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by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary of Priest’s text, which is already written with maximum efficiency. Bracketed commentary and boldface are my own, unless otherwise noted. I do not have specialized training in this field, so please trust the original text over my summarization. I apologize for my typos and other unfortunate mistakes, because I have not finished proofreading, and I also have not finished learning all the basics of these logics.]
Summary of
Graham Priest
An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is
Part I
Propositional Logic
2.
Basic Modal Logic
2.8
Meinongianism
Brief summary:
(2.8.1) In modal realism, possible worlds and their members are concrete objects, and in modal actualism, they are abstract objects. In both cases, they are existing objects. Now we will consider the idea that they are non-existent objects (a position called Meinongianism). (2.8.2) We are already familiar with such non-existent things as Santa Claus and phlogiston. We can think of possible worlds in the same light. (2.8.3) Meinong famously held that there are non-existent objects, and the arguments against his position are not especially cogent. (2.8.4) An example of an uncogent argument against Meinongism is that non-existent possible worlds cannot causally interact with us, and thus we can know nothing about them. Yet, this objection would also hold for modal actualism and modal realism too. (2.8.5) That same objection also fails to take into account the fact that we do know facts about certain non-existent objects on account of these facts being stipulated, for example: “Holmes lived in Baker Street – and not Oxford Street – because Conan Doyle decided it was so” (31). (2.8.6) Priest ends by noting that {1} the aforementioned ideas do not settle the matter, as there are more suggestions to consider, and {2} there are more objections to consider.
[Possible Worlds as Non-Existing Objects]
[Our Familiarity with Non-Existing Things]
[Meinong’s Non-Existent Objects]
[An Objection. Its Ineffectivity as Resulting from Its Additional Application to Actualism and Realism]
[The Objection’s Ineffectivity as Resulting from the Fact that Stipulations Tell Us About Non-Existent Objects]
[Our Treatment on Possible Worlds Representation as Incomplete]
Summary
[Meinongianism: Possible Worlds as Non-Existing Objects]
[In modal realism, possible worlds and their members are concrete objects, and in modal actualism, they are abstract objects. In both cases, they are existing objects. Now we will consider the idea that they are non-existent objects (a position called Meinongianism).]
[In section 2.6.1 we learned that modal realism is the view that possible worlds are real worlds that exist at different times and/or places. And in section 2.7.1 we saw that under modal actualism, possible worlds are understood not as physically real entities, like in modal realism, but rather as abstract entities, like numbers. One version of modal actualism understands a possible world as a set of propositions or other language-like entities and as being “individuated by the set of things true at it, which is just the set of propositions it contains” (p.29, section 2.7.2). There is another sort of modal actualism called combinatorialism. Here a possible world is understood as “the set of things in this world, rearranged in a different way. So in this world, my house is in Australia, and not China; but rearrange things, and it could be in China, and not Australia” (p.30, section 2.7.5). So in modal realism, possible worlds and their members are concrete objects, and in modal actualism, they are abstract objects. In both cases, they are existing objects. Now we will consider the idea that they are non-existent objects (a position called Meinongianism).]
Both realism and actualism take possible worlds and their denizens, whatever they are, to exist, either as concrete objects or as abstract objects. Another possibility is to take them to be non-existent objects. (We know, after all, that such things do not really exist!)
(30)
[Our Familiarity with Non-Existing Things]
[We are already familiar with such non-existent things as Santa Claus and phlogiston. We can think of possible worlds in the same light.]
[(ditto)]
We are all, after all, familiar with the thought that there are non-existent things, like fairies, Father Christmas (sorry) and phlogiston. Possible worlds are things of this kind.
(30)
[Meinong’s Non-Existent Objects]
[Meinong famously held that there are non-existent objects, and the arguments against his position are not especially cogent.]
[(ditto)]
The view that there are non-existent objects was espoused, famously, by Meinong. It had a very bad press for a long time in English-speaking philosophy, but it is fair to say that many of the old arguments against the possibility of there being non-existent objects are not especially cogent.
(30)
[An Objection. Its Ineffectivity as Resulting from Its Additional Application to Actualism and Realism]
[An example of an uncogent argument against Meinongism is that non-existent possible worlds cannot causally interact with us, and thus we can know nothing about them. Yet, this objection would also hold for modal actualism and modal realism too.]
[Priest then gives an example of an uncogent argument against non-existent objects. Someone might object that since non-existent possible worlds cannot causally interact with us, that means we can know nothing about them. Yet, this objection would also hold for modal actualism and modal realism too.]
For example, one argument against such objects is that, since they cannot interact with us causally, we would have no way of knowing anything | about them. But exactly the same is true, of course, of possible worlds as both the realist and the actualist conceive them, so this can hardly count to their advantage against Meinongianism about worlds.
(30-31)
[The Objection’s Ineffectivity as Resulting from the Fact that Stipulations Tell Us About Non-Existent Objects]
[That same objection also fails to take into account the fact that we do know facts about certain non-existent objects on account of these facts being stipulated, for example: “Holmes lived in Baker Street – and not Oxford Street – because Conan Doyle decided it was so” (31).]
[(ditto).]
Moreover, it is very clear how we know facts about at least some nonexistent objects: they are simply stipulated. Holmes lived in Baker Street – and not Oxford Street – because Conan Doyle decided it was so.
(31)
[Our Treatment on Possible Worlds Representation as Incomplete]
[Priest ends by noting that {1} the aforementioned ideas do not settle the matter, as there are more suggestions to consider, and {2} there are more objections to consider.]
[Priest ends these four sections on the question of what possible worlds represent by noting that {1} the aforementioned ideas do not settle the matter, as there are more suggestions to consider, and {2} there are more objections to consider.]
The preceding considerations hardly settle the matter of the nature of possible worlds. There are many other suggested answers (most of which are some variation on one or other of the themes that I have mentioned); and there are many objections to the suggestions I have raised, other than the ones that I have given, as well as possible replies to the objections I have raised; philosophers can have hours of fun with possible worlds. This will do for the present, though.
(31)
From:
Priest, Graham. 2008 [2001]. An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
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