Reburial of object theory: Reconsidering the Meinong-Russell debate (Alexius Meinong, Bertrand Russell)

This thesis is an investigation of nonexistent objects. Alexius Meinong believed there were facts about things that do not exist, such as the golden mountain or the round square. Such nonexistents, he contended, indeed had properties (such as nonexistence itself) and therefore, truly deserved a home in science. While Meinong's theory has many advantages, initially it was not well received, and Bertrand Russell had a lot to do with this. For starters, he gave compelling criticisms against the theory. However, he also went a step further, examining the logical form of sentences that appeared to say something about beingless objects, and he subsequently showed that they were not about nonexistents at all.; Russell retained the upper hand in the debate for many years. However, in more recent times, philosophers have been exposing problems with Russell's method of paraphrasing and questioning if it can adequately explain all that he wanted it to. In particular, few have found his descriptivist theory of names plausible, and some have wondered if he can give a reasonable account of sentences with names of fictional characters. Some have turned towards Meinongianism, arguing for nonexistents and bolstering Meinong's replies to Russell's main criticisms. Some have also developed formal logic systems that can take into account beingless objects.; Certainly these philosophers were right to reopen the issue and examine it more closely. However, in this dissertation, I will argue that contrary to Meinong, there are, in fact, no nonexistents. I show that Meinongians have not given adequate rejoinders to Russell's criticisms. I further defend Russell's analysis of some statements (those with descriptive phrases), filling in gaps and replying to Meinongian criticisms. I then turn towards statements about fiction and develop a theory of contextualization and a method of handling such statements. While this method is neither Russellian nor Meinongian in nature, it still appeals to Russell's notion of logical form and it does not make commitments to nonexistents. I finally conclude that there really are no beingless objects.