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Meinong is notorious for his -- in the prevailing
opinion: bizarre and clearly untenable--view
on being and existence. Not only did he argue
that there are things that do not exist,
but on his view this has as a consequence
for example that there is a certain nonexistent
entity which can be referred to as ``the
present king of France'', and in his theory
of objects he actually went so far as to
recognize impossible abstract entities like
The Round Square. No wonder that this theory
as a whole has few adherents today. However,
because of Meinong's notoriety, the very
distinction between being and existence has
come to share the bad reputation of his more
extravagant ontological claims and is commonly
labeled ``Meinongian'', even though Meinong
was neither the first nor the last philosopher
to make it. It is really a very old and dignified
distinction, which has a tendency to recur
in new versions as philosophical positions
shift.
Aristotle distinguished between different
senses of the verb ``be'', and he was followed
by many later philosophers who made even
more distinctions and developed new terminology
to cover them. The present use of the verb
"exist'' (which in classical Latin meant
to stand out or come forth) is probably due
to such terminological efforts by medieval
philosophers. And similar distinctions dressed
in different terminological garments have
been made all the time up to now. What amounts
to a distinction between being and existence
is for example at the root of Carnap's view
that quantification over numbers and other
abstract entities implies no recognition
of these entities as real, unlike quantification
over physical objects.
Clearly, Carnap did not make the claim that
numbers are but do not exist in these words.
Instead he introduced the notion of a framework
of entities, and distinguished between external
and internal questions of existence relative
to such frameworks: An external question
of existence is one that concerns the physical
reality of some particular framework of entities
itself, say the framework of numbers or the
framework of physical objects, but according
to Carnap such questions are meaningless;
he argued that accepting a framework is really
a matter of linguistic choice. An internal
question of existence, on the other hand,
is one that presupposes a certain framework
of entities, and within that framework it
can be given an answer that will be either
analytic or synthetic dependent on the nature
of the framework. Carnap further maintained
that statements about abstract entities like
numbers are analytic, not depending for their
truth on factual matters, but only on linguistic
convention, whereas statements about physical
objects are synthetic, their truth or falsity
dependent on extra-linguistic reality. But
all this means, should Carnap be right, that
the force of existential quantification must
be less than that of an existential claim:
the use of an existential quantifier would
not then in itself entail a claim of reality
for the values of the variable bound by it,
and we would consequently have to distinguish
between being a value of a variable bound
by an existential quantifier, and being a
real object; which is a distinction between
being and existence as good as any other,
though Carnap's views otherwise bear very
little similarity to those of Meinong's.
However, which words are actually used in
attempting to make or refute a distinction
between being and existence is of minor importance,
I think, since the words ``being'' and ``existence''
themselves are far from unequivocal. What
matters is what we take an existential claim
to mean, and then whether we think of existential
quantification as entailing an existential
claim or not.
Unlike Carnap, Quine thinks that existential
quantification always entails an existential
claim, or rather that the only way we can
make sense of existential claims is to construe
them as existentially quantified statements:
``To be is to be a value of a variable.''
So on his view, which is very influential,
there is no room for a distinction between
being and existence. However, his argument
against Carnap's position is based mainly
on his rejection of the underlying notion
of analyticity. Should we then accept Quine's
view on being and existence only for the
reason that the analytic-synthetic distinction
seems to be untenable? I think not. What
we can learn from Quine is that quantifying
over a certain realm of objects always commits
us to recognizing these objects as objects,
and this is indeed a very important insight,
with far-reaching consequences, as we shall
see. But it does not follow that we have
to regard the objects in question as existent
and real in every sense of these words. As
I have suggested already, such words are
often ambiguous. They may even be ambiguous
in a rather interesting way, and this is
what I shall try to show in the following.
If he wished, Carnap could have countered
Quine's attack by saying that as he used
the words, ``to exist'' and ``to be real''
just mean to be a physical (or material or
spatiotemporal) object, but for obvious reasons
he didn't want to make that move. It would
be much too analytic then to state that numbers
are not real and that they do not exist.
Even so, this imaginary objection has a point:
Maybe one of the senses of such phrases as
``exists'' and ``is real'' as they are used
in ordinary language can actually be rendered
as ``is a material object''? It is not so
difficult to find evidence for this hypothesis.
That doesn't mean that being a material or
physical object makes up a very interesting
concept of existence; but who said that our
ordinary language use of the word ``exist''
should be of any philosophical interest?
Anyway, there are still a few who maintain,
as Carnap did in effect, that only material
objects exist, but it is often not so clear
what exactly they mean by it. In order to
avoid triviality they ought at least to distinguish
their concept of existence from that of being
a material object, and further, to avoid
recognizing a distinction between being and
existence which most of them find unpalatable,
it seems that their only choice is then to
maintain that we can meaningfully quantify
only over material objects. But this is a
highly implausible view, since it will render
the bulk of scientific theory meaningless;
I think Quine has made that clear.
Grammatically the verb phrase ``exists''
has the function of a predicate, and the
same holds true also of the verb phrase ``is
real'', of course. These words can sometimes
be used interchangeably, and in such cases
it seems that they function as predicates
logically as well; I don't think that is
very controversial. What is more controversial
is whether ``exists'', when used as a logical
predicate, is always used as one that is
presupposed to be true of everything, like
the predicate ``is self-identical'', or whether
it has a use as a predicate that can be said
to be false of certain objects that are nevertheless
recognized as values of our bound variables,
which in my opinion is more likely. I shall
argue that the phrase ``is real'' is commonly
used as a predicate that can be meaningfully
negated of an object, and then the same must
be true of ``exists'' when used in the same
sense, which means that we actually have
to recognize a distinction between being
and existence of a sort. But this distinction
may not be one of great philosophical interest,
in so far as one sense of ``is real'' may
just be that of ``is a material object''.
Actually, I do regard the distinction between
being and existence as trivial in a way,
although far from so trivial as this suggestion
would render it, and I think there is not
just one, but a whole class of such distinctions
to be made, for I don't think there is an
absolute sense of being real, but only relative
ones: To be real is always to be a real something-or-other
dependent on context, say a real person or
a real centaur, and to be a real something-or-other
is really just to be that kind of thing.
Any person is a real person, and any centaur
a real centaur (or would be if there were
centaurs). So in my view the use of the word
``real'' is for emphasis, but more often
than not with just a tacit understanding
of what is emphasized. When we use the word
affirmatively, asserting of an object of
a certain kind that it is real, we mean to
stress that it is an object of the supposed
kind; and when we use it negatively, asserting
of some object that it isn't real, what we
mean is that the object in question does
not belong to a certain kind to which it
appears or might appear to belong. This is
how I think we ought to understand assertions
of reality, and I think besides that the
verb phrase ``exists'' is sometimes used
as an alternative to ``is real'' to make
such assertions.
Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic, Vol.
1, No. 1, pp. 61-78. © 1996 Scandinavian
University Press.
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Evans Experientialism 
