MCMP – Metaphysics and Philosophy of Language

Things that don't exist


Listen Later

Tobias Rosefeldt (Berlin) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (5 June, 2013) titled "Things that don't exist". Abstract: Are there things that don’t exist? Several answers seem to be possible here. You can answer ‚yes’ because you are a Mainongian and believe that existence is a discriminating property of objects, i.e. a property that some objects have and others lack. You can answer ‚no’ because you are a Quinean and believe that to exist just means to be identical to something and hence is a property of everything. Or you can be a fan of substitutional quantification and think that you can answer ‚yes’ without committing yourself to non-existing things in any ontologically interesting sense. In this paper, I want to introduce an alternative to all these views. According to this alternative, you can answer ‚yes’ to the question but nevertheless assume that (i) ‚exist’ expresses a property true of all objects and (ii) ‚there are things’ expresses objectual quantification. The reason why this is possible is that there is a literal reading of the sentence ‚There are things that don‘t exist’ in which we are using it to quantify over kinds of things and say that there are kinds that have no instances. In order to substantiate this claim, I will show that there are many cases in which natural language quantifiers such as ‚there are things’, ‚there is something’ or ‚there are Fs’ are used to quantify over kinds of things rather than individual things, and give an analysis of the intricate syntactical and semantical features of sentences in which such quantification occurs. I will then use the proposed analysis in order to show that there really is the mentioned reading of the claim that there are things that don’t exist and to explain why it has been overseen by so many philosophers. Finally, I will show how useful the insight into the linguistic structure of our talk about non-existing things is by applying it to several cases in which non-existing things are relevant in philosophy.
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

MCMP – Metaphysics and Philosophy of LanguageBy MCMP Team

  • 3.5
  • 3.5
  • 3.5
  • 3.5
  • 3.5

3.5

2 ratings


More shows like MCMP – Metaphysics and Philosophy of Language

View all
Multimedia-Programmierung - SoSe 2009 - Audio mit Folien by Prof. Dr. Heinrich Hußmann

Multimedia-Programmierung - SoSe 2009 - Audio mit Folien

0 Listeners

Multimedia im Netz - WiSe 2010 / 2011 - Audio mit Folien by Prof. Dr. Heinrich Hußmann

Multimedia im Netz - WiSe 2010 / 2011 - Audio mit Folien

0 Listeners

Theoretical Physics Schools (ASC) by The Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics (ASC)

Theoretical Physics Schools (ASC)

2 Listeners

MCMP – Mathematical Philosophy (Archive 2011/12) by MCMP Team

MCMP – Mathematical Philosophy (Archive 2011/12)

6 Listeners

Hegel lectures by Robert Brandom, LMU Munich by Robert Brandom, Axel Hutter

Hegel lectures by Robert Brandom, LMU Munich

6 Listeners

MCMP – Philosophy of Science by MCMP Team

MCMP – Philosophy of Science

1 Listeners

Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Prof. Dr. Stephan Hartmann – HD by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Prof. Dr. Stephan Hartmann – HD

1 Listeners

MCMP – Philosophy of Physics by MCMP Team

MCMP – Philosophy of Physics

3 Listeners

Sommerfeld Lecture Series (ASC) by The Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics (ASC)

Sommerfeld Lecture Series (ASC)

0 Listeners

LMU Grundkurs Strafrecht II (L-Z) SoSe 2015 by Prof. Dr. jur. Helmut Satzger

LMU Grundkurs Strafrecht II (L-Z) SoSe 2015

0 Listeners