that ranges over obtaining concreta. But Meinongians needn’t follow the historical
Meinong here. If they don’t, they should also say that Soseins of the intentionalia are
determined by the features of those things within the inner quantifier. But this seems
actually to be the intuitively correct view. There is not, for example, any more to
Sherlock Holmes than what is determined by the goings-on of concrete reality.^41
We’ll have a bit more to say about creatures offiction in section 5.6.
This sort of view would not be without precedent. According to Friedman (2015:
143 – 5), Peter Auriol held that there is a mode of being that all intentional objects
enjoy, but that it is a kind ofdiminishedmode of being.^42 Friedman’s remarks suggest
that this mode of being is diminished in two respects: it is not fundamental and it is
not absolute but rather a relational kind of existence, existence-in-a-mind. One
interesting feature of Auriol’s position is that some objects enjoy more than one
mode of being. Socrates, for example, enjoys the existence characteristic of substances
but also this diminished mode of being given that he is an intentional object. So there
are not two entities, Socrates and a representation of Socrates, but only Socrates
existing in two manners.
Does the fact that Socrates enjoys a non-fundamental, non-absolute mode of being
compromise his status as a substance? No. We can suppose that a necessary and
sufficient condition for being a substance is enjoying at least one mode of being that
is both fundamental and absolute, and the position of Peter Auriol is not inconsistent
with this. Some attributes might enjoy a fundamental mode of being, ifbeing-inis
perfectly natural, but they do not qualify as substances by virtue of that enjoyment,
since the mode of being is not absolute. And these attributes might also enjoy a non-
fundamental and yet absolute mode of being; perhaps the generic mode of being that
everything enjoys is such a mode. And yet this also does not elevate the attribute to a
substance. Conversely, the ontological status of a substance is not compromised by its
enjoying a non-fundamental mode of being; everything does. Nor is it compromised
if some of those non-fundamental modes are also relational modes. Only if a
substance enjoys a fundamental and relational mode of being should we pause for
concern.
Let us return to the discussion of potential candidates for being beings by courtesy.
Schiffer (2003) has argued that propositions and properties are“pleonastic”entities.
Pleonastic entities exist but they have a kind of“diminished”ontological status: they
are“thin”entities in some sense. They are“shadows”of sentences and predicates.^43
We know that they exist because there are true sentences that imply the existence of
such entities. Moreover, Schiffer (2003: 66) is explicit that they are not mind-
dependent or language-dependent entities, since propositions exist in possible worlds
(^41) See Schiffer (2003: 51–2), who argues that this is a conceptual truth aboutfictional entities.
(^42) See also Friedman (2014).
(^43) See Schiffer (2003: 59–64). Armstrong (1989: 77–8) also employs this expression, though he does not
accept that all universals are mere shadows of predicates or concepts.