Singular Death-Sentences

Abstract

Unicorns do not exist. Dinosaurs do not exist either. The sentence-frame “... does not exist” is used in ordinary language not only to reveal the unreality of certain items which are talked or written about, believed in, dreamt of or depicted, but also to report demise or extinction. That the existence-predicate serves to express two quite easily distinguishable concepts in these two kinds of use can be made clear by two simple idiomatic expansion tests. When we report the current nonexistence of prehistoric mammoths or of the Euston Arch we can smoothly add “now”, “any longer” or “these days” to the assertion. But it would be odd and misleading to say that Centaurs do not exist now or that El Dorado does not exist any longer (unless the appropriate mythology specifies that they would be extinct by the end of the twentieth century and we are asserting a fictional truth). Conversely, when we assert the absolute nonexistence of a particular hallucinated elf or of a very life-like fictional detective, we can idiomatically insert “really” between “does not” and “exist”. It would be quite awkward and misleading to do the same with our reports of present nonexistence. We might expand “Miss Marple does not exist” to “Miss Marple does not really exist” but would not expand “Agatha Christie does not exist” in the same way. Of course, we could exploit this ambiguity of “exists” and make statements like “Atlantis does not exist”, meaning, non-committally as it were, that either it was always imaginary or even if it once existed it no longer does, because according to the legend itself it went under the ocean in the year 950 B.C.

“And how shall we bury you?” asked Crito.

“In any way you like” said Socrates, chuckling quietly, “if you can get hold of me, and I don’t elude you.”

Phaedo