Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Saying that a does not exist (or that Fs do not exist) can mean that there is no such thing as a (that there are no Fs), so it can be a truism to say there are no non-existent objects. Some (e.g. Meinong) have meant something else: existing objects area special subclass of things, and there are objects outside that subclass, including fictional characters, golden mountains, and (perhaps) even round squares. Russell interpreted Meinong as holding that for any predicate F, there are things which are F; if there exist no Fs then the Fs are among the non-existents. This view appears untenable, since if S is any false sentence, we can define F to be ‘being an x such that S’, and the falsehood S follows logically from the claim that there are Fs. Meinong's actual view may escape this objection, since he limited his assumption of non-existents to Fs formed in natural ways from certain sorts of predicates (‘nuclear’ predicates); ‘exists’ itself is not one of these, though ‘golden’ and ‘being a mountain’ are. Another approach is to assume objects for any complex F whatsoever, but deny its decomposition in problematic cases; for example, one assumes that there are things that are round-and-square, but refuses to infer that such things are round (or square). A third is to assume (non-existent) Fs only when they are required for some branch of study, perhaps assuming fictional characters and ... log in or subscribe to read full text