Abstract
We begin our critical discussions with an examination of what might be called the naive property theory of existence. This theory consists of two related claims. (i) existence is a property; and (ii) the existing of an individual consists in its instantiating of the property, existence. The first claim implies that existence is a first-level property, a property of individuals, without excluding the possibility that it is also a property of non-individuals, e.g., properties. The second claim specifies how an existing individual exists or has existence: it has it by instantiating it. As we use ‘property’ and ‘instantiation,’ they are interdefinable: every property is an instantiable entity and every instantiable entity is a property. P is a property if and only if P is possibly such that it is instantiated by something, where ‘possibly’ is to be taken to express metaphysical or ‘broadly logical’ possibility. This definition rules out such impossible properties as being both round and square, and does so reasonably: it is difficult to understand how something that nothing could instantiate could count as a property. It rules in uninstantiated properties, again reasonably: whether or not all properties must be instantiated in order to exist is a difficult question not to be settled by a mere definition.
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Notes
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974 ), p. 146.
David Kaplan, “Afterthoughts” in Themes from Kaplan, eds. Almog, Perry, and Wettstein ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 ), p. 611.
Nathan Salmon, “Existence,” Philosophical Perspectives 1, ed. James E. Tomberlin ( Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing, 1987 ), p. 63.
Ibid., p. 62.
Cf. E. M. Zemach, “Existence and Nonexistents,” Erkenntnis 39 (1993), p. 1.
Meinong provides a concise summary of his Theory of Objects in his “Ueber Gegenstandstheorie” in Meinong Gesamtausgabe (Graz: Akademischer Druck und Verlagsanstalt), pp. 483–535.
Cf. Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics ( New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1903 ), p. 449.
Alexius Meinong, On Emotional Presentation, trans. Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972 ), p. 19.
Roderick Chisholm, Brentano and Meinong Studies (Humanities Press, 1982), p. 55.
Richard Routley, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond ( Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1980 ), pp. 494–495.
Karel Lambert, Meinong and the Principle of Independence (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 147.
Cf. Arthur Witherall, “Meinongian Metaphysics and Subjectivity,” Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. XXIII (1998), pp. 37–38. See also Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980 ), pp. 217–219.
Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000 ), p. 9.
Ibid., p. 11.
Ibid., p. 11.
Hector-Neri Castaneda, “Individuation and Non-Identity: A New Look,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 2 (April 1975), p. 137.
The Philosophical Works of Descartes,vol. II, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 186.
See J. K. Swindler, Weaving: An Analysis of the Constitution of Objects (Rowan & Littlefield, 1991), pp. 44–45 for an instance of this confusion.
Cf. Alvin Plantinga, op. cit.
Cf. Peter van Inwagen, “Two Concepts of Possible Worlds,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XI ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 ), pp. 185–213.
It might be objected that merely possible worlds and merely possible non-maximal propositions do not represent possibilities, but are (identically) possibilities. One reason why this cannot be right is as follows. The possibility of Humphrey’s being elected president is a de re possibility involving Humphrey himself, all 180 lbs. of him. But the (objective) proposition Humphrey is elected president cannot contain Humphrey. At most, it contains an abstract constituent that represents Humphrey. So the possibility of Humphrey’s being elected president cannot be identified with any (objective) proposition. On a grander scale, merely possible worlds, at least some of them, represent total ways the concrete universe might have been; they represent de re possibilities involving the concrete universe. I say `at least some of them,’ since the possible world according to which no concretum exists clearly does not involve the concrete universe or any part thereof.
In general, logical equivalences do not sanction identifications. Necessarily, for any x, x has a shape if and only if x has a size; but shape and size are distinct properties. Necessarily, for any x, xis triangular if and only if x is trilateral; but triangularity and trilaterality are distinct properties. It is worth noting that in these two examples, the properties differ not only intensionally but also causally. It was not the size but the shape of Brutus’ weapon that fitted it for puncturing Caesar’s chest. And, borrowing an example from N. Wolterstorff, it is presumably because of the triangularity, but not the trilaterality, of a metal triangle that I have three bloody points on my hand.
One reader insisted that `Socrates has contingent existence’ means `Socrates exists in some but not all worlds.’ This seems clearly false. For one thing, the first sentence could be true even if there are no possible worlds. The existence of possibilities does not guarantee (without argument) that there are possible worlds, i.e., maximal possibilities. Every possibility might be non-maximal. Or even if there are worlds, it might be that some possibles are possible without being included in worlds. Perhaps some possibles come in “world-sized packages” but others do not. Second, most will agree that possibility is prior to possible worlds. Proof: worlds are maximally consistent objects. But logical consistency is a modal notion: p, q are consistent if and only if they (logically) can both be true. So possible worlds presuppose primitive modality. For these two reasons, the sentences in question cannot be identical in meaning.
Cf. N. Salmon, op. cit.,p. 62 ff.
Jose A. Benardete, Metaphysics: The Logical Approach (Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 22–23.
Michael Bergmann, “A New Argument from Actualism to Serious Actualism,” Nous, vol. 30, no. 3 (1996), pp. 356–359.
Cf. N. Salmon, op. cit. p. 62 ff.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A 598; B 626.
Some of these examples are borrowed from Jerome Shaffer, “Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument” Mind 71 (1962), p. 318. This important article anticipates N. Salmon’s claims about the legitimacy of existential definitions, but is not cited by him.
N. Salmon, op. cit.,p. 65.
George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith ( New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955 ), p. 48.
N. Salmon, op. cit. p. 66.
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Vallicella, W.F. (2002). Is Existence a First-Level Property?. In: A Paradigm Theory of Existence. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 89. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0588-2_2
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