Meinongian Objects in the Ontology of Properties

Abstract

In this part of the book individuals have been identified with maximally consistent properties — this merely a simple way of representing the only provisionally accepted idea that each individual is essentially connected — in a certain manner F — with precisely one maximally consistent property, each individual with a different one, exhausting all maximally consistent properties. Suppose now that individuals in this sense form a proper subcategory of a more general category: the category of objects (or quasi-individuals) which is such that each object is essentially connected — in the mentioned manner F — with precisely one property, a different one for each object, in such a way as to exhaust all properties. Suppose the correlating functor which expresses the manner F of essential one-to-one connection is “the conjunction of the properties of t,” assuming in addition that not only no individual, but no object can have other properties than it has and stay the same object numerically. Then every property f is the conjunction of the properties of an object x, of precisely one object x, because the conjunctions of the properties of different objects are different properties. Then x also has — with conceptual necessity — precisely the properties that are intensional parts of f. (Since f is the conjunction of all the properties x has, f itself is a property x has, and hence x has every property contained in f, it has no property not contained in f, for every property x has is contained in the conjunction of all the properties x has: in f.)