FUNCIONES DEL GERENTE:

Noneism. Some things do not exist.

According to noneists, appropriate solutions to puzzles concerning the intentionality of thought, fictional discourse, discourse about time, what there could have been and there could not have been, etc. all imply the truth of Noneism.

Noneists advocate thePrinciple of Independence of Being from So-Being. According to this principle, the nature of a thing is independent of its existence.6 Even though it is not completely clear what is meant with ‘independence’, and so what is the exact content of the Principle of Independence, it is commonly taken to imply the following claim:7

Accidental Existence. There could have been some things that could have had properties while not existing.

Not only is Accidental Existence a consequence of the Principle of Independence, it is a consequence of noneist theories.

Prima facie, Accidental Existence consists in the negation of Serious Actualism, in which case Noneism (or the bulk of noneist theories) are inconsistent with Serious Actualism. This would mean that an appropriate defence of Serious Actualism would require taking a stance on the Noneism-Allism debate, and offering a defence of Allism (where Allism is the contradictory of Noneism, i.e., Allism is the thesis that everything exists). Reasonable considerations in favour of Noneism would turn out to count against Serious Actualism.

However, Accidental Existence is not inconsistent with Serious Actualism, and thus a defence of Serious Actualism does not require taking a stance on the Noneism-Allism debate. Let me briefly explain why.

Noneists distinguish betweenneutralandloadedquantification. Neutral quantification is quan- tification over everything, unrestrictedly. Loaded quantification is quantification restricted to what exists. As mentioned in chapter1, the quantifiers are here being understood as beingunrestricted. This means that Serious Actualism, as the principle is here understood, is a principle concerned with what holds of everything.

Let ‘E’ be a first-order predicate of typeheistanding for the property of existence. Consider the following two claims:

6_{The Principle of Independence was borrowed by Meinong from Mally, his student. See (Meinong,1960, fn. 7).} 7_{Lambert(1983) fleshes out independence in terms of the invalidity of a certain argument. According to him, the} principle of independence states that the argument ‘there are nuclear propertiesP1,P2,. . .such that the set ofP1,P2,. . .

attaches tos; So,shas being’ is invalid. From this reading of the Principle of Independence it follows that there could have been some things that could have had properties while not existing if it is assumed that an argument is invalid only if it is possible for its premises to be true and its conclusion to be false.

(1) a. Possibly there is some propertyPand possibly there is some thingxsuch that possiblyx

is aP andxis nothing.

b. ₃∃P₃∃x₃(P x∧ ¬∃y(y=x)).

(2) a. Possibly there is some propertyPand possibly there is some thingxsuch that possiblyx

is aP andxdoes not exist. b. ₃∃P₃∃x₃(P x∧ ¬Ex).

Claim(1)is inconsistent with Serious Actualism, whereas claim(2)is consistent with Serious Actualism. But it is(2)that is a consequence of the Principle of Independence. The Principle of Independence does not imply(1). So, the Principle of Independence is not inconsistent with Serious Actualism. Thus, there is no objection to Serious Actualism from the assumption of the truth of the Principle of Independence.

Does an unrestricted understanding of the quantifiers imply that Propositional Necessitism is trivially true? No, since the fact that quantification is unrestricted does not mean that there could not have been propositions that there actually aren’t.

A comparison with noneist theories may be helpful. Some noneists are committed to Necessitism, i.e., they hold that necessarily every thing is necessarily something.8 One may think that, since the quantifiers are unrestricted, the view that necessarily every thing is necessarily something is trivial. But it isn’t.

For instance, noneists committed to Necessitism are troubled with objections that do not trouble other noneists. One problem for noneists endorsing Necessitism is that they cannot make sense of the fact that fictional characters are created. The intuition that fictional characters are created could be respected by endorsing the view that fictional characters are nothing in at least some circumstances in which their creators are nothing. Note that such viewwould notrequire a rejection of the claim that necessarily, every fictional character is such that it does not exist. What would be required by this view would be a commitment to the claim that there could be fictional characters that could have been nothing in some of the circumstances in which they to do not exist.

Similarly, suppose that every proposition is such that it does not exist. Still, to some it will seem reasonable to think that if the things that propositions are about had been nothing, then the propositions would themselves be nothing. For instance, in circumstances in which Sherlock Holmes is nothing any proposition about Sherlock Holmes is itself nothing. Propositional Necessitism excludes cases such as this. Hence, regardless of whether Propositional Necessitism is true or not, the thesis is not trivial even when the quantifiers are understood unrestrictedly.

To reiterate, Serious Actualism is not inconsistent with Accidental Existence. Thus, a defence of Serious Actualism does not require a defence of Allism. Which of Noneism-Allism is true? In chapter 4I query whether some noneist theories turn out to be equivalent to some allist theories, and thus, 8_{See, e.g., (Priest,2005, §§1-2). Necessitism turns out to be a logical validity on the semantics for identity and necessity} offered by Priest.

whether proponents of these theories are involved in a verbal dispute.