Notes

  1. . Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1949), pp. 16, 33, 77–79, 94, 152, 168, 206.
  2. . J. N. Keynes, Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic, 1st ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), pp. 29–30, 75–76, 210–13, 226n. 234–35.
  3. . J. N. Keynes, Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic, 1st ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), p. 213.
  4. . This was one of the main purposes of Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathemutica. For a more readable account see the article on “Existence” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan & Free Press, 1967), 3:141.
  5. . Roderick M. Chisholm, “Alexius Meinong,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan & Free Press, 1967), 5:261–63.
  6. . Webster's New World Dictionary, ed. D. B. Guralnik (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980).
  7. . I am using the term “ontological status” to cover existence (whether legal, moral, or religious), subsistence, and nonexistence.
  8. . See Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Memphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 75–92. The distinction between “Being” and “beings” the translator of this book renders as the distinction between “being” and “essents.”
  9. . By “syntactics” I mean the study of the signalling code of a language, “semantics” is the study of the meanings that are conventionally assigned to the code, and “pragmatics” is the study of the conventional uses that are made of the code structures and their assigned meanings.
  10. . These views are analogous to ethical absolutism and ethical relativism, but it would be irrelevant here to enlarge on the analogy.
  11. . The place of values in science is discussed in Bruce B.Wavell, “The Rationality of Values,” Zygon  15 (March 1980):43–56.
  12. . I exclude reference from semantics and include it in pragmatics for reasons that need not concern us here.
  13. . This holds both in mathematics and in mathematical logic. For example, to specify the ranges of the variables of a mathematical system–‐which makes the specification a presupposition–‐prior to laying down the axioms is not precisely equivalent to giving the variables unrestricted ranges and then introducing the required restrictions by conditionalizing the axioms. Again, in ordinary language “If p then q” normally means “q on the presupposition that p.” The truth‐functional representation of the conditional does not, as is well known, capture this normal sense.
  14. . I do not wish to deny that each class of religion employs all three of the approaches I shall describe, but each has a predominant approach.
  15. . An obvious exception here is the Pure Land school, which does seem to involve ontological innovations.
  16. . G. C. C. Chang, The Buddhist Theory of Totality (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), p. 134.