An Argument for Existentialism
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An Argument for Existentialism Yannis Stephanou 1 Received: 25 July 2019 / Accepted: 19 November 2019/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Existentialism about propositions is the view that a proposition expressed in a sentence containing a nonempty name or indexical depends ontologically on the referent of the name or indexical: the proposition could not exist if the referent did not. The paper focuses on names. It discusses some arguments for existentialism and then presents a novel one. That argument does not presuppose that propositions have constituents, and it could be accepted by those who hold broadly Fregean views about names. It shows that, for example, if Aristotle had not existed, no sentence could have meant that Aristotle is a philosopher. The paper also touches on the consequences of existentialism. Keywords Propositions . Names . Fregean semantics . Contingentism
1 Introduction Following A. Plantinga’s terminology, we can say that existentialism about propositions is the view that a proposition expressed in a sentence containing a nonempty name or indexical depends ontologically on the referent of the name or indexical: the proposition could not exist if the referent did not. Let us focus on names. The idea is that if, for example, Aristotle had not existed, then inevitably the proposition that Aristotle is a philosopher would not exist either. Actually, Plantinga (1983, pp. 2–3) characterizes existentialism about propositions as the thesis that a singular proposition about an object depends ontologically on it, and he defines a singular proposition as one that makes a direct reference to an object. He counts various sentences containing a nonempty name as expressing singular propositions. However, as we can see in (Plantinga 1974, pp. 136–148), he considers that sentences like “Aristotle existed” and “Aristotle did not exist” sometimes express
* Yannis Stephanou [email protected]
1
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Ilissia Campus, 157 71 Athens, Greece
Y. Stephanou
propositions that are not singular. It is better to characterize existentialism without using theoretical terms, such as “direct reference”. Otherwise, it remains unclear which propositions it concerns, since it is controversial which propositions satisfy the theoretical terms. On the other hand, if we characterize existentialism in terms of sentences containing a nonempty name or indexical, we ought to allow for certain exceptions. One is sentences in which a name occurs within quotation marks. The proposition that “Aristotle” consists of nine letters does not require the existence of Aristotle. Another exception is names within complex demonstratives. The sentence “That female friend of Aristotle’s is a philosopher”, combined with a context in which the person demonstrated is indeed a female friend of Aristotle’s, expresses a proposition that does not seem to require the existence of Aristotle. For it seems to be the proposition that she is a philosopher, since t
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