Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 26, 2018

Ontology

Noneism, Russell Paradox and the Language/Metalanguage Distinction

Every so-called Meinongian theory has to face a well-known argument, which was presented by Bertrand Russell in “On Denoting”. The aim of this critique was to point out that Meinong’s theory of objects is inconsistent, false, and worthless from the theoretical point of view. It is so – Russell argued – because one of the fundamental assumptions of this theory (the principle of characterization) leads to a consequence which is ridiculous from an ontological point of view. Among a plentitude of theories inspired by Meinong’s views, Graham Priest’s theory (called “Noneism” or “modal Meinongianism”) is the newest one. Because of that, one can expect that it delivers an interesting reply to Russell’s argument. Moreover, Priest assures us that in fact it does. In my paper I would like to verify this claim, and show why one could doubt about these ensure. Nonetheless, the conclusion of my paper is rather positive – Priest’s theory is immune to Russell’s critique, in fact, older Meinongian theories are such as well. It is so because the argument mentioned above might be taken as based on a methodological misunderstanding, and its reformulation in terms of Priest’s theory will help me to show why it is invalid.