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1. This distinction can be interpreted in one of two ways: According toone interpretation, “exists” expresses one mode of beingand “there is” another. (For a critique of modes of beingdistinctions see Reicher 2005a.) According to another interpretation,however, “exists” expresses the only mode of being and“there is” has no ontological import whatsoever.

2. The view that quantification is ontologically neutral is also held byTim Crane (see Crane 2013, Chap. 2). Some claim that Meinongians (andeven Meinong himself) are not ontologically committed to nonexistentobjects (see, for instance, Priest 2005). Obviously, whether or notthis is correct depends not the least upon the question of whatexactly it means to be ontologically committed to something, whichleads into a highly subtle, complex and controversial debate thatcannot be pursued here. (For a contribution to this debate see Reicher2005a.)

3. A similar view is held by the 18th century philosopher Thomas Reid(see Reid 1785). Reid’s view is discussed and compared with theviews of Brentano, Meinong, Findlay and Anscombe in Prior 1971.

4. Thus, Tim Crane states: “[…] I have come to realize thatunless we understand non-existence we cannot understandintentionality” (Crane 2013, ix).

5. There is an alternative paraphrase of “Pegasus doesn’texist” put forward in Quine 1953: “Nothingpegasizes.” This is the result of transforming the singular term“Pegasus” into the general term “to pegasize”.The point of this is the same as the one of the Russellian paraphrase,namely to get rid of the empty singular term. Quine’s proposalavoids some objections to Russell’s theory (see below); yet itseems that the term “to pegasize” is in need of furtheranalysis.

6. Let’s assume for the moment, in order to get a grip on theproblem, that there is no difference between “\(F\)sexist” and “there are \(F\)s”.

7. For other formulations of the predication principle see KitFine’s “falsehood principle” (Fine 1981),Plantinga’s “serious actualism” (Plantinga 1983) andWilliamson’s “being constraint” (Williamson2013).

8. This is not the place to enter a discussion about the merits anddrawbacks of various versions of Free Logics. It must be sufficientfor the present purpose to note that both (EG) and (PP) have anextraordinary degree ofprima facie plausibility. Therefore,they should not be given up lightly.

9. Crane (2013) proposes such a “reductionist” solution. Fordetails, see Section 5.1 below.

10. Sometimes, advocates of the story operator strategy use anunspecified story operator “according to a story” (in thesense of “according to one story or another”).

11. Yet, (1′) may be taken to imply

(2′)

According to the story \(S\): There are flying horses.

and

(3′)

According to the story \(S\): Pegasus exists.

These implications, however, are unproblematic, for they do notcontradict “There are no flying horses” and “Pegasusdoes not exist”.

12. A defense of a generalized operator strategy is to be found in Brock2002. Brock’s operator, however, is not a story operator butsomething one might call a “theory (or belief) operator”.It reads: “according to the realist’s hypothesis”(where “the realist’s hypothesis” is the assumptionthat there are fictitious objects). This strategy is not susceptibleto the above objection, but it is doubtful whether it does justice tothe intuitions that govern realism with respect to fictitious objects.The same holds true of the account in Everett 2005, which says thatboth authors and literary critics engage in some sort of“pretense”. Both Brock’s and Everett’sposition are versions of “fictionalism”. (For more onfictionalism see Section 5.1 below and the entry onfictionalism.)

13. Throughout the whole entry, non-annotated premises are what we taketo be prima facie truths.

14. Graham Priest would even deny that 1 (“Pegasus is a flyinghorse”) implies “There are flying horses”. He wouldclaim, instead, that 1 implies “For some \(x,\) \(x\)is a flying horse”. Whether this is more than a linguisticdifference depends, of course, partly on how “there is” isinterpreted. (See note 1.)

15. Note that analogous considerations hold for the principle ofexistential generalization. (EG) had been formulated as

(EG)

\(Fb \rightarrow \exists x(Fx)\)

and the following reading had been suggested:

(EGa)

If \(b\) is \(F\), then there is something that is \(F\).

This reading can be (and is) accepted by a Meinongian. However, aMeinongian cannot accept

(EGb)

If \(b\) is \(F\), then \(F\)s exist.

16. The idea of fictitious objects as created artefacts occurs for thefirst time (though presented in an unfamiliar terminology) in RomanIngarden’sDas literarische Kunstwerk (originallypublished in 1931; English translation: Ingarden 1973) and then inMacDonald 1954, Ferrater-Mora 1976/77, and van Inwagen 1977. Morerecently, creationist accounts can be found, among others, in Fine1984, Salmon 1998, Thomasson 1999, Voltolini 2006, Reicher 2010. For acriticism of creationism see, e. g., Kroon 2011.

17. An anonymous referee drew my attention to the fact that this proposalinvolves a potentially confusing asymmetry. For if we use “thereis” as the neutral quantifier (i.e., as the quantifier thatexpresses being but not existence), as Meinongians usually do, then,prima facie, “there was” should be restricted tothings thatwere (i.e., had being) at some time in the past,not to things thatexisted at some time in the past. However,for a Meinongian, it would not make sense to understand “therewas” in this way. For, according to the Meinongian, an objectcan gain and loseexistence, but an object cannot gain andlosebeing. Therefore, the domain of things that had being inthe past is co-extensional with the domain of things that have beingnow. Therefore, if “there was” were used as quantifier foreverything that had being in the past, it would not be restricted atall. A Meinongian who is sympathetic to the idea of restrictedquantification but wishes to avoid the unpleasant asymmetry pointedout above perhaps could do so by rendering past tense sentencesformally as involving an untensed neutral quantifier plus a tensedexistence predicate. “Dinosaurs existed” could thus berendered as “There is an x such that (Dinosaur)x and(Existed)x”, where “there is” is the usual untensedand unrestricted neutral quantifier, and “(Existed)” is atensed existence predicate.

18. A proponent of a Meinongian solution to the problem of past andpresent objects is Mark Hinchliff in his dissertationA Defense ofPresentism, according to Markosian 2004.

19. For a critical discussion of such a view, see Weinberg 2013. Weinbergargues, convincingly, that “interests are contingent uponexistence” and thus, that “[i]f a hypothetically possibleperson will never exist then there is no real subject for interests atall.” (Weinberg 2013, 473) A related debate concerns thequestion of whether one can reasonably attribute a certain degree ofwellbeing to nonexistent people. (See Herstein 2013. Herstein answersthis question negatively.)

20.At least, this is one of the possible interpretations of what theobject called “blue” is, according toMOT\(^o\). Alternatively, one might interpret the objectblue as \(\iota x\forall F(Fx \equiv B \Rightarrow F)\),i.e., as the object that has all and only those properties that areimplied by the property of being blue (like being colored, forinstance). It is difficult to decide whether Meinong, in the earlyversion of his theory of objects, intended the objectblue tobe interpreted one way or the other. Since this question is of merelyhistorical interest, we’ll assume, for the sake of convenience,that according to MOT\(^o\) the first interpretation is the correctone and leave the more complex interpretation for later (see section5.4).

21. Incomplete objects violate the principle that for every property\(P\) and every object \(x\), either \(x\) exemplifies\(P\) or \(x\) exemplifies the negation of \(P\). Butincomplete objects do not violate the principle that for everyproperty \(P\) and every object \(x\), either \(x\)exemplifies \(P\) or \(x\) does not exemplify \(P\) (i.e., the principle of excluded middle). However, Anthony Everett hasargued that there may be special cases of fictitious objects whichviolate the latter principle, which would, if true, constitute aserious objection against fictional realism (see Everett 2005 and2013). Several authors have defended fictional realism againstEverett’s objections by proposing ways to avoid the violation ofthe principle of excluded middle even in Everett’s examples ofoutlandish fictions (see Schnieder and von Solodkoff 2008, Voltolini2010, Milne 2013, Murday 2015).

22. The distinction between complete and incomplete objects resolvescertain puzzles in connection with fictitious objects: How many hairsare there in Pegasus’s tail? What was the shoe size of SherlockHolmes’ grand-grandmother? (We suppose that the respectivestories do not give us any hint with respect to these questions.)— The Meinongian answer is simple and plausible: Pegasus is notdetermined with respect to the exact number of hairs in its tail.Sherlock Holmes is not determined with respect to the shoe size of hisgrand-grandmother. In general, fictitious objects are highlyincomplete.

23. For Russell’s criticism of MOT\(^o\) see Russell 1973a,1973b, and 1973c. Meinong defended himself in Meinong 1973. His replyto Russell can be plausibly interpreted as an anticipation of arevised version of MOT\(^o\) (see Rapaport 1978), which will bedelineated in section 5. For a detailed discussion of theRussell-Meinong debate see Smith 1985, Griffin 1985–86, andSimons 1992.

24. Why can’t one simply say that nonexistent objects have theproperties they are characterized as having at the worlds at whichthey exist? Priest explains that this is not his view, since,according to his brand of noneism, “[t]hey may not exist at suchworlds – indeed it may be part of their characterization thatthey do not exist. Conversely, they may exist at worlds without havingtheir characterizing properties there: there are worlds where SherlockHolmes exists and is a doctor, not a detective” (Priest 2011b,249, footnote 35). That is, a nonexistent object that is an existentdetective in one nonactual world may be identical to a nonexistentobject that is a nonexistent doctor in another nonactual world.

25. For critical discussion of Priest’s theory, see Hale 2007,Kroon 2012, Sauchelli 2012, and theBook Symposium inPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2008), whichconsists of contributions by Daniel Nolan, Frederick Kroon and, ofcourse, Priest’s replies.

26. Although Priest does not say so explicitly, one might suggest that they haveproperties likebeing round in some non-actual world,being a detective in some non-actual world etc. If so, hissolution becomes structurally similar to the dual copula strategy.Priest admits “a certain similarity here” in his 2011b (p. 250),but continues his comment as follows:

[T]he accounts are not structurally identical. For one thing, acharacterized object may have all sorts of properties at acharacterizing world that are not part of its characterization. (Forexample, Holmes may be either right handed or left handed at a world— though neither of these is in his characterization.) And sincethey are not part of its characterization, the object does not,according to Zalta, encode them. For another, I claim thatcharacterization can be applied toany condition. To avoidcontradiction, Zalta has to say that properties that involve encodingare not allowed to be part of a characterizingproperty. (ibid.)

The problem of the underdetermination of nonexistent objects inthe actual world is also broached in Nolan 2008 (191–193). Nolanargues that this problem is particularly pressing for objects ofmathematics. Priest replies to this in his Priest 2008.

27. Priest claims that non-actual worlds themselves are nonexistent objects.This view, together with what has been said above, seems to entail(although Priest does not say so explicitly) that nonexistent worldsare constituted (partly) by existent objects. For Pegasus, forinstance, exists in those worlds which are such as described in Greekmythology. Seemingly, it will not do to say that Pegasus does not“really” exist in those worlds (since those worlds arenonexistent), because Pegasus is said literally tohaveexistence-entailing properties in those worlds, and if existence in anonexistent world were not “real” existence, it seemsthat, consequently, objects existing in a nonexistent world could notliterally have existence-entailing properties.

28. Priest himself discusses this and other problems of the applicationof his noneism to the topic of fictitious objects in Priest 2011a.Note that Meinongianism in general (understood as the doctrine thatthere are objects that do not exist) is, in principle, neutral withrespect to the question of whether nonexistent objects are necessaryor contingent objects. The versions of Meinongianism presented beloware compatible with the view that Meinongian objects are created,though this is not the standard view among Meinongians. ButPriest’s noneism can in no way accommodate the“creationist” intuition, unless he abolishes the doctrinethat the domain of discourse is the same in all possible (andimpossible) worlds.

29. Originally, this distinction has been made by Ernst Mally, a disciple of Meinong,and Meinong adopted it for the mature version of object theory.Terence Parsons and Dale Jacquette are two contemporary proponents ofthis strategy. See Meinong 1972, Parsons 1980, Jacquette 1996, andalso Routley 1980.

30. However, there is no complete agreement among advocates of thenuclear-extranuclear distinction as to which properties areextranuclear. In contrast to Parsons, Dale Jacquette classifiesintentional properties as nuclear. (Jacquette 1996, 73f.)

31. We use the superscripts ‘\(^n\)’ and‘\(^e\)’ to indicate whether the propertiesin question are nuclear or extranuclear.

32. If we set aside the constitutive-consecutive distinction, we mayinterpret the object called “blue” as \(\iota x\forallF^n(F^nx \equiv F^n = B^n).\) This object has exactly one nuclearproperty, namely the property of being blue. But this object too hasinfinitely many extranuclear properties, among them the property ofhaving exactly one nuclear property. Thus the paradox is avoided inthe same way as with \(\iota x\forall F^n(F^n x \equiv B^n \RightarrowF^n).

33. This doctrine raises a difficult question: what is the difference betweenan extranuclear property and its nuclear counterpart? For a discussionof this problem see Reicher 2005b.

34. However, MOT\(^{ne}\) may be made stronger by assuming that notonly there is a nuclear counterpart to every extranuclear property butthat there is alsoan extranuclear counterpart to every nuclearproperty. (This assumption is made in Parsons 1980, see p. 167.)Of course, this makes the problem of how to distinguish nuclear fromextranuclear properties even more pressing. But given that allproperties come in nuclear-extranuclear pairs, one might say: Theround square exemplifies only nuclear roundness and squareness, whileevery existent square exemplifies extranuclear squareness. The(nonexistent) golden mountain exemplifies only nuclear goldenness andmountainhood, whereas every existent mountain exemplifies extranuclearmountainhood. One might argue that the principle of contradictionconcerns extranuclear properties only and that a thing’snuclear mountainhood does not entail that the thing can beperceived and is located in space, since a thing that exemplifies onlynuclear mountainhoodis not a mountain in the usual sense.Such an extension of MOT\(^{ne}\) would bring MOT\(^{ne}\)very close to the dual copula theory (see next section).

35. Like the nuclear-extranuclear distinction, this strategy too has beenintroduced first by Ernst Mally (see Mally 1912). In contrast to theformer, however, Meinong never adopted the dual-copuladistinction.

36. Van Inwagen applies this distinction exclusively to objects of fiction(in the narrower sense, connected to the ontology of art), but in itsfunction and spirit it seems to be analogous to the ones of Mally andCastañeda.

37. According to the interpretation adopted here, properties of the form“encoding being \(F\)” can be exemplified by abstractobjects only. Alternatively, one might assume that, for instance, anexistent “real” human being exemplifies both the propertyof being human and the property of encoding the property of beinghuman, while something that encodes being human without exemplifyingthis property must be an abstract object.

38. An anonymous referee suggested to me that fearing the devil might beanalogous to fearing a harmless snake that one mistakenly believes tobe poisonous: although the devil is in fact abstract (and thereforeharmless), those who fear “him” mistakenly believe that“he” is concrete and dangerous. However, I do not believethat this analogy holds. As I see it, those who fear the devil are notintentionally directed at an abstract object that encodes being eviletc. Rather, they are directed at a concrete object thatexemplifies being evil. It is not that they mistakenlyattribute certain properties to an abstract devil. Rather, they do nothave an abstract devil as their intentional object of fear in thefirst place.

39. Contributions to a discussion of the topics mentioned below are to be found inReicher 2001 and Reicher 2005b.