Abstract

The major goal of this paper is to argue that a well known argument to overturn the principle that coextensive predicates substitute in any statement without alteration of truth value can be avoided - even in the simplest of languages. Apparently this can be done nonartificially only by expanding the universe with nonexisting objects. It is not proved that the principle of substitution salva veritate holds in Meinongian model structures, but in fact it does - as any completeness proof of free logics based on inner domain-outer domain semantics will show. I f - as some have suggested - Meinong's views are compatible with the attitudes of a complete extensionalist, and he subscribed to the outlined modern theory of predication, there is no escape from Außersein. That may seem terribly obvious, but in the light of the development of free logics, more than mere conviction is needed. This dogmatic intuition is supplanted with some strong inclining reasons.