Meinong and Russell

some lessons on quantification

Gregory Landini

pp. 455-474

in: Axiomathes 27 (5), 2017.

Abstract

This paper explores the thesis that de re quantification into propositional attitudes has been wrongly conceived. One must never bind an individual variable in the context of a propositional attitude. Such quantification fails to respect the quantificational scaffolding of discursive thinking. This is the lesson of the Meinong–Russell debate over whether there are objects of thought about which it is true to say they are not. Respecting it helps to see how to solve contingent Liar paradoxes of propositional attitudes such as Kripke's Nixon–Jones.