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> Roberto Vescarelli wrote:
> (a) there are in common language such words like 'Father Christmas' used to
> denote non-existing objects
>
> (b) there is, consequently, the possibility of doing right reasoning about
> non-existing objects like 'If Father Cristmas brings, sponte sua, a present
> to every good children, he must be a good person'
>
> Why are there similar phaenomena?
>
> The natural answer is that there are things that don't exist. So we must
> distinguish beetwen being and existence (like Meinong did).
Graham Priest, whose noneism deals with nonexistent object, states:
"One must precisely not read 'SxA(x)' as 'There exists something, x,
such that A(x)'.
Assuming that existence and being are the same thing, one should not
even read it as 'There is something, x, such that A(x)'. The reading
'Something, x, is such that A(x)' will do nicely. This is why I have
changed the symbolism: the temptation to read 'E' as 'there exists/is'
is just too great. [...] Thus, 'Sx(Px & Qx)' is: 'some x is such that x
is a P and x is a Q'. Or more simply: 'some Ps are Qs'. One can still
continue to read 'AxA(x)' as 'Every x is (or all xs are) such that
A(x)'. Thus 'Ax(Px -> Qx)' is: 'every x is such that if it is a P it is
a Q'. Or more simply: 'all Ps are Qs'. If one wishes to express the
more orthodox interpretation of quantifiers, one can (and has to) do
this by deploying the existence predicate.
[...] The admission of non-existent objects is meinongianism, or, as I
shall call it, noneism. And let me stress, as [Routley/Sylvan] did,
that non-existent objects do not have some inferior mode of being, such
as 'subsistence'. They have no mode of being whatever. They do not
exist in any sense of that word (at the world in question, of
course--they may, or may not, exist at others; they may not even exist
at any world)." (p. 13/14)
"For the noneist to exist and to be are exactly the same thing. Holmes
does not exist; Holmes is not. There exists/is nothing that is Sherlock
Holmes." (p. 108)
[Priest, Graham (2005). /Towards non-being: The logic and metayphysics
of intentionality/. Oxford: Oxford University Press.]
#PH
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