Summary |
Brentano's contributions to ontology are many, but two kinds stand out: his work on mereology and his work on nominalism. Brentano's mereology is quite sophisticated but also quite unorthodox. It differs from so-called classical mereology in several respects, most notably in rejecting the axiom of supplementation; Chisholm suggests that Brentano's very notion of parthood is different. As for Brentano's nominalism - often referred to as reism - it is explicit in some of Brentano's writings starting 1904; there are some scholarly debates over whether Brentano changed his mind one last time in the last two years of his life. There are also debates over whether Brentano's mereology and nominalism have any plausibility or are merely of historical interest. Other topics covered in this category include Brentano's work on existence talk, his views on substance and accident, and scholarly studies of his metaphysics' relation to Aristotle's. |