Aim
This workshop will discuss topics in and around Meinongianism, including conceivability and impossibility; contradiction in Meinongianism; metaontology of Meinong and Quine; reconsideration of Meinogian and Russellian frameworks; and applications of Meinongian theory of nonexistent objects to metaphysics of fictional entities and metaphysics and ethics of the dead and unborn.
Date & Venue
- Date: October 15 (Sat), 2016, 9:30--18:30
- Venue: Room A-B, Akihabara Satellite Campus, Tokyo Metropolitan University. [map]
Speakers
- Francesco Berto (University of Amsterdam)
- Filippo Casati (Lehigh University)
- Naoya Fujikawa (Tokyo Metropolitan University)
- Tsuyoshi Kurata (Kyushu University)
- Hajime Nakagawa (Hokkaido University of Education)
- Masahiro Takatori (Keio University)
- Fumitake Yoshizawa (Kogakuin University)
Commentators
- Filippo Casati (Lehigh University)
- Richard Dietz (Tokyo Denki University)
- Genki Uemura (Rissho University)
Program
09:30--10:40 : Hajime Nakagawa, `Constituents of a proposition and what it is about’ (Comment: Filippo Casati)
10:45--11:55 : Filippo Casati and Naoya Fujikawa, `On Defective Objects’
11:55--13:20 : Lunch
13:20--14:30 : Francesco Berto, `Modal Meinongianism: Conceiving the Impossible’ (Comment: Richard Dietz)
14:35--15:45 : Masahiro Takatori `Ontological commitment, semantic machinery and nonexistent objects’
16:05--17:15 : Fumitake Yoshizawa `Value and Nonexistence: No Easy Way to Solve the Problem of the Value of Nonexistence (without Meinongianism)’
17:20--18:30 : Tsuyoshi Kurata `A Dualism for Fictional Objects: Abstract Artefact and Nonexistent Object’ (Comment: Genki Uemura)
19:00-- : Dinner
Abstracts
Hajime Nakagawa
Title: Constituents of a proposition and what it is about
Abstract: Gilbert Ryle referred to the Moore-Meinong-Russell Logical Atomism. And he urged that Moore's theory of propositions, wanting the Fregean distinction of Sinn and Bedeutung, involved an aporia. On the other hand Bertrand Russell had seen Frege's theory of propositions and Moore's one as being of the same kind, distinguished from Meinong's one. We shall examine the complications among the theories of propositions of the 1899-1905 period.
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Filippo Casati and Naoya Fujikawa
Title: On Defective Objects
Abstract: In his On Emotional Presentation (1917), Meinong introduced defective objects as the objects of self-referential thoughts/experiences which have themselves as their `immediate objects’. For example, suppose that I think that what I think is correct, and that what I think is nothing other than this very thought (ibid. pp. 14-15). According to Meinong, the object of this thought is defective, in the sense that it is one of the objects of `experiences which do not have objects in the way other experiences do, which in a sense lack objects altogether’ (ibid. p. 18).
One prominent feature of defective objects is, according to Meinong, their lack of Aussersein (objecthood). This claim is quite controversial for Meinong’s theory of objects, according to which every object has Aussersein (ibid. cf. p. 19).
After examining interpretations of defective objects in Kalsi (1980) and Rapaport (1982), in this paper we focus on the question why Meinong claimed that defective objects lack Aussersein at all. The reason Meinong gave for this is that the immediate object of an apprehending thought/experience is a precondition of the apprehension in question and thus logically prior to it. However, such consideration seems to show at most that such objects are nonexistent and impossible. However, as is well known, Meinong’s universe contains nonexistent objects and impossible objects. So, it is not clear why he claimed that defective objects lack Aussersein, rather claims simply that defective objects are nonexistent impossible objects. In this paper, we try to answer this question by examining Meinong’s distinction between having Aussersein as a concretum and having Aussersein as a disconcretum.
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Francesco Berto
Title: Modal Meinongianism: Conceiving the Impossible
Abstract: Modal Meinongianism (MM), as per Priest’s Towards Non-Being’s book, is based on the following “Qualified Comprehension Principle” for objects: For any condition A[x], some object o satisfies A[x] at some world. The worlds at issue are those that realise the situation envisaged by the intentional agent who uses the condition. These worlds can be possible or impossible. This means that MM assumes the view that we can envisage the impossible. Can we? A venerable philosophical tradition denies it, going back to Hume’s motto: “Nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible.” (Treatise, I, ii, 2). But a defense of the view that we can conceive the impossible is crucial to the MM research program. If we cannot, the whole apparatus of impossible worlds becomes pointless as a way to give a semantics of intentionality. In this paper I distinguish various senses of “conceiving that A”: in one minimal sense, explicitly addressed by Priest (“bringing A before the mind”, or “grasping the meaning of A”), it is trivial that we can conceive the impossible. In a more substantive sense (“imagining that A” understood as “having a mental representation of a situation verifying A”), the issue is more controversial. Drawing on recent work by Kung, I propose a distinction between two ways of understanding imagination, the “telescopic view” and the “stipulative view”. I argue that, if the stipulative view is right, we can conceive the impossible in the more substantive sense. Though I have no strong argument to offer, I gesture at some reasons for preferring the stimulative view over the telescopic view.
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Masahiro Takatori
Title: Ontological commitment, semantic machinery and nonexistent objects
Abstract: It is an orthodox view in the broadly Quinean metaontology that the ontological commitment of a theory is specified through its semantic metatheory. And in this procedure of specification, the following point should be noted: some kinds of objects admitted in the semantic metatheory are not counted in the ontological commitment of the original (object) theory. (For example, think about various mathematical constructs employed in the standard semantics for formal languages.) Such kinds of objects are usually classified as something like “semantically auxiliary objects” (cf. Rayo (2007), Krämer (2014)), and these entities are not considered as the constituents of the world or realm of beings (at least relative to the object language). In this talk, I will examine the status of such semantically auxiliary objects in the (broadly) Quinean metaontology, and argue that the status of such objects is in fact close to the one of nonexistent objects in important aspects. In addition, related to the above points, I will also argue about the status of semantically auxiliary objects in noneism/Meinongianism and investigate the (if not ontological) “metaphysical” commitment of this metaontological position.
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Fumitake Yoshizawa
Title: Value and Nonexistence: No Easy Way to Solve the Problem of the Value of Nonexistence (without Meinongianism)
Abstract: Dying early is usually worse than living a long life. To come into existence is usually perhaps better than to have never existed. Both of these comparative evaluations appear to suppose that a dead person and an unborn person have a certain, naturally, zero well-being level (the Zero View). However, does it not then follow from the Zero View that a nonexistent person has a property, namely, of having zero well-being, when (and where) she does not exist? How does a nonexistent subject have a property? This can be called “the problem of the value of nonexistence.” I examine the metaphysical (or formal) approach to making the Zero View intelligible, in particular by criticizing Neil Feit’s proposal (2015). According to Feit, it is not that a subject has certain properties, but rather that she lacks certain properties (e.g., being pleased and being in pain), that makes true the proposition that she has zero well-being. However, I argue that Feit’s argument does not work well. Feit should abandon the whole concept of the properties of well-being. I then suggest that there is no easy way to solve the problem of the value of nonexistence without Meinongianism, in the sense that we should reject the popularly (and sometimes uncritically) accepted principle that a person have a genuine property only when (and where) she exists.
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Tsuyoshi Kurata
Title: A Dualism for Fictional Objects: Abstract Artefact and Nonexistent Object
Abstract: As is well known, the nature of fiction and fictional objects has been much discussed in twentieth century analytic philosophy. Today we have a great variety of theories, both in ontology and metaontology, that attempt to provide a unified account for this topic. Among those are possibilism (D. Lewis), noneism or the new approach to Meinongianism (G. Preist, F. Berto), ‘classical’ neo-Meinongianism (T. Parsons, E. Zalta), artefactualism (S. Kripke, N. Salmon, A. Thomasson), and fictionalism (K. Walton, S. Brock), not to mention neo-Fregeanism (including ‘easy’ approach) and neo-Carnapianism. It seems, however, that no single theory can succeed in solving at once various problems that are involved in fictional discourses and fictional objects. And I think that this is due to the complexity of the problems, rather than some deficiency of each theory. In effect, the fallacy might consist in the view that there must be a single theory that is able to give an answer to all the semantical and ontological questions concerning this troublesome topic.
This presentation defends a dualism for fictional objects, according to which a sharp distinction should be made between the fictional object in intra-fictional discourses, such as in ‘Sherlock Holmes is a detective’, and the fictional object in extra-fictional (meta-fictional) ones, such as in ‘Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional character’. In my view, the former (FO1) is suitably analyzed by the framework of Meinongianism of a certain type, while the latter (FO2) is best analyzed by Artefactualism: the dualist thesis takes FO1 to be some sort of Meinongian object, FO2 to be an abstract artefact. These are two distinct objects that are governed by their own criterion of identity, so that a single theory can hardly give an integrated account for them.
I shall argue first that the artefactualist insights concerning fictional objects are basically correct so far as external discourses are concerned. Secondly I claim that an ‘empty’ name in the intra-fictional discourses denotes, unlike fictionalist theory (whether it is ‘pretense’ or ‘prefix’ one), a Meinogian object that is a correlate of a (nuclear) property set. Thirdly I shall turn to examine two objections to my approach. The first would say that it is extravagant to admit the nonexistent objects in addition to the existent abstract artefacts (or abstract artefacts over and above Meinongian objects). The second is that the ‘creationist’ view in artefactualism is questionable. Finally I shall emphasize some merits of the dualist approach (not exactly ‘syncretism’) and propose a solution to the question of how the two types of fictional objects (FO1 and FO2) stand in relation to each other.
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Acknowledgment
Tokyo Workshop on Meinongianism is supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through grant 16K16684.
Organizers
The workshop is organized by Naoya Fujikawa and Hitoshi Omori. For any inquiries on the workshop, please feel free to contact Naoya at: fjnaoya [at] gmail [dot] com.