On the jungle
In 1904 the Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong argued that you can say true things about objects that don’t exist. A later critic called the place where those objects live a jungle. This site has been growing one, 328 specimens so far, without meaning to.
Objects without being
Meinong’s object theory starts from a plain observation: we think about, describe and argue over things that aren’t there. The golden mountain is golden. The round square is round. Both statements seem true, and neither object exists. So, Meinong concluded, being an object and existing are two different matters.
He set it out in “Über Gegenstandstheorie” (1904), translated as “The Theory of Objects”, and it produces his most quoted sentence:
There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects.
Two ideas carry the weight. Sosein (so-being: what an object is like) is independent of Sein (being: whether it is). In the encyclopedia’s quotation of Meinong, “the so-being of an object is not affected by its non-being”. Ernst Mally had formulated the principle first, in 1903. The golden mountain has its properties, golden and mountainous, whether or not there is one.
And the pure object has Aussersein (Außersein, outside-being). In the encyclopedia’s translation, “The object is by nature indifferent to being”: whether it is or isn’t is no part of what it is. It is often summed up as standing “beyond being and non-being”, a phrase Meinong himself thought misleading.
Not every nonexistent object is alike. The golden mountain merely doesn’t exist; nothing about it is contradictory. The round square couldn’t: being round, it isn’t square. Meinong let both be objects. That is where his critics came in, and it is the line the taxonomy draws: possible (273 specimens) and impossible (55).
Russell objects
Bertrand Russell took Meinong seriously enough to review his work at length, and in “On Denoting” (Mind, 1905) gave the objection that stuck:
This is in itself a difficult view; but the chief objection is that such objects, admittedly, are apt to infringe the law of contradiction. It is contended, for example, that the present King of France exists, and also does not exist; that the round square is round, and also not round, etc. But this is intolerable; and if any theory can be found to avoid this result, it is surely to be preferred.
His theory of descriptions was that theory. A phrase like “the round square” doesn’t name anything; a sentence using it makes a claim that there is exactly one such thing. So “the round square is round” comes out false, “not, as Meinong maintains, a true one.” No objects required.
The argument ran on. Russell pressed the case of the existent golden mountain: if an object has whatever properties it is described with, this one exists. Meinong answered that “being existent” is part of what an object is like, while existing is not, so the existent golden mountain is existent and still doesn’t exist. He also held that objects without being needn’t obey the law of noncontradiction at all; only actual and possible ones must. Russell, in 1907, could see no difference between being existent and existing, and had “no more to say on this head.” The published debate ended there.
Plato’s beard
W. V. O. Quine’s “On What There Is” (Review of Metaphysics, 1948) opens on the same puzzle and gives it a name:
This is the old Platonic riddle of non-being. Non-being must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato’s beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam’s razor.
Quine argues with two invented opponents. One of them, Wyman, holds that Pegasus has being as an “unactualized possible”, and Quine is not charmed: “Wyman’s overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.” Worse, it can’t count its own inhabitants:
Wyman’s slum of possibles is a breeding ground for disorderly elements. Take, for instance, the possible fat man in that doorway; and, again, the possible bald man in that doorway. Are they the same possible man, or two possible men?
Quine’s own test was what a theory has to quantify over: in the 1948 text, “To be is, purely and simply, to be the value of a variable.” The essay never names Meinong, and Wyman isn’t quite him: faced with the round square, Wyman calls the phrase meaningless rather than admit an impossible object. Meinong would have filed it.
Who called it a jungle
The name is usually credited to the Oxford philosopher William Kneale, in Probability and Induction (1949). Twice, and neither time fondly:
But after a period of wandering in Meinong’s jungle of subsistence (during which Lord Keynes produced his book) philosophers are now agreed that propositions cannot be regarded as ultimate entities…
With the horrors of Meinong’s jungle fresh in our minds, we cannot accept such language until we are convinced that it is harmless.
Kneale’s footnote says the jungle “is described in Meinong’s book, Über Annahmen”. His is the earliest use we could find in sources we could actually check. Whether he coined it, or picked it up from someone else, we couldn’t confirm, so it is commonly attributed to him and we leave it at that.
The phrase stuck. Richard Routley (later Richard Sylvan) took it for the title of a defence of Meinong, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond (1980), a deliberate allusion to Kneale. Around the same time Terence Parsons (Nonexistent Objects, 1980) and Edward Zalta (Abstract Objects, 1983) built careful logics in which the golden mountain is an object again, on conditions. The jungle, it turns out, can be surveyed.
Why the pictures belong here
Everything on slopped.site is made by machine. Each Fresh slop artwork is an image model’s answer to a description: a sea in a sardine tin, a pasta bow the size of a building, a candle whose flame blows a gale across the room. The pictures exist; they are files, with sizes. The things in them don’t, anywhere.
That makes them unusually good specimens. Meinong’s examples came as phrases, and a phrase is thin: “the golden mountain” has no weather. These come with lighting, texture, a time of day and a precise list of properties, which is to say a lot of Sosein and no Sein at all. Some are possible and nobody has bothered. Some, like the shadow that sags while its scarf is taut, contradict themselves on sight, and the machine drew them without complaint, which is more than Russell managed.
So the jungle adds a third kind to Meinong’s two, the site’s own: generated, a picture that exists of an object that doesn’t. Every specimen is one. The classifications were written by an AI too, reading the descriptions and looking at the pictures. If you share Quine’s taste for desert landscapes, the field guide has a search box. If not, the expedition leaves daily.
Sources
Every quotation above was checked against these. Where a translation or edition matters, it’s noted.
- Johann Marek, “Alexius Meinong”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (revised 2023), including note 2 on Kneale. plato.stanford.edu/entries/meinong. The English of Meinong’s 1904 sentences, the so-being and outside-being principles, Mally’s priority, and the Russell–Meinong exchange of 1905–1907 are from here.
- Maria Reicher, “Nonexistent Objects”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (revised 2022). plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects. Parsons, Routley and Zalta.
- Bertrand Russell, “On Denoting”, Mind 14 (1905): 479–93. Text at Wikisource.
- W. V. O. Quine, “On What There Is”, Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 5 (September 1948): 21–38. Quoted from the 1948 printing; the version reprinted in From a Logical Point of View (1953) words some sentences differently.
- William Kneale, Probability and Induction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), pp. 12 and 32, read in a scan of the 1949 edition.
- Richard Routley, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), as cited by the encyclopedia.
What we couldn’t verify: who first said “Meinong’s jungle” (Kneale is the earliest we found, not provably the first), and where in Meinong’s own writing the golden mountain first appears.