Why The Unicorn Does Not Exist

There are always discussions about existence in philosophy such as seeking the meaning of human existence, or a reflection about what existence is itself. But here, the existence and ontology should be distinguished. The former indicates the things that exist in the world, the things that are to disappear after they exist, and the things that are to come and to exist. The latter states the ideas, beliefs, assertions, and theories about existence. Ontology has three layers: descriptive, substantive, and meta layer. The theory of descriptive ontology describes the actual existence of any person, school, country, culture, etc. (together with the theory of higher existence, if necessary). The theory of meta-ontology focuses on the meaning of basic …show more content…
As a result, by putting a negation to the predicate, it tries to reject the existence of unicorn. However, the predicate ‘…does not exist’ or ‘…is non-existent’ itself describes the unicorn, which means that unicorn must exist. Same problem arises when given that the subject ‘unicorn’ describes the existence of unicorn. That’s because, under the assumption that the subject ‘unicorn’ itself contains the existence of unicorn, unicorn must exist for the sentence – ‘unicorn does not exist’ – to be true. As a result, for this statement to come true, unicorn must exist but not exist. The handling of the aforementioned problems is called ontology. On this paper I will suggest Quine’s explanation as the best solution to the problem of negative …show more content…
Ontological commitment is simply an argument for existence. Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment plays a role that it enables one to evaluate the ontological cost of theories so it is an important part when affirming which theories to accept. Plus, it also allows one to figure out which components of the theory were in charge of its ontological costs. There are two kinds of standards of ontological commitment: standard of explicit ontological commitment and that of implicit ontological commitment. If the existence argument about something is explicitly made about it, because it is an ontological commitment, the argument is explicitly involved in its existence. On the other hand, when it implies that a theory exists, the theory intervenes in its existence in an implicit way. But as I mentioned above, there is problem that ontological commitment is facing –unicorn must exist but not