Abstract
This article is a critical review of Cocchiarella’s theory of reference. In conceptual realism, there are two central distinctions regarding reference: first, between active and deactivated use of referential expressions, and, second, between using referential expressions with and without existential presupposition. Cocchiarella’s normative restrictions on the existential presuppositions of reference lead to postulating two fundamentally different kinds of objects in conceptual realism: realia or concrete objects, on the one hand, and abstract intensional objects or nonexistents, on the other. According to Cocchiarella, nonexistents can be referred to only without existential presuppositions. However, referring to nonexistents with existential presuppositions is an ordinary human practice. To account for this fact, Cocchiarella’s normative theory of reference should be supplemented by a descriptive account of referring.
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Notes
Cocchiarella (2007).
Cocchiarella (2007, p. 22).
Cocchiarella (2007, p. 142).
Cocchiarella (2007, p. 143).
Cocchiarella (2007, p. 148).
Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 101–120).
This formulation is based on Fitting and Mendelson (1998, p. 169), but has been slightly changed for our purposes.
The terms ‘inflationism’ and ‘deflationism’ were introduced by Berlin; see Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998, pp. 169–178).
A more detailed account of the “standard inflationist response” see in Fitting and Mendelsohn (1998, pp. 175–177).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, p. 151).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, p. 148).
See Cocchiarella (2007, p. 232).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 108–110; 153–154).
This principle is my summary of Cocchiarella’s views on abstract intensional objects; the formulation is based on a more extensive exposition of the issue in the book: see Cocchiarella (2007, p. 123 ff).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 151–155; 201–203).
The account of fictional objects in terms of ‘In-the-story’ operator that I present here is different from the account of nonexistents given above in (A4)–(A5). I believe that these two accounts are complementary and compatible with each other.
See Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 163–166).
See Cocchiarella (2007, p. 109).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 40–44).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 48–52).
Cocchiarella gives two examples of the model for naturally possible objects: the concordance model of multiverse in cosmology and the many-worlds model in quantum mechanics; see Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 74–78).
Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 281–288).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, pp. 61–69).
Kripke (1980, pp. 34–39).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, p. 123 ff).
cf. Cocchiarella (2007, p. 123).
References
Cocchiarella NB (2007) Formal ontology and conceptual realism, synthese library, vol 339. Springer, Dordrecht
Fitting M, Mendelson RL (1998) First-order modal logic, synthese library, vol 277. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht
Jacquette D (1996) Meinongian logic. The semantics of existence and nonexistence, perspectives in analytical philosophy 11. De Gruyter, Berlin
Kripke S (1980) Naming and necessity. Basil Blackwell, Oxford
Parsons T (1980) Nonexistent objects. Yale University Press, New Haven
Priest G (2005) Towards non-being. The logic and metaphysics of intentionality, Clarendon, Oxford
Zalta E (1988) Intensional logic and the metaphysics of intentionality. MIT Press, Cambridge
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Nino Cocchiarella for reading a preliminary version of this paper and giving a number of valuable suggestions and comments that helped me both to improve the paper and to understand better details of his theory
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Vasylchenko, A. The Problem of Reference to Nonexistents in Cocchiarella’s Conceptual Realism. Axiomathes 19, 155–166 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-009-9059-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-009-9059-2