Noneist Explorations I The Sylvan Jungle - Volume 2

This second volume continues Richard Routley’s explorations of an improved Meinongian account of non-referring and intensional discourse (including joint work with Val Routley, later Val Plumwood). It focuses on the essays 2 through 7 of the original monograph, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond, following on from the material of the first volume and explores its implications of the Noneist position. It begins with a further development of noneism in the direction of an ontologically neutral chronological logic and associated metaphysical issues concerning existence and change.

What follows includes: a detailed response to Quine’s On What There Is; a defense against further objections to noneism; a detailed account of Meinong’s own position; arguments in favour of noneism from common-sense; and a noneist analysis of fictional discourse.

We present these essays separately and provide additional scholarly commentaries from a range of philosophers including Fred Kroon, Maria Elisabeth Reicher-Marek and a previously unpublished commentary on noneism by J.J.C. Smart.

Editors’ Preface.- Contributors.- Introduction: Some Personal Reflections – Priest.- Original Material. First Edition Front Matter [Abridged].- Acknowledgements.- Chapter 2. Exploring Meinong’s jungle and beyond. II. Existence and identity when times change.- Chapter 3. On what there isn’t.- Chapter 4. Further objections to the theory of items disarmed.- Chapter 5. Three Meinongs.- Chapter 6. The theory of objects as commonsense.- Chapter 7. The problems of fiction and fictions.- Bibliography.- Supplementary Essays. A critique of Meinongian semantics – Smart.- Routley’s theory of fictions – Reicher  Routley’s second thoughts – Kroon.- Index.

Richard Routley/Sylvan (1935-1996), a New Zealand born philosopher, who was a research fellow at the Australian National University at the time of his death, rose to prominence for his work in the development of Relevance Logic, Deep Ecology and a revised and improved Meinongian ontology known as “noneism.”  An iconoclastic figure in Australian philosophy, Routley/Sylvan’s legacy thrives in the views of students and colleagues worldwide.

Dominic Hyde is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at The University of Queensland whose works include: Vagueness, Logic and Ontology (2008), and Eco-Logical Lives: the philosophical lives of Richard Routley/Sylvan and Val Routley/Plumwood (2014). He works in non-classical logic and environmental philosophy and in environmental conservation.