Abstract
What does existence consist in, if it is not what the Parmenidean takes it to be? Here comes a non-Parmenidean approach. To begin with, “exists” is a predicate of individuals just like the others – a predicate for real, not only from the point of view of our ordinary language’s surface grammar. It is a predicate in the same sense that “eats”, “flies”, and “is a man” are. The modo materiali, ontological counterpart of the semantic thesis, is that existence is a genuine, non-blanket property of individuals, just as the properties of eating, flying, being a man.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Plato, Sophist 247d-e.
- 3.
Geach (1968), pp. 7–8.
- 4.
Kripke (1972), p. 94.
- 5.
Fine (2009), p. 175.
- 6.
- 7.
Aristotle, Physics, D, 208a 29–31.
- 8.
Hume (1739), I.1.5.
- 9.
See Williams (1981), pp. 319ff.
- 10.
It is yet another issue how one can have de re mental representations of nonexistent objects that cannot be their “causal origin”. This is a biggish problem, to come on stage in Chapter 9.
- 11.
See Miller (1982), p. 183.
- 12.
Some claim that there is no possible situation in which I am a purely fictional character, as we will see. If so, we cannot Cambridge-test this property by envisaging a possible situation in which I become purely fictional, and wondering how this would affect me. I think, though, that the intuition is the same as with the property of being a man: these are intrinsic features, not merely Cambridge ones, insofar as they are possessed by the thing in virtue of the way it itself is.
- 13.
See see Miller (1982) and Miller (2002), Section 4.
- 14.
Miller (2002), Section 4.
- 15.
For instance, Williamson (2003).
- 16.
Meinong (1904), p. 83.
- 17.
Lycan (1979), p. 290.
- 18.
Meinong (1904), p. 82.
- 19.
A famous example by David Lewis (1986), p. 3.
- 20.
Fine (2009), p. 168.
- 21.
See Ibid, p. 170. Some terminological subtleties are in fact involved here. I have used “is real” and “exists” as largely interchangeable throughout this book, often speaking equivalently of real or existent vs. unreal or nonexistent objects. The Oxford English Dictionary seems to agree: the first meaning given for “real” is “actually existent” and the first meaning for “reality” is “real existence”. However, Moltmann (2009) has pointed out that the reality predicate “is real” works linguistically in a different way from the existence predicate. It is not clear to me to what extent this may mirror a conceptual difference. Of course, “real” can be used e.g. as a modifier: “You are a real friend” means that you are a friend indeed or a true friend, not that you are an existent friend (as opposed to false friends of mine that would be nonexistent friends). Also the definition in the dictionary, of reality as “real existence”, has “real” work more like “actual”, as opposed to “merely possible”; so “real existence” would mean existence in the actual situation, or in the circumstances that actually obtain (as opposed to circumstances that are hypothetic, or counterfactual, etc.).
- 22.
Ibid, p. 171.
- 23.
Van Inwagen (1998), p. 16. “Wyman” is the name of the second imaginary philosopher, after McX, against whom Quine argues in On What There Is. Wyman is at times taken as a Meinongian, but there are several discrepancies between the position actually held by Meinong and the things that Quine, with little fair play, made Wyman to say.
- 24.
On this point, see e.g., Zalta (1988), pp. 103ff.
- 25.
As pointed out in Moltmann (2009), locational restrictions are acceptable in the case of mass nouns or bare plurals – things work much better here: “Elephants exist both in Africa and in Asia”; “With such massive exploitation, soon gold will no longer exist in South Africa”.
- 26.
Moltmann (2009), Section 2.3.
- 27.
I speak of books just to pick up van Inwagen’s example. In fact, “book” raises the difficulty that it can be used to refer to an abstract object (“Deaver’s book was a major hit”), or to a concrete copy (“Bring me Deaver’s book from my bedside table, please”). From now on, in this Section I’ll talk only of books as concreta.
- 28.
The first example comes from Wolstertorff (1961); the second from Priest (2005); the last two from McGinn (2000).
- 29.
Now one may retort: haven’t you claimed that properties like being a mountain, or a horse, or a (concrete copy of a) book, entail existence (for if something is a mountain or a horse, then it is a material object, physically located, etc. etc.)? Now you are talking of existent as well as nonexistent mountains and horses. Where did the existence-entailment go? As we shall see in the following Chapters, this is a serious point, often underestimated by (neo-)Meinongians. We have two options: either deny the existence-entailment for such properties; or accept it, and explain our talk of nonexistent mountains and horses differently. I favor the second option, and shall tell a story on why I do. But (neo-)Meinongians have often favored the first.
- 30.
For example, Richards (1975), Haack (1979), and Lycan (1979). We will get back to such notions as possible world and possibile later on.
- 31.
Meinong (1904), p. 79.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
This is an example from Buridan, reported by Priest (2007).
- 34.
Paolo Veneto, Logica Magna, p. 13.
- 35.
See Ashworth (1977), Read (2001), and Priest (2005), Section 3.7.
- 36.
McGinn (2000), pp. 35–36. See also Salmon (1987), pp. 56–57.
- 37.
Lewis (1986), p. 6.
- 38.
Ibid, pp. 211–213.
- 39.
For a classic introduction to Meinong’s thought, see Grossmann (1974).
- 40.
Actually, it is even controversial whether Meinong admitted objects that have no mode of being at all, or rather objects that exist, objects that subsist, and object that lack both existence and subsistence but have some third mode of being. A good discussion of the issue is in Zalta (1988), pp. 135ff. I favour the first option, embraced also by Lambert (1983), pp. 13–14; but for theoretical reasons – not as the unique exegetically right way to read Meinong’s doctrine.
- 41.
“[Abstract objects] do indeed subsist, but […] do not by any means exist […]. If I say, ‘it is true that the antipodes exist,’ truth is ascribed not to the antipodes, but to the Objective, ‘that the antipodes exist.’ But this existence of the antipodes is a fact which, as everyone sees immediately, can very well have a subsistent status, but cannot be still another existent entity. […] The form of being [Sein] with which mathematics as such is occupied is never existence [Existenz]. In this respect, mathematics never transcends subsistence [Bestand].” (Meinong 1904, pp. 79–80). Interpreting existence-as-subsistence in this way may help to explain why, for Meinong, all the objects that existieren also bestehen, whereas the converse does not hold. In order to be a concretely existing object one needs to be consistent to begin with, or to instantiate coherent, exemplifiable packages of properties.
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Berto, F. (2013). Existence As a Real Property. In: Existence as a Real Property. Synthese Library, vol 356. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4207-9_4
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