Talk About the Non-Existent

Abstract

‘Devadatta, the son of a barren woman, does not speak—but neither is he silent.’ Most non-philosophers would be inclined to accept the Buddhists’ claim that this sentence is true, and that it is about Devadatta. There are widely shared pre-theoretical intuitions to the effect that it is possible to make true assertions about non-existent entities. But many philosophers see this as yet another instance in which our intuitions lead us astray. In the West there is a tradition beginning with Parmenides that denies that anything meaningful can be said about the nonexistent. In response to the challenge that at least this much may be said about a non-existent, that it does not exist, this tradition has given us various analyses of negative existentials all of which are designed to show that such sentences are actually about something else. Only a relative handful of Western philosophers-Meinong being the best known example-defend common sense on this point. But the Meinongian defense comes at a price--a bloated ontology replete with the golden mountain, unicorns, and the son of a barren woman-that many find too steep to pay.