Firstly, let us deal with the present work as such. The original version published in 2005 provoked much discussion.  In the first version 2 Parts–“Semantics for Intentionality” and In Defense of Non-Being–4 Chapters each.  The first half of the book furnishes us with a world semantics for intentional operators and predicates. The new version retains the 2 Parts and 8 Chapters of the 2005 version and adds two more parts–“Impossible Worlds and (Other) Non-Existent Objects” and “Et Cetera”–5 Chapters each.

I propose to treat this new version as a unified text. The clarity and interconnection of the numerous issues dealt with confirm this. One substantive point in my review is that I will set aside the formal machinery of the work–what is minimally needed is an understanding of formal and modal logic. Formalism is talk about impossible worlds, and worlds not closed under entailment.

Secondly, what in general terms, is involved in Towards Non-Being? The effort is to develop a formal semantics of intentional structures. For instance the intentional operator takes a sentential or propositional complement:  “I dread that you love me.” The intentional predicate takes a noun phrase complement:  “I worship you.”

In the case of non-existents there is a noneist construal of formal semantics” I dread that Sauron despises me.” Semantics underwrites logic. I will to present a more plain text reading. Indeed Priest himself notes that the most technical parts–Chapter 15 and some of Chapter 16 can be skipped. I would encourage the reader though,  perhaps, on second reading to delve into Priest’s deployment of his formal devices.

Towards Non-Being concerns intentionality and semantics underpinned by an analytic metaphysics, but there is a tantalizing dialetheism opening here as well. It implicates world semantics which goes beyond axiomatics and involves non-existent objects. In the area of world semantics Priest includes impossible worlds and open worlds. To what problem do they contribute an understanding? Simply, Priest holds that objects without existing can possess certain properties. There is the existent and the non-existent. This sidesteps Meinong’s theory of Sein and Sosein. This is Priest’s’s doctrine of noneism. By invoking world semantic modalism modal logic has been introduced. Hence this approach has been described as Modal Meinongianism that is not ad hoc. Francesco Berto, Priest’s oft time interlocutor and collaborator, calls it Hybrid Modal Meinongianism.

According to Priest he is repositioning the issue of non-existent objects in their natural (Meinongian) home (intentionality), and world semantics will frame his account. Priest says little about existence except that is “the potential to interact causally.” He is dubious that an account of existence can be provided. The existence predicate is primitive.

Regarding non-existent objects we refer to them via intentionality (using the semantics of intentional operators and predicates). My example: “I desire the golden mountain that attracts me.”  So noneism deploys intentional verbs to talk about non-existents. The skeptical argue we can intend a non-existent object, etc., but then in standard logic its properties would be unrestricted rendering this position trivial. Anything goes.

In his crucial Characterization Principle Priest argues that objects existent or not have the properties used to characterize them. These object are characterized by being represented (84-86). And he argues for an unrestricted interpretation here, but not at this unique actual world, but instead at possible, impossible, and open worlds, thus avoiding the triviality objection. Moreover non-existent have no ontological status. Yet they can be referred to by name. Fundamentally we describe objects by the ways we agents represent them (84).

This third part will touch on the new work Priest has furnished us with.

Part 3: Impossible Worlds and (Other) Non-Existent Objects

In Chapter 9. Possible, Impossible, and Conceivability Priest proposes two directives: the Primary Directive is that “Everything holds at some worlds, and everything fails at some worlds. (187). The Secondary Directive is that “If A and B are distinct formulas, there are worlds where A holds and B fails.” (190). At impossible worlds anything can happen. According to Priest the Secondary Directive “entails the Primary Directive. The Secondary Directive places limits on the Primary Directive. I cannot argue for it now, but I hazard that this is connected with Priest’s anti-relativistic dialetheism.

What is interesting is that Priest notes intentional states are not necessarily closed under entailment. We are not dealing with simply just rational agents (191). This accords with the research of Kahneman and Tversky on the limits of human rationality due to systemic irrational patterns of thought. . Conceivability is importantly mentioned as an intentional operator because it enables the bringing of a  state of affairs before the mind. I would suggest that this agent-relative observation can be given a more Husserlian phenomenological interpretation (196).

Chapter 10 “Lost in Translation” notes that meaning is a public phenomenon. But it is in Chapter 11  Phenomenological pointing Priest concedes he encountered the most flak. This is the role of phenomenology in determining reference. He finds intentionality very puzzling. In singling out an object the agent(-relative?) engages in an act of “primitive intentionality.” (209). For Priest, this pointing is like a physical pointing. Or, intentionality is a pointing whether the object exists or not. Yet Priest wants to claim that he is not reducing semantic facts to physical facts. Yes, but only if he is strongly wedded to formal semantics. And he is. For given a set, the function picks out one member. This is naming by arbitrary selection. Yet Priest admits later that naming can go awry. The object is not baptized but rather seems to remain a semantic reprobate.

Chapter 12 on “Poor Non-Existent Objects” is insightful in marking that the speaker referent refers to the semantic referent (223). The speaker intention takes place occurs within a context. Indeed the referent of the description determined is selected “by suitable choice function” or intentional act. (227).

Chapter 13 on “Other Issues From First Edition” seeks to advance the discussion. This I leave to the reader.  Except to note that again world semantics is the way things are taken to be in some intentionality, and that intentional states are not closed under entailment, and that things which are indiscernible at this world does not entail that they possess the same properties at all worlds.

Part 4 “Et Cetera” is not misnamed. It is a series of tentative reflections for further exploration. We have Chapter 14 “Creating Non-Existents,” Chapter 15. “Neighborhood Semantics,” Chapter 16  Self-Deception,” Chapter 17 “Sein Language,” and finally Chapter 18 “How the Particular Quantifier Became Existentially Loaded Behind  our Backs.”

What can we say about this provocative work by Priest? The principle commitment of Priest’s noneism is the Characterization Principle in a sense. As such it arranges linguistic, semantic, and ontological phenomena.

But more importantly, I suggest is intentionality.  Not so much noticed is that this is a problem in the philosophy of mind: what is “aboutness” or intentionality? What and where is it? First Priest seems to indicate this implicates a theory of non-existent objects and thus various types of worlds. But secondly, he admits his is not a definitive account of intentionality. Yet in introducing it he veers towards the agent in determining reference since his intentional states determine, in Priest’s area of interest, non-existent objects. They are cognitive representations in the way in which the agent in choosing descriptions “represents” the world. But what is the ontological or epistemological status of these representations? If Priest wants to clarify the semantics and logic of intentional contexts to this end I do not find any answer. He admits that for him his is a “primitive intentionality” although it is fundamental to cognition (142).

Now it is precisely aporias over intentional contexts and I would suggest noneism’s quantifying over non-existent objects that suffers as a result of the aforementioned. And it is in intentionality that the idiom of non-existents find their home.

Is there way out in terms of identity? Naming? Naming gone awry though? For Priest the crucial key to noneism is that existence cannot be analyzed in terms of identity. Moreover in the 2005 version of the book, identity is not determined by its properties at any one world. In addition to this, existence cannot be indexed. It is absolute. And regarding non-existents they possess no spatio-temporal locations, rendering them different from identity. Yet we talk about them in all natural languages according to Priest (321). They just seem that way. They are just, I suggest, intended that way.

Priest’s metaphysics of intentionality is quite opaque. It is fine to say, using dialetheism, that  some contradictions are true, and that this implies neither relativism, nor that every claim is true and false. But (13.5.7) dialetheism is ingredient in the formal semantics of his work.

Priest has much to offer us by way of a task for thinking. His agent, which I think too thin, Priest indicates is sufficient for cognitive truth, albeit he/she is a limited fallible rationally committed cognitive agent. He says his explanations are analyses and metaphors (238). This is Priest’s new language game.

In conclusion, I propose that Priest’s formal and modal logic and formal semantics are nested within natural language underwritten by a wider metaphysics. Formalizing semantics holds Priest back from the true home of intentionality which deals not only with existence and non-existence, but more deeply with the presence and absence of things in their wholes and parts. This is ordinary language tipping over into the philosophical analyses of Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic. Priest has provided a very clear and honest accounting of what has been overlooked–non–existents. His book is clearly written and welcome reading.

 

© 2017 Jim Kow

 

jim kow is an associate professor of philosophy at kings university college, london. canada