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Dissecting Intentionality in the Lab: Meinong’s Theory

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Abstract

Besides presenting a phenomenological-experimental analysis of consciousness, Meinong challenged one of the major indisputable axioms of current scientific research, i.e. that perception in awareness has to be veridical on the stimulus. Meinong’s analysis of consciousness, which he conducted through a kind of dissection of its structures from a systematic and an experimental viewpoint, offers relevant insights to contemporary consciousness studies.

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Notes

  1. This is partly due to its revival during some decades of the last century in logic and analytic philosophy (Bergmann 1967; Chisholm 1960; Grossmann 1974; Haller 1966; Hochberg 2005; Jacquette 2001; Lambert 1983; Parsons 1980; Routley 1981; Simons 1995; Zalta 1983, 1988), as well as the theme of assumptions (Meinong 1910/1983), a development of Brentano’s tripartite classification of psychic phenomena (Brentano 1874/1995).

  2. I distinguish between intentional references (intentionale Beziehungen) and intentionality because, properly speaking, Brentano does not have a theory of intentionality, like Husserl’s for example (Schuhmann 1993).

  3. i.e. the different constitutive parts of an act of seeing: for example, the operation of seeing and its duration, the mental content, and the object of seeing.

  4. These concern the relation between the act and itself, and between the act and its correlate (such as seeing and seen, presenting and presented).

  5. By Gegenstand in German is meant ‘standing against’ or ‘confronting’, as objects are supposed to confront and present themselves to consciousness.

  6. Plurivocity is the perceptual shifting between different appearances, as in the Necker cube, or in a series of regularly aligned points that can be seen as horizontal lines or vertical columns, etc.

  7. In other words, whether some phases of development are more salient (auffällig) than others (Ameseder 1904; Benussi 1913; Husserl 1966/1991).

  8. The dispute regarded the explanation of apparent movement, such as the tachistoscopic presentation of the Müller-Lyer illusion. Benussi maintained that the cause was the diversity of positions assumed by the figure in the individual distinct phases of the process. Koffka, instead, believed that the vision of movement was a unitary phenomenon, not an aggregate or sum of parts: hence, he maintained, even if the phases presented are physically distinct, they are seen as a unitary, clearly structured complex (Koffka and Kenkel 1913).

  9. Psychological elementism conceives mental processes as composed of or derived from simple elements.

  10. The idea that phenomenology describes but neurophysiology explains is still widespread in perception studies (Spillmann 2009).

  11. Consider Ryle’s description of Meinong as the “supreme multiplier in the history of philosophy” (Ryle 1933, 44; see also Findlay 1963, Preface; Routley 1980. Criticism in Jacquette 1996).

  12. Subjective space is the anisotropic experienced space of visual appearance comprising illusions, distortions, apparent size of shapes, apparent motion; etc.; subjective time is the qualitative experience of duration.

  13. Temporal dislocations are acoustic phenomena like those of trills in music (see Wundt 1902; Rubin 1949).

  14. Objectives are not coincident with states of affairs (Sachverhälte): states of affairs connote factuality in ordinary language (Meinong 1910/1983; Rollinger 1999). Among the Meinongians, it was Witasek who stressed that presentations contain a moment of belief, of conviction (Witasek 1910, 7).

  15. Non-intuitive apprehensions are, for example, the apprehension of arbitrarily large times which implies the assumption of a relationship between two temporal instant-like ‘points’. The same happens when we think of one point lying 10 km away from another, or of one sound which is 10 octaves higher than another.

  16. Assumptions should not be confused with Bayesian priors of the inferential and probabilistic models in perception. In such approaches the entire informational content of the stimulus/mental state becomes a set of measures, and there is no semantic distinction between those assigned to the stimulus and those assigned to the mental state (Vishwanath 2005; Albertazzi et al. 2010). For example, depth, distance, direction in perceptual space, are all considered the same informational constructs as depth, distance, direction in some objective external world.

  17. Rensink, for example, found almost all the five prototypical durations identified by Benussi in his experiments on the present and its fringes (Benussi 1913; Calabresi 1930. See Albertazzi 1999, 2011). There are five of these durations, and they relate to qualitatively different situations. Benussi defined them as “absolute” impressions of durations, because their determination, according to Benussi, does not derive from the comparison with other presentations. In Meinongian terms they are neither judgments nor objectives. They are: very short durations (from 90 to 234–252 ms); short durations (from 234–252 to 585–630 ms); indeterminate durations (from 585–630 to 1,080–1,170 ms); long durations (from 1080–1170 to 2,070 ms); extremely long durations (≥2,070 ms). These durations constitute the present and its fringes.

  18. The qualitative level of reality concerns appearances, consisting of perceived primary qualities, secondary and tertiary qualities, and their Gestalt organization in perceptual wholes (Albertazzi 2013).

  19. Such as plurivocity, illusory perception, stereokinesis, etc.

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  1. CIMeC (Center Mind/Brain), University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Liliana Albertazzi

  2. Department of Humanities, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Liliana Albertazzi

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Albertazzi, L. Dissecting Intentionality in the Lab: Meinong’s Theory. Axiomathes 23, 579–596 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-013-9213-8

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