Meinong Matters – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

Philosophy Always Resurrects Its Dead

Etienne Gilson famously remarked that "Philosophy always buries its undertakers." That is the first of his "laws of philosophical experience." (The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Scribners, 1937, p. 306) As a metaphilosophical pronunciamento it is hard to beat. It is equally true that philosophy always resurrects its dead. Let that be my first law. The history of natural science is littered with corpses, none of which is an actual or potential Lazarus. Not so in philosophy.

None of the classical problems has ever been demonstrated to be a pseudoproblem pace Wittgenstein, Carnap and such epigoni as Morris Lazerowitz; none of the major theories proposed in solution of them has ever been refuted once and for all; no school of thought has been finally discredited.

Thomism, to take an example, was once largely confined to the academic backwaters of Catholic colleges where sleepy Jesuits taught the ancient lore from dusty scholastic manuals to bored jocks. (I am not being entirely fair, but fair enough for a blog post.) But in the last twenty years an increasing number of sharp analytic heads have penetrated the scholastic arcana and have been serving up some fairly rigorous forward-looking stuff that engages with contemporary analytic work in a way that was simply beyond the abilities of (most) of the sleepy Jesuits and old-time scholastics.

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 never before due to the efforts of such brilliant philosophers as Butchvarov, Castaneda, Lambert, Parsons, Priest, Routley/Sylvan, and Zalta, just to mention those that come first to mind. And the Rylean cockiness has had an ironic upshot: his logical behaviorism is temporarily dead while Meinongianism thrives. But Ryle too will be raised if my parallel law of philosophical experience — Philosophy always resurrects its dead — holds.

It may be worth noting that if philosophy resurrects its dead then it can be expected to raise the anti-philosophical (and therefore philosophical) positions of philosophy's would-be undertakers. Philosophy, she's a wily bitch: you can't outflank her and she always ends up on top.

A Routley/Sylvan Argument for the Utter Nonexistence of Past Individuals

Many of us are inclined to say that purely past individuals (James Dean, Scollay Square, my cat Zeno, anything that existed but does not exist now), though past, yet exist. Of course, they don't presently exist. But why should only what presently exists, exist? Why should that which loses the temporal property of presentness fall into an abyss of nonbeing? Surely that is not obvious. Presentism may be true, but it is not obviously true. Nor is it a position favored by common sense as some contemporary writers seem to think. Let me sketch a couple of anti-presentist considerations. I will not present them rigorously and I do not claim that they are absolutely compelling.

Purely past individuals are part of the actual world inasmuch as they are not merely possible. And what is actual exists. So purely past individuals exist (tenselessly). Or will you say that when Dean ceased to presently exist he underwent a transformation from an actual being to a merely possible one? How then would you distinguish between past merely possible beings and past actual beings? As far as I know Dean did not have any children. Suppose that is true. Still, he might have had a child. In the past, that was a possibility, though it is not a possibility now. Surely there is a difference between a past possible individual such as Dean's child and an actual past individual such as Dean. Dean was; his child never was.

Moreover, we refer to past individuals and we say true things about them. 'James Dean died in a car crash in 1955.' 'Dean's fame is mainly posthumous.' 'Scollay Square was located in Boston.' The subject terms of these sentences not only did refer to something, they do refer to something, something that exists, though not at present. Furthermore, whatever has properties exists. Dean has properties, ergo Dean exists. That is not to say that he presently exists, but if he didn't exist in any sense, how could he have properties? So a case can be made for the reality or existence of past individuals.

But this morning I stumbled upon an interesting argument from Richard Routley, who later in life came to call himself Sylvan. (Presumably because of an attraction to forests and jungles and an aversion to desert landscapes.) In any case, after beginning p. 361 of Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Ridgeview 1980) with some question-begging sophistry that I won't bother to expose, he uncorks an interesting argument on the other side of the question, one that that stokes my aporetic fire:

Purely past and purely future items are, like merely possible items, not (now) determinate in all extensional respects: hence (applying the results of 1.19) they do not exist. Compare the items Aristotle and Polonious, and remember Peirce's question as to how long before Polonious died had he had a hair cut and Russell's as to the baldness of the present king of France. Well, is Aristotle bald now?If he is, how long has he been bald? If not, how long since he had a hair cut and how long is his hair? Since Aristotle has ceased to exist, it is false that Aristotle is now bald and false that he is not now bald . . . . Thus Aristotle is indeterminate in respect of the extensional property of (present) baldness. Hence he does not exist now; hence he does not exist.

The argument is short and snappy:

1. For any x, if x exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.
2. It is not the case that purely past individuals are now determinate in all extensional respects.
Therefore
3. It is not the case that purely past individuals exist.

The argument is valid but why should we accept (1)? I have no problem with the following two cognate principles which I warmly embrace:

1*. For any x, if x now exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.

1**. For any x, if x exists, then x is determinate in all extensional respects.

But I see no reason to accept the question-begging (1). After all, Aristotle, unlike Polonious, exists, but Aristotle — if (2) is to be believed — is not now determinate in respect of baldness or the opposite.

Suppose, however, that we accept (1). Why should we also accept (2)? Presumably because it is not now the case that Aristotle is either bald or not bald. But this far from clear. During his life, Aristotle either counted as bald or as not bald. Suppose he counted as bald. Then I say that Aristotle exists (tenselessly) and is (tenselessly) bald. So he is now determinate in respect of baldness or its opposite. He is tenselessly bald and so is now tenselessly bald.

What Routley has done in the above passage and surrounding text is merely beg the question in favor of presentism. He has given us no non-question-begging reason to accept it.

The Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann Solution to the Problem of Intentionality

Perhaps the central problem to which the phenomenon of intentionality gives rise can be set forth in terms of an aporetic triad:

1. We sometimes think about the nonexistent.
2. Intentionality is a relation between thinker and object of thought.
3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist.

The datanic first limb is nonnegotiable, a 'Moorean fact.' The other two limbs, being more theoretical, can be denied if one is willing to pay the price. But something has to give since they cannot all be true.

Brentano denied (2) with unpalatable consequences to be explored in a separate post. Why not accept (2), deny (3) and admit that there are abnormal relations, relations that connect existents with nonexistents?

Consider the round square, that well-worn example that goes back at least to Bernard Bolzano. Since there is no such thing, and cannot be, one will be tempted to say that the round square is an idea (presentation, Vorstellung) without an object. That is what Bolzano maintained using that very example of rundes Viereck. (Theory of Science, pp. 88-89) In section 5 of Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (1894), Kasimir Twardowski criticizes Bolzano's position.

Twardowski distinguishes among the following: there is the expression 'the round square.' Then there is the mental act, the act of presentation (Vorstellungsact) that transpires in someone who uses the expression with understanding. Corresponding to the act is a content (Inhalt) which constitutes the meaning of the expression. But there is also a fourth item, that to which the expression refers, the round square itself, that which combines logically incompatible properties and whose existence one denies as soon as one advances from the presentation round square to a judgment about it. (Cf. the Brentanian theses that judgments are founded upon presentations, and that every judgment is existential, involving the acceptance or rejection of a presentation.)

This of course sticks in the craw. One hesitates to admit that there is something outside the mind to which 'round square' refers, something that has the property of nonexistence. It smacks of a contradiction. Clearly, 'There exists an x such that x does not exist' IS a contradiction, but this is not what a Meinongian will say.

Note that Twardowski has a couple of powerful reasons for not identifying the round square and its colleagues with mental contents. The first is that contents exist while nonexistent objects don't. So the round square cannot be identified with the content expressed by 'the round square.' The second reason is that we ascribe to the round square attributes that not only cannot be ascribed to the corresponding content, but are logically incompatible to boot. Thus no content is round and no content is square and of course no content is both round and square. Since contents exist, they cannot have contradictory properties.

These arguments, spelled out a bit perhaps, show that mental contents cannot go proxy for nonexistent items, whether merely possible like the celebrated golden mountain or impossible like the round square. One could extend the argument to cover abstract objects which are not mental contents or in any way mind-dependent. They too are unsuited to go proxy for nonexistents. For (1) abstracta exist while nonexistents do not, and (2) the properties of nonexistent concreta cannot be attributed to abstracta. Thus a flying horse is an animal, a golden mountain is a mountain, and a round square is round. But no abstract object is an animal or a mountain or round.

When I think about the round square or the golden mountain (in whatever psychological mode) the object of my thought is neither a mental content nor an abstract object. What is it then? Why, it is the round square or the golden mountain! As bizarre as this sounds, it makes a certain amount of sense. If I want to climb the golden mountain, I want to climb a physical prominence, not a mental content or an abstractum.

The position under examination, then, is not only that every mental act has a content, but that every mental act has an object as well. But not all of these objects exist. One obvious advantage of this approach is that it allows us to hold onto (2) of our opening triad in full generality: in every case, intentionality relates a thinker through a content to a transcendent object, and not to some surrogate object, either!

Why is this a good thing? Well, if intentionality is relational only in some cases, the veridical cases, then it cannot be essential to mental acts to be of an object: whether or not an act actually has an object will depend on contingent facts in the world beyond the mind. For Brentano, all mental acts are intentional by their very nature as mental. The Twardowski-Meinong approach upholds this.

But the price is very steep: one must accept that there are items that actually instantiate properties (not merely possibly instantiate them), and that these items nevertheless do not exist, or indeed, as on Meinong's actual view, have any mode of being at all. This is his famous doctrine of the Aussersein des reinen Gegenstandes, the 'extrabeing of the pure object.' Thus the golden mountain is actually golden and actually a mountain despite having no being whatsoever. It is a pure Sosein utterly devoid of Sein.

Some, like van Inwagen, think that Meinong's theory of objects is obviously self-contradictory. I don't believe this is right, for reasons detailed here. Even so, I find Meinong's theory incoherent. 'Some items have no being at all' is not a formal contradiction. Still, I cannot get a mental grip on the notion of an item that actually has properties, but is wholly beingless.

In addition, one must accept that there are genuine relations that connect existents to nonexistents.

The price is too steep to pay. The Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann solution is just as problematic as the original problem.

REFERENCE: Reinhardt Grossmann, The Categorial Structure of the World, Indiana UP, 1983, p. 197 ff.

The Dead and the Nonexistent: Meinong Contra Epicurus

Are there nonexistent objects in the sense in which Meinong thought there are? One reason to think so derives from the problem of reference to the dead. The problem can be displayed as an aporetic tetrad:

1. A dead person no longer exists.
2. What no longer exists does not exist at all.
3. What does not exist at all cannot be referred to or enter as a constituent into a state of affairs.
4. Some dead persons can be referred to and can enter as constituents into states of affairs. (For example, 'John Lennon' in 'John Lennon is dead' refers to John Lennon, who is a constituent of the state of affairs, John Lennon's being dead.)

Despite the plausibility of each member, the above quartet is logically inconsistent. The first three propositions entail the negation of the fourth. Indeed, any three entail the negation of the remaining one. Now (1) and (4) count as data due to their obviousness. They are 'datanic' as opposed to 'theoretical' like the other two. Therefore, to relieve the logical tension we must either reject (2) or reject (3).

To reject (2) is to reject Presentism according to which only temporally present items exist. One could hold that both past and present items (tenselessly) exist, or that past, present, and future items (tenselessly) exist. Such anti-presentist theories break the two-way link between existence and temporal presentness: what is temporally present exists, but what exists need not be temporally present.

But another option is to reject (3). One could adopt the view of Alexius von Meinong according to which there are items that stand jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, "beyond being and nonbeing." These items have no being whatsoever. Meinong's examples include the golden mountain (a possible object) and the round square (an impossible object). His doctrine was misunderstood by Russell and generations of those influenced by him. The doctrine is not that nonexistent objects have a mode of being weaker than existence, but that they have no being whatsoever. And yet they are not nothing! They are not nothing inasmuch as we can refer to them and predicate properties of them. They are definite items of thought possessing Sosein but no Sein, but are not mere accusatives of thought. A strange view, admittedly, and I do not accept it. (See my A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer 2002, pp. 38-42.) But distinguished philosophers have and do: Butchvarov, Castaneda, T. Parsons, Routley/Sylvan, et al.)

So Meinongianism is a theoretical option. The Meinongian line gives us a way to answer Epicurus. For Epicurus death is not an evil because when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not. The point is that at no time is there a subject possessing the property of being dead. When I am alive, I am not dead. And when I am dead, I do not exist. It is not just that when I am dead I no longer presently exist, but that I do not exist at all. (Presentism seems part and parcel of the Epicurean position.) And because I do not exist at all when I am dead, I cannot have properties. (Anti-Meinongianism is also part and parcel of the Epicurean position: existence is a necessary condition of property-possession.) But then I cannot, when dead, have the property of being dead, in which case there is no state of affairs of my being dead. And that gives us a deep ontological reason for denying that death is an evil: if there is no state of affairs of my being dead, then there is nothing to possess the property of being evil. (Note that it is not the property of being dead that is evil, or me the individual, but the putative state of affairs of my being dead.)

As I read Epicurus, his position on death, namely, that being dead is not an evil for the one who is dead, requires both Presentism and Anti-Meinongianism. If that is right, then one can answer Epicurus either by rejecting Presentism or by accepting Meinongianism.

Anti-Presentism breaks the two-way link between existence and temporal presentness, while Meinongianism breaks the two-way link between existence and property-possession. The anti-presentist faces the challenge of giving a coherent account of tenseless existence, while the Meinongian owes us an explanation of how there can be items which actually have properties while having no being whatsoever. Epicureanism maintains both links but flies in the face of the powerful intuition that death is an evil.

A good solution eludes us. And so once again we end up in good old Platonic fashion up against the wall of an aporia.