Referring and Existing

Abstract

STRANGER: . . . Suppose one of this company were seriously required to concentrate his mind and tell us to what this name can be applied-' that which is not '.... THEAETETUS : That is a hard question. . . . STRANGER: Well, this much is clear at any rate: that the term 'what is not' must not be applied to anything that exists. THEAETETUS: Certainly not. STRANGER: And since it cannot be applied to what exists, neither can it properly be applied to 'something '.... THEAETETUS : No.... STRANGER: So it seems to follow necessarily that to speak of what is not ' Something' is to speak of no thing at all. THEAETETUS: Necessarily. STRANGER: Must we not even refuse to allow that in such a case a person is saying something, though he may be speaking of nothing ? Must we not assert that he is not even saying anything when he sets about uttering the sounds 'a thing that is not' ?1 Plato in this passage is expressing for the first time in philosophy an exceedingly bewitching view of language; namely, that we cannot refer to things that don't exist-that non-being cannot be spoken of. The bewitchment lasts to our own day. In one of his early books Russell says: Being is that which belongs to every conceivable term, to every possible object of thought. . . . 'A is not ' must always be either false or meaningless. For if A were nothing, it could not be said not to be; 'A is not' implies that there is a term A whose being is denied, and hence that A is. . . Thus being is a general attribute of everything, and to mention any thing is to show that it is.2 And in one of his later books, after he had developed his Theory of Descriptions, Russell says: The proposition ' The so-and-so exists ' is significant, whether true or false; but if a is the so-and-so (where ' a ' is a name), the words ' a exists ' are meaningless. . For, if ' a ' is a name, it must name something : what does not name anything is not a name, and therefore, if intended to be a name, is a symbol devoid of meaning. ...3 Similarly a prominent opponent of Russell's theory of reference, P. F. Strawson, agrees with him that we cannot refer to non-existent entities: