Meinong's General Theory of Objects
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Transworld Heir Lines 89
Transworld Heir Lines 89 It is desirable that symposia be limited to nine; 4 and, It is believable that nine is prime illustrate such contexts. These occurrences ofthe word "nine" are neither Transworld Heir Lines . so vulgar as that in Nine is larger than five DA VID KAPLAN nor so accidental as that in University of California, Los Angeles Canines are larger than felines. Presumably there are no logical or semantical problems concerned with vulgar or accidental occurrences. Vulgar occurrences of "nine" denote a certain number, are open to substitution and generalization, and contribute to the meaning of the containing sentence. Accidental occurrences are A certain kind of linguistic context has come in for increasing attention ! irrelevant to all such concerns. But analysis of the intermediate contexts over the past several years. The occurrences of the word "nine" in produced by "provable," "possible," "permissible," "probable," "be lievable, " and "desirable" is neither trivial nor pointless. It is provable in arithmetic that nine is the square of three; Gottlob Frege, who tried to assimilate such intermediate occurrences to It is possible that the number of planets is nine; the vulgar ones by means of a doctrine about ambiguity and indirect deno It is permissible that the number of occupants exceed nine; .tation, called such contexts "oblique" or "indirect." W. V. O. Quine, It is probable that the number of enrolled students will be less than who often seems to want to assimilate the intermediate occurrences to nine; accidental ones by means of a doctrine of indissolubility, calls such con texts opaque. Copyright © 1978 by David Kaplan. -
Existence As a Real Property
Francesco Berto Existence as a Real Property The Ontology of Meinongianism For Graham Priest, Long-distance teacher Prologue: Much Ado About Nothing Some philosophers think that something’s having intuitive content is very inconclusive evidence in favor of it. I think it is very heavy evidence in favor of anything, myself. I really don’t know, in a way, what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking. –Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity 1 In an episode of The Today Show of some years ago, Gene Shalit – NBC’s film and book critic, famous for his wits – reviews several books sharing the feature of bearing entertaining titles. The highpoint of the monologue comes with Nonexistent Objects, by the UCLA philosopher Terence Parsons. Shalit wonders how one could write a whole book on things that do not exist!1 This whole book, too, is about things that do not exist. But if one stops to think, one may find that, in a sense, there is nothing special about this. There are, in fact, thousands of books speaking about unreal things. You have probably read quite a few of them: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories portrait the adventures of the detective Sherlock Holmes; The Lord of the Rings speaks at length of Gandalf the wizard. Doyle represents Sherlock Holmes as a detective living in London, Baker Street (precisely, at number 221b), describes his remarkable observational and deductive abilities, makes of him the arch-enemy of the criminal mastermind Moriarty. J.R.R. Tolkien characterizes Gandalf as a wizard with a pointy hat and a grey robe (a white one, from a certain point of the story onwards), a heavy pipe-herb 1 The anecdote is reported by Roy Sorensen [2003], p. -
PHIL. 555 – Fiction and Fictionalism Course Description: We Have No
PHIL. 555 – Fiction and Fictionalism Course Description: We have no trouble at all deploying our concept of fiction in everyday life. Yet, from a philosophical standpoint, few concepts are as problematic. Is what accounts for the difference between fictional and real representations something in the syntax (something manifest in the structure of the representation) or the semantics (the presence or absence of truth and reference), or is it a matter of pragmatics (the ways in which representations are used/intended to be used)? How should we analyze the truth- value of statements made in or about fictions? Can we learn anything from fictions, and can we make the case for literary cognitivism by drawing on the analogy between fictions and thought-experiments? What kinds of entities are fictional characters, and do they share anything in common with the entities postulated by mathematical and moral realism? This seminar will begin to address all of these questions, and touch upon the significance of the problems posed by fiction for aesthetics, metaphysics, metaethics, and the philosophy of mathematics. Schedule of Readings Week 1 Introductory Class Overview and organizational matters No readings Week 2 The Nature of Fiction I What is fiction, anyway? John Searle – The logical status of fictional discourse Gregory Currie – The Concept of Fiction David Davies – What is a literary work & The nature of fiction (Chs. 2 and 3 of Aesthetics and Literature) Week 3 The Nature of Fiction II What are fictions about? Harry Deutsch – Making Up Stories Stacy Friend – Real People in Unreal Contexts John Gibson – The Fictional and the Real Week 4 Truth in Fiction How to make it work; adding an intensional operator David K. -
Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real
Kairos. Journal of Philosophy & Science 17, 2016 Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of Lisbon University Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real Cristina Travanini University of Rome Tor Vergata DAAD Fellow 2015/16 – FU Berlin [email protected] Abstract Meinong’s thought has been rediscovered in recent times by analytic phi- losophy: his object theory has significant consequences in formal ontology, and especially his account of impossible objects has proved itself to be decisive in a wide range of fields, from logic up to ontology of fiction. Rejecting the traditional ‘prejudice in favour of the real’, Meinong investigates what there is not: a peculiar non-existing object is precisely the fictional object, which exemplifies a number of properties (like Sherlock Holmes, who lives in Baker Street and is an outstanding de- tective) without existing in the same way as flesh-and-blood detectives do. Fictional objects are in some sense incomplete objects, whose core of constituent properties is not completely determined. Now, what does it imply to hold that a fictional object may also occur in true statements? We shall deal with the objections raised by Rus- sell and Quine against Meinong’s view, pointing out limits and advantages of both perspectives. Keywords Ontology of fiction, Meinong, classical quantification, Quine, meta-onto- logy. DOI 10.1515/kjps-2016-0017 1. Fictional Objects. Why Should We be Interested in Them? A fictional object is an object that occurs in fictional discourse, such as novels, scripts, short stories, created by the author’s imagination, so that we cannot find it in our actual world. -
Meinongian Merits and Maladies
Sam Hoadley-Brill | PHIL 197B | Spring 2019 1 Meinongian Merits and Maladies Willard V. Quine begins perhaps the most celebrated article on ontology of the 20th century: A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: “What is there?” It can be answered, moreover, in a word –– “Everything” –– and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is. (1948, p. 21) Has Quine made a methodological mistake in these first few sentences? I do not wish to suggest that, because there are some theorists who deny that “Everything” is the correct answer to the ontological problem, Quine is being irresponsible in saying this answer is universally appealing; it is certainly an answer with which the vast majority of analytic philosophers would agree, in spite of their thinking it utterly uninformative and unsatisfying. But it is far from obvious that this licenses Quine’s inference that the sentences ‘Everything is’ and ‘There is whatever there is’ are semantically equivalent. Mightn’t it be true that, for something x, it is not true that there is an x? To find an answer, we must determine the semantic content of ‘something’ and ‘there is.’ According to what has long been the dominant school of thought in analytic meta-ontology–– defended not only by Quine, but also by Bertrand Russell, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, and many others––the meaning of ‘there is’ is identical to the meaning of ‘there exists.’ The most (in)famous aberration from this view is advanced by Alexius Meinong, whose ontological picture has endured extensive criticism (and borderline abuse) from several subscribers to the majority view. -
Monism P16ff
1 Intentionality in Mullā Ṣadrā Submitted by Sümeyye Parıldar to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arab and Islamic Studies In June 2014 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. 2 ABSTRACT The present study reconstructs psychological, linguistic and ontological aspects of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy in the light of Brentano’s theory of intentionality. Brentano used intentionality as a psychological term to denote the ‘mental’ as opposed to the ‘natural’. Later, with Meinong, intentionality took an ontological commitment to assenting that ‘there are things that do not exist’. The chapters that discuss Ṣadrā’s philosophy reflect the two aspects with an investigation for the production process of intentional objects and an investigation of the status of these objects in ontology. The main aim of the research is to give an internalist and monist account for the nature of intentionality demonstrating an alternative approach to the concepts of existence and the soul. Ontologically, there is only one reality (existence) and nothing is left outside it. Accordingly, intentional objects are mental beings that are at a lower level of existence (wujūd ẓillī). The principles behind the monist ontology are: first, the gradational ontology (tashkīk) that all things are determined beings (mutamayyiz) and they are manifestations of a single reality at different levels of intensity (mutashakkik), and, second, the simplicity principle (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa) in which existence is a simple reality that comprehends all beings whilst being the principle of multiplicity at the same time. -
Meinongian Semantics and Artificial Intelligence
Meinongian Semantics and Artificial Intelligence William J. Rapaport Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Philosophy, and Center for Cognitive Science State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-2000 [email protected] http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/ rapaport/ originally written in 1985; updated 3 February 1995; updated again, 28 June 2005 Abstract This paper introduces semantic networks to a philosophical audience and surveys several approaches to semantic-network semantics that, at the original time of writing (1985) had not previously been treated in the AI or computational- linguistics literature (but see ¡ 12), though there is a large philosophical literature investigating them in some detail. In particular, propositional semantic networks (exemplified by SNePS) are discussed, it is argued that only a fully intensional, Meinongian semantics is appropriate for them, and several Meinongian systems are presented. This paper was once allegedly forthcoming in: Simons, Peter (ed.), Essays on Meinong (Dettelbach: Roell Verlag) (or possibly Amsterdam: Rodopi Editions). A shorter version appeared as: Rapaport, William J. (1985), “Meinongian Semantics for Propositional Semantic Networks”, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (University of Chicago) (Morristown, NJ: Association for Computational Linguistics): 43–48, [http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/P/P85/P85-1006.pdf]. 1 1 Meinong, Philosophy, and Artificial Intelligence Philosophy has not been kind to Alexius Meinong, a late-19th/early-20th-century cognitive scientist (see Findlay 1963; Grossmann 1974; Rapaport 1978, 1991b; Routley 1979; Lambert 1983; Schubert-Kalsi 1987). Only recently (ca. 1970s) has there been a renaissance in Meinong studies. Even so, his writings are often treated as curiosities (or worse) by mainstream philosophers. -
The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GILBERT RYLE A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings © Charlotte Vrijen 2007 Illustrations front cover: 1) Ryle’s annotations to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 2) Notes (miscellaneous) from ‘the red box’, Linacre College Library Illustration back cover: Rodin’s Le Penseur RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Wijsbegeerte aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 14 juni 2007 om 16.15 uur door Charlotte Vrijen geboren op 11 maart 1978 te Rolde Promotor: Prof. Dr. L.W. Nauta Copromotor: Prof. Dr. M.R.M. ter Hark Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. Dr. D.H.K. Pätzold Prof. Dr. B.F. McGuinness Prof. Dr. J.M. Connelly ISBN: 978-90-367-3049-5 Preface I am indebted to many people for being able to finish this dissertation. First of all I would like to thank my supervisor and promotor Lodi Nauta for his comments on an enormous variety of drafts and for the many stimulating discussions we had throughout the project. He did not limit himself to deeply theoretical discussions but also saved me from grammatical and stylish sloppiness. (He would, for example, have suggested to leave out the ‘enormous’ and ‘many’ above, as well as by far most of the ‘very’’s and ‘greatly’’s in the sentences to come.) After I had already started my new job outside the academic world, Lodi regularly – but always in a pleasant way – reminded me of this other job that still had to be finished. -
Phil. Colloquium Archives 2018
FALL 2018 1. Friday, September 14, 2018 - 3:00pm, BEH 215 "Defending Deflationism from a Forceful Objection." James Woodbridge, Department of Philosophy, University of Nevada Las Vegas This talk presents work done in collaboration with Brad Armour-Garb. We offer a unified picture of deflationism about truth, by explaining the proper way to understand the interrelations between (what Bar-On and Simmons (2007) call) conceptual, linguistic and metaphysical deflationism. I will then present our defense of deflationism against Bar-On and Simmons (2007)'s objection that conceptual deflationism is incompatible with the explanatory role the concept of truth plays in an account of assertion or assertoric illocutionary force. We defend deflationism, rather than just conceptual deflationism, because we take Bar-On and Simmons's stance on their target to involve a mistake. They purport to raise an objection merely to conceptual deflationism, putting the issues involved in metaphysical deflationism and linguistic deflationism to one side. I will explain how that cannot really be done because it mistakenly treats the three categories of deflationary views as running independently and as being at the same theoretical level. As we argue, given the relationships between them, a challenge to conceptual deflationism would flow upward and would amount to a challenge to linguistic deflationism, too, and, thus, to deflationism as a whole. Having defended conceptual deflationism against Bar-On and Simmon's objection, we conclude that deflationism about truth, understood primarily as a view about truth- talk, but with the other theses that brings with it, remains a viable position to endorse. 2. Friday, October 5, 2018 - 3:00pm, BEH 215 "Theorizing Testimony in Argumentative Contexts: Problems for Assurance." David Godden, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University Standardly the testimonial acceptance of some claim, p, is analyzed as some subject, S, accepting that p on the basis of another's say-so. -
The Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy: Program History
The Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy: Program History 1960 FIRST COLLOQUIUM Wilfrid Sellars, "On Looking at Something and Seeing it" Ronald Hepburn, "God and Ambiguity" Comments: Dennis O'Brien Kurt Baier, "Itching and Scratching" Comments: David Falk/Bruce Aune Annette Baier, "Motives" Comments: Jerome Schneewind 1961 SECOND COLLOQUIUM W.D. Falk, "Hegel, Hare and the Existential Malady" Richard Cartwright, "Propositions" Comments: Ruth Barcan Marcus D.A.T. Casking, "Avowals" Comments: Martin Lean Zeno Vendler, "Consequences, Effects and Results" Comments: William Dray/Sylvan Bromberger PUBLISHED: Analytical Philosophy, First Series, R.J. Butler (ed.), Oxford, Blackwell's, 1962. 1962 THIRD COLLOQUIUM C.J. Warnock, "Truth" Arthur Prior, "Some Exercises in Epistemic Logic" Newton Garver, "Criteria" Comments: Carl Ginet/Paul Ziff Hector-Neri Castenada, "The Private Language Argument" Comments: Vere Chappell/James Thomson John Searle, "Meaning and Speech Acts" Comments: Paul Benacerraf/Zeno Vendler PUBLISHED: Knowledge and Experience, C.D. Rollins (ed.), University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964. 1963 FOURTH COLLOQUIUM Michael Scriven, "Insanity" Frederick Will, "The Preferability of Probable Beliefs" Norman Malcolm, "Criteria" Comments: Peter Geach/George Pitcher Terrence Penelhum, "Pleasure and Falsity" Comments: William Kennick/Arnold Isenberg 1964 FIFTH COLLOQUIUM Stephen Korner, "Some Remarks on Deductivism" J.J.C. Smart, "Nonsense" Joel Feinberg, "Causing Voluntary Actions" Comments: Keith Donnellan/Keith Lehrer Nicholas Rescher, "Evaluative Metaphysics" Comments: Lewis W. Beck/Thomas E. Patton Herbert Hochberg, "Qualities" Comments: Richard Severens/J.M. Shorter PUBLISHED: Metaphysics and Explanation, W.H. Capitan and D.D. Merrill (eds.), University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966. 1965 SIXTH COLLOQUIUM Patrick Nowell-Smith, "Acts and Locutions" George Nakhnikian, "St. Anselm's Four Ontological Arguments" Hilary Putnam, "Psychological Predicates" Comments: Bruce Aune/U.T. -
Problems for Temporary Existence in Tense Logic Meghan Sullivan* Notre Dame
Philosophy Compass 7/1 (2012): 43–57, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00457.x Problems for Temporary Existence in Tense Logic Meghan Sullivan* Notre Dame Abstract A-theorists of time postulate a deep distinction between the present, past and future. Settling on an appropriate logic for such a view is no easy matter. This Philosophy Compass article describes one of the most vexing formal problems facing A-theorists. It is commonly thought that A-theo- ries can only be formally expressed in a tense logic: a logic with operators like P (‘‘it was the case that’’) and F (‘‘it will be the case that’’). And it seems natural to think that we live in a world where objects come to exist and cease to exist as time passes. Indeed, this is typically a key component of the most prominent kind of A-theory, presentism. But the temporary existence assumption cannot be upheld in any tense logic with a standard quantification theory. I will explain the problem and outline the philosophical and logical considerations that generate it. I will then consider two possible solutions to the problem – one that targets our logic of quantification and one that targets our assumptions about change. I survey the costs of each solution. 1. Univocal Existence and Temporary Existence Metaphysicians should be applauded when they make efforts to be sensible. Here are two particular convictions about existence and change that seem worthy of defense: UNIVOCAL EXISTENCE: There is just one way that objects exist; and TEMPORARY EXISTENCE: Some objects came to exist or will cease to exist. -
Showing and Self-Presentation of Experiences – Some Philosophical Cases
Showing and Self-Presentation of Experiences – Some Philosophical Cases Johann Christian Marek, Graz Experiences Experiences (Erlebnisse in German) are of phenomenal character. There is something it is like to be in a conscious mental state; there is something it feels like to be in pain, and there is something different it feels like to be glad. Some experiences are purely phenomenal – pains and moods, for instance –, and some are intentional, i.e. directed to something – for example, you are glad about your good company or you are glad to get home. Intentional states such as being glad about someone (or worshipping something) are purely objectual, whereas intentional states such as being glad to get somewhere (or believing that something is the case) are propositional. You can distinguish between the mode and content of intentional experiences. When you entertain the belief that it is raining, believing is the mode and that it is raining is its content. When you hate that it is rain- ing the content stays the same but the mode has changed into an emotional experience. It is controversial which mental phenomena count as experiences, especially whether there is the experience of the mode on the one hand and the experience of the content on the other hand. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, was always skeptical about both of these accounts. He questioned the view that there is an experience of meaning as well as the view that willing, understanding and conviction respectively would be experiences. Although Wittgenstein objected to the idea of the experiential reality of mental acts and contents, he did not fully deny the existence of experiences.