Расселианский анализ понятия существования: проблемы и затруднения

Философия науки. 2020. Т. 87. № 4. С. 15–28.

Frolov K.

The main point of the article is that the Russellian analysis of the concept of existence does
not provide a significant economy of ontology in comparison with the Meinongian one. The reason
lies in the unavoidable need to preserve the possibility of numerical distinguishing between various
nonexistent (unrealized) objects. For example, Sherlock Holmes is definitely not the same as the
largest prime number. At the same time, in order to distinguish these two objects unrealized in the
actual world, we need something which can be distinguished. It is this need for truthmakers for a vast class of true statements about nonexistent objects that prevents us from obtaining a more economical
ontology. In particular, the refusal to treat these truth factors as objects in favor of treating them as
unrealized combinations of properties only serves to revise their categorization (we transfer them
from the individual level to the level of properties). However, such unrealized combinations of properties
themselves can be considered as typical abstract objects, which nullifies all efforts to build
a more economical ontology.

Keywords: существование, existence, теория дескрипций, theory of descriptions