Abstract
Can we believe that there are non-existent entities without commitment to Meinongian metaphysics? This paper argues we can. What leads us from quantification over non-existent beings to Meinongianism is a general metaphysical assumption about reality at large, and not merely quantification over the non-existent. Broadly speaking, the assumption is that every being we talk about must have a real definition. It’s this assumption that drives us to enquire into the nature of beings like Pegasus, and what our relationship as thinkers is to them. However, I argue this assumption only holds if you think your language, and in particular that aspect of it to do with referring to entities works in a specific way. This is the specific way generally assumed by the discipline called ‘Semantics’. I sketch out an alternative, call it global expressivism, in which talk of referring is given an expressivist, speech-act theoretic treatment. If we accept that our talk of the non-existent works as the global expressivist tells us it does, then the question of the metaphysical nature of non-existent entities is utterly void. You might say that Pegasus is empty of any metaphysical nature. Since the non-existent lacks any metaphysical nature, the metaphysics of the non-existent, Meinongianism, as a form of inquiry, lacks a subject matter, despite the fact that we talk happily, and indeed unavoidably, of the non-existent.
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Notes
The empirical claim is a conjecture inspired by the work of Kripke (1982).
My approach assumes that files don’t have reference as such—pace Sainsbury (2005) and Recanati (2012). Files are theoretical entities of cognitive science. Reference is not a relation that has any explanatory role in the account of how talk works. Therefore, it won’t appear in the explanatory story featuring files.
The speech-act approach in Barker (2004) offers a semantics offers a semantics because identities the meaning of a name with a referring act type—one identitied by a referential tree.
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Barker, S. Expressivism About Reference and Quantification Over the Non-existent Without Meinongian Metaphysics. Erkenn 80 (Suppl 2), 215–234 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9699-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9699-5