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Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real

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Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real Kairos. Journal of Philosophy & Science 17, 2016 Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of Lisbon University Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real Cristina Travanini University of Rome Tor Vergata DAAD Fellow 2015/16 – FU Berlin [email protected] Abstract Meinong’s thought has been rediscovered in recent times by analytic phi- losophy: his object theory has significant consequences in formal ontology, and especially his account of impossible objects has proved itself to be decisive in a wide range of fields, from logic up to ontology of fiction. Rejecting the traditional ‘prejudice in favour of the real’, Meinong investigates what there is not: a peculiar non-existing object is precisely the fictional object, which exemplifies a number of properties (like Sherlock Holmes, who lives in Baker Street and is an outstanding de- tective) without existing in the same way as flesh-and-blood detectives do. Fictional objects are in some sense incomplete objects, whose core of constituent properties is not completely determined. Now, what does it imply to hold that a fictional object may also occur in true statements? We shall deal with the objections raised by Rus- sell and Quine against Meinong’s view, pointing out limits and advantages of both perspectives. Keywords Ontology of fiction, Meinong, classical quantification, Quine, meta-onto- logy. DOI 10.1515/kjps-2016-0017 1. Fictional Objects. Why Should We be Interested in Them? A fictional object is an object that occurs in fictional discourse, such as novels, scripts, short stories, created by the author’s imagination, so that we cannot find it in our actual world. Typical examples of fictional objects are a centaur, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes. Critics, commentators or students through their external comments might also distinguish the Cristina Travanini fictional discourse made by an author in his fictional work from the dis- course about fictional objects that is made. For example, when we say: “Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the most complex character in the history of literature”, we are dealing with a fictional object (Hamlet) in an external way, attributing him an extra-fictional property such as complexity. Now, why should we be interested in fictional objects? Why is it sig- nificant to provide a rigorous account of them? I shall suggest that fic- tional objects issue a challenge to our ontological categories, since to provide an account of them also means to deal with the notorious prob- lem of non-being and, in particular, with the fact that it seems possible to assert true things about non-existent objects. Indeed, if we consider the sentence: (1) Sherlock Holmes lives in 221b Baker Street, this seems to be intuitively true. We also make various external asser- tions about fictional objects that seem likewise intuitively true, such as “Arthur Conan Doyle invented Sherlock Holmes”. But can I really say true things about something (Sherlock Holmes) that seems not to exist? Am I here really positively talking about non-existence? Fictional objects appear to be borderline cases situated on the con- fines between ontology, epistemology, psychology and philosophy of language. We have to redefine our concept of object, being and non-be- ing, in an attempt to give an account of them. The questions about fic- tional objects involve the problem of the relationship between things and words, of how we can refer to something that seems not to exist. We might reformulate our initial problem in the following way: why should we be interested in non-being? We are actually interested in non-being because some of the asser- tions about it are not trivial. Consider for example the discovery that the planet “Vulcan” does not exist. Vulcan was a small planet whose existence between Mercury and the Sun was hypothesized in order to explain some perturbations of Mercury’s orbit. In the 19 th century the astronomers’ community maintained that there was a planet being-thus-and-so: only with Einstein’s theory of relativity it became apparent that Vulcan did not exist, although it had a clear, well determined nature. To assert “Vulcan Kairos. Journal of Philosophy & Science 17, 2016 57 Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of Lisbon University Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real does not exist” assures scientific progress: in this case non-existence makes the difference. So it seems that an object can have some features without existing. This is Alexius Meinong’s position: he defines as “object” whatever has a set of constitutive properties, regardless of its ontological status 1. Objects have a nature, a being-thus-and-so [ Sosein], regardless of (1) whether or not they exist; (2) whether or not they are actually intended (represented, thought, desired etc.)2. An object is independent from our psychological apprehension of it as well as from any ontological consid- eration: that means that there are also impossible objects like a round square, which is both round and square even if it cannot exist, and even if we do not think about it. Against “the prejudice in favour of the real”3, Meinong rejects the idea that to be an object means to exist, identifying different kinds of being. As well as existing real objects like tables and trees (which have a pecu- liar spatio-temporal determination), there are also ideal objects, like “limit”, “lack”, “connection”, “number”4, that although they do not exist in the same sense as a table, somehow “are” or “subsist” [ bestehen]. Fur- thermore, there are even objects that have no kind of being at all: for instance, the round square, the number 0 or a non-extensive surface, are all objects which maintain their properties regardless of their non-being, whose theoretical investigation has to be included into a more general theory of objects. In this extra-ontological domain, for which Meinong coined the term Aussersein (extra-being), the object is given a priori before our apprehending it and before we decide on its being or non-be- ing5. In this sense, “object theory in the realm of Aussersein offers an 1 Meinong’s associate E. Mally first formulated this principle of the “independence of Sosein from Sein”. 2 The Meinongian theory of objects defends its independence not only from traditional metaphysics (considered as the science of the existent), but also from psychology, that treats of objects only as far as they are apprehended by our intentional acts. 3 Meinong, 1904 , 485. 4 See Meinong, 1899. 5 In this sense the doctrine of Aussersein does not imply any recourse to a third type of being in addition to existence and subsistence. Kairos. Journal of Philosophy & Science 17, 2016 58 Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of Lisbon University Cristina Travanini extra-ontological semantic domain of all mind-independent objects of thought and language, existent, subsistent, beingless”6. Although Meinong does not provide us with a comprehensive theory of fictional objects, his theses on object theory might prove themselves to be useful in order to develop a sound ontology of fictional discourse. We shall now draw attention to those rare passages where Meinong explicitly deals with fictional objects, considered as a specific subclass of non-existent objects. 2. Meinong’s View on Fictional Objects. Explicit References It is matter of fact that people are able to think about non-existent things: we might admire Sherlock Holmes’ cleverness, fear a horrible character in a movie or imagine golden mountains. But how is it possible to think about something without ontological commitment? It seems that when we judge about something we always have to admit its existence: according to Meinong, “a person who judges believes something: […] to judge is to believe”7. Since Meinong ties up each feature in the realm of objects with some feature in the interior life of the subject, it might be helpful to provide here a brief overview of the Meinongian concept of intentionality. Indeed, it is not by sheer chance that his manifesto “Über die Gegenstandtheorie” [On Theory of Object] begins with an explicit reference to this concept of intentionality: “That knowing is impossible without something being known, and more generally, that judgements and ideas or presentations [Vorstellungen] are impossible without being judgements about and presentations of something, is re- vealed to be self-evident by a quite elementary examination of these experiences”8. 6 Jacquette, 1996. 7 Meinong, 1910; 1983, 10. So, conviction is the first thing that anyone will grant as being present in judgements: the second thing is “a definite position within the antithesis of yes and no”, which definitely distinguishes judgements from representations. 8 Meinong, 1904, 483; 1960, 76. Kairos. Journal of Philosophy & Science 17, 2016 59 Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of Lisbon University Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real The direction towards an object is regarded as the mark of mental acts. Meinong identifies four experiences through which an object can be apprehended: representation, thought, feeling and desire. In particular, within the thoughts are included not only judgements but also assump- tions, defined as “an intermediate domain, the one between representa- tion and judgement”9, “a convictionless affirmation and negation” 10 . This concept of assumption is extremely important in order to explain our apprehension of fictional objects, as far as we make assertions about them without affirming their existence. For example, we may say: (2) Sherlock Holmes is an excellent detective, even though we are perfectly aware of the non-existence of Sherlock Holmes11 , only because “our assuming is manifestly something that is not influenced in the slightest by the presence of a contrary conviction” 12 .
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