If everything exists, then it looks, prima facie, as if talking about nothing is equivalent to not talking about anything. However, we appear as talking or thinking about particular nothings, that is, about particular items that are not among the existents. How to explain this phenomenon? One way is to deny that everything exists, and consequently to be ontologically committed to nonexistent “objects”. Another way is to deny that the process of thinking about such nonexistents is a genuine singular thought. (...) The first strategy we may call “the Meinongian tradition” (championed by authors like Alexius Meinong, Ernst Mally, Terence Parsons, Richard Routley, and Ed Zalta), while the second could be dubbed “the de re tradition” (connected to work by Gareth Evans, John McDowell, and Tyler Burge). Finally, the third way to solve the above puzzle, and probably the majority view in contemporary philosophy, is due to Bertrand Russell and W.V.O. Quine, who deny the particularity of the apparent nonexistent object and the singularity of the corresponding thought via the view that any statement about apparently particular nonexistents can be paraphrased into a quantified expression containing no genuinely referring terms. Jody Azzouni’s book is an attempt to argue for and develop a fourth view, based on the hitherto unrecognised notion of an “empty singular thought”, which Azzouni takes to have a place in logical space. Concomitant to developing the view, Azzouni applies it to three typical cases of talk about nonexistents: numbers, hallucinations, and fictions. As the name suggests, empty singular thought is devised as having three essential characteristics: (1) it is genuine thought, no different from any other, (2) it is singular, that is, its content is partly determined by particular non-conceptualised states of affairs, and (3) nevertheless it is genuinely empty, unlike Meinongian thought, that is, its object “does not exist in any sense”, to use Azzouni’s own formulation. Azzouni undertakes some challenging acrobatics when trying to persuade the reader that his view is substantive and it does not end up being the same as any of the previous three views about apparent talk about nonexistents.. (shrink)

Everyone is or ought to be acquainted with the thesis of Meinong's extraordinarily able and important work. It is that beside acts of judgment and ideas there is an intermediate kind of psychical state -- the act of supposing -- which resembles judgment in that its content can be affirmative or negative, but differs from it and resembles ideas in that it is unaccompanied by conviction. Meinong tries to show that it is necessary to assume such acts for a variety (...) of reasons and that they throw a light on some of the most; difficult questions in the theory of knowledge. The extreme value of the book lies not merely in the evidence brought forward for the existence of suppositions, but in the discussions to which the search for suppositions gives rise on all manner of difficult points in logic and what Meinong calls 'Gegenstandstheorie'. There is further a contribution to Ethics and Aesthetics in Meinong's attempt to show the necessity of assuming something comparable to suppositions in the realms of Feeling and Volition. (shrink)

"Nowadays, a need for formal tools is strongly felt in the treatment of two special areas of ontological inquiry. One area is concerned with intentional objects, an area which seems to contain difficulties on the level of things, but also on the level of states of affairs, facts and other "propositional" entities. An intentional relation holds between either persons (more generally experiencing subjects) or acts of consciousness on the one hand, and the intentional objects on the other. The latter are (...) what people see, fear, expect, look for; and the problem, naturally, consists in the fact that – contrary to.. (shrink)

Meinong The Legacy of "On Denoting" Edited by Nicholas Griffin and Dale Jacquette Routledge TaylorkFrancisGroup New York London ...

In this article it is argued that Popper's well-known deductive and falsificationistic epistemology is historically rooted in German psychology, notably the work of Otto Selz. Drawing on Popper's early and still unpublished psychological manuscripts it is shown how Otto Selz's psychology of thinking with its emphasis on the guiding role of schematic anticipations gave the impetus to Popper's theory of problem solving, his theory of the Searchlight, and its attendant rejection of empiricism, the so-called Bucket theory of knowledge. In the (...) second part of the article it is argued that Selz's theory of schematic anticipations is rooted in Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie. Because Meinong's theory was partly an attempt to do justice to the objectivity of thinking, this may explain why the anti-psychologist Popper felt nevertheless attracted to the psychology of Selz. (shrink)

The article examines the development of Husserl’s early philosophy from his Habilitationsschrift (1887) to the Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891). -/- An attempt will be made at reconstructing the lost Habilitationsschrift (of which only the first chapter survives, which we know as Über den Begriff der Zahl). The examined sources show that the original version of the Habilitationsschrift was by far broader than the printed version, and included most topics of the PA. -/- The article contains an extensive and detailed comparison (...) of these texts to illustrate the changes in Husserl’s position before and after February 1890. This date is taken as a turning point in his development, because of Husserl’s announcement in a letter to Carl Stumpf that he was mistaken in his basic assumption, i.e. that the (psychological) analysis of the concept of Anzahl would yield a foundation for arithmetic. Some interesting conclusions in this respect can also be drawn from an unpublished lecture that Husserl held in the WS 1889/90, in which he anticipates aspects of his position hitherto deemed to belong to the last phases of the PA. (shrink)

The consistent formalization of Meinong's object theory in recent mathematical logic requires either plural modes of predication, or distinct categories of nuclear or constitutive and extranuclear or nonconstitutive properties. The plural modes of predication approach is rejected because it is reducible to the nuclear extranuclear property distinction, but not conversely, and because the nuclear extranuclear property distinction offers a more satisfactory solution to object theory paradoxes.

Russell's criticisms force Meinong to adopt a distinction between two types of negation. Logical expositions of Meinong's theory show the distinction is easily drawn in formal terms, but that alone does not justify the distinction intuitively.I criticise Routley'streatment of the distinction and argue that only Terence Parsons'theory retains and preserves the tight network of conceptual connections between the notions of negation, contradiction and impossibility. Hence, Parsons' approach best expresses the Meinongian perspective.

Russell's objections to object-theory have been refuted by the proofs of the consistency of Meinong's system given by various writers. These proofs exploit technical distinctions that Meinong apparently uses very little if at all. Instead, Meinong introduces a theoretical postulate called the modal moment. I describe this postulate and its place in Meinong's system, and I argue that it has been much under-rated by Meinong's logician expositors.

In his 1988 review of On the Plurality of Worlds (Lycan [1988]), William Lycan argued that what he called Lewis's 'mad-dog modal realism' (also 'rape-and-loot modal realism' and 'nuclear-holocaust modal realism' - I suspect that some reference to the supposed extremity of Lewis's position is intended) rested upon an unanalysed modal notion. Lycan accepted that actualists all seemed to be stuck with such unanalysed notions (adding that his own was the notion of compatibility as applied to pairs of properties), but (...) argued that Lewis's notion of worlds was also a modal primitive: 'World' for him has to mean 'possible world', since the very flesh-and-bloodiness [which relieves him of the sort of abstraction indulged in by actualists] prevents him from admitting impossibilia. (Lycan [1988], p.46) Lycan's main concerns in this review go back to his earlier paper 'The Trouble with Possible Worlds' (Lycan [1979]), and are taken up again in his PAS paper: The ruling out of impossible worlds is a serious liability [...] For semantics needs impossible worlds. Though standard modal logics may trade just in possible states of affairs, the semantics of conditionals must deal with inconsistent beliefs. (Lycan [1991], p.224) He goes on to claim that the actualist has no problem with impossible worlds. An impossible world is just - e.g. - a set of propositions (one of which happens to be inconsistent). (loc.cit.) Whatever the truth of this in principle, most actualists have either explicitly or implicitly excluded possible worlds from their theories.* It is true, nevertheless, that Lewis has a clear problem with the very idea of worlds at which logically incompatible propositions are true. Lycan attempts to exploit this as follows. (shrink)

As well as aiming to revive interest in Meinong's thought, this book challenges many of the most widespread assumptions of philosophical logic.

plausible data, argues carefully regarding his subject matter, and is willing to go where the data and arguments lead. In his theory of objects he developed an account of a domain of objects that transcend those we normally take for granted. In this paper I propose to take a look at what we can learn from an attempt to generalize these investigations from the point of view of philosophy of language. So this is what happens when a philosopher of language (...) looks at Meinong, and sees something of interest for semantics. (shrink)

Un des principaux enjeux de la théorie du jugement de Russell consistait à élaborer une théorie qui n’engage pas à admettre des entités complexes vraies, fausses ou inexistantes tels que les objectifs meinongiens. Dans l’etude du débat entre Russell et Wittgenstein sur cette théorie, on n’a jamais sérieusement envisagé que Wittgenstein n’ait pas suivi Russell sur cette question et qu’il ait plutôt adopteune position plus proche de celle de Meinong. Dans cet article, j’aborde cette question et soutiens que Wittgenstein a (...) trouvé la solution aux problèmes posés par la théorie du jugement de Russell dans la théorie de l’image et qu’il a longuement hésité dans les Carnets entre des versions de la théorie de l’image en accord avec la position de Russell et des versions en accord avec celle de Meinong. Enfin, je soutiens qu’il a finalement tranché la question dans le Tractatus en optant pour une théorie du type de celle privilégiée par Meinong.One of the main challenges faced by Russell’s theory of judgement was to provide a satisfactory account of judgement that was not committed to the existence of true, false, or non-existent complex entities such as Meinongian objectives. In the study of the Russell-Wittgenstein debate on that theory, scholars never considered the idea that Wittgenstein might not have followed Russell on that issue. In this article, I address that question and hold, first, that problems raised by Russell’s theory of judgement find their solution in the picture theory. Then, I show that Wittgenstein hesitated for a long period of time in the Notebooks between a version of his solution which is committed to the existence of possible (non-existing) complex entities and one which is not. Finally, I argue that he did, along with Meinong, go for a committing version in the Tractatus. (shrink)

List of errata to Rapaport, William J. (1978), "Meinongian Theories and a Russellian Paradox", Noûs 12: 153-180.

A fundamental assumption of Alexius Meinong's 1904 Theory of Objects is the act-content-object analysis of psychological experiences. I suggest that Meinong's theory need not be based on this analysis, but that an adverbial theory might suffice. I then defend the adverbial alternative against an objection raised by Roderick Chisholm, and conclude by presenting an apparently more serious objection based on a paradox discovered by Romane Clark.

This essay re-examines Meinong's "Über Gegenstandstheorie" and undertakes a clarification and revision of it that is faithful to Meinong, overcomes the various objections to his theory, and is capable of offering solutions to various problems in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. I then turn to a discussion of a historically and technically interesting Russell-style paradox (now known as "Clark's Paradox") that arises in the modified theory. I also examine the alternative Meinong-inspired theories of Hector-Neri Castañeda and Terence Parsons.

INTRODUCTION! In almost every area of contemporary philosophy the impact of Franz Brentano or his pupils can be detected. ...

By the law of excluded middle, either ‘A is B’ or ‘A is not B’ must be true. Hence either ‘the present King of France is bald’ or ‘the present King of France is not bald’ must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig. (...) (p. 233). (shrink)

In this paper, the author analyzes critically some of the ideas found in Karel Lambert's recent book, Meinong and the Principle of Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Lambert attempts to forge a link between the ideas of Meinong and the free logicians. The link comes in the form of a principle which, Lambert says, these philosophers adopt, namely, Mally's Principle of Independence, which Mally himself later abandoned. Instead of following Mally and attempting to formulate the principle in the material (...) mode as the claim that an object can have properties without having any sort of being, Lambert formulates the principle in the formal mode, as (something equivalent to) the rejection of the traditional constraint on the principle of predication. The principle of predication is that a formula of the form Fa' is true iff the general term F' is true of the object denoted by the object term a'. The traditional constraint on this predication principle is that for the sentence Fa' to be true, not only must the object term have a denotation, but it must also denote an object that has being. According to Lambert, the free logicians violate this constraint by suggesting that Fa' can be true even if the object term has no denotation, whereas Meinong violates this constraint by proposing Fa' can be true even when the object term denotes an object that has no being. Lambert then tries to `vindicate' the Principle of Independence, thereby justifying both the work of the free logicians and Meinong. (shrink)