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Full Idea
Existence and nonexistence are not primarily properties of individual objects (dogs, unicorns), but of totalities. To say that some object exists is just to say that it is a constituent of the world, which is a characteristic of the world, not the object.
Gist of Idea
Existence and nonexistence are characteristics of the world, not of objects
Source
George Engelbretsen (Trees, Terms and Truth [2005], 4)
Book Ref
'The Old New Logic', ed/tr. Oderberg,David S. [MIT 2005], p.43
A Reaction
This has important implications for the problem of truthmakers for negative existential statements (like 'there are no unicorns'). It is obviously a relative of Armstrong's totality facts that do the job. Not sure about 'a characteristic of'.
Related Ideas
Idea 18916 Facts are not in the world - they are properties of the world [Engelbretsen]
Idea 14394 It is implausible that claims about non-existence are about existing things [Merricks]
Idea 18377 Negative truths have as truthmakers all states of affairs relevant to the truth [Armstrong]
| 18913 | Traditional term logic struggled to express relations [Engelbretsen] |
| 18907 | Term logic rests on negated terms or denial, and that propositions are tied pairs [Engelbretsen] |
| 18905 | Propositions can be analysed as pairs of terms glued together by predication [Engelbretsen] |
| 18906 | Negating a predicate term and denying its unnegated version are quite different [Engelbretsen] |
| 18908 | Standard logic only negates sentences, even via negated general terms or predicates [Engelbretsen] |
| 18912 | Was logic a branch of mathematics, or mathematics a branch of logic? [Engelbretsen] |
| 18917 | Existence and nonexistence are characteristics of the world, not of objects [Engelbretsen] |
| 18916 | Facts are not in the world - they are properties of the world [Engelbretsen] |
| 18915 | If facts are the truthmakers, they are not in the world [Engelbretsen] |
| 18919 | There are no 'falsifying' facts, only an absence of truthmakers [Engelbretsen] |
| 18918 | Terms denote objects with properties, and statements denote the world with that property [Engelbretsen] |
| 18920 | 'Socrates is wise' denotes a sentence; 'that Socrates is wise' denotes a proposition [Engelbretsen] |
| 18921 | Individuals are arranged in inclusion categories that match our semantics [Engelbretsen] |
| 18922 | Logical syntax is actually close to surface linguistic form [Engelbretsen] |