THESES SIS/LIBRARY TELEPHONE: +61 2 6125 4631 R.G. MENZIES LIBRARY BUILDING NO:2 FACSIMILE: +61 2 6125 4063 THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY EMAIL: [email protected] CANBERRA ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA USE OF THESES This copy is supplied for purposes of private study and research only. Passages from the thesis may not be copied or closely paraphrased without the written consent of the author. OBJECTS AND ONTOLOGY IN MEINONG'S JUNGLE by Arthur Witherall A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Australian National University July 1992. Except where acknowledged within the text, all parts of this thesis represent my own original work. 1/Mhu~ /J/ZwutJ Arthur Witherall ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Not only do I acknowledge my supervisors, Richard Campbell and Richard Sylvan, for their intelligent criticism of this work, I am also grateful to them for giving me the occasional push in what seemed to be the right direction. Some of the many others whose ideas have stimulated my thoughts while venturing into Meinong's Jungle include: Edwin Mares, Susan Theron, Dominic Hyde, Bart Buseyne, Robert Nichols, Jeremy Garwood, Julia Clarke and Micheal Tooley. We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the centre hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 11. ABSTRACT It is often sensible, coherent and true to deny that certain things exist. When talking about fictional characters, imaginary objects of thought, and impossible things, it is also appropriate to attribute specific features which distinguish these subjects of discourse. Sometimes it is important to make such attributions in order to ascertain whether such items could exist in the first place. It therefore seems that there are nonexistent things, and that they are constituted in quite definite ways. At the very least, this is the most simple and intuitive way to explain a great deal of our discourse. It suggests that the term "object" does not necessarily mean "existent". Using a general phenomenological method, Alexius Meinong developed these observations into his theory of objects. He argued that existence is a substantial property, which has both instances and noninstances, and also claimed that we know about things which fail to exist through postulation, assumption, and imagination. The general principle of his original theory was that, fo.r any property f, there is an object: "the f-er" which has that property. He was later forced to modify this principle in response to Bertrand Russell's objections, for it appeared to imply that the existent round square exists, which is false, and it also seemed to contravene the law of noncontradiction. Without a developed logical theory, his modifications were not very appealing. Consequently Russell's alternative theory of descriptions, which dispenses with nonexistent objects, flourished. The logical theory which Meinong could not supply was eventually constructed by Terence Parsons and Richard Routley, and variations were devised by Hector-Neri Castaneda and William Rapaport. They have made use of several distinctions, the most important of which is that between characterising properties, which describe and classify things, and noncharacterising properties, which include existence and possibility. It is by invoking this distinction, and modifying Meinong's general principle so that "the f-er is f' is restricted to characterising properties, that Russell's objections are met. It is principally through the notion of the characterisation of a thing (its set of characterising properties) that the simple and intuitive explanation of our attributions of nonexistence can be reconstructed by a revised version of the theory of objects. This work does not deal with Meinong's original theory in any detail. Instead, the version presented by Routley and Parsons is examined, and mostly endorsed. It is argued that the distinction between characterising and noncharacterising properties needs a more substantial justification than has been supplied, and an account of how to draw it is given. The problem of universals, which is relevant because it is an ontological matter, and because (it is argued) nonexistent objects really do instantiate properties, is also examined. In the first three chapters, I explain the basic theory of objects, attempt to show that universals are things which fail to exist, and provide an account of characterisation. The last two chapters are (mostly) independent of the first three, and address the problems of ontology. If the theory of objects is correct, then the question of what it is to exist is given an entirely new meaning. For one thing, it is then possible to give a substantial account of ontological status. The main problem with the project of characterising existence is that it is difficult to distinguish existing things from .fictions, because anything that a real thing can be, an imaginary thing can also be. My conclusion is a little radical: there is no way of separating fiction from reality, other than by the external and logical features of their stories. In effect, anything which exists has the same form as a fictional character, and even appears in stories. I consequently present a holistic ontology, in which universal coherence of stories and descriptions, and connection to the real world, are the criteria for existence. CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE : THE tHEORY OF OBJECTS 1 Existence as a Substantial Property 1 2 Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond 7 3 The Characterisation Postulate 25 4 Castaneda's Guise Theory 38 CHAPTER TWO : THE NONEXISTENCE OF UNIVERSALS 1 The Problem 46 2 General Arguments for Universals 51 3 Instantiation 57 4 The Regress Argument 63 5 Other objections and different theories 67 6 The Question of Existence 72 6.1 Routley's Noneist Theory of Universals 76 6.2 The Nonexistence of Universals 79 CHAPTER THREE : CHARACTERISATION 1 The Distinction Between Characterising and Noncharacterising Properties 87 2 The Distinction According To Routley and Parsons 88 3 What Objects are Like 92 4 Categories and Essences 95 4.1 Contrast and A priori Resemblance 97 4.2 The Ground for the Distinction 99 4.3 Examples of Characterising Properties 102 5 Category Trangressions and Other Problems 106 5.1 Relations 111 5.2 Higher-order Opjects 118 6 A Digression on Husserl and Meinong 119 7 The Adequacy of the Theory 123 8 Conclusion 135 CHAPTER FOUR: THEORIES OF EXISTENCE 1 Ontological Frames 137 2 The Orthodox Analytical Theory of Existence 140 3 Phenomenological Alternatives 149 4 Relational Theories of Existence 153 4.1 Power 156 4.2 Space and Time 159 4.3Harmony 164 5 Formal Definitions 167 5.1 Contingency 169 5.2 Completeness and Consistency 173 6 Conclusion 179 CHAPTER FIVE : HOLISTIC ONTOLOGY 1 The Unity of Existence 181 2 The Theory of Embedding 186 3 Fictional Objects 196 3.1 The Pretence Theory of Fiction 200 3.2 Toward A Theory of Fictional Characters 207 3.3 Experience and Fiction 217 4 Holistic Ontology 226 4.1 The Real World 227 4.2 Subject, Object, World 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY 238 CHAPTER ONE : THE THEORY OF OBJECTS The people we are tempted to call clods and boors are just those who seem to find nothing fascinating in being human; their humanity is incomplete, for it has never astonished them. There is also something incomplete about those who find nothing fascinating in being. You may say that this is a philosopher's professional prejudice - that people are defective who lack a sense of the metaphysical. A. Watts, The Book, p. 129 1 Existence as a Substantial Property The aim of this work is to construct a general ontology: a theory of existence, in the sense of an account of what it means to exist, and of what is ultimately real. This is a very basic metaphysical concern, and answers to philosophical questions about existence form the foundations of large scale research programs. In the analytical tradition, questions about general ontology have been treated in a certain way, and the answers that have been given by thinkers like B. Russell and W.V. Quine have been so widely accepted that students are often taught that the issues have been settled once and for all. Very few philosophers now believe that there are any open questions regarding the notion of existence, which is almost always taken to be the main subject of ontology. To exist is to be "spoken about", "named", "the value of a variable" within "serious" discourse, and true (scientific) theories. This means that existence is treated as a trivial property, satisfied by everything, instead of a substantial property. The reliance upon 1 linguistic criteria for reality is a central part of the prevailing methodology, and one of its main problems is to explain those parts of language that do not fit in to the serious, scientific and referential paradigms. I shall attempt to construct a basic ontology using an unorthodox methodology, involving the rejection of mainstream "classical" logic, and one of my aims is to arrive at an analysis of the notion of existence. Rather than propose yet another logico-linguistic account, I will develop a theory which allows the ontological predicate "exist" to possess a metaphysical meaning. In doing so I shall invoke a specific contrast with things that fail to exist. I am thereby committed to the thesis that there are such things as nonexistent objects. For this reason, a large part of the work is devoted to the examination and extension of a theory which allows for quantification over things which fail to exist.