Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond: The Sylvan Jungle - Volume 1

667 Pages·2018·10.102 MB·English

by  Richard Routley, Maureen Eckert

Synthese Library 394
Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science
Richard Routley Author
Maureen Eckert Editor
Exploring Meinong’s
Jungle and Beyond
The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 1
Synthese Library
Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology,
and Philosophy of Science
Volume 394
Editor-in-Chief
Otávio Bueno, University of Miami, Department of Philosophy, USA

Editors
Berit Brogaard, University of Miami, USA
Anjan Chakravartty, University of Notre Dame, USA
Steven French, University of Leeds, UK
Catarina Dutilh Novaes, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Special attention is paid to methodological studies which illustrate the interplay of empirical and philosophical
viewpoints and to contributions to the formal (logical, set-theoretical, mathematical, information-theoretical,
decision-theoretical, etc.) methodology of empirical sciences. Likewise, the applications of logical methods to
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6607
The Sylvan Jungle

This book is part of a collection of four books that present the work of the iconic and iconoclastic Australian
philosopher Richard Routley (né Sylvan).

The four books are:

• Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond
• Noneist Explorations I
• Noneist Explorations II
• Ultralogic as Universal?

All books are published in the Synthese Library.
Editorial team of the Sylvan Jungle:

• Maureen Eckert
• Ross Brady
• Filippo G.E. Casati
• Nicholas Griffin
• Dominic Hyde
• Chris Mortensen
• Graham Priest
• Zach Weber
Richard Routley Author
Maureen Eckert Editor
Exploring Meinong’s Jungle
and Beyond
The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 1
with Supplementary Essays
Richard Routley (deceased)
Editor
Maureen Eckert
Philosophy Department
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA
Synthese Library
ISBN 978-3-319-78791-6 ISBN 978-3-319-78793-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78793-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934097

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Editors’ Preface
In 1980 Richard Sylvan (then named ‘Richard Routley’) published Exploring Meinong’s
Jungle and Beyond: An investigation of noneism and the theory of items. Even though
this book has generated considerable debate and has contributed to the development
of neo-Meinongianism, published through the Australian National University, it is now
out of print and the few available second-hand copies are expensive. This, coupled with
developments in the area since the book’s original publication, have led us to think that
there are benefits in reprinting this extensive work along with commentaries that situate
and discuss the rich philosophical material contained in the work.
To this end, and with the support of Springer, we reprint the work here in four
volumes. Volume One centres on the lengthy first chapter of the original work that de-
scribesnoneism–Sylvan’sneo-Meinongianposition–andthetheoryofitems. Inaddition
to the commentary essays, the Volume also includes a later paper of Sylvan’s revisiting
and revising his item-theory. Volumes Two and Three include the remaining chapters
from the original work (i.e. chapters 2 to 12 of the original) and further commentary es-
says including one by J.J.C. Smart, Sylvan’s colleague at the ANU for many years. And
the final volume, Volume Four, centres on Sylvan’s Appendix, ‘Ultralogic as universal?’,
with further commentary essays.
Some of the work reprinted in Volumes Two and Three contains material that
formed part of a broad, ongoing research project that Sylvan pursued with Val Plumwood
(formerly Val Routley). We have indicated where reprinted work is jointly authored.
Wehavesoughttocorrectobviouserrors,andhaveupdatedsomereferences. While
attempts were made to locate and reproduce the photographs that Sylvan included in the
original publication (see the introductory essay by Hyde), the passage of time has erased
theirtracksandtheytoo,likeSylvan,aresadlynon-existent. Wehave,however,beenable
to find further photographs of the same area as that pictured in the original monograph
Editors’ Preface
byoneoftheoriginalphotographers, HenryGold, andwithhiskindpermissionreproduce
his Creek lilies, antarctic beech and epiphytes in this volume.
For help in the production of this first volume, thanks go to: Louise Sylvan for
her permission to reprint Richard’s original material; Grazer Philosophische Studien for
permissiontoreproduce‘Re-exploringitem-theory’; theever-helpfularchivistsattheUni-
versity of Queensland Fryer Library (where Sylvan’s extensive archive is housed); Michael
Kebrt and the Word-to-LaTeX crew; and funding from the University of Queensland.
* * * * *
A note on cross-referencing within and across volumes: whentypesettingthisvolume, pa-
gination was not available for subsequent volumes of this reprint of Exploring Meinong’s
Jungle and Beyond. With the four-volume reprint cited as “EMJB ”, page references are
2
therefore only available for EMJB Vol. 1. Other page references are to the first edition,
2
cited as “EMJB ” (available at http://hdl.handle.net/11375/14805). Section references
1
are then also given for the later volumes of the reprint, to facilitate locating them in
EMJB .
2
Maureen Eckert
Ross Brady
Filippo Casati
Nicholas Griffin
Dominic Hyde
Chris Mortensen
Graham Priest
Zach Weber
Contents
Editors’ Preface v
Introduction: The Jungle Book in context – Hyde xiii
ORIGINAL MATERIAL xxxv
First Edition Front Matter xxxvii
Preface and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli
CHAPTER 1 Exploring Meinong’s jungle and beyond. I. Items
and descriptions 1
I Noneism and the theory of items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
§1 Thepointoftheenterpriseandthephilosophicalvalueofatheory
of objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
II Basic theses and their prima facie defence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
§2 Significance and content theses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
§3 The Independence Thesis and rejection of the Ontological Assumption 28
§4 Defence of the Independence Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
§5 The Characterisation Postulate and the Advanced Independence
Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
§6 The fundamental error: the Reference Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
§7 Second factor alternatives to the Reference Theory and their
transcendence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
III The need for revision of classical logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
§8 The inadequacy of classical quantification logic, and of free logic
alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
§9 The choice of a neutral quantification logic, and its objectual
interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
§10 The consistency of neutral logic and the inconsistency objection
to impossibilia, the extension of neutral logic by predicate neg-
ation and the resolution of apparent inconsistency, and the in-
completeness objection to nonentities and partial indeterminacy . . 109
§11 The inadequacy of classical identity theory; and the removal of
intensional paradoxes and of objections to quantifying into inten-
sional sentence contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
§12 Russell’s theories of descriptions and proper names, and the ac-
claimed elimination of discourse about what does not exist . . . . . 152
§13 The Sixth Way: Quine’s proof that God exists . . . . . . . . . . . 172
§14 A brief critique of some more recent accounts of proper names
and descriptions: free description theories, rigid designators, and
causal theories of proper names; and clearing the way for a com-
monsense neutral account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
IV Stages of logical reconstruction: evolution of an intensional logic of
items, with some applications en route . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
§15 The initial stage: sentential and zero-order logics . . . . . . . . . . 212
§16 Neutral quantification logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
§17 Extensions of first-order theory to cater for the theory of objects:
existence, possibility and identity, predicate negation, choice op-
erators, modalisation and worlds semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
1 (a)Existenceisaproperty: however(b)itisnotanordinary
(characterising) property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
2 “Exists” as a logical predicate: first stage . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
3 The predicate “is possible”, and possibility-restricted quan-
tifiers ⇧ and ⌃ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
4 Predicate negation and its applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
5 Descriptors, neutral choice operators, and the extensional
elimination of quantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
6 Identity determinates, and extensionality . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
7 Worlds Semantics: introduction and basic explanation . . . . 262
8 Worlds semantics: quantified modal logics as working examples 268
9 Reworking the extensions of quantificational logic in the
modal framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
10 Beyond the first-order modalised framework: initial steps . . . 289
§18 The neutral reformulation of mathematics and logic, and second
stage logic as basic example. The need for, and shape of, enlarge-
ments upon the second stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
1 Second-order logics and theories, and a substitutional solu-
tion of their interpretation problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
2 Substantive second-order logics with abstraction principles . . 296
3 Definitional extensions of 2Q and enlarged 2Q: Leibnitz
identity, extensionality and predicate coincidence and identity 298
4 Attributes, instantiation, and �-conversion . . . . . . . . . . . 302
5 Axiomaticadditionstothesecond-orderframework: specific
object axioms as compared with infinity axioms and choice
axioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
6 Choice functors in enlarged second-order theory . . . . . . . . 305
7 Modalisation of the theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
§19 On the possibility and existence of objects: second stage . . . . . . 309
1 Item possibility: consistency and possible existence . . . . . . 310
2 Item existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
§20 Identity and distinctness, similarity and difference and functions . . 322
§21 The more substantive logic: Characterisation Postulates, and
other special terms and axioms of logics of items . . . . . . . . . . 329
1 Settling truth-values: the extent of neutrality of a logic . . . . 329
2 Problems with an unrestricted Characterisation Postulate . . . 331
3 A detour: interim ways of getting by without restrictions . . . 333
4 Presentational reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
5 Characterisation Postulates for bottom order objects; and
the extent and variety of such objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
6 Characterising, constitutive, or nuclear predicates . . . . . . . 344
7 Entire and reduced relations and predicates . . . . . . . . . . 350
8 Further extending Characterisation Postulates . . . . . . . . . 351