanced Independence thesis. According to the former, nonentities have their characterising, i.e. extensional, properties; according to the latter, nonentities have a more or less determinate nature, which is the set of their characterising properties. For Routley, it is the Advanced Independence thesis, in particular, that makes nonentities genuine objects, instead of remaining mere “logical dummies”. In Lewisian terminology, it would be what makes them genuine, as opposed to ersatz, individuals.
I take his neutral stance here on this issue as an improvement over his stance in [ 1975 ]. There he says, ‘it is by no means clear that Holmes has these properties [being a detective, solving crimes, living at 221B Baker St, etc.]. Certainly it is true that according to the story Sherlock Holmes is a detective. But to go on and require that Sherlock Holmes b e a detective runs the risk of confusing truth-according-to-the-story with truth. The story says he’s a detective, but stories say lots of things that aren’t true’ (p. 77). But at the very end of that essay, in contrasting his theory with theories in the possible-worlds tradition, he says that we know that Pegasus is a winged horse in the real world, not just that he is a winged horse in some world.
The fact is that Meinong said very little about fictional objects or names. As far as I am aware, they were explicitly discussed only once, in [1895]. This, of course, is not to say that one cannot develop a “Meinongian” theory of fictional objects. See, e.g., Parsons [1975] and [1982].
In essence, this argument appeared in [1904]. His [1910] formulation is accompanied by the following footnote: ‘Nothing in this would be changed, even if one found the following interpretation natural: by a perpetual motion machine is meant something which, in the event that it existed, would have the properties customarily ascribed to a perpetual motion machine. For then this “something” would of course still have at least the property that found its characterization in the round about way via the hypothetical judgment.’
If Meinong’s “worlds” and their inhabitants (actual, possible and impossible) are not like stories, one might see a parallel between his treatment of their independence (from thought, language, etc.) and David Lewis’s modal realism. For Lewis, worlds and their inhabitants are not of our own making. See his [1986], p. 3.
At the least, that is the way it strikes some ears. See, e.g., Findlay [1963], p. 103; Chisholm [1960], p. 10; and Routley [1980a], p. 2. Others don’t hear the similarity. See, e.g., Lambert [1983], p. 21 note 20.
This consideration might lend further support to Lambert’s [1983] suspicion (noted above) that Meinong did not in fact deny that existence and nonexistence (being and nonbeing) were properties of objecta.
If one thinks it is too contentious to say, as I do, that a genuine (interesting) nonexistent-object theorist must deny that all objects have being of some kind, I’ll rephrase my point in a conditional form: If to be a genuine Meinongian is to be committed to beingless objects, and if (at times at least) Meinong was not so committed, then at those times at least Meinong himself was no genuine Meinongian. Zalta ([1988], p. 138f) puts aside the scholarly question of whether Meinong did in fact commit himself to the principle that there are beingless objects; instead he focuses on the question of whether there are any good reasons to try to develop a coherent notion of a beingless object, to which he argues in the negative.
In [1904] the view that all objects have being of some kind is presented as a former opinion. Presumably this refers primarily back to the first (1902) edition of Assumptions. See sections 34 to 37 of the second [1910] edition. The view that is retrospectively called ‘the being view’ is the 1902 view that presentations, and in fact all mental acts, have objects in the strict sense only when these objects have being, so that all genuine objects must have being of some kind.
Those who think that Meinong was (at least in [1904]) committed to beingless objects often appeal to his remark ‘there are objects of which it is the case that there are no such objects’. But as Zalta (e.g. [1988], p. 135) has been quick to point out, this remark was prefaced with the disclaimer ‘those who like paradoxical modes of expression could very well say’. In reply, the targets of Zalta’s criticism here would no doubt appeal (in addition to the above reconstructed argument which Meinong rejects) to other [1904] passages which do not appear to come with “disclaimers”. E.g., ’This [that the Object as such stands “beyond being and non-being”] may also be expressed in the following less engaging and also less pretentious way, which is in my opinion, however, a more appropriate one: The Object is by nature indifferent to being [außerseiend]…’. Of course, when Meinong says that (pure) objects have außersein or are außerseiend,that by itself hardly shows that they are beingless (or that außersein is not a genuine mode of being). If ’being’ is used ’in the usual way’ (i.e. restricted to existent and subsistent objects), the claim that there are beingless objects might just be terminological.
Russell says, ‘But a proposition, unless it happens to be linguistic, does not itself contain words; it contains the entities indicated by words’ ([1903], p. 47).
As far as I am aware, Lambert ([1972]p. 40) was the first in print to suggest in passing that Meinong may have anticipated Russell’s theory of descriptions.
I am inclined to think that what this means is not that existing and subsisting objects would then have another mode of being (Quasisein) as well, but that if x is an object, then x exists or [exclusive disjunction] subsists or (else) has Quasisein. Kalsi, however, thinks that for Meinong [presumably, at least the later Meinong] all objects which exist or subsist also have außersein. Perhaps my general aversion to modes-of-being talk (unless this is understood as restricted quantification) is getting in the way here. Alternatively, modes-ofbeing talk, along with the apparent assignment of more than one mode of being to (many) objects, is just a somewhat confused way of talking about restricted/unrestricted quantification.
For Mally’s paradox, see his 1914 essay ‘On the Independence of Objects From Thought’, translated with a commentary by Jacquette [1989b].
The notion of a defective object is a difficult one and will not be pursued in any detail here. As far as I am aware, Meinong does not appeal to it again (i.e. after ch. 2 of his [1917]). For interesting discussions of this notion, see Jacquette [1982] and Rapaport [ 1982 ]. One might wonder why the Russell class, e.g., should be worse or more absurd than, say, the round square. Routley responds: ‘One can assume, and in reductio proofs characteristically does assume, what is impossible. But one is barred, by stratification theories of one sort or another, e.g. order theories, levels of language theories, from assuming what is paradoxical, e.g. from assuming that what one is assuming is not the case. This classical separation in the propositional case between the impossible and the paradoxical or defective we find in Meinong in the object case: really since propositions are objects (of higher order) the classical case is just a special case of the more general separation ’ ([1980b], p. 14 ).
Findlay ([1963], pp. 47–8) hints at this, but goes on to say that we had better ignore [!] it.
Meinong adds (Kalsi edition, p. 21): ‘It can also be said that though a round square neither exists nor subsists, the round square has Außersein as a disconcretum; but it does not and cannot have Außersein as a concretum. Here we have a typical case of something which lacks Außersein,and in this respect our defective objects are not alone’.
I think it is also worth pointing out here that from at least the time of his [1906/7], and thereafter, the distinction between subsistence and außersein is not very prominent and appears (for most purposes) to drop out of his thought. The focus instead is on the real-ideal distinction (which he had in hand at least since [1899]). All thought-objects (called earlier ‘pseudo-objects of presentation’) are ideal, regardless of their ontological status, and both subsistent and außersein objects are typically said to be ideal (not real). I am indebted to Kalsi for bringing this to my attention in correspondence.
Rapaport [1978] says, ‘I would like to suggest that Aussersein is “being-like” in that it serves as the domain for quantification over Meinongian objects’ (p. 158). He also says that außersein is not a degree of being (Sein),at least in Meinong’s [1904], and possibly not in [1917] either.
Gram ([1970], p. 123) accuses Findlay of missing the point; Meinong is not saying that we must assume that they exist, but that they have some ontological status. Even if Findlay’s use of ‘exist’ in the cited passage was a bit careless, I see no evidence which suggests that Findlay was really confused about Meinong’s use of ‘exist’. By the way, Gram seems to think that Meinong was arguing for a third mode of being in [ 1904 ].
Heanue edition, p. 159. See also Twardowski [ 1894 ], Grossmann translation, pp. 22–3.
See, e.g., Kahn [1966], and Graham [ 1965 ].
See, e.g., Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos x. 218, in Outlines of Pyrrhonism,vol. 3.
See, e.g., Zeller [1870], p. 91; Zeller [1931], p. 214; and Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism,vol. 1, p. 203. Contra Rescher ([1982], p. 77), external objects, words uttered and mental acts are corporeal for the Stoics.
Granted, Avicenna is no nonexistent-object theorist in the (suggested or stipulated) Meinongian sense, for reasons to be discussed shortly. But considering that Rescher sees a theory of nonexistents in the Mu’tazilites, e.g., despite his concluding remark that for them nonexistents have quasi-being and are put in the mind of God, I would have expected him to extract some such theory in Avicenna as well.
The following discussion owes much to Beatrice H. Zedler, James H. Robb, and the unpublished lecture notes of Anton Pegis [1950]. Perhaps the best discussion of this in print is to be found in Smith [ 1943 ].
For a Whorfian consideration of the linguistic origin of the distinction between essence and existence in Arabic, see Graham [1965].
Perhaps the main theological-philosophical basis for positing this realm of possibles in themselves was the Arabic felt need to reconcile the creator God of the Koran with the eternity of matter in Aristotle.
On the distinction between essential and existential possibility, see Gilson [1952], p. 182.
This point is typically expressed by saying that between any creature and its being there is at least a distinction of reason. No Christian philosopher considers the essence of a creature to include its existence; i.e., no creature exists in its own right. Whether there is a real distinction (Aquinas prefers real composition) between essence and existence is the question of whether within a creature, after its creation and during the time when it exists, there is any reason to ascribe to it a distinct act in virtue of which it is (exists). On this latter point there is endless controversy among the mediaevals. A real distinction or composition between essence and existence is not entailed by a commitment to the very notion of creation.
An important difference is that whereas for Meinong (in some moods, at least) nonexistent objects do not have being of any sort, Avicenna’s possibles necessarily will exist, and he says (e.g. in Metaphysics,Book I, chapter 6) that the understanding understands only that which is (has being). For Avicenna, being is essence. Being is deducible from the having of predicates.
According to Wolff, ’Quod possible est, ens est’ (’What is possible is a being’), and this, he says, is accepted by everyone. See Gilson [1952], p. 114.
Routley states, a bit uncautiously in my view, his affinity to the principle that essence precedes existence in [1980a], e.g., pp. 3 and 51.
Consider, e.g., the ’ens diminutum’ of Duns Scotus, which designates being in the mind as opposed to being outside the mind, and was considered a lesser type of being. See Maurer [1950]. In the context of the discussion of divine Ideas, for Scotus they have a diminished or relative being, which was meant to replace the more substantial reality assigned to them by Henry of Ghent (i.e. Henry’s esse essentiae). William of Alnwick, a Scotist, discusses the degree of reality one should attribute to the being of an object known only insofar as it is an object known in the mind. He rejects the notion of esse diminutum or esse cognitum. On the side of the intellect, the being of the object known by it is none other than the being of the intellect which knows it. For the majority of Christian mediaeval philosophers (including Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure and Aquinas), the divine Ideas strictly are not in God but are God. On the endless controversies surrounding the nature of divine Ideas, see Gilson [1952] and [1955]. Aquinas preferred to use the terms ’esse intentionale’ and ’ens rationis intentio’ to designate being in the mind. But far from merely designating some degenerate form of being, in Aquinas ‘intentional being’ often designates the richest, primary mode of being for creatures. This notion is also present in Bonaventure and Augustine. It is a being which gets its full meaning by pointing to another (recall that ’in-tendo’ means a stretching out to something); it is added to our physical being, so to speak, and is distinctively human. Through knowledge, e.g., one can expand one’s being by “becoming” everything one knows.
Consider, e.g., the scholastic theory of sense perception. In virtue of sensory qualities and through the mediation of physical media, objects act upon the external sensory organs of the body and produce sensations in the powers of vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. These sensation-effects, which are formal modifications in the sense power, are called sense species or formal signs, which in turn are said to be likenesses (similitudines) of the external objects. When the physical media between the object(s) and the body, the physiological media of skin and external organs, and the ultimate sense organs within the body are all “well disposed”, the sensations are said to be identically the same form or species as exists in the object. Numerically, the sensory quality in the external object and the sensation are distinct qualities, but specifically they are the same. Consider also the scholastic distinction between actual reality and objective reality, according to which the intelligibility or form of an object exists in the object materially but exists in the intellect objectively or formally. The latter is called the intelligible species, which is related to the intellect as that by which it understands.
See, e.g., Aristotle’s Physics 208a 29f [’all suppose that things which exist are somewhere (the nonexistent is nowhere - where is the goat-stag or the sphinx?)’]. This view is traced back to Hesiod’s Theogony at 208b 29f. Plato states the common Greek view in Timaeus 52b: ‘we say of everything that is real that it must of necessity be in some place and occupy a space, but what is neither in heaven nor in earth is nothing at all’. Of course, for the ancient Greeks the tendency is to say that whatever is, is somewhere in physical space. Though Plato thought he was the first to discover non-material entities or a non-material mode of being, which may be seen as an early formulation of the notion that whatever is, is somewhere in logical space, he continued to use physical metaphors: the Forms are located in the receptacle (in Timaeus) and the intelligible world of the Forms is presented quite literally as an intelligible place (noetos topos). For an interesting discussion of the connection between existence and location (i.e. the locative case) in Indo-European languages, see Kahn [ 1966 ].
This interpretation of Abailard has been endorsed by Tweedale in correspondence.
See Replies to First Objections,HR [i.e. Haldane and Ross] ii. 20, and Fifth Meditation,HR i. 182. Alternatively, there is a contrast between ideas which are said to have true and immutable natures and factitious ideas, whose natures depend solely on my thought.
See the seeming contradiction between HR ii. 20 and his reply to Burman (in Cottingham [1976], pp. 23 and 90–2), regarding an existing lion, a chimera and a triangle inscribed in a square.
HR ii. 20; see also Principles I, 15 (HR i. 225).
See HR ii. 2 and HR ii. 9–10 for Caterus’ objection and Descartes’ reply to the interpretation assigned to objective reality.
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Perszyk, K.J. (1993). Meinong’s Theory of Objects. In: Nonexistent Objects. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, vol 49. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8214-8_2
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