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Existence questions

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Abstract

I argue that thinking of existence questions as deep questions to be resolved by a distinctively philosophical discipline of ontology is misguided. I begin by examining how to understand the truth-conditions of existence claims, by way of understanding the rules of use for ‘exists’ and for general noun terms. This yields a straightforward method for resolving existence questions by a combination of conceptual analysis and empirical enquiry. It also provides a blueprint for arguing against most common proposals for uniform substantive ‘criteria of existence’, whether they involve mind-independence, possession of causal powers, observability, etc., and thus for showing that many arguments for denying entities (numbers, ordinary objects, fictional characters, propositions…) on grounds of their failure to meet one or more of these proposed existence criteria are mistaken.

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Notes

  1. As Hirsch (2002, p. 67) summarizes van Inwagen’s view.

  2. See Horwich (1998 pp. 119–120) for discussions of context-sensitive terms and problems of attributions of reference in foreign languages. For simplicity, I only deal with general terms (not singular terms) in this paper, but most of what is said about general nouns parallels points that may be made about singular terms (see Thomasson 2007a).

  3. I have given independent arguments elsewhere for a metasemantic approach to existence claims. See Thomasson (2007a, pp. 45–48).

  4. Field (2001, pp. 105–106) handles a similar problem for the deflationary conception of truth; in the terms he develops there, we might say that ‘*K* refers’ and ‘Ks exist’ are equivalent relative to the existence of the term *K*.

  5. Nor, however, does the above view of existence commit us to denying minimalism about reference—since there is, on that view, no substantive nature of a reference relation to be uncovered, there is no need for some substantive content to ‘existence’ to plug in to get a substantive understanding of reference. The terms ‘refers’ and ‘exists’ may, instead, each be governed simply by interrelated platitudes. Thanks to Huw Price for raising this issue.

  6. Note that this way of formalizing the thesis relies on assuming that a term *K* refers just in case there is some x such that *K* refers to x. While widely accepted, this assumption is rejected by Martinich and Stroll (2007).

  7. This assumption is of course rejected by various philosophers including Meinongians and free logicians. It is, however, generally accepted by those who hold the approaches to ontology I will be criticizing below, viz., Quineans and most of those who propose substantive existence conditions (excepting Azzouni (2004)).

  8. Second, the situation is even worse than that, since (as the qua problem attests) there are always a great many things a speaker’s utterance is causally connected to.

  9. Donnellan (1974, pp. 23–24) says only that a chain of reference ends in a block when, for example, it ends with the introduction of a name via a mistake, an act of imagination, a work of fiction, and the like. I argue elsewhere (2007a, pp. 45–48) that we need to generalize his view of what counts as a ‘block’ by instead holding that reference chains end in blocks where application conditions were not met in a grounding situation.

  10. I respond to intuitions that kangaroos (or baubleheads) could be robots in my (2007a, pp. 48–53).

  11. Thanks to Robin Hendry for raising this issue.

  12. To use a term of Pettit’s (2002, p. 128).

  13. Dummett (1976, p. 80) makes a similar point.

  14. It should also be noted that application conditions are genuine success conditions, governing when a term would and would not be properly applied—they are not mere recognitional, evidential, or epistemic conditions.

  15. For discussion of difficulties with interpreting Armstrong’s criterion, see Oddy (1982).

  16. Bueno (2005, p. 477) proposes that it is a sufficient criterion for existence that we have observed an entity, tracked it, interacted with it, or developed methods of instrumental access to it. But he takes these only as sufficient, not as necessary criteria for existence, and so is not subject to the objections below.

  17. Azzouni (2004, 129ff.) lays out four conditions on thick epistemic access as criteria for entities being ‘thick posits’, but also allows that we should accept the existence of ‘thin’ (but not ‘ultrathin’) posits.

  18. Some serious ontologists suggest that speakers are deceived in thinking that there is some ‘thing’ ‘object’ or ‘individual’ in the relevant situations (where the presence of such a ‘thing’ is supposed to be an application condition for the term), when there is none. I address this line of thought briefly in Sect. 5 below, and more thoroughly in my (2007a, b, pp. 157–158) and (2008).

  19. Though it should be noted that van Inwagen and Merricks only accept the Eleatic principle as a criterion for the existence of macroscopic physical objects.

  20. Of course much the same could be said of other abstracta, including propositions, universals, numbers, etc. But since it is a contentious matter what exactly the application conditions for these terms are, I have stuck with more commonsense terms of ordinary language above.

  21. I provide a more thorough criticism of the Quinean approach to existence questions and to ontological commitment in my (2007a, pp. 159–168).

  22. Some eliminativist strategies, however, remain untouched by this argument—e.g. arguments based on alleged contradictions in the very idea of the sort of thing in question. I deal with these arguments elsewhere (2007a).

  23. This is not to say that doing ontology requires working in the metalanguage: given the connections between object-language and meta-language claims, the first step may also be undertaken in the object language in terms of determining the existence conditions for Ks.

  24. It may even be misleading to call this stage ‘conceptual analysis’ since it may be undertaken in the object language, as an analysis of the existence conditions for Ks. In that respect, we might think of this as analysis of Ks (making use of our conceptual competence) rather than an analysis of the concept of Ks or of the term ‘K’. For a discussion of this point, see my (2007b).

  25. Or one could reject schema (R) entirely, adopting a purely causal or teleosemantic theory of reference. But at least these alternate theories of reference (if combined with instances of schema (E)) would make existence questions purely empirically resolvable, and so would be little use to those attempting to revive a distinctively philosophical discipline of ontology.

  26. This is the referential parallel to the distinction in Horgan and Potrč (2000) between truth as involving indirect versus direct correspondence. I raise problems for this in my (2007a, pp. 100–104).

  27. This is not to endorse quantifier variance—the idea that the quantifier, and with it ‘existence’, has a multitude of different actual or possible uses. On the contrary, I have argued above that *exists* has a single core rule of use captured by (E), and have argued elsewhere (2008) that attempts to explicate a ‘thicker’ meaning for the term often fail. Nonetheless, one cannot rule out in principle that a homophonic term with different rules of use might be introduced, so the above is directed to considering that possibility.

  28. Thus a preferable route would be, with Schaffer (2008), to consider metaphysics not as the study of what exists, but rather of what grounds what.

  29. At least unless, as some (e.g. Sider 2008) have hoped, an argument can be made that there is one ‘absolutely’ best language, rather than different languages being better and worse at serving different purposes.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the Ontological Commitment conference in Sydney (December 2007), and at colloquia at Durham University and the University of Sussex. Many thanks to those present for very helpful discussions. Special thanks to Berit Brogaard, Jonathan Lowe, Luca Moretti, Jonathan Schaffer and Nick Zangwill for more extensive comments and/or discussion that greatly improved the paper.

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Correspondence to Amie L. Thomasson.

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Thomasson, A.L. Existence questions. Philos Stud 141, 63–78 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9263-8

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