In this article, I explore the problems of ficta ‘generation’ and ‘properties’ in light of the philosophies of Alexius Meinong and Roman Ingarden. Comparing Ingarden and the historical Meinong is not a novel idea. By contrast, comparing Ingarden and a phenomenological Meinong has not, to my knowledge, yet been explored. Here, I rely on Alberto Voltolini’s ‘phenomenological conception of außerseiende entities’. I devise Ingarden’s phenomenological ontology to account for the problems of ascription and generation that cripple Meinong’s account. In short, (...) I argue that Ingarden’s account is better suited to accommodate ficta’s generation and properties in a way that does not complicate our approach to fiction. (shrink)

The consequences of Quine's criterion of ontological commitment epitomized in his treatment of the term 'Pegasus' in "On What There Is" are evaluated in terms of Quine's own work, in particular in "The Variable" and "Variables Explained Away". There is a cost to maintaining this criterion with regard to the empirical consequences of some non-existent objects, given considerations prompted by Quine's holism. This cost can be reduced by adopting a noneist position according to which non-existent objects can be values of (...) bound variables as well. (shrink)

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano had an often underappreciated influence on the course of 20 th - and 21 st -century philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal (...) figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A General Introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work, and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is a problem of talking about or otherwise representing things that not exist. But what exactly is this problem? This paper presents a formulation of the problem in terms of the conflict between the fact that there are truths about non-existent things and the fact that truths must be answerable to reality, how things are. Given this, the problem of singular negative existential statements is no longer the central or most difficult aspect of the (...) problem of non-existence, despite what some philosophers say. (shrink)

After presenting Apostel’s views on scientific realism, I present definitions of the concepts of ontology and metaphysics. I then proceed to develop Apostel’s basic ontology and his metaphysics. Apostel proposed a particular understanding of existence based on his views on causation. He also developed a view of the universe as a causal self-explaining system. I discuss and illustrate three kinds of what he calls “metaphysical deductions” that aim to deliver such a view of the universe. The most important one is (...) the Leibnizian variational method, that should allow us to deduce the existing universe as the ‘best’ of all possible worlds. (shrink)

Within the framework of Meinongianism, nothingness turns out to have contradictory features—it seems to be an object and not. In this paper, we explore two different kinds of Meinongian accounts of nothingness. The first one is the consistent account, which rejects the contradiction of nothingness, while the second one is the inconsistent account, which accepts the contradiction of nothingness. First of all, after showing that the consistent account of nothingness defended by Jacquette fails, we express some concerns on the general (...) possibility of consistently characterizing nothingness. Secondly, starting from Priest’s inconsistent characterization of nothingness :146–158, 2014b), we will introduce our own inconsistent account. The key idea of our account is to take nothingness as the complement of the totality. Finally, we will make formal sense of it by constructing an inconsistent mereological system, which is the development of the paraconsistent mereology proposed by Weber and Cotnoir. (shrink)

According to Meinongianism, some objects do not exist but we can legitimately refer to and quantify over them. Moreover, Meinongianism standardly regards nonexistent objects as contributing to the truth-makers of sentences about nonexistent objects. Recently, Tim Crane has proposed a weak form of Meinongianism, a reductionism, which denies any contribution of nonexistent objects to truth-making. His reductionism claims that, even though we can truly talk about nonexistent objects by using singular terms and quantifiers about them, any truth about nonexistent objects (...) is reducible to some truths about existent objects. In this paper, we critically examine the reductionism casting some doubts on the reducibility of truths of sentences like ‘a winged pig is possible’ or ‘some winged pig does not exist’ into truths about existent objects. We also argue that the truth of such sentences can be explained by adopting a strong form of Meinongianism which admits contribution of nonexistent objects to the truth-making of such sentences. (shrink)

Introduction to the Routley/Sylvan Issue.

Most paradoxes of self-reference have a dual or ‘hypodox’. The Liar paradox (Lr = ‘Lr is false’) has the Truth-Teller (Tt = ‘Tt is true’). Russell’s paradox, which involves the set of sets that are not self-membered, has a dual involving the set of sets which are self-membered, etc. It is widely believed that these duals are not paradoxical or at least not as paradoxical as the paradoxes of which they are duals. In this paper, I argue that some paradox’s (...) duals or hypodoxes are as paradoxical as the paradoxes of which they are duals, and that they raise neglected and interestingly different problems. I first focus on Richard’s paradox (arguably the simplest case of a paradoxical dual), showing both that its dual is as paradoxical as Richard’s paradox itself, and that the classical, Richard-Poincaré solution to the latter does not generalize to the former in any obvious way. I then argue that my argument applies mutatis mutandis to other paradoxes of self-reference as well, the dual of the Liar (the Truth-Teller) proving paradoxical. (shrink)

I provide an interpretation of Wittgenstein's much criticized remarks on Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem in the light of paraconsistent arithmetics: in taking Gödel's proof as a paradoxical derivation, Wittgenstein was right, given his deliberate rejection of the standard distinction between theory and metatheory. The reasoning behind the proof of the truth of the Gödel sentence is then performed within the formal system itself, which turns out to be inconsistent. I show that the models of paraconsistent arithmetics (obtained via the Meyer-Mortensen (...) collapsing filter on the standard model) match with many intuitions underlying Wittgensteins philosophy of mathematics, such as its strict finitism and the insistence on the decidability of any meaningful mathematical question. (shrink)

Noneism a is form of Meinongianism, proposed by Richard Routley and developed and improved by Graham Priest in his widely discussed book Towards Non-Being. Priest's noneism is based upon the double move of building a worlds semantics including impossible worlds, besides possible ones, and admitting a new comprehension principle for objects, differerent from the ones proposed in other kinds of neo-Meinongian theories, such as Parsons' and Zalta's. The new principle has no restrictions on the sets of properties that can deliver (...) objects, but parameterizes the having of properties by objects to worlds. Modality is therefore explicitly built in - so the approach can be conveniently labeled as "modal noneism". In this paper, I put modal noneism to work by testing it against classical issues in modal logic and semantics. It turns out that - perhaps surprisingly - the theory performs well in problems of transworld identity, which are frequently considered to be the difficult ones in the literature; faces a limitation, albeit not a severe one, when one comes to transworld individuation, which is often taken as an easy issue, if not a pseudo-problem; and may stumble upon a real trouble when dealing with what I shall call 'extensionally indiscernible entities' - particular nonexistent objects modal noneism is committed to. (shrink)

We outline a neo-Meinongian framework labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM) to account for the ontology and semantics of fictional discourse. Several competing accounts of fictional objects are originated by the fact that our talking of them mirrors incoherent intuitions: mainstream theories of fiction privilege some such intuitions, but are forced to account for others via complicated paraphrases of the relevant sentences. An ideal theory should resort to as few paraphrases as possible. In Sect. 1, we make this explicit via (...) two methodological principles, called the Minimal Revision and the Acceptability Constraint. In Sect. 2, we introduce the standard distinction between internal and external fictional discourse. In Sects. 3–5, we discuss the approaches of (traditional) Meinongianism, Fictionalism, and Realism—and their main troubles. In Sect. 6 we propose our MMM approach. This is based upon (1) a modal semantics including impossible worlds (Subsect. 6.1); (2) a qualified Comprehension Principle for objects (Subsect. 6.2); (3) a notion of existence-entailment for properties (Subsect. 6.3). In Sect. 7 we present a formal semantics for MMM based upon a representation operator. And in Sect. 8 we have a look at how MMM solves the problems of the three aforementioned theories. (shrink)

Drawing on different suggestions from the literature, we outline a unified metaphysical framework, labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM), combining Meinongian themes with a non-standard modal ontology. The MMM approach is based on (1) a comprehension principle (CP) for objects in unrestricted, but qualified form, and (2) the employment of an ontology of impossible worlds, besides possible ones. In §§1–2, we introduce the classical Meinongian metaphysics and consider two famous Russellian criticisms, namely (a) the charge of inconsistency and (b) the (...) claim that naïve Meinongianism allows one to prove that anything exists. In §3, we have impossible worlds enter the stage and provide independent justification for their use. In §4, we introduce our revised comprehension principle: our CP has no restriction on the (sets of) properties that can characterize objects, but parameterizes them to worlds, therefore having modality explicitly built into it. In §5, we propose an application of the MMM apparatus to fictional objects and defend the naturalness of our treatment against alternative approaches. Finally, in §6, we consider David Lewis’ notorious objection to impossibilia, and provide a reply to it by resorting to an ersatz account of worlds. (shrink)

In his famous work on vagueness, Russell named “fallacy of verbalism” the fallacy that consists in mistaking the properties of words for the properties of things. In this paper, I examine two (clusters of) mainstream paraconsistent logical theories – the non-adjunctive and relevant approaches –, and show that, if they are given a strongly paraconsistent or dialetheic reading, the charge of committing the Russellian Fallacy can be raised against them in a sophisticated way, by appealing to the intuitive reading of (...) their underlying semantics. The meaning of “intuitive reading” is clarified by exploiting a well-established distinction between pure and applied semantics. If the proposed arguments go through, the dialetheist or strong paraconsistentist faces the following Dilemma: either she must withdraw her claim to have exhibited true contradictions in a metaphysically robust sense – therefore, inconsistent objects and/or states of affairs that make those contradictions true; or she has to give up realism on truth, and embrace some form of anti-realistic (idealistic, or broadly constructivist) metaphysics. Sticking to the second horn of the Dilemma, though, appears to be promising: it could lead to a collapse of the very distinction, commonly held in the literature, between a weak and a strong form of paraconsistency – and this could be a welcome result for a dialetheist. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 95, Issue 2, pp 245 - 264 In the last few decades, the interest in Brentano’s philosophical psychology, especially in his theory of judgment, has been steadily growing. What, however, has remained relatively unexplored are the modifications that have been introduced over the years into this theory by Brentano himself and by his student Anton Marty. These amendments constitute the focus of the present paper. As will be argued, only by making such changes can the weaknesses of (...) the first formulation of the theory be overcome. Moreover, as the final section of the paper attempts to show, these modifications may even trigger further steps towards what we might label a new Brentanian theory of judgment. (shrink)

I dub a certain central tradition in philosophy of language (and mind) the de re tradition. Compelling thought experiments show that in certain common cases the truth conditions for thoughts and public-language expressions categorically turn on external objects referred to, rather than on linguistic meanings and/or belief assumptions. However, de re phenomena in language and thought occur even when the objects in question don't exist. Call these empty de re phenomena. Empty de re thought with respect to numeration is explored (...) in this paper, and such thought with respect to hallucinations is touched on. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the epistemic approach to paraconsistency. This approach is advanced as an alternative to dialetheism on what concerns interpreting paraconsistency and contradictions; instead of having to accept that there are true contradictions, it is suggested that we may understand such situations as involving only conflicting evidence, which restricts contradictions to a notion of evidence weaker than truth. In this paper, we first distinguish two conflicting programs entangled in the proposal: interpreting paraconsistency in general through the notion (...) of evidence, and modeling reasoning with evidence by using paraconsistent logic. The first part of the program, we argue, does not succeed, on the grounds that it does not lead to a uniform proposal to the understanding of paraconsistency, and fails to engage with dialetheism in a legitimate dispute about interpretation of paraconsistency. Also, when seen through the lights of the second kind of approach, a ‘logic as modeling’ approach, weaknesses of dealing with evidence through paraconsistency come to light, basically because evidence does not seem to suggest the need of a paraconsistent treatment. As a result, one can neither approach paraconsistency in general through evidence, nor approach evidence with the use of paraconsistent logics. (shrink)

In this paper, we critically discuss the idea of a ‘philosophical interpretation’ of paraconsistent logics. We do so by considering the epistemic approach to paraconsistency, by Carnielli and Rodrigues, according to which paraconsistent logics should be interpreted exclusively in terms of non-conclusive evidence, and also, by considering counter-arguments by Barrio and Barrio and Da Re, according to whom paraconsistent logics are not specially tied to any specific interpretation. We begin by presenting the positions involved, and by arguing that the debate (...) may be profitably understood in terms of the distinction between pure and applied logics. We argue that dialetheism is not an interpretation of paraconsistent logics, but rather a view on truth and negation which requires use of paraconsistent logics. Something similar may be said about the epistemic approach itself. The result is that there is nothing distinctive to be called a philosophical interpretation of paraconsistent logics, but rather what we have are distinct applications of paraconsistent logics. Arguments by Barrio and Barrio and Da Re may be then re-framed more effectively. (shrink)

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.

Dialetheism is the view that some contradictions are true. Resorting to either metaphysical dialetheism or semantic dialetheism may seem like an appropriate resolve to certain theological contradictions. At least for those who concede to theological contradictions, and take dialetheism seriously. However, I demonstrate that neither of these types of dialetheism would serve to be amenable in resolving an Islamic theological contradiction. This is a theological contradiction that I refer to as ‘the paradox of an unknowable and ineffable God’. As a (...) result of this, I propose an alternative type of dialetheism which aims to resolve the paradox of an unknowable and ineffable God. I call this type of dialetheism, ‘mystical dialetheism’. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on alternative logics. It discusses a hierarchy of logical reform. It presents case studies that illustrate particular aspects of the logical revisionism discussed in the chapter. The first case study is of intuitionistic logic. The second case study turns to quantum logic, a system proposed on empirical grounds as a resolution of the antinomies of quantum mechanics. The third case study is concerned with systems of relevance logic, which have been the subject of an especially detailed reform (...) program. Finally, the fourth case study is paraconsistent logic, perhaps the most controversial of serious proposals. (shrink)

Most contemporary philosophical discussions of intentionality start and end with a treatment of the propositional attitudes. In fact, many theorists hold that all attitudes are propositional attitudes. Our folk-psychological ascriptions suggest, however, that there are non-propositional attitudes: I like Sally, my brother fears snakes, everyone loves my grandmother, and Rush Limbaugh hates Obama. I argue that things are as they appear: there are non-propositional attitudes. More specifically, I argue that there are attitudes that relate individuals to non-propositional objects and do (...) so not in virtue of relating them to propositions. I reach this conclusion by not only showing that attempted analyses of apparently non-propositional attitudes in terms of the propositional fail, but that some non-propositional attitudes don’t even supervene on propositional attitudes. If this is correct, then the common discussions of intentionality that address only propositional attitudes are incomplete and those who hold that all intentional states are propositional are mistaken. (shrink)

I discuss three ways of responding to the logical omniscience problems faced by traditional ‘possible worlds’ epistemic logics. Two of these responses were put forward by Hintikka and the third by Cresswell; all three have been influential in the literature on epistemic logic. I show that both of Hintikka's responses fail and present some problems for Cresswell’s. Although Cresswell's approach can be amended to avoid certain unpalatable consequences, the resulting formal framework collapses to a sentential model of knowledge, which defenders (...) of the ‘possible worlds’ approach are frequently critical of. (shrink)

Ultralogic as Universal? is a seminal text in non-classcial logic. Richard Routley presents a hugely ambitious program: to use an 'ultramodal' logic as a universal key, which opens, if rightly operated, all locks. It provides a canon for reasoning in every situation, including illogical, inconsistent and paradoxical ones, realized or not, possible or not. A universal logic, Routley argues, enables us to go where no other logic—especially not classical logic—can. Routley provides an expansive and singular vision of how a universal (...) logic might one day solve major problems in set theory, arithmetic, linguistics, physics, and more. It circulated in typescript in the late 1970s before appearing as the Appendix to Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. With engaging, forceful prose, unsparing criticism of entrenched institutions, and many tantalizing proof sketches, Ultralogic? has had a major influence on the development of paraconsistent and relevant logic. This new edition makes this work available for a modern audience, newly typeset and corrected, along with extensive notes, and new commentary essays. (shrink)

Similar to Meinong, Abū Hāšim al-Ğubbāī held the view that some objects do not exist. This paper is a comparative study between Meinong’s object theory and Abū Hāšim’s theory of nonexistent objects. Our comparative study is mostly done through three topics: the characterization principle, objecthood, and the ontological status of existence. Moreover, Abū Hāšim’s theory of nonexistent objects is based on his theory of states, according to which some things, namely states, which among other things include existence, are neither existent (...) nor nonexistent. In this paper, we have also discussed two arguments on behalf of this claim and then we have examined them from a Meinongian perspective. (shrink)

Mathematical pluralism can take one of three forms: (1) every consistent mathematical theory consists of truths about its own domain of individuals and relations; (2) every mathematical theory, consistent or inconsistent, consists of truths about its own (possibly uninteresting) domain of individuals and relations; and (3) the principal philosophies of mathematics are each based upon an insight or truth about the nature of mathematics that can be validated. (1) includes the multiverse approach to set theory. (2) helps us to understand (...) the significance of the distinguished non‐logical individual and relation terms of even inconsistent theories. (3) is a metaphilosophical form of mathematical pluralism and hasn't been discussed in the literature. In what follows, I show how the analysis of theoretical mathematics in object theory exhibits all three forms of mathematical pluralism. (shrink)

In this book, Zalta attempts to lay the axiomatic foundations of metaphysics by developing and applying a (formal) theory of abstract objects. The cornerstones include a principle which presents precise conditions under which there are abstract objects and a principle which says when apparently distinct such objects are in fact identical. The principles are constructed out of a basic set of primitive notions, which are identified at the end of the Introduction, just before the theorizing begins. The main reason for (...) producing a theory which defines a logical space of abstract objects is that it may have a great deal of explanatory power. It is hoped that the data explained by means of the theory will be of interest to pure and applied metaphysicians, logicians and linguists, and pure and applied epistemologists. (shrink)

This paper describes a modal conception of sets, according to which sets are 'potential' with respect to their members. A modal theory is developed, which invokes a naive comprehension axiom schema, modified by adding `forward looking' and `backward looking' modal operators. We show that this `bi-modal' naive set theory can prove modalized interpretations of several ZFC axioms, including the axiom of infinity. We also show that the theory is consistent by providing an S5 Kripke model. The paper concludes with some (...) discussion of the nature of the modalities involved, drawing comparisons with noneism, the view that there are some non-existent objects. (shrink)

This paper begins an axiomatic development of naive set theoryin a paraconsistent logic. Results divide into two sorts. There is classical recapture, where the main theorems of ordinal and Peano arithmetic are proved, showing that naive set theory can provide a foundation for standard mathematics. Then there are major extensions, including proofs of the famous paradoxes and the axiom of choice (in the form of the well-ordering principle). At the end I indicate how later developments of cardinal numbers will lead (...) to Cantor’s theorem, the existence of large cardinals, and a counterexample to the continuum hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper develops a (nontrivial) theory of cardinal numbers from a naive set comprehension principle, in a suitable paraconsistent logic. To underwrite cardinal arithmetic, the axiom of choice is proved. A new proof of Cantor’s theorem is provided, as well as a method for demonstrating the existence of large cardinals by way of a reflection theorem.

A world is trivial if it makes every proposition true all at once. Such a world is impossible, an absurdity. Our world, we hope, is not an absurdity. It is important, nevertheless, for semantic and metaphysical theories that we be able to reason cogently about absurdities—if only to see that they are absurd. In this note we describe methods for ‘observing’ absurd objects like the trivial world without falling in to incoherence, using some basic techniques from modal logic. The goal (...) is to begin to locate the trivial world’s relative position in modal space; the outcome is that the less we assume about relative possibility, the more detail we can discern at the edge of reason. (shrink)

In a recent article, Emil Badici contends that the inclosure schema substantially fails as an analysis of the paradoxes of self-reference because it is question-begging. The main purpose of this note is to show that Badici's critique highlights a necessity condition for the success of dialectic about paradoxes. The inclosure argument respects this condition and remains solvent.

Once one draws a distinction between loyal non-existent items, which do not exist in a non-universal sense of the first-order existence predicate, and non-items, which fail to exist in a universal sense of that predicate, one may allow for the former but not for the latter in the overall ontological domain, so as to adopt a form of soft Parmenideanism. There are both theoretical and empirical reasons for this distinction.

In this paper I want to claim, first, that despite close similarities, noneism and Crane’s psychological reductionism are different ontological doctrines. For unlike the latter, the former is ontologically committed to objects that are nonentities. Once one splits ontological from existential commitment, this claim, I guess, is rather uncontroversial. Second, however, I want to claim something more controversial; namely, that this ontological interpretation of noneism naturally makes noneism be nonstandardly read as a form of allism, to be however appropriately distinguished (...) from Quinean allism in terms of the different scope of the overall ontological domain on which the only particular/existential quantifier that there is ranges. This may orient a noneist towards a syncretistic view of existence, according to which, appearances notwithstanding, existence as a whole is captured both by means of second-order and by means of first-order related notions. (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend the claim that there are three existence properties: the second-order property of being instantiated, a substantive first-order property (or better a group of such properties) and a formal, hence universal, first-order property. I will first try to show what these properties are and why we need all of them for ontological purposes. Moreover, I will try to show why a Meinong-like option that positively endorses both the former and the latter first-order property is the (...) correct view in ontology. Finally, I will add some methodological remarks as to why this debate has to be articulated from the point of view of reality, i.e., by speaking of properties, rather than from the point of view of language, i.e., by speaking of predicates (for such properties). (shrink)

The collapse models of arithmetic are inconsistent, nontrivial models obtained from ℕ and set out in the Logic of Paradox (LP). They are given a general treatment by Priest (Priest, 2000). Finite collapse models are decidable, and thus axiomatizable, because finite. LP, however, is ill-suited to normal axiomatic reasoning, as it invalidates Modus Ponens, and almost all other usual conditional inferences. I set out a logic, A3, first given by Avron (Avron, 1991), and give a first order axiom system for (...) the finite collapse models. I present some standard arithmetical axioms in addition to a cyclic axiom and prove that these axioms are sound and complete for the cyclic models, reporting a similar result for the heap models. The state of the situation for the each of the kinds of infinite collapse model is, however, left an open question. (shrink)

A logic is said to be paraconsistent if it does not allow everything to follow from contradictory premises. There are several approaches to paraconsistency. This paper is concerned with several philosophical positions on paraconsistency. In particular, it concerns three ‘schools’ of paraconsistency: Australian, Belgian and Brazilian. The Belgian and Brazilian schools have raised some objections to the dialetheism of the Australian school. I argue that the Australian school of paraconsistency need not be closed down on the basis of the Belgian (...) and Brazilian schools’ objections. In the appendix of the paper, I also argue that the Brazilian school’s view of logic is not coherent. (shrink)

There is a tension in Santayana's ontological system, one that is generated by the interactions of his doctrine of existence, doctrine of systematization, and critical agnosticism on the infinity of material substance. From and, in conjunction with what will be called the expansionist postulate, an infinite material expansion is generated, one that is in conflict with. This tension is remediated by a coherentist proposal regarding Santayanan existence, the relevant feature of which is that existents at distinct orders of organization are (...) in symmetrical dependence relations. "Metaphysical coherentism," which has recently been described as "one of the least explored areas in contemporary... (shrink)

The claim that nature is self-consistent has recently been contested by a number of paraconsistent logicians. In this paper I will survey the arguments which paraconsistent logicians have presented for the thesis that nature is actually inconsistent. My conclusion is that these arguments all fail.The paraconsistency programme has to date been concerned primarily with outlining the philosophical inadequacy of classical logic, and detailed discussions of issues bearing upon the philosophical adequacy of the paraconsistency position itself are not to be found (...) as yet in the literature. This inadequacy will be illustrated here with respect to the question of the self-consistency of nature. (shrink)

Alexius Meinong is one of the foremost, most independent-minded, most distinctive, most misunderstood and most unjustly maligned of all philosophers. He was pilloried by his own teacher Brentano and his one-time admirer Bertrand Russell as what Gilbert Ryle called “perhaps the supreme entity-multiplier in the history of philosophy.” It is often enough to employ the adjective ‘Meinongian’ to cast a philosopher’s views into the outer darkness. But as supreme commentator J. N. Findlay observes, Meinong was a painstakingly careful and methodical (...) thinker, who inched his way forward to his radical ontological views. Meinong maintained a running interest in ethics and value theory, and the subjective experiences of feeling and desire that correlate to these spheres, from his 1894 Psychological-ethical investigations in value theory to his late works Emotional presentation and the posthumous On the foundation of general value theory. In the process he graduated from value subjectivism to value objectivism. In this paper we will survey Meinong’s mature theory of intentionality and its objects, with particular attention to the otherwise neglected dignitatives and desideratives. (shrink)

Przedmiotem artykułu jest status ontologiczny światów możliwych oraz niemożliwych. Zgodnie z jedną ze współczesnych wersji meinongianizmu, o ile świat aktualny jest przedmiotem istniejącym, o tyle światy czysto możliwe oraz niemożliwe uznawane są za przedmioty nieistniejące. Zwolennicy tego podejścia twierdzą ponadto, że światom nieaktualnym nie przysługuje żaden inny rodzaj istnienia.Celem artykułu jest wskazanie na problematyczne konsekwencje wspomnianego stanowiska oraz zarysowanie poglądu alternatywnego, który oparty jest na pluralizmie ontologicznym, tj. na poglądzie uznającym wielość rodzajów istnienia.

The subject of this article is the Principle of Characterization—the most controversial principle of Alexius Meinong’s Theory of Objects. The aim of this text is twofold. First of all, to show that Bertrand Russell’s well-known objection to the Principle of Characterization can be reformulated against contemporary unrestricted interpretations of it. Second, to propose an alternative formulation of this principle. This refers to the methodology of metaphysics and is based on the distinction between pre-theoretical and theoretical languages. The proposed formulation fits (...) well with every type of contemporary interpretation of the Theory of Objects and helps to overcome Russell’s criticism. (shrink)

The subject of this article is the Principle of Characterization—the most controversial principle of Alexius Meinong’s Theory of Objects. The aim of this text is twofold. First of all, to show that Bertrand Russell’s well-known objection to the Principle of Characterization can be reformulated against contemporary unrestricted interpretations of it. Second, to propose an alternative formulation of this principle. This refers to the methodology of metaphysics and is based on the distinction between pre-theoretical and theoretical languages. The proposed formulation fits (...) well with every type of contemporary interpretation of the Theory of Objects and helps to overcome Russell’s criticism. (shrink)

The subject of my article is the principle of characterization – the most controversial principle of Meinong’s Theory of Objects. The aim of this text is twofold. First of all, I would like to show that Russell’s well-known objection to Meinong’s Theory of Objects can be reformulated against a new modal interpretation of Meinongianism that is presented mostly by Graham Priest. Secondly, I would like to propose a strategy which gives uncontroversial restriction to the principle of characterization and which allows (...) to avoid Russell’s argument. The strategy is based on the distinction between object- and metalanguage, and it applies to modal Meinongianism as well as to other so-called Meinongian theories. (shrink)