A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1920, Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong died. Meinong was known for his unique ontology, which claimed that everything that the universe contains everything that can be thought (even contradictions!) even if those things don’t exist, but merely “subsist.”
“Consider the proposition ‘the present king of France is wise’. This is perfectly meaningful, and because it is so it seems natural to ask whether it is true or false. And to this there seems an equally natural answer. There is no king of France at present; the subject term fails to refer to anything. Therefore, it seems that the proposition should be considered false. But there is a problem here, concerning how to demonstrate why it is false. This is because if in normal circumstances we say of something (call it ‘x’) that x is wise, the proposition ‘x is wise’ will be true if x is wise, and false if x is not wise. But what if there is no x? How can we say of something that does not exist that it either is or is not wise?
Initially Russell accepted a solution to this puzzle which had been proposed by the nineteenth‐century philosopher Alexius Meinong. This solution was to say that every expression with a referring or denoting function in a sentence does denote something, either an actually existing item, as with the table in ‘the table is brown’, or a ‘subsisting’ item, where by ‘subsistence’ is meant non‐actual existence – a kind of real but half or ‘courtesy’ existence. On this view, the universe contains everything that can be thought or talked about, including the present king of France; but only some of what the universe contains is actually existent. Accordingly the descriptive phrase ‘the present king of France’ does indeed denote, and what it denotes is a subsistent – that is a real but non‐actual – king of France.” — From ‘Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction’ by A.C. Grayling
[Pg. 23 — From ‘Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction’ by A.C. Grayling.]
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
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