# whether it's possible to deny the existence of something without presupposing it exists **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 6, 2011, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548 "2011-01-06T00:19:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/41 "2011-01-07T03:45:19Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > “God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. _If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality._ Therefore, God must exist.” > > The problem is with the third sentence, which I’ve emphasized. Oh, it starts a lot earlier than that: the first sentence is poetic and all, but has no concrete meaning. “no greater can be conceived” is _not_ a definition of God, or at least not a very good one. At best (and you’d be stretching for even this), it’s an attribute of God. The concept “Bob is greater than God” is easily conceived of, so it isn’t even true. Further, “greater” is an adjective: it modifies something, and what it modifies isn’t completely clear, but obviously changes between the first sentence and the third. The second sentence is equally gibberish: sure, it sounds good, it’s very quotable, like “God is love” and all…but what does “God exists in the understanding” really mean? We see a lot of this on this board: go into any of the religious debates, and you’ll see a bunch of people arguing logic on one side, and a bunch of folks quoting poetic gibberish on the other. Here, the arguer is attempting to take poetry at literal face value. So given that: “All elephants wear luminous tophats. Obama is an elephant. Therefore Obama wears luminous tophats.” Argument’s valid, but premises (and therefore conclusions) are false. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/42 "2011-01-07T03:56:28Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Why wouldn’t it be possible? In a second’s thought you could come up with examples of things that you know don’t exist; how would you denying they exist affect the fact of their non-existence in any way? I simply don’t see where your uncertainty comes from. The uncertainty seems to come not from “existence” but from “presupposing” – i.e., the idea is that that presupposition (of A’s existence) is prerequisite to denial (of A’s existence) – but I don’t see how it follows. Having a **conception** of something, however vague, is prerequisite to denying its existence in any meaningful way, but conception of characteristics != presupposition of existence. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/43 "2011-01-07T04:00:06Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Moreover, the argument only allows for the existence of a single god, but there are thousands, so it’s axiomatically incorrect before you even start. The argument assumes the definition of God as “the Perfect Being”\* – that is why existence is implied, because nonexistence would be a defect at least in comparison to an existent being. Does that allow for more than one? Can there be more than one Perfect Being? BTW: Who says God is a “Perfect Being” anyway? **That** ain’t essential to the definition! (To a priest it might be, but not to a philosopher.) An imperfect being could still have made the world – it’s an imperfect world, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/44 "2011-01-07T07:15:08Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Which brings up the same question Meinong was addressing–does a thing have to exist in order to have properties? > > “Sauron ruled in Mordor during the 3rd Age” appears to a lot of people to be a true sentence. But if it’s true, then it must be that Sauron does in fact have the property of ruling in Mordor during the 3rd Age. And if he has that property, and if having properties entails existence, then it must be that Sauron exists. > > However, there are a lot of other equally plausible positions available: > > 1. The sentence “Sauron ruled in Mordor during the 3rd Age” isn’t true. People sometimes call it “true” but when they do so they’re engaging in a game of pretend. (Insert argument that a correct understanding of what goes into a game of pretend shows that the objects pretended don’t need to exist.) > > 2. The sentence is “true in a fiction” which is not the same thing as “true in reality” although it is a kind of truth. Truth in fiction doesn’t entail real existence. > > 3. The word “Sauron” is short for a description something like “an entity occupying a place in the third level of a heiarchy of angelic beings ruled by a God name Iluvatar, who blahdee blahdee blah… and who ruled in Mordor during the 3rd age.” Once you supply appropriate definitions for “mordor” and “3rd” age as well, you find out the sentence is true _tautologically_, which means its truth doesn’t entail the existence of an entity matching Sauron’s description after all. (Similarly, “Square circles are square” is tautologically true, yet its truth doesn’t entail the existence of a square circle.) > > I’m sure there are several other views available but those are the ones that came to mind. Or a simpler example: How many horns does a unicorn have? Obviously, by definition, the answer is “one,” but we have to clarify the meaning of the word “does.” The actual meaning of the question would be “How many horns would a unicorn have if it existed?” I think this is closer to what the OP is thinking. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/45 "2011-01-07T07:24:02Z")
The OP seems to confuse the definitition of things with things themselves. Defining a thing presupposes the definition of all other things are not that thing. But the existence of a definition of a thing is not the same as the existence of a thing. All swans are white. You have defined a ‘swan’ as having a property ‘white color’ (not a ‘color’ property that is ‘white’, it is invariant). That also implicitly defines something that has all other properties of a swan except for the property ‘white color’. But the dependent association of ‘white color’ with ‘swan’ says that other thing does not exist. You don’t have to presuppose the existence of a thing to deny its existence, but you do have to presuppose the definition of a thing to deny it’s existence. Those who contend that you can deny the existence of asldiujois without presupposing the definition of them are incorrect. There is no logical statement that says something that can be anything does not exist without denying the existence of all things. Denial based on ignorance may work as a political tactic, but not as a logical argument. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/46 "2011-01-07T07:27:40Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > BTW: Who says God is a “Perfect Being” anyway? Christian philosophers, presumably based on centuries of pondering on Christian theology. Hence my comment about “the existence of a single god”. That argument only works with a) one god, b) that that god is _that_ God. > [@Canadjun](#): > > In order for them to either exist or not exist, they must be defined. Not so. There is no definition of a Habalabafabano. It does not exist. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/47 "2011-01-07T12:01:06Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So anyway, I’ll go ahead and say that as far as I can remember, there’s _never_ been a view (taken seriously by professional philosophers anyway) that it’s impossible to deny the existence of something without presupposing it exists. I think what the OP is (mis-)remembering is the problem of non-denoting (or empty) names, as discussed by Russell and Quine perhaps most influentially. Basically, the problem is with deciding the truth values of sentences that refer to fictional entities, such as ‘Pegasus has wings’. Intuitively, we’d say that statement is true; but if that is so, then there must be something referred to by the name ‘Pegasus’ of which the property ‘has wings’ holds, in some form or another. What, then, are we to make of a sentence like ‘Pegasus does not exist’? If we try to parse it in the same way as the previous one, we arrive at something contradictory – ‘there is something that is referred to by the name Pegasus which has the property of not existing’ seems both to affirm and deny Pegasus’ existence. This problem is addressed by Quine in his essay ‘[On What There Is](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_What_There_Is)’, which I suspect may be what the OP was after. One possible resolution would be to say that Pegasus refers to an idea, rather than an actual horse with wings; however, this is somewhat unsatisfactory, since people don’t talk about the idea when they say that Pegasus doesn’t exist (and how can an idea have wings anyway?). One also could quibble about the meaning of the word ‘exist’, about whether or not it is a property, or how it is supposed to apply to fictional entities. Quine’s resolution, however, is to appeal to Russell’s theory of singular descriptions, developed in his essay ‘[On Denoting](http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Russell/denoting/)’. Basically, Russell shows how to use names that don’t actually name – i.e. refer to – anything. In order to do so, one must analyze them as descriptors within the context of a sentence they appear in; so ‘The author of Waverley was a poet’ gets turned into ‘Something wrote Waverley which was a poet, and nothing else wrote Waverley’. The advantage of this rather cumbersome framework then is that it can be used to talk meaningfully about propositions of existence, without presupposing existence of what is talked about in any way: ‘The author of Waverley exists’ gets turned into ‘Something wrote Waverley and nothing else wrote Waverley’, and its negative, ‘The author of Waverley doesn’t exist’ gets parsed at ‘Either everything failed to write Waverley, or more than one thing wrote Waverley’ – a statement which we can attribute a definite truth value to, without running into the ambiguities previously presented. Now, all that has to be done is to transform the name of some fictional entity into a singular description (i.e. a phrase that describes one and only one entity) in Russell’s sense: one could, for example, talk about ‘the winged horse captured by Bellerophon’, or, more simply, turn whatever uniquely identifies it into a predicate, and make ‘Pegasus’ into ‘something that is-Pegasus’ or that ‘pegasizes’. These are somewhat ugly, but always possible: every non-denoting name can be turned into a singular description in this manner, and thus, one can speak meaningfully about the subject’s existence; then, one can essentially throw away the scaffolding and conclude that, even if only as abbreviation for a singular descriptive phrase, on was always justified in claiming that ‘Pegasus doesn’t exist’ after all. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/48 "2011-01-07T17:04:49Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > There is no definition of a Habalabafabano. It does not exist. If there is no definition of Habalabafabano you cannot form a logical argument about it. Existence is a property of things, and all things have definitions. Logic applies to things. If it has no definition it is not a thing, and using it in logic gives the same result as the square root of a banana. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/49 "2011-01-07T17:08:24Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I think what the OP is (mis-)remembering is the problem of non-denoting (or empty) names, as discussed by Russell and Quine perhaps most influentially. Yes. This question is about meta-things, the definitions and names of things, not the things themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2011, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/50 "2011-01-08T16:43:51Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Christian philosophers, presumably based on centuries of pondering on Christian theology. Hence my comment about “the existence of a single god”. That argument only works with a) one god, b) that that god is _that_ God.Not so. There is no definition of a Habalabafabano. It does not exist. If there’s no definition of Habalabafabano, then the sentence “Habalabafabano” is meaningless. What you might be able to say, though, is the following: “Nothing exists which is properly referred to in any language on Earth by the term ‘Habalabafabano.’” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/51 "2011-01-08T16:49:41Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > If there’s no definition of Habalabafabano, then the sentence “Habalabafabano” is meaningless. So you’re denying the existence of a meaning of a sentence containing “Habalabafabano” ? Anyway, the whole question is a lame-ass theist gotcha game, to by used by lame-ass theists who are just busting to tell an atheist: “You said the word ‘God’ when you said ‘God doesn’t exist’, so how can you name something that doesn’t exist unless you believe it does? Checkmate, neener-neener.” ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2011, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548/52 "2011-01-08T17:53:14Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > So you’re denying the existence of a meaning of a sentence containing “Habalabafabano” ? I’m not sure I understood your point, but hopefully the following is a relevant response: I’m denying the existence of a meaning of any contemporary (well-)written sentence containing the term “habalabafabano.” I’m _not_ denying the existence of a meaning of any contemporary (well-)written sentence containing th term “‘habalabafabano.’” (Count the quotation marks…) Does that answer your point? > [@](#): > > Anyway, the whole question is a lame-ass theist gotcha game, to by used by lame-ass theists who are just busting to tell an atheist: “You said the word ‘God’ when you said ‘God doesn’t exist’, so how can you name something that doesn’t exist unless you believe it does? Checkmate, neener-neener.” It’s especially lame-ass since it’s a straightforwardly invalid argument, as I’ve explained. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whether-its-possible-to-deny-the-existence-of-something-without-presupposing-it-exists/566548.md?page=2)