ON DEFOLIATING MEINONG'S JUNGLE

entities), that Quine's rhetorical demand for unsatisfiable identity criteria for nonexistent possibilia can have any force. Otherwise, the answer is obvious, and is just the solution Meinong gives in offering his thesis of the ontic neutrality or indifference of pure objects in the Auflersein, and of the ontic independence of Sosein from Sein. 26 If nonexistent nonsubsistent Meinongian objects belong to the extraontology rather than ontology of the Meinongian semantic domain, then, in the strict principle expresses the nonpsychologistic sense of Meinong's thesis of the unrestricted freedom of assumption (unbeschrankten Annahmenfreiheit) in intending mindindependent objects of thought. The set theoretical paradoxes associated with latitudinarian comprehension can be managed in several ways; i.e., by type-theory or existence restrictions on abstraction well-formedness, equivalence, or detachment (in effect controlling authorized substitution instances for 'F'). 26 To avoid logical inconsistency in Meinongian semantics a distinction between internal and external negation or predicate complementation and propositional negation for constitutive property predications is usually drawn, whereby it does not follow from the fact that an object has the complement of a constitutive property that the object therefore does not have the property. This distinction depends on Meinong's further division between constitutive (nuclear) and extraconstitutive (extranuclear) properties. Formal characterizations of the distinction between predicate complementation and propositional negation can equally be used to sharply define the nuclear-extranuclear property distinction. An extranuclear or extraconstitutive (CEN) property is one that can be defined in terms of logical operators and quantification over uninterpreted predicate symbols alone, while a nuclear or constitutive (CN) property is any property that is not categorical, or one that requires for its definition the interpretation of at least some predicate symbols. Formal criteria for the distinction can thus be provided in these terms: (CN) -'n(VXl)...(VXn)(VFn)(~FnXl...Xn = ff'nxl...Xn) (CEN) (~/Xl)...(VXn)(VFnt)(~FntXl...Xn = ff-'n!x l...xn) Meinong introduced the distinction between konstitutorische and auflerkonstitutorische Bestimmungen (constitutive and extraconstitutive properties) in [Meinong 1915], 176177. [Findlay 1963], 176, proposed the English translations 'nuclear' and'extranuclear'. See [Jacquette 1985-1986], 423-438; [Jacquette 1994], 345-359. ON DEFOLIATING MEINONG'S JUNGLE 31 sense of the word, Meinong in allowing incomplete and impossible nonexistent and nonsubsistent objects cannot rightly be said to have planted a jungle by inflating ontology with explanatorily or otherwise theoretically unnecessary objects. The objects he postulates are in fact strictly needed to account for the intentionality or object-directedness of ordinary and scientific thought and discourse. Yet beingless objects do not inflate ontology, because they reside instead in the Meinongian semantic domain's extraontology. Meinong obviously does not claim that nonexistent nonsubsistent objects exist or subsist, By denying the being-predication thesis, on the contrary, Meinong allows his semantics to refer to and truly predicate constitutive properties of absolutely beingless objects. Nor can Meinong's object theory correctly be said to have planted a tangled jungle in the sense of admitting logically or metaphysically disorderly objects into the ontology or extraontology. Beingless Meinongian objects are identified and individuated on the basis of the constitutive properties truly predicated of them as constituting their being-indifferent beingindependent natures or so-beings. Meinong's object theory is neither an excessively lush or tangled semantic jungle. 27 6. Abstracta in a Meinongian Extraontology The distinction between Meinongian ontology and extraontology makes it possible for an object theory semantics to support an even more parsimonious ontology in its commitment to fewer or fewer kinds of existent objects than Russell's later extensionalist theory of entities or 'individuals', including universals, or Quine's extensionalist desert landscape ontology of spatiotemporal entities and (including some tumbleweeds) abstract classes. The idea is to have available a nonexistent nonsubsistent abstract referent that does all the work of traditional existent or subsistent absfract entities, but for which ontic commitment is unnecessary. The object theory developed by Meinong and his students provides precisely the concepts needed for an analysis of this kind. They make it possible to go beyond concerns about whether Meinong planted a jungle to present an ontically more streamlined desert-like ontology of existent entities than that provided by even the most austere extensionalist semantic domains. 28 Once we have admitted the division of a Meinongian semantics into ontology and extraontology, it is a relatively simple matter to propose a principled basis for consigning all abstract traditionally subsistent entities from 27 [Meinong 1969-1978], II, 490-93. See [Chisholm 1972] and [Grossmann 1974]. The independence of Sosein from Sein thesis was formulated by Meinong's student Ernst Mally, in his [1904], 127. See [Findlay 1963], 44, [Lambert 1982] and [1983], [Griffin1979]. 2s See also [Campbell 1972], 89-102.