Concept

Nonexistent objects

Overview

concept in metaphysics

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

The oneness of the world is an almost undiscussed postulate of most metaphysics. "Reality is not merely one and self-consistent, but is a system of reciprocally determinate parts"[19]--such a statement would pass almost unnoticed as a mere truism.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
The author is tied to Nonexistent objects in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Now, however, owing to the labours of the mathematicians, notably Georg Cantor, it has appeared that the impossibility of infinite collections was a mistake. They are not in fact self-contradictory, but only contradictory of certain rather obstinate mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great sources of metaphysical constructions is dried…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
The author is tied to Nonexistent objects in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Suppose the stronger and more substantial existence annihilated: it is the attenuated and weaker existence of the merely possible that becomes the reality itself, and you will no longer be representing the object, then, as non-existent. In other words, and however strange our assertion may seem, _there is_ more, _and not_ less, _in the idea of an object conceived as "not existing" than in the idea of this same…
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Close in meaning to Nonexistent objects; the term itself is not named.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Nonexistent objects

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Existence

Place in the tradition

Part of Analytic philosophy.

Explore Nonexistent objects in the interactive graph →