Meaning and truth: revisiting the problem of negative existential statements

Abstract

In this paper, I revisit the classic problem of empty proper names or, more precisely, the problem of negative singular existential statements. I start by establishing a relationship between this problem and the problem (or para-dox) of how false statements are possible. I then show, in a first moment, how Aristotle introduces a distinction between “name” and “declaration” in order to separate the meaning conditions from the truth conditions of a state-ment, thus opening the possibility for a discourse to be false without being meaningless. Afterwards, I show how the idea that meaning is prior to truth is radicalized in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. One of the consequences of this ra-dicalization is the distinction between ordinary proper names (which are tre-ated as equivalent to descriptions) and logically genuine proper names, for which the question of existence or non-existence does not even arise. In a third moment, I turn to Kripke's work to show how he, in denying that the proper names of ordinary language are equivalent to descriptions, is obliged, in his analysis of negative existential statements, to refuse what Aristotle and Wittgenstein presupposed, namely, that the meaning of a statement is prior to its truth or falsity. I then draw some seemingly paradoxical conclusions from Kripke's analysis of these statements. Finally, I provide a way to un-derstand these conclusions by means of a brief comparison between these statements and what Wittgenstein calls, in his last work, hinge propositions.