Informally, (e) says that if something becomes past, it will never again be present,
whereas (f) says that if something is present, it will never again be present. The only
time (f) is true of some object is when that object is enjoying the last instance of its
(present) existence.
Regardless of whether one accepts the Lockean view, one should hold that all ways
of substituting for the free variable in (g) yield necessary truths, whereas not all
instances of (h) are necessarily true:
(g) (^9) pxx=y!W( (^9) cxx=y)
(h) (^9) cxx=y!W( (^9) cxx=y)
Informally, (g) says that all past things once were present, which is necessarily true,
whereas (h) is false of some entity at the time at which itfirst comes into being.
If PEP* is true and tense logic is logic, existence is systematically variably
axiomatic.^14
3.3 PEP and Meinongian Presentism
Meinongian presentismis the view that, although non-present things do not exist,
nonethelessthere arenon-present things. The real Meinong rejected Meinongian
presentism for most of his career. See, for example, Meinong (1983: 60), in which he
defends the view that all things in time share the same mode of being, namely,
existence. According to J. N. Findlay (1933: 79–80), late in his life Meinong changed
his mind and endorsed something like Meinongian presentism. But regardless of
whether Meinong endorsed Meinongian presentism, the view has current defenders,
and its interest is independent of the psychological fact that it has been believed.^15
There are commonalities between Meinongian presentism and PEP. Allow me to
highlight some differences. First, the friend of PEP need make no dealings with non-
existent entities per se: she can hold that, although there are different ways to exist,
everything that there is exists in some way or other. Second, the friend of PEP can
insist that it is metaphysically mistaken to assimilate dinosaurs to elves: past things
have ontological status, whereas there simply are nofictional, imaginary, in short,
non-real entities.^16 A view that treats past entities as fundamentally on a par with
“creatures offiction,”merepossibilia, or evenimpossibilia, as standard Meinongian-
ism does, fails to respect the ontological facts.^17
(^14) Recall section 2.5.
(^15) See Keller (2004) and Markosian (2004b) for critical discussion. Defenders of Meinongian presentism
include Gallois (2004), Hinchliff (1988), and Yourgrau (1993). Berto (2013: 98–101) and von Solodkoff and
Woodward (2013: 573 16 – 4) also discuss versions of Meinongian presentism.
My own view is that there arefictional entities, but they do not enjoy a fundamental mode of being,
unlike some past entities. Fictional entities will be brie 17 fly discussed in section 5.5.
As Yourgrau (1993: 140) writes,“Talk of the dead is of an entirely different order from, say, talk of the
tooth fairy, which cries out for paraphrase.”Note, however, that Yourgrau is himself a friend of non-
existent past and future objects, non-existent possible worlds, and babies that are never born. Given this, it