Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Meinong Matters

  • Metaphysics and Common Sense

    It is a curious fact that some philosophers will enlist common sense in support of the wild metaphysical views they maintain. Karel Lambert, for example, thinks that common sense favors Meinong's doctrine of Aussersein! (See his Meinong's Principle of Independence, Cambridge UP, 1983, p. 17.)  I should think that common sense with its "robust sense of…

  • Ontologically Serious and Unserious Uses of ‘Something’ and the Problem of Reference to the Nonexistent

    If Jane is friendly, then there is something Jane is, namely, friendly. But one hesitates to infer either 1) There is (exists) such an object as friendly which is not even well-formed, or 1*) There is (exists) such an object as friendliness which is well-formed but offensive to the nominalist sensibility. 'Jane is friendly' commits…

  • Could Scollay Square be a Meinongian Nonexistent Object?

    Bill, newly arrived in Boston,  believes falsely that Scollay Square exists and he wants to visit it. Bill asks Kathleen where it is. Kathleen tells him truly that it no longer exists, and Bill believes her. Both use 'Scollay Square' to refer to the same thing, a physical place, one that does not exist. To…

  • Relations and Nonexistents

     Consider the following two sentences:  a) Lions are smaller than dragons.b) Mice are smaller than elephants. From this datanic base a puzzle emerges.  1) The data sentences are both true.2) 'Smaller than' has the same sense in both (a) and (b).3) In both (a) and (b), 'smaller than' has the same reference: it refers to…

  • Lukáš Novák on Reference to What is Not

    What follows is a re-do of an entry that first saw the light of the blogosphere on the 4th of July, 2014. The draft Lukáš Novák (on my left in the photo) sent me back then for my comments has since appeared in print in Maimonides on God and Duns Scotus on Logic and Metaphysics …

  • Is Anything Ever Settled in Philosophy? Meinong’s Theory of Objects

    Gilbert Ryle once predicted with absurd confidence, "Gegenstandstheorie . . . is dead, buried, and not going to be resurrected."  (Quoted in G. Priest, Towards Non-Being, Oxford, 2005, p. vi, n. 1.) Ryle was wrong, dead wrong, and shown to be wrong just a few years after his cocky prediction.  Variations on Meinong's Theory of Objects flourish like…

  • Defending Barry Miller against Herman Philipse: Existence as a First-Level Property, Part II

    This is the second in a series. Here is the first installment. Read it for context and references. We are still examining only the first premise of Barry Miller's cosmological argument, as sketched by Philipse: 1) Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals. Philipse gave two arguments contra. In my first entry…

  • Van Inwagen contra Meinong on Having Being and Lacking Being

    There is a passage in Peter van Inwagen's "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities," (in Existence: Essays in Ontology, CUP, 2014, p. 98, emphasis added), in which he expresses his incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being' and 'lacks being':  . . . the Meinongian must mean something different by 'has being' and 'lacks…

  • Beingless Objects

    For Alexius von Meinong, some objects neither exist nor subsist: they have no being at all.  The stock examples are the golden mountain and the round square. London Ed finds this contradictory. "The claim that some objects neither exist nor subsist is an existential claim, of course, so how can 'they' have no being?" But of…

  • Graham Priest on Alexius von Meinong

    Dave Lull sends us to a short piece by Graham Priest which will serve as an introduction to the Austrian philosopher and his characteristic views for those who know nothing of either. As I write in my Philosophy Always Resurrects its Dead, Gilbert Ryle once predicted with absurd confidence, "Gegenstandstheorie . . . is dead,…

  • What Song Did the Sirens Sing and in What Key?

    Ulysses had himself bound to the mast and the ears of his sailors plugged with wax lest the ravishing strains of the sea nymphs' song reach their ears and cause them to cast themselves into the sea and into their doom.  But what song did the Sirens sing, and in what key?  And what about the…

  • Kripke’s Misrepresentation of Meinong

    In "Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities" (in Philosophical Troubles, Oxford UP, 2011, pp. 52-74) Saul Kripke distances himself from the following view that he ascribes to Alexius Meinong: Many people have gotten confused about these matters because they have said, 'Surely there are fictional characters who fictionally do such-and-such things; but fictional characters don't exist;…

  • Descartes Meets Meinong: Might I be a Nonexistent Individual?

    Lukas Novak thinks I am being politically, or rather philosophically, 'correct' in rejecting Meinongianism.  And a relier on 'intuitions' to boot.  I plead innocent to the first charge.  As for the second, I rather doubt one can do philosophy at all without appealing to some intuition somewhere.  That would make for an interesting metaphilosophical discussion. …

  • What the Meinongian Means by ‘Has Being’ and ‘Lacks Being’

    There is a passage in Peter van Inwagen's "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities," (in Existence: Essays in Ontology, CUP, 2014, p. 98, emphasis added), in which he expresses his incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being' and 'lacks being':  … the Meinongian must mean something different by 'has being' and 'lacks being'…

  • Another Misrepresentation of Meinong

    This time from John Nolt in his SEP entry on Free Logic:  "Alexius Meinong is best known for his view that some objects that do not exist nevertheless have being." False for reasons already supplied.  See article below. It takes quite bit of chutzpah to shoot your mouth off about authors you never took the…