Abstract
Meinong explains assumptions (Annahmen) as a fourth class of psychical phenomena, belonging to an intermediate class supplementing Brentano’s division between presentations (Vorstellungen), judgments (Urteile), and emotions (Gefühle). If thought is free to assume anything, even nonactual and metaphysically predicationally impossible intended objects, as Meinong supposes, then as Meinong follows the tracks from Brentano’s intentionality thesis, there must be nonexistent intended objects assumed for consideration by thought independently of their ontic status. We must be able to think about and say true things about intended objects regardless of whether or not they happen to exist, their existence or nonexistence being an independent matter once they have satisfied identity conditions as distinct intended objects. Meinong’s phenomenology of assumption is discussed as key to the intuitive basis for his object theory comprehension principle, by which the semantic referential domain is populated with distinct identity condition-satisfying existent and nonexistent intended objects, perhaps among at least one other category.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Hume 1978, 67. In Book I, Part II, Section VI, ‘Of the idea of existence, and of external existence’, Hume argues that: ‘[N]o object can be presented resembling some object with respect to its existence, and different from others in the same particular; since every object, that is presented, must necessarily be existent. / A like reasoning will account for the idea of external existence. We may observe, that’tis universally allow’d by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion.’ Later, in Part IV, Section II, ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’, Hume concludes that philosophy cannot rigorously prove the existence of external reality, even if the passions and in particular the imagination are psychologically compelled to accept the existence of a real world beyond the contents of impressions and ideas. Hume adds, 187: ‘We may well ask What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but’tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings’.
- 2.
See Weiler 1986, especially 31–9. Smith 1994, 7–34. Jacquette 2001b, 2002b, Jacquette et al. 2001. Husserl 1976, 50: ‘[Brentano] had little regard for thinkers such as Kant and the post-Kantian German Idealists, who place a far higher value on original intuition and premonition as to the future than they do on logical method and scientific theory…He, who was so devoted to the austere ideal of rigorous philosophical science (which was exemplified in his mind by the exact natural sciences), could only see in the systems of German Idealism a kind of degeneration’.
- 3.
Meinong explains his philosophical debt to Brentano’s intentionalist descriptive empirical psychology in his 1921, 91–150; reprinted, AMG VII, 3–62.
- 4.
- 5.
All quotations from the Heanue translation, unless otherwise indicated. Meinong’s original text is Über Annahmen, second edition 1910, AMG IV. I have replaced Heanue’s translation of Meinong’s ‘Vorstellung’ as ‘representation’ with ‘[presentation]’ in square brackets throughout to preserve consistency with standard English practice in commentary on the Brentano school’s use of this term, and to avoid confusion with other quotations from discussions of Meinong’s work.
- 6.
The difference between intentionality and intensionality is sometimes characterized as a distinction between an abstract relation obtaining between thought and its intended objects, and the mode of linguistic expression of intentional states. Quotation, numbering and certain modal contexts are thought to represent counterexamples that are intensional but have nothing immediately to do with intentionality.
- 7.
Meinong went even further by accepting a version of his student Mally’s argument by referential diagonalization to show that there are psychologically unapprehendable objects. See Mally 1914; Jacquette trans. 1989d. Meinong discusses Mally’s argument in Über emotionale Präsentation, AMG III, where he responds by offering a theory of defective objects. See also Jacquette 1982, 1996a, 37–55 and 70–9.
References
Brentano, Franz. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot.
Brentano, Franz. 1924 [1874]. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, 2 vols, 2nd ed., ed. Oskar Kraus. Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag.
Chisholm, Roderick M. 1967. Brentano on descriptive psychology and the intentional. In eds. E.N. Lee and Mandelbaum, 1–23.
Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2001. Intentionalitätstheorie beim frühen Brentano, Phaenomenologica series, vol. 159. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer.
Findlay, J.N. 1995 [1963]. Meinong’s theory of objects and values, Edited with an introduction by Dale Jacquette, from the 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing (Gregg Revivals).
Griffin, Nicholas. 1979. The independence of Sosein from Sein. Grazer Philosophische Studien 9: 23–34.
Howart, J.M. 1980. Franz Brentano and object-directedness. The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 2: 239–254.
Hume, David. 1978. A treatise of human nature [1739–40], ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. revised with notes by P.H. Nidditch. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
Husserl, Edmund. 1976. Reminiscences of Brentano. In Linda L. McAlister, ed. 1976, 47–55.
Jacquette, Dale. 1982. Meinong’s theory of defective objects. Grazer Philosophische Studien 15: 1–19.
Jacquette, Dale (trans.). 1989d. ‘On the objects’ independence from thought’ (translation of Ernst Mally, ‘Über die Unabhängigkeit der Gegenstände vom Denken’). Man and World 22: 15–31.
Jacquette, Dale. 1996a. Meinongian logic: The semantics of existence and nonexistence. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Jacquette, Dale. 2001b. Fin de Siècle Austrian thought and the rise of scientific philosophy. History of European Ideas 27: 307–315.
Jacquette, Dale, Liliana Albertazzi, and Roberto Poli. 2001. Introduction: Meinong in his and in our times (with Liliana Albertazzi and Roberto Poli). In Liliana Albertazzi, Dale Jacquette and Roberto Poli, 3–48.
Jacquette, Dale. 2002a. Ontology. Chesham: Acumen Publishing.
Jacquette, Dale. 2002b. Brentano’s scientific revolution in philosophy, Spindel Conference 2001. Origins: The common sources of analytic and phenomenological traditions. Southern Journal of Philosophy, Spindel Conference Supplement, 40: 193–221.
Lambert, Karel. 1982. A logical interpretation of Meinong’s principle of independence. Topoi 1: 87–96.
Lambert, Karel. 1983. Meinong and the principle of independence: Its place in Meinong’s theory of objects and its significance in contemporary philosophical logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mally, Ernest. 1904. Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie des Messens. In Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, vol. III, ed. Alexius Meinong, 121–162. Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth.
Mally, Ernst. 1914. Über die Unabhängigkeit der Gegenstände vom Denken. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 160: 37–52.
Meinong, Alexius. 1890. See Höfler, Alois 1890.
Meinong, Alexius. 1910. Über Annahmen, 2nd ed. (1st ed. 1902). Wien: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth; reprinted in AMG IV, 1–384.
Meinong, Alexius. 1921. Selbstdarstellung. In Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellung, ed. Raymund Schmidt, 91–150. Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag; reprinted in AMG VII, 3–62.
Meinong, Alexius. 1983. On Assumptions. James Heanue, ed. and trans. of Meinong 1910 [1902]. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rancurello, Antos C. 1968. A study of Franz Brentano: His psychological standpoint and his significance in the history of psychology. New York: Academic Press.
Smith, Barry. 1994. Austrian philosophy: The legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago/Lasalle: Open Court.
Twardowski, Kasimir [Kazimierz]. 1894. Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellung. Vienna: Hölder.
Weiler, Gershon. 1986. In search of what is Austrian in Austrian philosophy. In Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein: Zur Tradition der österreichischen Philosophie, ed. J.C. Nyiri, 31–40. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jacquette, D. (2015). Meinong on the Phenomenology of Assumption. In: Alexius Meinong, The Shepherd of Non-Being. Synthese Library, vol 360. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18075-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18075-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18074-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18075-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)