Abstract
Whether natural language permits quantification over ‘nonexistent’, intentional objects is subject of a major controversy, as is the nature of such entities themselves. This paper argues that certain constructions in natural language involving ‘intentional verbs’ such as ‘think of ’, ‘describe’, and ‘imagine’ cannot be analysed compositionally without positing intentional objects, as entities strictly dependent on intentional acts. The paper also argues that intentional verbs involve a distinctive semantics, which is fundamentally different from that of intensional transitive verbs, a difference reflected in a range of quantificational phenomena.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
See Tye [31].
- 4.
Such sentences are not a problem, though, for the Meinongian theory of Priest [24], who takes nonexistent objects to have ‘existence-entailing’ properties (such as the property of being a woman) only in other possible worlds, the worlds that realize the content of the fiction or the relevant intentional acts or states. It seems that this account makes predictions about modal statements, though, that are unsupported by linguistic intuitions. Sentences such as (ia) below do not seem any better than (ib):
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(i)
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(a)
There is something that could be a tree that does not exist.
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(b)
There is a tree that does not exist.
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(a)
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(i)
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The noun object in the construction ‘object of thought’ is in fact a relational noun since it cannot be replaced by a noun like entity or thing. Object of thought describes whatever entities may stand in the object of-relation to a thought or other intentional state or act, be it a real object of some type or a ‘nonexistent’ object. See also Crane [3].
- 6.
Also the non-sortal noun thing allows for quantification over intentional objects in there-sentences:
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(i)
There are things that John imagined/thought about/made reference to that do not exist.
In this function, it need not match gender features of the intentional object:
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(ii)
There is something John was thinking about, a son who would one day take over his company.
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(i)
- 7.
One might posit the same type of intentional object for the two cases of attitudes and, in the case of an attitude being directed toward a real object, allow an intentional act to be related to two sorts of objects simultaneously: an intentional object and a real one. However, such a move is notoriously problematic: an intentional act just cannot relate to two such objects at once: it has a single object. This is a common objection raised against Brentano, see Voltolini [34] for discussion.
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For a critique of intentional objects in that sense see van Inwagen [33].
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The underspecification of intentional objects should not be confused with the nonspecificity of the complement of intensional transitive verbs, a point that will be discussed later.
- 11.
It is customary in the philosophical literature on fiction to distinguish between ‘internal predication’ and ‘external predication’. Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street is true because the property of living on Baker Street is predicated of Holmes internally, whereas Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character is true because the property of being a fictional character is predicated of Sherlock Holmes externally. This suggests that intentional objects are predicated properties only internally, whereas fictional objects can be predicated properties both externally and internally. However, I think this distinction is not helpful. Intentional objects simply do not have properties as such, internally or externally predicated, rather they have properties only relative to an intentional act (including the intentional acts that make up a context of fiction).
A related distinction is Meinong’s distinction between nuclear predicates and extranuclear predicates (see also Parsons [23]). However, the distinction between two ways of predicating is a better one, since one and the same predicate may be both internally and externally predicated. Another related distinction is the one van Inwagen [32] draws between having a property and holding a property. Having a property corresponds to a property externally predicated, whereas holding a property corresponds to a property internally predicated.
- 12.
What is described in a piece of fiction can also be viewed as an intentional object rather than a fictional object, namely as the intentional object that corresponds to the coordinated intentional acts that make up the writing of the fiction. It is the object the fiction is about, but it is not the object the author intended to create. The same pretend acts of reference thus give rise to two distinct objects: nonexistent intentional objects and fictional objects. The two kinds of objects may share the same internally predicated properties, but they differ in ontological status: one of them is a quasi-object, the other one is an abstract artifact.
- 13.
The relation of coordination as a relation among intentional acts thus differs from that of Fine [7], which is viewed primarily a relation among occurrences of expressions.
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Other kinds of intensional modifiers that extend the domain of quantification of a there-sentence are those in the sentences below:
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(i)
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(a)
There are possible buildings that do not exist.
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(b)
There are philosophers of the past who hold the same view.
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(a)
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(i)
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Past objects may allow for other predicates that do not entail existence besides psychological predicates, namely predicates describing the causal effects or historical influence of an object, such as influential or important. Even sortal predicates may in certain cases not be existence-entailing, namely in the case of individuals whose influence endures beyond their life span or whose achievements are meant to endure. Thus if A and B are two people that lived in the past, (1a) is acceptable in the present tense if A was a philosopher whose work is still known. By contrast, (1b) is not likely to be acceptable, unless B, let us say, initiated a tradition or created a lasting recipe:
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1.
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(a)
A is a philosopher.
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(b)
B is a baker.
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(a)
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1.
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The distinction is often ignored both in the philosophical and in the linguistic literature.
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- 19.
The same contrast can be observed with verbs of creation, which themselves are in fact intensional verbs (Moltmann [15]):
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(i)
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(a)
John is writing a poem. Mary is writing the same thing.
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(b)
John is writing a poem.?? Mary is writing the same poem.
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(a)
(ib) has only a reading on which John’s literary creation miraculously coincides exactly with that of Mary, which is not something implied by (ia).
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(i)
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- 21.
The acceptability of (57b) is quite surprising in fact, since the positive would not allow for a singular generic indefinite, as is familiar from the linguistic literature on generics:
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(i)
?? A unicorn is small.
The difference obtains whether or not the NPs range over existent or nonexistent objects. Thus, it also obtains for the examples below:
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(ii)
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(a)
A mouse is smaller than an elephant.
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(b)
?? A mouse is small.
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(a)
I do not know of an explanation of this difference.
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(i)
- 22.
The philosophical literature also discusses the following sentence:
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(i)
The largest natural number does not exist.
This sentence seems to me to be subject to the same condition involving a previous quasi-referential act, pace Russell’s [25] account of definite descriptions acting as quantifiers in such sentences.
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(i)
- 23.
Another option one might think of would be to take the king of France to stand for a merely possible object and say that it does not exist. But see Kripke [5] for a critique of that view.
- 24.
Another apparent case of reference to a fictional character is (i) below:
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(i)
Anna Karenina is an interesting fictional character.
However, fictional character has a ‘reifying’ function in this context, mapping a presentation of a name (a non-referential use of the name) onto a fictional character of which interesting is then predicated. It is the same function that fictional character has in the fictional character Anna Karenina, where it guarantees reference to a fictional character on the basis of a non-referential use of the name Anna Karenina. See Moltmann [19, ch. 6], for a discussion of the reifying function of certain sortals in predicate position.
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(i)
- 25.
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Moltmann, F. (2015). Quantification with Intentional and with Intensional Verbs. In: Torza, A. (eds) Quantifiers, Quantifiers, and Quantifiers: Themes in Logic, Metaphysics, and Language. Synthese Library, vol 373. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18362-6_8
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