Abstract
Around 1900, when Vittorio Benussi’s research and publications began to appear, psychology was already an established science. By comparison, in previous decades, the new science of experimental psychology had displayed impressive growth, but all the while proceeding in a confused and disorganised manner. With the participation of many researchers from different European countries contributing insights from many diverse fields, such as philosophy, physiology, neurology, psychiatry, and biology, the modern psychologists became an active research community who could count on well-equipped laboratories, scientific societies, specialised journals, national and international conferences, and other means of communication to advance their discipline. Psychology was thus a science that “had freed itself from its national confines” (Ebbinghaus 1901, p. 60), and was developing on the basis of a multidisciplinary approach (Gundlach 2004a).
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- 1.
The reference here is to the famous Methodenstreit, which arose within the foundations of economic sciences, but soon extended to philosophy. It developed in marked opposition to French and English positivism which intended to quash the epistemological distinction between natural and human sciences. German historicists, in opposition to the reductionist methodological monism typical of positivism, sustained the irreducibility of natural sciences to human sciences. This occurred on the basis of the ontological distinction between nature and the historical world (Dilthey) and the epistemological difference between explanation and understanding (Windelband, Rickert). In this regard, see Hughes 1976; Willey 1978; Iggers 1983; Bambach 1995; Signore 2005; Feest 2010.
- 2.
As is widely known, the publication of this work irritated Hermann Ebbinghaus who in a long review essay (Ebbighaus 1896) replied that Dilthey’s criticism of the use of causal hypotheses and explanations in psychology was only justified in the case of the old associationist psychology and Herbartian psychology. These, however, had been surpassed once and for all, since they had conceived psychology in analogy to chemistry and physics, rather than biology. For Ebbinghaus, Dilthey’s thesis according to which explanatory psychology functioned just like physics, adhering to the principle that a cause is equal to an effect, was incorrect. Instead, psychology could and should only declare that “the contiguity of two sensations is considered a causal relationship because a later representation of one sensation gives rise to a presentation of the other” (Ebbinghaus 1896, p. 186).
- 3.
The Faculties of Philosophy usually had the largest number of professors, lecturers and students in German universities. From the first decades of the 1800s onwards, these faculties were divided into departments, generally named Philologisch-historische Abteilung and Naturwissenschaftlich-mathematische Abteilung. It was only during the following century that the departments gave rise to distinctive faculties, usually called Philosophische and Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät.
- 4.
This was also admitted by the exponents of experimental psychology. For example, in 1912 Oswald Külpe underlined how “seniors” could still cultivate and teach both philosophy and experimental psychology, while it had become “practically impossible” for younger generations to “be at the service of both without falling into amateurism or frenetic superficiality”, considering the increasing request for experimental investigations (Külpe 1912, pp. 266 f.; cf. Ash 1985, p. 53).
- 5.
Wundt and the School of Leipzig were not exempt from participating in this occupation. Thus, it could be expected that Wundt would take sides with psychology against philosophy in this controversy. Instead he adopted a ‘philosophical’ position with which he intended to mediate, and, at the same time, serve psychology: without philosophy, psychology would be degraded to a mere technique, and it was in the philosophers’ and psychologists’ interest that psychology “remain faithful to its philosophical roots”, and that university habilitations should not be allowed for “those who were mere experimenters without a psychological and philosophical education, and those lacking in philosophical interest” (Wundt 1921, p. 543). For Wundt, psychology was in fact not limited to experimental psychology, but also included Völkerpsychologie, which was to be developed with ethnological, philosophical and historical methods, and which was, as such, similar to the Neo-Kantian geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie. As a consequence, experimental psychology was reduced to serving a far more extensive general psychology, which only by being complete and exhaustive could aspire to founding the Geisteswissenschaften as a whole (Wundt 1893, I, pp. 3–5).
- 6.
The reference here is to the Chair at the University of Graz for Othmar Sterzinger, requested by Meinong, but only obtained many years after the latter’s death.
- 7.
Only 5 of the 117 signatures belonged to Austrian philosophers. Among the professors the following should be mentioned: Hugo Spitzer (1854–1936), a long-term colleague of Meinong at Graz, and Gustav Philipp Otto Willmann (1839–1920), a Herbartian pedagogue at the university of Prague. Among the Privatdozenten, one should mention Oskar Ewald (1881–1940), who was one of the most authoritative exponents of the “religious socialists”, Heinrich Gomperz (1873–1942), son of the more famous Theodor, exponent of the empirio-criticism, and Robert Reininger (1869–1955), exponent of immanence philosophy. See Erklärung 1913.
- 8.
Haller (1981, p. 92) formulates this thesis as follows: “I wish […] to defend two theses: first, that in the last 100 years there has taken place an independent development of a specifically Austrian philosophy, opposed to the philosophical currents of the remaining German-speaking world; and secondly that this development can sustain a genetic model which permits us to affirm an intrinsic homogeneity of Austrian philosophy up to the Vienna Circle and its descendants.”
- 9.
Stumpf was Hering’s colleague in Prague from 1879 to 1884, and carried out some research that contributed to the publishing of the first volume of his Tonpsychologie (The Psychology of Tones) (Stumpf 1883) in his laboratory. Stumpf adopted one of Hering’s methodological theses, employing it in his research and passing it on to his gestaltist students. In particular, he referred to Hering’s idea that phenomenological observation constitutes an indispensable preliminary act to constructing explanatory hypotheses relative to the physiological substrate of experience.
Hering’s theory of vision continued on from the qualitative and phenomenological ideals of Romantic philosophy, in particular of Goethe’s Farbenlehre, although it was updated through the contributions of Herbartism and Johannes Müller’s physiology. Its cornerstones were phenomenological primacy which he attributed to Sehdinge in contrast to wirkliche Dinge (see Hering 1879, p. 343; on the concept of Sehding in Hering cf. Casati 1994), as well as the methodological primacy of subjective experience (rather than that of the physical and mechanical models as found in Helmholtz and his school), when formulating discourses and theories relative to the neurophysiological correlates of experience itself. Thus, experience not only constitutes the starting point for formulating hypotheses on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying it, but experience also guides, inspires and, if necessary, corrects these hypotheses. Unlike Helmholtz, who was guided by considerations derived from the fields of physics and mechanics, Hering proposed that subjective experience offers explananda for the physiological theories of the underlying mechanisms of experience, thus engendering explanatory limits that any physiological theory needs to consider.
- 10.
Since 1861 and until 1896 the other Chair was held by Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898) from Prague. He too was a Herbartian, who had been taught by Bernhard Bolzano.
- 11.
Cf. Benetka 1990, pp. 57 f.; Höflechner 1997, p. 71. Wundt initially aspired to a professorship in Physiology in the more prestigious Faculty of Medicine, from which he came and in which he had become a Privatdozent. In 1894, after having rejected more than one proposal from various philosophical faculties, he accepted a professorship in Inductive Philosophy at the University of Zurich, and a year later, a professorship in Philosophy at the University of Leipzig.
- 12.
Numerous fortunate circumstances enabled the summons of Brentano. On the one hand, Rudolf Hermann Lotze, a friend of Brentano, held a position that was decisive. He was asked for an opinion by the Ministry and strongly supported Brentano’s call. Apart from Lotze, Brentano’s family was befriended with a number of renowned exponents of the Viennese Catholic world who helped to overturn the doubts among the clergy. It should also be remembered that during those years Austria had a brief period of liberalism, which allowed an ex-clergyman to be called to the University. In later years, political conditions changed, and when Brentano decided to marry in 1879, he was met with hostility from the Austrian authorities, who had once again become clerical and conservative. Cf. Falkenberg 1901, pp. 111 f.; Winter 1980.
- 13.
This explains Brentano’s repeated attempts to establish a laboratory of experimental psychology from his arrival in Vienna in 1874 onwards. In 1893 he recalled: “In 1874, shortly after my arrival in Vienna, I was appointed to the University of Vienna, and I asked the Ministry for an Institute of Experimental Psychology. Had the Ministry been persuaded by my suggestion at the time, Vienna would now have the precedence over all other German universities. Now Wundt has his psychological cabinet in Leipzig, Stumpf in Munich, Elias Müller in Göttingen, Lipps in Wroclaw and others have theirs elsewhere, but Vienna has not even begun with the task.” (Brentano 1929, p. 51; cf. Benetka and Guttmann 2001, p. 91) The difficulties he faced in initiating this project, due to the hostility of the Austrian authorities toward an ex-Catholic priest who had married, was one of the reasons Brentano left Vienna for Italy in 1895. See Brentano 1895, pp. 6 ff.
- 14.
Meinong always recognised Brentano as his teacher. However, the relationship of solidarity that bound Brentano to other students, like Marty and Stumpf, was never as fully established between the two. Brentano considered Meinong to have little philosophical talent (letter Brentano’s to Ehrenfels of 29.10.1895, Brentano Archiv at the Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für österreichische Philosophie, University of Graz). On his part, Meinong was trying to defend himself from Brentano’s dominating personality, which, in his view, threatened to stifle the need for independence of every student (Meinong 1921, pp. 6 f.). To overcome these difficulties, Meinong’s marked detachment from his teacher grew in time, and from the time of his professorship in Vienna onwards, he created his own school, with two other students of Brentano, Christian von Ehrenfels and Alois Höfler, gathering around him. Ehrenfels and Höfler both obtained their PhDs under Meinong’s tutorship at the University of Graz, in 1885 and in 1886 respectively, and remained in contact with him for life. Among the large group of students and collaborators whom Meinong tutored in Graz during their entire philosophical and psychological training at the two institutes he founded, the Laboratory of Psychology (1994) and the Seminary of Philosophy (1897), he cites: R. Ameseder, V. Benussi, W. Benussi-Liel, A. Faist, A. Fischer, W. M. Frankl, E. Mally, E. Martinak, R. Saxinger, E. Schwarz, O. Tumlirz, F. Weber, F. Weinhandl, St. Witasek, K. Zindler (Meinong 1921, p. 11; Eng. 235). Fritz Heider, his last PhD student, must also be mentioned here. After Meinong’s death Heider perfected his training in Berlin, and finally emigrated to the USA, becoming one of the most influential social psychologists of the twentieth century.
Some of Meinong’s students obtained prestigious and influential professorships at various universities of the Habsburg Empire: Christian von Ehrenfels in Prague, Alois Höfler first in Prague and then in Vienna. The Graz School, the establishment of which Meinong worked on throughout his life, did however progressively disintegrate. Stephan Witasek, whom Meinong had designated as his successor, died in 1915; Vittorio Benussi was forced to leave Austria at the end of 1918; Ferdinand Weinhandl and Fritz Heider, Meinong’s last two students both evincing strong psychological interests, left Graz, so that the activities of the laboratory were interrupted. Rudolf Ameseder, one of the first collaborators of Meinong in developing his theory of objects, as well as Wilhelmine Liel, Ernst Schwarz and Robert Saxinger, did not achieve academic careers, while Ernst Mally, Meinong’s successor in Graz, who substantially contributed to the development of the theory of objects, gradually distanced himself from his teacher’s positions, subjecting them to harsh criticism. The only noteworthy students who continued the research undertaken in Graz, albeit in autonomous and original ways, and disseminated them in their respective countries, were Vittorio Benussi in Italy and France Veber in Slovenia. The latter returned to Ljubljana in 1920 and developed Meinong’s psychological and object-theoretical theses until 1945, when he was banned from teaching by the government of the then nascent Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia.
- 15.
Meinong-Nachlass, Karton XXIII/e. Cf. Mittenecker and Seybold, p. 95; Huber 2007, 2012, 2013, 2015.
- 16.
Meinong was in contact with the leaders of this movement, in particular with Wilhelm Wundt, Hermann Ebbinghaus, Georg Elias Müller, Ewald Hering, Carl Stumpf, Oswald Külpe, Karl Bühler, Karl Marbe, Edward B. Titchener, William Stern, Richard Avenarius, Christian von Ehrenfels, Hans Cornelius, Theodor Lipps, to name only the most famous.
- 17.
His interest in empiricism is also confirmed by the courses that Meinong held in Vienna until 1882. These were dedicated to the history of British philosophy from Bacon to John Stuart Mill and to the nativism-empiricism controversy. See the list in Dölling 1999, pp. 233–246.
- 18.
In his letter to Anton Marty dated March 17, 1905 – in which he argued that “our thought has as its immanent object not a ‘contemplated horse’, but a horse” (Brentano 1930, p. 86; Eng. 77) – Brentano sought to defend and clarify his point of view against that of his ‘opponents’, in this case, against Alois Höfler, without admitting a distinction between immanent and transcendent object, which some of his students were developing.
- 19.
The canonical version of these principles is formulated by Hume in the Sections I and IV of the First Part of Book I of his Treatise on Human Nature (Hume 1978 [1739/1740], pp. 1–7, 10–13).
- 20.
Barber (1970, pp. 553 ff.) effectively established this distinction in terms of “being presented with” vs “being aware of”. See also Barber 1966.
- 21.
The fundamenta relationis mentioned by Meinong should not to be confused with the relata of Locke, i.e. with the non-relative ideas or things between which one makes a comparison (for example, a ball and a nut), but instead refers to those simple ideas in which, according to Locke, all relations terminate (for example, the colour that nut and ball are compared to).
- 22.
It should be noted that presentational objects can become part of the mental state of the presenting person in two different ways. I can just present white or black, round or oval, and not think about anything else; but I can also, by presenting this content, be aware that I am presenting them and that this content is an object of my act of presenting. In this second case, my activity is captured and judged reflexively as existing: I do not only present white, black, and so on, but also the content ‘presentation’, ‘presented object’, and I simultaneously judge their reality. Now, for the relations analysed above a simple presenting is sufficient to make the necessary foundations available: it is sufficient that I present white and black to find them to be different. On the contrary, in the given examples of presentational complexes it is not enough that one simply presents. The presentations as such, along with the objects that make up their components, must be taken into account in order to express a judgment about the different ways they are connected. As for the problem of the relationship between the relation and its foundations, the unavoidable problem of infinite regress will be considered in Meinong 1899, pp. 390 ff.; Eng. 146 ff.
- 23.
The progressive integration of real relations into Meinong’s system is masterfully analysed by Grossmann 1974, Chap. 2, Sect. 7.
- 24.
Here, Meinong spoke of “imaginative presentations” (Einbildungsvorstellungen), distinguishing them from “fantasy presentations” (Phantasievorstellungen), of which the former are a subclass, since the imaginative presentations included the mnestic or reproductive ones. However, in the first edition of Über Annahmen (On Assumptions) (Meinong 1902, p. 286) he would consider this distinction to be superfluous and thus use both expressions almost as synonyms (see also Meinong 1910, pp. 376, 383; Eng. 265, 273).
- 25.
An imaginative presentation is not only given in the absence of any external or peripheral stimulus – which is essential to perception – but also in the absence of any internal stimulus, pertaining to the central nervous system, which instead produces hallucinations and dream presentations: see Meinong 1888–1889, pp. 170–179. For the derivation of imaginative presentations from perceptions, cf. ibid., p. 130.
- 26.
According to Meinong a “concrete presentation” cannot be a presentation that contains all relevant characteristics of the presented object, which could be infinite in number (this idea will, if anything, find a place in the late Meinongian ontology, under the name of a “completely determined object” or vollständiger Gegenstand). “The concretum includes nothing but the complex of characteristics which by virtue of the nature of the object all at once intrudes upon the senses” (Meinong 1877, p. 19; Eng. 119), and first and foremost upon sight. However, as already mentioned, since vision already has a selective function, it operates a selection in the visual field, and since interest in presented objects induce us “to isolate as much as possible what is characteristic of the objects from the accidental elements introduced by the act presenting them” (ibid., p. 24; Eng. 126, translation slightly modified), it follows that a concrete presentation is something merely postulated, and not describable.
- 27.
Meinong 1888–1889, p. 124; see also Meinong 1889, p. 232. On the difficulties with this conception of abstraction, see the critical comments made by Husserl in his “Psychological Studies for Elementary Logic” (Psychologische Studien zur elementaren Logik) (Husserl 1979 [1894], p. 100; Eng. 130): “I have tried in vain to find the slightest difference between the consciousness of the abstract and the consciousness of the concrete. To abstract, it is said, is to pay attention to something by itself. But, do we not require just this ‘abstracting’ in order to segregate an absolute concretum from its more inclusive background and make it an object of particular occupation? If I look at this box, I pay attention to it in particular, and only by my doing so does it come to me in a particular conscious and become an object of an intuition. Should it then be called an ‘abstractum’? No one would claim this.” In this essay, Husserl had already distanced himself from his Philosophy of Arithmetic, in which he had shared Meinong’s conception of abstraction.
- 28.
In support of his own observations Meinong referred on p. 169 to Lotze’s investigations: “Presentations are particularly distinguished from sensations. The presentation of the clearest splendour does not in itself shine, that of the loudest sound does not sound, that of the greatest pain is not painful.” (Lotze 1881, p. 16) In recognising that the mental act, and not the content, is responsible for the different intensity between perception and image – and that this constitutes a deviation from the original Humean doctrine – Meinong depended on the following argument: if the only difference between perceptual and imaginative presentation consisted in the intensity of the content, I would not be able to determine in each case of inner perception, “if there is a perception with a less intensive content or an image with more intensive content, therefore if at any given time I am hearing a soft sound or whether I am thinking of a loud sound” (Meinong 1888–1889, p. 161). This is noteworthy because during the following years, on the basis of these observations, Meinong would develop changes in Brentano’s classification of mental phenomena, distinguishing the phenomenon of assumption from that of judgment for the absence, in the first, of a “quantitative factor of the act”, that is, a variable degree of certainty, which instead characterises the second (Meinong 1902, p. 342).
- 29.
Meinong would later revisit this interpretation. Although the content of the presentation continued to be psychologically identified with a mental image, he then emphasised that repetition or reinforcement did not have the power to transform the content of memory or imagination into that of a current perception, nor that perception could be considered as a more intense imaginative presentation. The difference between the two types of presentations was therefore qualitatively irreducible. See Meinong 1894, p. 340, n. 1; Eng. p. 97, n. 32. See also Meinong 1910, p. 378.
- 30.
Meinong 1889, p. 240: “[A]ll absence of sensuous intuitability can in the end be traced back to incompatibility.”; and further: “It is a frequent experience that the non-intuitive connection of presentations is somewhat insensitive to contradictions.” (Ibid., p. 242)
- 31.
The non-intuitive vs intuitive pair will also be subjected by Meinong to further developments (cf. Meinong 1910, pp. 247 ff., 280 ff.).
- 32.
“Pairs” and “groups” are Meinong’s examples (Meinong 1888–1889, p. 207).
- 33.
Husserl, however, also included similarity, identity, gradation and logical inclusion among primary relations (Husserl 1891, p. 68; Eng. 71), which Meinong placed in the “producible” relations.
- 34.
The four degrees of cohesion concern (1) opposite contents; (2) contents belonging to different sensory fields; (3) contents belonging to the same sensory field; (4) contents belonging to a single sensory quality. The first three cases concern independent contents, since single elements can be presented separately, while in the latter case they must necessarily be presented together (Stumpf 1873, pp. 107 ff.).
- 35.
Ibid., p. 109: “Independent contents are present when the elements of a presentational complex, according to their nature, may also be presented separately; partial contents are present when this is not possible”. See also ibid., pp. 8 f.
- 36.
Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation “Towards a Theory of Wholes and Parts” (Husserl 1900–1901) would be based on these Stumpfian considerations. Here, the mutual relationship between partial content ceases to be a mere empirical fact, becoming an essential and necessary law, that is, relative to the intrinsic characteristics of the contents themselves and not to the way in which they are experienced. This objectivistic turn was not, however, followed, at least in the first phase of his thinking, by Meinong, who continued to refer to the level of sensory data, of the contents as they appear in the immanence of consciousness. Despite the often repeated thesis that the structural unity of the “found complexion” rests “on the nature of the involved contents”, Meinong continued to refer to the level of the contents and not to that of the (transcendent) objects. This step, as already mentioned, would begin to appear only in his essay of 1899 on higher-order objects (Meinong 1899).
- 37.
See Stumpf 1883, pp. 96–122. The four species of sensible relationship – multiplicity, increase, similarity and fusion – with the single sensations build the material on which apprehension (Auffassung) works, i.e. a sensory judgment. Relations do not have the same absolute character of sensations, but since they exist between these, they are still moments “cum fundamento in re” (ibid., p. 97).
- 38.
See this Chapter, Sect. 2.4.7.
- 39.
The figural moments are sensory contents which prevail over perception, thanks to the fusion of the individual contents and of the relationships existing between them. According to Husserl, in fact, even when the qualitative moments are grasped with a character of simplicity that extends to the overall appearance of the whole, the possibility cannot be excluded of a subsequent analysis which shows the internal structure of the whole itself.
- 40.
Stumpf had already discussed the concept of “mental chemistry” in 1873, which he had found in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill (Stumpf 1873, pp. 101–106). But in the Tonpsychologie his criticism was directed at this concept as it had been developed by Wundt (Stumpf 1890, pp. 131 f.; cf. also pp. 10, 208 ff.).
- 41.
The sensible judgment, i.e. the mental function which supervenes onto sensations and is provoked by these, is fallible (Stumpf 1883, pp. 10–12, 31–43), but unlike sensory illusions, it can be corrected: “[A]ttention, exercise and other psychological influences in the individual life substantially change only the apprehension of the sensations […]. Therefore, the differences and changes which the same objective sound offers to consciousness should always be traced back, in first instance, to changes and differences in mere apprehension.” (Stumpf 1890, pp. 11 ff.)
- 42.
Ehrenfels was clearly inspired by examples taken from Mach’s Beiträge, as he himself acknowledged in a letter to Meinong on June 3, 1891 (Meinong 1965, p. 74), and in which he also admitted his debt towards his Bemerkungen zur Lehre vom räumlichen Sehen (Remarks on the Theory of Spatial Vision) (Mach, 1865). Cf. Mulligan and Smith, 1988.
- 43.
In the third chapter of his Beiträge Mach illustrated two decisive examples. Consider the letter ‘A’, first drawn in black on a white background, and then in white on a black background. The identity of the forms is immediately recognisable, despite all colour “sensations” having changed. The form is thus independent from the matter of local sensations – it is precisely a Gestalt, which however Mach calls “space-sensation” (Mach 1886, p. 43; Eng. 104). Let us now take two equal squares placed next to each other on the same background, one in a horizontal-vertical position, the other rotated by 45° when compared to the first. They appear as two different figures, even though they are geometrically congruent: the first figure is a square, the second a sort of large lozenge. The geometric relationships are the same in both cases, but the Gestalt, understood as an observable property, changes with a wider system of (optical, physiological) relationships existing between the figures and the space around them (ibid., p. 44; Eng. 105). Hence, two distributions of different sensations can have the same Gestalt, and two distributions of equal sensations can have different Gestalten. Gestalten are thus independent of sensations. Mach considered this to be a special case of sensations, but now the theoretical jump is complete. Terminology aside, there are outstanding features in the visual world which cannot be reduced to the sensations of which the psychophysicists speak. In the fifth chapter of his volume, Mach then demonstrates that in the complex objects of direct experience, sensations are so tightly interwoven that only with a deliberate analytical effort one can separate them and consider them in isolation (ibid., pp. 79–102; Eng. 195–234). And later, in his seventh chapter, dealing with issues related to listening to music, he brings very significant examples of the fact that the analytical effort faces unsurmountable resistances within the system of binding relationships between sounds, which lays down the law to the parts. In this context Mach introduced the topic from which Ehrenfels would move in his 1890 article: “If two series of tones begin at two different points on the scale, but are made to maintain throughout the same ratios of vibration, we recognise in both the same melody, by a mere act of sensation, just as readily and immediately as we recognise in two geometrically similar figures, similarly situated, the same form. Like melodies, differently situated on the scale, may be termed tonal constructs of like tonal form, or they may be termed similar tonal constructs.” (Ibid., p. 128; Eng. 285)
- 44.
The phenomenon of the recognition of equal figures, in which, however, an equality is not found between the components, is illustrated by Herbart under the title of “reproduction due to the Gestalt”. Reproduction is for Herbart one of the laws of the presentational mechanism by which every new perception allows the previous equal and homogeneous presentations to emerge in consciousness. Specifically, reproduction due to the Gestalt “is something so common, that a simple example is sufficient to recognise it. It is the same to us if writing appears to our eyes in black on white or (on the blackboard) in white on black, and we read it just as easily if it is written with red ink or in gold letters. How is this possible? Certainly only by a reproduction of previously known signs. But for those who have learnt the black letters, how is it possible that the black figures return and present themselves, when they see the red and golden ones? […] A mediating element must have intervened, and it is precisely that dark spatial image which is equally connected to red and black, and that, when recalled by one, immediately recalls the other.” (Herbart 1825, p. 101; see also pp. 91 and 97–100) It goes without saying that the problem of ‘Gestalt perception’ in Herbart derived from his critique of Kant’s conception of space, which in its apriorism would not have been able to explain the perception of well-determined and specific spatial figures.
- 45.
Within the field of sound, Stumpf identified five degrees of sound fusion within the octave, corresponding to the intervals of octave, fifth, fourth, third and sixth, and to all the remaining intervals. He found that amongst them, the natural seventh resulted more fused (Stumpf 1890, p. 135).
- 46.
Meinong 1891a, p. 295; Eng. 66 (translation slightly modified): “Stumpf, in my judgement, pointed out very convincingly that contents which are simultaneously given do fuse and that gradual differences then occur. Therefore, it is natural, in the face of the simultaneous occurrence of founded and founding contents to expect a fusing (Verschmelzung) of them or a relationship between them similar to fusing.”
- 47.
The question of why the presentations of foundations are followed sometimes by the presentation of a complexion, sometimes by that of a relation, remains an open one. As suggested by Grossmann (1974, pp. 62 ff.), this problem arises from the fact that in dealing with the relationship between foundations and founded object, Meinong wrongly assimilates two different types of relations: two entities A and B are parts of the complexion S that encompasses both, but they are not parts of the relation R, of which they are terms.
- 48.
For the young Husserl, the concept of a number as a determined multiplicity resulted from a reflection on the act of connecting (Husserl 1891, pp. 17–21; Eng. 18–22), and Stumpf agreed with this approach in his Tonpsychologie (Stumpf 1890, p. 5, n. 2). It is well known that the concept of reflection was to be completely revised by Husserl in his sixth Logical Investigation, with the elaboration of his theory of categorial objects.
- 49.
What Meinong defines as a Quasi-Urteil is a judgment that does not involve an intellectual intervention, i.e. it is not yet placed on the level of thought, but is rooted in the very tissue of perceptual operations. The concept of perception as a judgement had of course already been supported by Brentano, who considered that every external perception implicated an instinctive, and therefore blind, not rationally motivated act of assent to the sensible object, which lead to conceiving it as existing (Brentano 1924–1925, I, p. 129; Eng. 60). Meinong further weakened the already poor epistemological consistency attributed by Brentano to outer perception, and furthermore extended this weakness to inner perception itself, thereby losing the claim of absolute evidence that Brentano had attributed to it. In Meinong, this evidence assumes a number of degrees of verisimilitude (Vermutung), which only an agreement among different observers – an inter-observability – was able to strengthen or weaken.
- 50.
- 51.
The passage that states the identity of content and immanent object is fully reported in the first pages of Twardowski (1894), and this testifies to the influence of the text of Höfler and Meinong in the scientific debate of the time. For an analysis of the concept of content in Meinong, see Marek 2001.
- 52.
“Man kann ein dreifaches unterscheiden; etwas, was der Name kund gibt, was er bedeutet, und was er nennt. Spricht jemand einen Namen aus, so gibt er kund, dass er ein gewisses Vorstellen habe, es bedeutet aber der Name den Inhalt einer Vorstellung als solchen. Und es nennt der Name das, was durch den Inhalt einer Vorstellung vorgestellt wird; davon sagen wir, es kommt ihm der Name zu; man nennt den Gegenstand unter Vermittlung der Bedeutung; der Inhalt der Vorstellung vermittelt den Gegenstand.”
- 53.
The image-theory undeniably informs Twardowski’s conception, insofar as he was unable to avoid the equivocal identification of the content with a “painting” or “mental picture”. This can be seen where Twardowski makes use of the analogy of the presentation with the “painted landscape” in order to clarify the ambiguity inherent in the word ‘presented’. In fact, he stated that “when the object is presented […], there occurs a third thing, besides the mental act and its object, which is, as it were, a sign of the object: its mental ‘picture’” (Twardowski 1894, p. 9; Eng. 7). However, there are places in the same work in which the concept of content does not appear compromised by immanentistic instances, but solely aims to ensure the necessary self-transcendence of the act: content is to be understood as “that link between the act and the object of a presentation by means of which an act intends this particular and no other object” (ibid., p. 31; Eng. 28 f.); and again: “[T]he act of presentation […] presents an object by means of the content itself” (ibid., p. 19; Eng. 17). This is the meaning of content which was particularly taken into account and emphasised by Meinong. Furthermore, Twardowski non only assimilated the content to a mental picture, but, as already mentioned, considered it to be the meaning of a name, distinct from the named object, in line with the same threefold task which he, like Brentano, assigned to names: making known, meaning and naming.
- 54.
In the more concise formulation of Ernst Mally the principle reads: “With every complexion coincides essentially a relationship between its inferiora; (and vice versa:) with every relation coincides a complexion of its members.” (Mally 1904, p. 153)
- 55.
The distinction between existence and subsistence consists mainly in the fact that only existence has temporal definiteness (see Meinong 1904b, GA II, pp. 486, 519 f.; Meinong 1910, GA IV, pp. 64 f., 74 ff.; Meinong 1906, GA V, pp. 377 n. 2, 387 f.; Meinong 1915, GA VI, pp. 56 f., 61 ff.; Meinong 1921, GA VII, pp. 17 f., 20 f.).
- 56.
Meinong raised this question almost in passing, because his main interest in this work was the ideal superiora, and the introduction of a new mode of being which pertains to them, namely subsistence or Bestand (many critics, in fact, were led to identify all higher-order objects with ideal objects).
- 57.
In referring to the typically descriptive question of whether Meinong’s founded content is more than the simple sum of its parts, Gelb stated: “[W]hen the parts are not given, one cannot even ask if consciousness can show anything beyond an objective collective of content; the ‘sum of the parts’ is simply missing.” (Gelb 1911, p. 31)
- 58.
For Meinong, as was the case previously for Brentano (1924–1925, I, p. 130; Eng. 71), colours, sounds, and tastes, are real, that is, they are able to exist without contradictions. However, in the light of the results obtained by the empirical sciences they factually do not exist. See e.g. Meinong 1904b, p. 490. For the inclusion of an existential judgment in every perception, see for example Meinong 1906, p. 384.
- 59.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Ameseder, in this context, explicitly referred to the positions of Theodor Lipps, a scholar close to the Neo-Kantians.
- 60.
Witasek 1897b, pp. 406 f.: “However, the intuitive content of a presentation of change is more than the mere sum of single situations.”
- 61.
Witasek 1897b, pp. 407 f.: “On the psychological side, the essence of the direct perception of change is that the sensory contents which directly correspond to the physical stimuli are summarised into a mental unity by a supervening presentational content. This content, to which nothing corresponds in the physical stimuli, is such, that it cannot be presented as separated from the sensory contents on which it is based, so to speak.”
- 62.
The elevation of the “presentational weight” (Vorstellungsgewicht) induced by the psychological function of analysis projects, according to Meinong, the presentation within the “judgement-sphere”, bringing it to full consciousness (Meinong 1894, p. 351).
- 63.
Witasek 1897b, p. 420: “Anyone will admit that the comprehension of a series of tones in terms of a melody […] is highly facilitated by the fact that the tones have the same timbre. […] The fact that contents of the same kind or similar contents enter more easily into a complex can be observed in countless cases.”
- 64.
Ibid., p. 426: “The founded content is not merely the result of a blindly acting mental mechanism. Instead it is we who gather the single components of this or that group together at our discretion, and thus cause the form of the higher-order complexion to be established.”
- 65.
Witasek divided the whole group of elementary aesthetic objects into four classes. The first included simple sensory objects, such as sounds and colours; the second Gestalten of pure formal beauty, such as chords and melodies; the third Gestalten conform to standards or models; the last class included expressive objects.
- 66.
Meinong had already mentioned this sphere of mental facts as an intermediate between presentations and judgements in the first pages of his 1902 work.
- 67.
More briefly, intending is to apprehend by means of an object; see Meinong 1910, pp. 233–246; Eng. 170–178.
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Antonelli, M. (2018). The Austrian Path Toward Gestalt Psychology: From Brentano to Benussi, via Meinong. In: Vittorio Benussi in the History of Psychology. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96684-7_2
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