Nonexistent Objects: The Avicenna Transform

Abstract My general concern is how to translate modern formal semantics into medieval metaphysics, itself a theory about objects. I shall use the formal model in Nonexistent Objects by Terence Parsons as a test case for the modern formal system, and the philosophy of Avicenna as one for medieval metaphysics. My investigation has four parts: 1) a summary of Avicenna’s general metaphysical scheme, the threefold distinction of quiddity; 2) translating Parsons’s theory into medieval terms; 3) the location of nonexistent objects of various sorts in Avicenna’s theory; and 4) comparing the theories of Parsons, and c oncluding that the theories of Parsons and Avicenna are not incommensurate paradigms as Parsons suggests. Rather, they are different theories but under the same research tradition.