Brentano's Descriptive Psychology marks a breakthrough into clarification of internal time, made possible by using his doctrine of intentionality (and modality) of consciousness. Husserl's version of descriptive psychology, a pure phenomenological psychology, according to its author tries to overcome Brentano's (naturalistic) description of internal experience by explicitly considering the intentional content of mental events, and the different categories of objects as objects of a possible consciousness. Husserl's investigations on internal time are an example of a quite specific sort of genetic (...) inquiry, complementary to the descriptive one. Meinong, when discussing the relation of representation and perception of time, differentiates between the time as given in a representation (act time), in different sorts of (Meinongian) objects (object time), and in contents (content time). These questions of a Brentanist temporality problem are reconsidered and brought to a Husserlian conclusion. (shrink)

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)

1. Die Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874) Brentanos gilt als das Werk der Theorie der Intentionalität. Brentano macht dort die „intentionale Inexistenz” des Denkobjekts zum Definitionsmerkmal des Psychischen und zugleich zum zentralen Begriff eines einflußreichen Forschungsprogramms. Die Idee der intentionalen Beziehung, die in der Psychologie diese zentrale Stellung genießt, hat jedoch ganz bestimmte Aristotelisch-scholastische Wurzeln und wurde bereits in Brentanos Dissertation (1862) sowie in seiner Habilita¬tions¬schrift (1867) als ein unproblematisches Werzeug der Analyse verwendet. 2. Die Rede von der „objektiven Existenz (...) im Geiste” bedeutet dabei zunächst eine gewisse Suspendierung der ontologischen Verpflichtungen. Alles, was nur diese Seinsweise hat, wird aus dem Bereich der Ontologie ausgeschloßen. Auch in seinen Vorlesungen zur Metaphysik, die Brentano seit 1867 in Würzburg gehalten hat (Manuskript M 96), betrachtet er die Seinsweise, die den gedachten Objekten als solchen zukommt, als ontologische belanglos. 3. In der Periode nach der Psychologie wurde indessen die intentionale Inexistenz immer mehr als ein ontologi¬sches Thema für sich betrachtet. Brentano wurde sich der ontologischen Implikationen der Rede von der intentionalen Inexistenz immer mehr bewußt. Die Seinsweise der immanenten Objekte wird immer mehr ontologisch verpflichtend und Brentano entwickelt in der Tat eine höchst komplizierte Onto¬logie der intentionalen Beziehung. Sehr deutlich kann man das auf Grund der Vorlesungen zur deskriptiven Psychologie (1890/91) sehen. So kann man sagen, daß das sogenannte „Kriterium Quines” bei Brentano erst in der Periode nach der Psychologie richtig zur Geltung kommt. Das Kriterium selbst ist übrigens umstritten. Die Philo¬sophen wie Prior, Alston oder Geach betrachten es z.B. eher als dubios. Die Entwicklung der Theorie Brentanos ist demgemäß keineswegs von bloß historischer Bedeutung. 4. Die Gegenstandstheorie Meinongs, die die Objekte der intentionalen Beziehung endgültig „ontologisiert” und von der psychischen Realität eman¬zi¬piert, kann als eine konsequente Fortsetzung dieser Entwicklung angesehen werden – die Fortsetzung, die der späte Brentano (nach 1904) eher als eine reductio ad absurdum betrachten würde. Sehr interessant ist in diesem Kontext die Theorie der Intentionalität, die Brentano in seinen Logik-Vorlesungen von 80-ger Jahren (Manuskript EL 80) vorgestellt hat. Diese Theorie operiert mit den nicht-existierenden Gegenständen und kann mit guten Gründen als die Inspirationsquelle der Meinongschen Theorie angesehen werden. (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)

Russell brought three arguments forward against Meinong's theory of objects. None of them depend upon a misinterpretation of the theory as is often claimed. In particular, only one is based upon a clash between Meinong's theory and Russell's theory of descriptions, and that did not involve Russell's attributing to Meinong his own ontological assumption. The other two arguments were attempts to find internal inconsistencies in Meinong's theory. But neither was sufficient to refute the theory, though they do require some revisions, (...) viz. a trade-off between freedom of assumption and unhmited characterization. Meinong himself worked out the essentials of the required revisions. (shrink)

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

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

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)

Meinong's thought is considered in relation to several major conceptual problems, including the Frege-Russell thesis that words like is are multiply ambiguos and Aristotle's treatment of existence. This treatment leads to a problem of how to interpret quantifiers. The three main possible interpretations are: (i) quantifiers as ranging over actual individuals (or individuals existing in some one world); (ii) quantifiers as ranging over a set of possible individuals; (iii) quantifiers merely as a way of specifying the interdependencies of the concepts (...) (forms) specified by syllogistic terms. The subsequent history of philosophers' and logicians' treatments of existence is characterized by a tension between (i)-(iii). Meinong's position is in the main (iii) whereas Russell in his On Denoting defended (i). The contrast between (i) and (iii) has a counterpart in nineteenth-century discussions about foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

Both Alexius Meinong and Edmund Husserl wrote about relations in their early works, in periods in which they were still influenced by Franz Brentano. However, besides the split between Brentano and Meinong, the latter also accused Husserl of plagiarism with respect to the theory of relations. Examining Meinong’s and Husserl’s early works and the Brentanist framework they were written in, we will try to assess their similarities and differences. As they shared other sources besides Brentano, we will consider very carefully (...) whether we should speak at all of influence or plagiarism. Despite Meinong’s accusations it seems that both he and Husserl took over some elements from Brentano and, partially through him, from John Stuart Mill, who appears to be the most probable source on relations. (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)

Meinong introduces the concept of implexive being and nonbeing to explain the metaphysics of universals, and as a contribution to the theory of reference and perception. Meinong accounts for Aristotle's doctrine of the inherence of secondary substances in primary substances in object theory terms as the implection of incomplete universals in complete existent or subsistent objects. The derivative notion of implexive so-being is developed by Meinong to advance an intuitive modal semantics that admits degrees of possibility. A set theoretical interpretation (...) of Meinong's mereological concept of the implection of incomplete beingless objects in existent or subsistent complete objects is proposed. The implications of Meinong's concept of implection are exploited to answer extensionalist objections about "Meinong's jungle", defending the ontic economy of an extraontological neo-Meinongian semantic domain that supports individual reference and true predication of constitutive properties to beingless objects. (shrink)

The origins of object theory in the philosophical psychology and semantics of Alexius Meinong and the Graz school can be traced both to the insight and failure of Franz Brentano's immanent objectivity or intentional in-existence thesis. The immanence thesis is documented, together with its critical reception in Alois Höfler's Logik, Twardowski's Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, and Meinong's mature Gegenstandstheorie, in which immanent thought content and transcendent intentional object are distinguished, and Brentano's thesis of immanent intentionality as (...) the mark of the mental is reinterpreted to imply that only content is the immanently intentional component of presentations. Brentano's thought from the early immanence thesis through the so-called Immanenzkrise and his later reism is explored against the background of his students' reactions to the original 1874 intentionality thesis and its idealist implications, in the emergence of Meinong's object theory and Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. Finally, Brentano's reism in the later ontology is critically examined, as his solution to ontic problems of immanent intentionality, limiting intentional objects to transcendent concrete particulars. (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.

I intend to take into account Meinong's theory of objects from a point of view allowed by the author himself, when he agrees that the proper "place" for such a doctrine is the theory of knowledge. According to this suggestion, I think it convenient to explain the doctrine at issue in the light of the definition of knowing as a "double" act, in which the object known is "in front o f the knowing act itself as something comparatively autonomous. From (...) this point of view a comparison with Husserl's "pure logic" - as Meinong again suggests - as well as a valuation of the part played by our philosopher in their common Opposition to psychologism seem to be of interest.Pure logic seems to answer in the most adequate way the demands that induce Meinong to elaborate a theory of pure objects: such objects are taken into consideration as to their positivity and possibility founded on equally pure operations of a subject. At the same time pure logic provides us with a clue to the ambiguity of Außersein: as a matter of fact, Meinong, freeing himself from the prejudice in favor of what is actual, remains involved in what I would call a prejudice "in favor of what has being"; he thinks it necessary to resort to an assumption, that is to a simulation of being in order to explain our thinking of a non-being object. Furthermore according to him an assumpion is in general demanded in order to think of an object as to his so-being, that is of the outside-being object.There are two orders of questions: the first one regards the "formal" generality of the fundamental gnosiological problems, leaving out of consideration every "matter" of knowledge, the second refers to the gnosiological-phenomenological foundation of the concepts and of the laws of pure logic. They are absolutely inseparable, and yet strictly distinct. The first order should be the right place for the Außersein of pure objects. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that Meinong overlooked the "specific/nonspecific" distinction. For example, 'I am looking for a grey horse' may either mean that there is a specific horse I am looking for (e.g. one I lost), or just that I am grey-horse-seeking. The former reading, and not the latter, requires for its truth that there be a grey horse. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether it is defensible to maintain Meinong's theory here: to take nonspecific reading (...) of any verb concerning a possibly non-existent but incomplete object. This requires essential appeal to the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. Included is a discussion of criticisms of Meinong's own theory, and of the Medieval theory of ampliation, according to which psychological discourse can "ampliate" a term such as 'chimera' so as to stand for one or more things that cannot exist, yet are chimeras. The paper concludes inconclusively. (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 brief introduction to Meinong, his theory of objects, and modern interpretations of it. Sections include: The Theory of Objects, Castañeda's Theory of Guises, Parsons,'s Theory of Nonexistent Objects, Rapaport's Theory of Meinongian Objects, Routley's Theory of Items.

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. ...

Although Brentano generally regarded himself as at heart a metaphysician, his work then and subsequently has always been dominated by the Psychology. He is rightly celebrated as the person who reintroduced the Aristotelian-Scholastic notion of intentio back into the study of the mind. Brentano's inspiration was Aristotle's theory of perception in De anima, though his terminology of intentional inexistence was medieval. For the history of the work and its position in his output may I refer to my Introduction to the (...) reprinted English translation. Alongside Aristotle the work shows influences of Descartes, Comte and the British empiricists. The theory of intentionality presented in the Psychology is much less modern and less plausible than almost all recent commentary would have it, and was in any case not where Brentano's main interest lay. Intentionality simply served to demarcate mental phenomena from physical, in Book One, but the main aim was a classification of the mental, outlined in Book Two. Books Three to Five were to have dealt in detail with the three main classes of presentations, judgements and feelings, with the final book considering the metaphysics: mind-body and the immortality of the soul. Brentano's shifting views, recently documented in English with Benito Muller's translation of Descriptive Psychology, a work from the transitional 1890s, made the original plan obsolete. The role of an a priori, philosophical or descriptive psychology, methodologically prior to empirical-experimental genetic psychology, foreshadowed and influenced Husserl's notion of phenomenology, and Brentano's Comtean methodological epoche of desisting from controversial metaphysical statements in favour of an examination of the phenomena likewise presaged Husserl's more ponderous phenomenological reductions. Brentano's other work covers most areas of philosophy, notably ethics, where he upheld a form of a priori intuitionism much admired by G. E. Moore, the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, philosophy of language, deductive and inductive logic, and the history of philosophy. I shall mention just two areas. In his logic lectures from 1866 onwards (a compilation published 1956) Brentano rejected the subject-predicate analysis of simple judgements and proposed instead (for which he apparently secured written assent from Mill) that all judgements are logical compounds of positive and negative existential judgements. For example the universal judgement All men are mortal becomes the negative existential There are no immortal men. On this basis Brentano radically simplified the inference rules of deductive logic. While unlike de Morgan, Frege and others he does not go beyond logic's traditional scope by recognising relations, within its bounds his reformed-term logic is simple, elegant and easily teachable. Some of his ideas in logic influenced the young Husserl. Unfortunately Brentano took against mathematical logic, which he wrongly associated exclusively with Hamilton's confused doctrine of the quantification of the predicate. His inductive logic, which takes up by far the greater part of his logic lectures, remains unresearched to this day. (shrink)

What follows is an exercise in hunter-gatherer ontology. More precisely, the region of space and of spatial objects will be adopted as a happy hunting ground for the purposes of Meinongian metaphysics. Meinong, notoriously, struggled against the prejudice in favour of the actual and fought on behalf of the ontological rights of incomplete, impossible, and indeterminate objects. A parallel struggle, as we shall see, can be waged in the domain of spatial objects. Meinong's ideas can in this way be seen (...) to have relevance for studies of the philosophical foundations of the theories of land-surveying and of international law. (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)