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American Philosophical Quarterly Paper presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the

Volume 19,Number 4, October 1982 American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division,Sacramento, California, March 25-27, 1982

VIII. ARE THERE NONEXISTENT OBJECTS?TERENCE PARSONS

THEquestion that I have been asked to address

is "Are there nonexistent objects?"1 The

answer that I will give is "Yes." I cannot hope to

establish with any certainty that this is the correct

answer. However, I will try to say what the best

evidence is in its favor, and I will try to answer the

chief objections to this view that I have not

discussed elsewhere.2

The evidence in favor of the view that there are

things that do not exist is that this is entailed or

presupposed by things that we believe and that wehave good evidence for. I will give examplesbelow. The two main sorts of objection that I will

discuss here are (1) objections to the effect that the

things that we believe do not in fact entail or

presuppose that there are nonexistents, and (2) ob?

jections to the effect that, whatever the evidence,the conclusion that there are nonexistents could

not possibly be true. Iwill begin with an objectionof the latter sort.

I. Does "There Are" Mean "There Exists?"

One of the most typical respnses to the claim:

"There are things that do not exist" is that this can?

not possibly be true; it cannot possibly be true

because it is inconsistent, and it is inconsistent

because "there are" just means "there exist." Andso the claim: "There are things that do not exist"

just means "There exist things that do not exist,"and this is clearly inconsistent.

Now Iacknowledge

that when we make state?

ments using the words "there are" we very often

communicate the very same information that we

would otherwise communicate by using the words

"there exist." But this is not because the two

phrases are synonymous, and it does not show

that there could not be things that do not exist. In

fact, a proper understanding of our use of

language suggests just the opposite. The first sec

tion of this paper is devoted to an explanation of

this point.I want to begin by examining a typical dialogue

of the sort that makes it appear that "there are"

and "there exist" are synonymous. Here it is:

Speaker A: There is a passage in one of Meinong'sworks in which he gives up the belief in nonexistent

objects.Speaker B: Oh no, that seriously undermines a paperthat Fm writing.Speaker A: Oh I wouldn't worry if I were you; it's

only a nonexistent passage.3

This is a bad joke, but it illustrates a good point.The joke only works because in his first statement

Speaker A communicates the information that

there is an existent passage of a certain sort in

Meinong's writings, and he does this not by saying"there exists" but merely by saying "there is." And

this is typical, I think, of virtually all of the quan?tifier words that we use in ordinary language. By

using "some F," or "an F," or "at least one F" we

usually communicate "some existing F," "an ex?

isting F," or "at least one existing F." And onenatural explanation of this is that the word"exists" is logically redundant, so that these pairsof phrases are all synonyms. However, that is not

the only possible explanation, and it is a wrongone.

Let me apparently change the subject for a mo?

ment and focus on a couple of other dialogues:

C: Did you put out a fork with each plate?D: Each plate? Heavens no There must be millionsof plates just here in California alone. I'm not Super?

man, you know.E: At least two heifers and three steers have the initial

symptoms of hoof and mouth disease.F: Well, have you called the vet?E: What for? Ours are OK. I was talking about onesin China.

I think that these dialogues illustrate the very same

linguistic phenomenon that is operative in the firstone. Speaker C clearly communicates to D a ques

365

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366 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

tion regarding the plates that are then in use bythem: by using the word "plate" he "meant" "platein use by us," and D's pretense that he

misunderstood this is only a bad joke. But this is

not because thephrases "plate"

and"plate

in use

by us" are synonymous; they are not. In fact, if

they were synonymous, D could not make the jokeat all. Likewise E's use of the phrase "two heifers"

communicates the notion "two of our heifers," but

not because the phrases are synonymous. The ex?

planation is rather this. In ordinary linguistic

interchanges a limited range of things are under

discussion, and both speaker and hearer take the

common nouns that they use to be implicitlyrestricted to these things.4 Without such an

assumptioncommunication would be

extremelydifficult, if not impossible.

Now what about "there are" and "there exist"?

Do these often communicate the same informa?

tion because they are synonymous, or because

they are often used in contexts in which it is

understood that it is only existing things that are

under discussion? The answer will be clear if these

phrases function differently in contexts in which

no such assumption is made. Here are three

dialogues that presuppose such contexts:

G: Oneof

the detectivesin this

story (namely,Sherlock Holmes) has inspired more amateur

criminology than any real detective has.

H: You must be pulling my leg. None of the detec?tives in that story exist, and so there aren't any such

things. So none of "them" could possibly have in?

spired anything.

I: It's very strange; that unicorn that I dreamed aboutlast night bore a very strong resemblance to my

psychiatrist.

J: I guess you need more than a psychiatrist; don't

you know that there aren't any unicorns?

K: Meinong thought that some things don't exist.L: How peculiar; how could anyone think that some

things that exist don't exist. Are you sure that the

poor fellow hasn't been mistranslated?5

Each of these perfectly awful jokes depends on

supposing that in the context in question a word

such as "some" means "some existing." If this

equivalence were correct, the dialogues would not

be jokes at all, but would rather contain perfectly

appropriate responses to peculiar statements. In?

stead, it is the responses that are peculiar and the

initial statements that are appropriate. Not only is

the equivalence missing in such contexts, but or?

dinary people withouta

modern philosophicaleducation don't even get the joke when shown

such dialogues.I take such dialogues to show that there are at

least some perfectly ordinary everyday contexts in

which speakers assume that at least some of the

things under discussion do not exist. This does not

by itslf establish that there are things that do not

exist, but it does show that "there are" and similar

phrases are not synonymous with phrases such as

"there exist," and it shows that the claim "There

arethings that

do not exist" is a substantive claim

that cannot be automatically dismissed on groundof verbal inconsistency.

II. When Does Our Use of a Term Commit

Us to a Referent?

I believe that there is an important difference

between (i) referring to a thing that does not exist,and (ii) failing altogether to refer. We succeed in

referringto a

thingthat does not exist when we use

the name "Sherlock Holmes" or the description"the chief detective in the Conan Doyle novels."

We fail to refer at all when we use a descriptionsuch as "the chief detective in Alice in Wonder?

land.99

Free logic is sometimes explained as the study of

"singular terms which fail to refer to existing

things." If I am right, free logic is a study of two

quite different kinds of singular terms. Some

terms which fail to refer to existing things do so

because they fail to refer altogether; examples are

"the existing present king of France" and "the

chief detective in Alice in Wonderland.99 Other

terms fail to refer to existing things because theysucceed in referring to things that do not exist; ex?

amples are "Sherlock Holmes" and "the chief

detective of The Woman in Scarlet.99 These terms

behave in different ways. Those that succeed in

referring to nonexistent things may appear in con



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ARE THERE NONEXISTENT OBJECTS? 367

tingently true identities (e.g., "Zeus=

Jupiter,""Sherlock Holmes = the chief detective of the

Conan Doyle novels"), they may appear in true

atomic (nonnegative) sentences (e.g., "Pegasus is

winged"),and

theyare

subjectto normal

logicallaws such as universal specification (e.g., from

"All fictional detectives are cultural artifacts" and

"Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective" we mayinfer "Sherlock Holmes is a cultural artifact").

Terms that fail entirely to refer to none of the

above. I suspect that many (though certainly not

all) of the ongoing controversies in free logic are

ongoing because of a failure to appreciate this

distinction.

So far I have been making claims without sup?

porting them. How can we tell which singular

terms refer and which do not? I think that this isbest divided into two questions: (1) How can we

tell which of the claims that we make using

singular terms are true?, and (2) How can we tell

which of the true claims that we make using

singular terms commit us to there being referents

for such terms? The first question is a very generalone; I will return to it in the last section. In this

section and the next I will discuss the question of

which uses of which singular terms commit us to

those terms having referents. To give you an idea

of where I am heading, my intuitions on this mat?ter are that:

(1) If I say "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective"then I am commited to their being a referent for"Sherlock Homes."

(2) If I say "The detective in that story does not exist"then I may or may not be committed to a referent for

"the detective in that story." I might be attributingnonexistence to a certain fictional detective, in whichcase I would be so committed; on the other hand I

might instead be denying the proposition that suchand such a detective does exist, in which case Iwould

not be so committed. (In short, I agree with Russellthat such sentences have the two interpretations thathe would attribute to the description's having either

primary or secondary occurrence.)

(3) If I say "The average American male has 1.37children" then I am not committed to a referent for"the average American male."

One reason for dwelling on such examples is that

historically a belief in nonexistent objects has been

linked with the view that "every grammaticallycorrect denoting phrase stands for an object,"

where denoting phrases are identified not by their

use or meaning but solely in terms of their gram?matical form.6 Such a view

puts"the

averageman"

on a par with both "Sherlock Holmes" and "the

detective in Alice in Wonderland,99 and fails to do

justice to scope ambiguities and the like. It also

leads to inconsistency, as Russell pointed out.7 We

need a more sophisticated view than this, and one

that hopefully can be articulated and tested in a

way that appeals to ordinary nonphilosophicalevidence.

My proposal is going to sound disappointinglyold-fashioned. I propose that a use of a sentence

involvinga

grammaticallycorrect

singularterm

commits the user to a referent for that term just in

case it commits the user to the existential

generalization of the original claim. That is, a use

of a sentence of the form "...i..." commits the user

to a referent for 7' just in case it commits its user

to a sentence of the form "There is something such

that ...it..." Now tests of this sort are often taken

to be appropriate if applied to sentences that have

already been paraphrased into some kind of

canonical idiom. This is not what I am suggesting.I am suggesting that the test be applied to real live

uses of English sentences. The advantage of this is

that the test depends mostly on what people mean

when they speak in ordinary language about or?

dinary matters, and is relatively independent of

philosophical presuppositions. The disadvantageis that the sentences in question are often

somewhat stilted, and this affects our judgment. (Iinsist on the test being exactly applied because

seemingly trivial rewordings can alter our

judgments.) Here are what I take to be results of

the test:

(1) A normal use of "My birthday present arrived

yesterday" does commit one to "There is something

such that it arrived yesterday."(2) A normal use of "The average American male has1.37 children" does not commit one to "Something issuch that it has 1.37 children."

(3) A normal use of "The king of France is not bald"

may or may not commit one to "Something is suchthat it is not bald" depending on how it is intended: as



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thickness" are not merely false but, on analysis, in

contradiction with something in that from which theyseemed to be logical consequences. The only solutionis to see that being a fictitious person is not to be a

person of a certain sort...10

Has Ryle said anything here that would cast doubt

on the view that "Mr. Pickwick" succeeds in refer?

ring to a nonexistent thing? That may depend on

additional assumptions about what fictional ob?

jects are like. The most natural view is that such

things are pretty much the way we conceive them

to be when we read the stories in which they

originate, so that Mr. Pickwick would actually be

a (nonexistent) person who actually took part in

certain escapades. Another possible view,

however, is that Mr. Pickwick is not a person atall, but ismerely a thing that has personhood attri?

buted to it in certain stories.11 On this latter view,

Ryle has said nothing at all that would cast doubt

on there being aMr. Pickwick. For this latter view

agrees with Ryle in holding that fictional personsare not persons of a certain sort. It disagrees with

Ryle in holding that there are fictional persons,but Ryle's argument has not touched this point.

Probably Ryle intended to attack what I have

called the more natural view, the view according

to which fictional objects actually have theordinary sorts of properties that they are

understood to have in their stories.12 But even here

I think his argument fails. Granted, on this view

Mr. Pickwick actually has the property of being a

person, as Ryle suggests, and even has the pro?

perty of "having been born sometime," for these

are both properties that he is understood to have

in the story. But Ryle is wrong to think that it

follows from this that there is some particualr time

such that Mr. Pickwick has the property of havingbeen born then. This does not follow on the view

in question, for the story does not specify a time at

which Mr. Pickwick was born, nor does it followon general logical principles. The form of the in?

ference in question is this:

From: x has the property of there being a time atwhich he was born,Infer: there is a time, t, such that x has the propertyof having been born at t.

This inference depends on a property abstraction

principle that is known to fail when nonexten

sional contexts are concerned, and according to

the view under discussion, it also fails in manycases

involving quantificationover nonexistent

things. Ryle has taken a principle of limited val?

idity and applied it to a domain in which it does

not hold.13

Let me turn briefly to Ryle's second test for

systematically misleading expressions. This is not

a test that he ever articulates, but it is one that he

uses quite a bit. Here is a passage in which he

applies the test to the phrase "the idea of taking a

holiday":

.. .the statement "the idea of taking a holiday has

just occured to me" seems grammatically to be

analogous to "that dog has just bitten me."...But the

appearance is a delusion. For while I could not restate

my complaint against the dog in any sentence not con?

taining a descriptive phrase referring to it, I can easilydo so with the statement about "the idea of taking a

holiday," e.g., in the statement "I have just been

thinking that Imight take a holiday."14

The claim seems to be that if a sentence containg a

definite description can be paraphrased by one

without a corresponding name or definite descrip?

tion, then we should not treat the original definite

descriptionas a

referring expression.Unfortunately, when Ryle attempts to apply

this test to the sentence "Mr. Pickwick is a fiction"

the test fails. Ryle attempts two different

paraphrases. The first one is "some subject of

attributes has the attributes of being called

Dickens and being a coiner of false propositionsand pseudo-proper names."15 This clearly fails as a

paraphrase since it fails to specify which of

Dickens' characters is being identified as fictional.

The second attempted paraphrase is "some subjectof attributes has the attribute of being a book or a

sentence which could only be true or false (/"some?one was called 'Mr. Pickwick'."16 This iswrong for

many reasons, a chief one being that it does not

make any link with fiction. Ryle's paraphrases do

not work, and no one has been able to improve on

them in the last fifty years. Perhaps that is because

"Mr. Pickwick" is not systematically misleading at

all.



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370 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

IV. Are There Really Nonexistent Things?

No doubt many philosophers will agree with

almost everything I have said so far, insofar as it is

taken as a contribution to "descriptive meta?

physics." They will suggest that I have been

describing the everyday beliefs of everyday peoplewithout philosophical training, and pointing out

that these beliefs involve a commitment to nonex?

istent things. But I have failed to challenge this

naive point of view and address the real question,which is whether there actually are any nonexis?

tent things.

Probably very little of substance can be said at

this point. Bynow we

have learned that if webegin by rejecting all of our ordinary beliefs, then

no conclusions follow at all, whereas if we reject

only part of them, then our conclusions are deter?

mined by the part we have arbitrarily chosen to

keep. Because of this, Carnap thought that to posea question of the form "Are there really things of

such and such a sort" is to pose a pseudo-question.It is merely to express the fact that we are faced

with a choice, a choice of whether or not to adopta language that uses quantifier idioms in connec?

tionwith

common nounsthat describe things of

the sort in question.17 If Carnap is right, the only

thing that I can reasonably say is that many

philosophers are wrong in thinking they have goodreasons for rejecting a form of language that other

people use with comfort.

Quine thinks that more can be said on such

issues. He thinks that we can make our pragmaticchoices rationally, if we take into account notions

such as simplicity. Here is a passage in which he

explains why we should believe in physical objects:

Imagine... that we have devised the mosteconomical set of concepts adequate to the play-by

play reporting of immediate exerience. The entitiesunder this scheme?the values of bound variables?

are, let us suppose, individual subjective events of

sensation or reflection. We should still find, no

doubt, that a physicalistic conceptual scheme, pur?

porting to talk about external objects, offers great ad?

vantages in simplifying our over-all reports. By bring?ing together scattered sense events and treating themas perceptions of one object, we reduce the complexi?

ty of our stream of experience to a manageable con?

ceptual simplicity.18

The claim here is that it is legitimate to assume

that there are physical objects because, amongother things, this shared assumption greatly

simplifies reports of our experiences. I claim that

it is legitimate to assume that there are nonexistent

objects for exactly the same reason?it simplifiesreports of our experiences in exactly the same way.

Let me give an example. Suppose I tell you the

following:

I've dreamed about the same unicorn three nights ina row. It looks a lot like a dog I once owned, thoughthe way it talks reminds me of my grandmother. Ac?

tually I'm growing quite fond of it, and I'm hopingthat it will be back tonight.

This could be a serious, informative report of a

meaningful experience. The shared assumptionthat there is something that I have been dreamingabout tells you as much about my dream exper?ience as the assumption that there are physical

objects does when I report my waking experiences.It would be just as difficult to translate my dream

report into purely phenomenological terms as it

would be to translate perceptual reports of

physical objects into such terms.

Quine thinks that our belief in physical objectsis a convenient myth.19 Perhaps nonexistent

objects are no better off. But they are no worse

off.

University of Calif ornia, Irvine Received February 3,1982

NOTES

1. This paper is to be presented in a symposium of the same title at the Pacific Division APA meetings inMarch 1982. The other

participants will be Alan Code, Jaakko Hintikka and Howard Wettstein.



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2. Especially in "The Methodology of Nonexistence," Journal of Philosophy LXXVI (1979) 649-62; Nonexistent Objects (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1980); "Fregean Theories of Fictional Objects." Topoi, forthcoming.

3. This example is patterned after one by Peter van Inwagen in a talk given to the American Society of Aesthetics in October 1981.

4. In logic such ranges are often called "domains of discourse," and they are taken to be limitations on the range of one's quan?

tifiers. In a language like English in which quantifier words always appear in conjunction with common nouns it makes no dif?

ference whether they are taken to limit the quantifiers or the nouns.

5. This example is patterned after one in Richard Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Research School of Social

Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, 1980), p. 423.

6. B. Russell, "On Denoting," Mind, vol. 14 1905.

7. The arguments that Russell explicitly states do not quite show this, but simple reformulations of them do; see Parsons (1980),

Chap. 2.

8. Examples (4) and (5) illustrate Frege's point that our commitment to numbers arises from our commitment to arithmetic, and

not from our ordinary uses of number words; see G. Frege, Foundations of Arithmetic (Oxford: Blackwells, 1950).

9. G. Ryle, "Systematically Misleading Expressions," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1931-32; reprinted in M. Weitz

(ed), Twentienth-Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition (New York: Free Press, 1966). Page references are to the reprinted

version.

10. Ryle, op. cit., p. 202.

11. The two views that are being contrasted here are called "Mod 1" and "Mod 2" in Parsons (1980) chapter 7. For a version of the

latter view, but one that takes fictional objects to actually exist, see P. van Inwagen, "Creatures of Fiction," American

Philosophical Quarterly vol. 14 (1977).

12. This view depends on distinguishing "ordinary" properties from others; this is discussed throughout Parsons (1980) where or?

dinary properties are called nuclear properties.

13. Some have held that the inference even fails in physics: a particle may be located someplace in a given region without there be?

ing any particular place at which it is located. The inference also fails for claims about the future, given an Aristotelian view of

future contingents. Much more needs to be said then this, of course; see Parsons (1980), especially chapters 4 and 7 for discussion.

In case the other symposiasts wish to criticize this account, I hereby incorporate the relevant portions of that text into this paper.

14. Ryle, op. cit., p. 198.

15. Ryle, op. cit., p. 189.

16. Ibid.

17. R. Carnap, "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology," inMeaning and Necessity (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1956).

18. W. V. Quine, "On What There Is," in From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), p. 17.

19. Quine, op. cit., pp. 18-19.

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