David M. Mark and Barry Smith
Departments of Geography (Mark) and Philosophy (Smith)
National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, and Center for
Cognitive Science
University at Buffalo, New York 14261 U.S.A.
dmark@geog.buffalo.edu, phismith@buffalo
Environment & Planning B (Planning and Design), 30(3) (2003), 411-427
Abstract
Do mountains exist? The answer to this question is surely: yes. In fact, 'mountain' is the example of a kind of geographic feature or thing most commonly cited by English speakers (Mark et al., 1999; Smith and Mark 2001), and this result may hold across many languages and cultures. But whether they are considered as individuals (tokens) or as kinds (types), mountains do not exist in quite the same unequivocal sense as do such prototypical everyday objects as chairs or people.