  Sylvan’s intuition is that, in order to be able to say something true about non-existent items, we need to allow for the possibility that non-existent items have properties. For instance, in order to be able to say that ‘Sherlock Holmes is a detective’ is true, Sherlock Holmes needs to have the property of being a detective. Now, according to Sylvan, a suitable philosophical background for supporting this intuition is Meinong’s Theory of Objects. For this reason, in Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond (Routley 1980), Sylvan tries to deliver a modern logical presentation of Meinong’s philosophy. He writes: