Arkadiusz Chrudzimski

In his ontological works Kurt Grelling tries to give a rigorous analysis of the foundations of the so-called Gestalt-psychology. Gestalten are peculiar emergent qualities, ontologically dependent on their foundations, but nonetheless non reducible to them. Grelling shows that this concept, as used in psychology and ontology, is often ambiguous. He distinguishes two important meanings in which the word “Gestalt” is used: Gestalten as structural aspects available to transposition and Gestalten as causally self-regulating wholes. Gestalten in the first meaning are, according to Grelling, “equivalence classes of correspondences”, while Gestalten as self-regulating wholes have more to do with relations of ontological dependence. Grelling’s clarification of the concept of Gestalt is doubtless an excellent piece of philosophical analysis, but at the end of the day it turns out that his analysis captures at best only a part of intuitions traditionally connected with the notion of Gestalt.

The thought of Alexius Meinong (1853–1920) has a distinguished position within the conceptual space of ontology. He was the first philosopher who tried systematically to develop a quasi-ontological discipline which was intended to be much more general than the metaphysics in the traditional sense. Metaphysics investigates being qua being; and this constitutes only a small part of the domain of the theory of objects (Gegenstandstheorie) as Meinong conceived of it. For – so reads one of Meinong’s most frequently cited theses – the objects considered purely qua objects are neutral concerning their being or non-being. In this book Meinong’s theory of objects is presented in its historical development and investigated within the context of his theory of intentionality. This connection is justified because the real motivation behind Meinong’s introduction of entities "beyond being and non being" lies in the philosophical puzzles of the theory of intentionality.

Résumé -/- Dans son premier livre (Philosophie de l’arithmétique 1891), Husserl élabore une très intéressante philosophie des mathématiques. Les concepts mathématiques sont interprétés comme des concepts de « deuxième ordre » auxquels on accède par une réflexion sur nos opérations mentales de numération. Il s’ensuit que la vérité de la proposition : « il y a trois pommes sur la table » ne consiste pas dans une relation mythique quelconque avec la réalité extérieure au psychique (où le nombre trois doit être exemplifié de quelque manière), mais bien dans le fait que les pommes sur la table peuvent être dénombrées correctement en tant qu’elles sont au nombre de trois. Nous avons affaire ici à une position « antiréaliste » fondant la vérité mathématique non pas dans un monde platonicien, mais bien sur le concept de rectitude de nos opérations formelles. -/- Abstract -/- In his first book (Philosophy of Arithmetic 1891) Husserl develops a very interesting philosophy of mathematics. Mathematical concepts are interpreted as « second order » concepts gained by reflection on our mental operations of counting. Accordingly the truth of the proposition « There are three apples on the table » consists not in any mythical relation to the extra-mental reality (where the number three should be somehow exemplified), but rather in the fact that the apples on the table can be correctly counted as three. We have here an « anti-realist » position grounding the mathematical truth not in platonic realms, but rather in the concept of correctness of our formal operations.

Die offizielle Urteilstheorie Brentanos war eine nicht-propositionale Theorie. Die These, dass man, um die in einem Urteilsakt involvierten intentionalen Beziehungen zu erklären, keine propositionalen Entitäten einführen muss, war in der Tat eine seiner interessantesten Ideen. Brentano hat aber im Laufe seiner Lehrtätigkeit sehr viele neue Wege ausprobiert und so finden wir in seinen Vorlesungen aus den späten achtziger Jahren auch eine Urteilstheorie, die jedem Urteilsakt eine propositionale Entität zuordnet. Gerade diese Lehre war für Brentanos Studenten besonders inspirierend. Vor allem Anton Marty und Carl Stumpf haben sehr interessante Theorien von solchen, wie sie es nannten, Inhalten entwickelt. 1888 hat Stumpf in seinen Vorle¬sun¬gen für der¬ar¬tige Entitäten den Ausdruck „Sachverhalt” ein¬geführt. Da sich vor allem diese Bezeichnung als terminus technicus durchgesetzt hat, werden wir sie in diesem Aufsatz auch in Bezug auf diejenigen Philosophen verwenden, die ihre propo¬sitionalen Entitäte anders nannten. Unter den treuen Brentanisten war es Anton Marty, der am konsequentesten an der Unentbehrlichkeit solcher Sachverhalte als Wahrmacher für richtige Urteile bestand. Seine Theorie hat jedoch einen etwas merkwürdigen Charakter. Die Sachverhalte werden einerseits als unverzichtbare Elemente des ontologischen Mobiliars angesehen, andererseits finden wir aber bei Marty eine deutliche Tendenz, sie als Strukturen zu interpretieren, die auf den Dingen (der nominalen Form), wie man es heutzutage gerne sagt, supervenieren. Der Sinn, in dem sie dann noch als unreduzierbar zu bezeichnen sind, ist nicht einfach zu eruieren. Der Philosoph, der sich von diesem, an sich sehr attraktiven, Supervenienz¬gedanken endgültig verabschiedet hat, war Alexius Meinong. Wir besprechen die Hauptpunkte seiner Kritik, untersuchen mögliche Auswege und versuchen die innere Spannung Martys Sachverhaltsbegriffs zwischen der Supervenienz und Unreduzierbarkeit ein wenig zu klären.

In the paper we present some interesting aspects of the traditional account of the theory of intentionality that after Sellars is commonly called „the myth of the given”. The most characteristic aspect of this doctrine is the essential interrelation betwen the theory of intentionality and the idea of the Cartesian sphere of epistemically priviledged access. This interrelation allows in turn to link very naturally the theory of intentionality to the doctrine of epistemological foundationalism. The theory of intentionality of this kind assumes that every intentionality is of the descriptive, „Russellian” nature. Consequently, all the contexts de re pose a very serious problem for this theory. On the ground of Chisholm's theory we show how the partisan of „the myth of the given” could manage these problems.

Der semantischen Wahrheitsdefinition Tarskis wird of vorgeworfen, dass sie philosophisch uninteressant sei. Sie sei informativ leer, weil sie mit jeder erdenklichen Ansicht bezüglich der Natur der Wahrheit zu vereinbaren sei. Wir wollen zeigen, dass diese Meinung unhaltbar ist. Tarskis semantische Wahrheitsdefinition lässt sich im Besonderen mit den Versuchen der Epistemisierung und Pragmatisierung des Wahrheitsbegriffs nicht vereinbaren. (Vorausgesetzt, dass diese Versuche wirklich den Wahrheitsbegriff und nicht den Realitätsbegriff betreffen.) Darüber hinaus ist die Tatsache, dass Tarskis Definition eine Unterscheidung von Sprach¬ebenen voraus¬setzt, für die Erklärung der Schwierigkeiten, die viele Philosophen mit dem klassischen Wahrheitsbegriff haben, sehr instruktiv. Wir argumentieren, dass diese Schwierigkeiten zum großen Teil mit der Grundhaltung zusammenhängen, die man als (im weiten Sinne) „Begriffsempirismus” bezeich¬nen kann.

Bei Brentano finden sich zwei deutlich voneinander abweichende Lehren von der Intentionalität. Beide Theorien der Intentionalität werden im Detail analysiert und mit Freges Theorie von Sinn und Bedeutung verglichen. Die frühe Lehre, wie sie Brentano in seiner Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt einführt, ist eine Objekt-Theorie, bei der gewisse irreale Entitäten als Objekte der Intention fungieren, mit den bekannten kontraintuitiven Aspekten und logischen Anomalien als Folge, die von Brentano durch eine Umformulierung des Begriffs des Objektes der Intention gelöst werden. Diese Theorie kritisiert Brentano später vehement und ersetzt sie durch eine Theorie der Relationen, die unvollständige intentionale Objekte vermeidet, allerdings um den Preis einer deutlich komplizierterenUrteils-, Wahrheits- und Evidenzlehre.

The point of departure for Anton Marty's theory of intentionality is Franz Brentano's ontology of intentionality as outlined in the unpublished manuscript of his logic-lectures from the second half of the 1880's. This rich ontology comprises immanent objects, immanent propositional contents and states of affairs. The late Marty rejects all immanent entities in Brentano's sense and explains intentionality in terms of counterfactualconditionals.However,contraryto the late Brentano,he insists on the indispensability of the category of states of affairs. Consequently Marty can formulate a realistic theory of truth, while Brentano holds an epistemic theory of truth.

In der Geschichte der Philosophie finden wir viele Intentionalitätstheorien, die spezielle Gegenstände zur Erklärung des Intentionalitätsphänomens einführen. Solche Theorien wurden in erster Linie von Philosophen eingeführt, die durch Franz Brentano beeinflusst waren. Gegenstände, um die es hier geht, werden üblicherweise intentionale Gegenstände genannt. Eine Theorie der intentionalen Gegenstände, die vom ontologischen Standpunkt aus betrachtet besonders detailliert ausgearbeitet ist, hat Roman Ingarden formuliert. Auch Ingardens Theorie ist daher Gegenstand einer oft geäußerten Kritik. Man behauptet, dass alles, was intentionale Gegenstände leisten, auch in einer ontologisch sparsameren Weise zu erreichen ist. Wir werden allerdings zeigen, dass diese Behauptung unbegründet ist. Die Einführung intentionaler Gegenstände hat ihre guten Gründe und es ist unklar, ob eine ontologisch sparsamere Variante überhaupt funktionieren kann. Die adverbiale Theorie, die oft als ein Gegenkandidat vorgeschlagen wird, stößt jedenfalls auf große Schwierigkeiten. Was die Ingardensche Version der Theorie betrifft, so erweist sie sich als eine etwas kuriose Mischform der Theorie der intentionalen Gegenstände und der adverbialen Theorie. Wir werden sehen, dass der adverbiale Teil aus dieser Theorie am besten entfernt werden soll.

The concept of a trope (understood as an individual property and not as a figure of speech) plays an important role in contemporary analytical metaphysics. It is, however, often far from clear what the logic of this concept really is. Indeed, there are two equally important intuitions underlying the concept of trope, two intuitions that generate two quite different conceptual frameworks. According to the first intuition, a trope is a particularised property – a property taken as an individual aspect of a particular object. A trope is thus the colour of this table or the shape of this sculpture. In the light of this conception tropes are, as it were, direct abstractions from concrete individuals. According to the second intuition a trope is still such an individual (and abstract) colour or such an individual (and abstract) shape, but now it is not only abstracted from the concrete individual of which it is a trope but also taken in abstraction from the very fact that it has been abstracted this way. We can imagine that the cognitive access to these tropes is obtained by a kind of a double abstraction. All this can sound puzzling at first blush, but in what follows I hope to make the matter a little clearer. Let us anticipate briefly. On the second view, tropes are construed not so much as abstractions from concrete individuals, but rather as primitive items of which the concrete individuals are composed. Tropes so construed are, as it were, metaphysically prior to concrete individuals. We will call tropes of this kind unstructured tropes, whereas tropes conceived as aspects of individual things will be called propositional tropes. This terminology is justified because tropes understood as aspects of things seem to involve something like propositional structure, a structure that tropes conceived as primitive “building blocks” of reality definitely lack. It is sometimes believed that these two concepts of trope are nearly equivalent, that the difference between them is for the most part verbal. Yet it will turn out that there is an important ontological difference here. Propositional tropes are non-trivially propositional and unstructured tropes are non-trivially deprived of such a structure (althought not necessarily deprived of any dependence-links with respect to other tropes). It will be argued that tropes are metaphysically interesting only on the second conception (i.e., as primitive, unstructured items), whereas only on the first conception (tropes as propositionally structured entities) can they function as semantically efficient truthmakers. The moral of the paper will be that our trust in tropes must be mitigated. A trope ontology could plausibly be viewed as a serious metaphysical alternative, but its semantical possibilities should not be exaggerated.

I propose a certain classification of entities which are introduced in various theories of intentionality under the label ‘intentional objects’. Franz Brentano’s immanent objects, Alexius Meinong’s entities ‘beyond being and non-being’, or Roman Ingarden’s purely intentional objects can serve as examples of suchentities. What they all have in common is that they have been introduced in order to extensionalise the so called ‘intentional contexts’ (‘intentional’ with ‘t’). But not all entities which function this way deserve the name of intentional objects. In particular, neither Frege’s senses nor mental contents of the early Husserl are tobe classified as intentional objects in my sense. Roughly speaking, to be properly called ‘an intentional object’ a postulated entity must be supposed to function as a quasi-target of the subject’s intention. In other words: intentional objects are supposed to stand ‘before the subject’s mind’, so that they, in a sense, ‘replace’ the common sense objects of reference. It turns out that the intentional objects that were introduced in the history of philosophy make up groups which,from the ontological point of view, are very heterogeneous. Nevertheless it is possible to formulate certain systematic criteria of classifying them.

Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) apparteneva a quegli allievi di Husserl che si designano come “fenomenologia di Gottinga”. Si tratta della prima generazione di fenomenologi, nella quale rientravano, fra gli altri, anche Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius ed Edith Stein. I ricercatori di questo gruppo erano influenzati soprattutto dalle Ricerche logiche di Husserl e reagirono un po’ stupiti alla sua successiva svolta idealistica. Per quanto riguarda lo stesso Ingarden, egli incontrò Husserl solo dopo la pubblicazione delle Idee, tuttavia filosoficamente appartiene senza dubbio al periodo della prima fenomenologia “realistica”.

Das Buch ist eine analytische Darstellung der Hauptideen der Erkenntnistheorie Ingardens. Es basiert zum größten Teil auf dem bis vor kurzem noch unpublizierten bzw. ausschließlich in polnischer Sprache verfaßten Material und wendet sich vor allem an die Phänomenologen aber auch an die analytischen Philosophen, die sich für die Erkenntnistheorie und Ontologie der Intentionalität interessieren. Die Ingardensche Erkenntnistheorie, seine Theorie der Intentionalität und die Hauptzüge seiner Ontologie werden auf dem Hintergrund der Brentanoschen und Husserlschen Tradition präsentiert und mit den begrifflichen Werkzeugen der zeitgenössischen analytischen Philosophie analysiert. Die Erkenntnistheorie Ingardens bildet das Ergebnis einer Synthese der Husserlschen phänomenologischen Methode mit der ontologischen Präzision, die für die Schriften Ingardens so charakteristisch ist. Sie besteht aus zwei Disziplinen: der reinen und der angewandten Erkenntnistheorie. Die reine Erkenntnistheorie ist eine absolutistische, Cartesianische Disziplin. Sie formuliert die Definition der Erkenntnis und beruht auf einem besonderen, selbstreferierenden Bewußtseinszustand, den Ingarden Intuition des Durchlebens nennt. Die angewandte Erkenntnistheorie untersucht dagegen die konkreten Fälle der Erkenntnis und ist eine empirische, hypothetische und fehlbare Wissenschaft.

It was one of Brentano’s central ideas that all judgements are at bottom existential. In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint he tried to show how all traditionally acknowledged judgement forms could be reinterpreted as existential statements. Existential propositions, therefore, were a central concern for the whole Brentano School. Kazimierz Twardowski, who also accepted this program, introduced the problem of the existential reduction to his Polish students, but not all of them found this idea plausible. In 1911 Stanisław Leśniewski published a paper under the title “A Contribution to the Analysis of Existential Propositions” where he criticised Brentano’s translation. According to Leśniewski the consequences of Brentano’s program would be absurd because according to Leśniewski all positive existential propositions are analytically true and all negative ones are contradictory. In his later works Leśniewski repudiated all his early writings (1911–1914) as philosophically immature and formally imprecise. “[…] I regret that they have appeared in print,” he writes, “and formally ‘repudiate’ them herewith […]”. But in spite of this severe assessment, these early papers are worth considering not only from a historical standpoint. As we will see, Leśniewski’s critique of Brentano is unsound, but it casts an interesting light on his understanding of certain basic metaphysical concepts.

The majority of Polish phenomenologists never found Husserl’s transcendental idealism attractive. In this paper I investigate the source of this rather surprising realist attitude. True enough the founder of Polish phenomenology was Roman Ingarden - one of the most severe critics of Husserl’s transcendental idealism, so it is initially tempting to reduce the whole issue to this sociological fact. However, I argue that there must be something more about Ingarden’s intellectual background that immunized him against Husserl’s transcendental argumentation, and that the same background made his students so sympathetic to his “naive” realism. My claim is thatthis “something” is Ingarden’s realist concept of truth that he learned (at least partially) from Tarski as opposed to Husserl’s epistemic construal that he took from Brentano.

The most striking feature of Meinong's theory of intentionality is his thesis that every mental act has its reference‐object “beyond being and non being”. This theory seems, at first, to be a clear example of the so called object‐theory of intentionality, as it introduces special “postulated” entities in the target‐position of the mental act. Closer examination, however, reveals in Meinong's works important elements of the mediator‐theory. Meinong speaks of auxiliary incomplete objects situated “between” the subject and the object of reference and “mediating” the intentional access to the reference‐object. Moreover, even if the object of reference is of the simple nominal form, the mediating structure involves essentially propositional entities. In the paper we attempt to give a set‐theoretical interpretation of Meinong's theory in the frame of which we could eventually do without the incomplete mediating objects. Yet, some general epistemological considerations suggest the indispensability of such incomplete mediating structures.

At least since Hume we have a serious problem with explaining our moral valuations. Most of us – with notable exception of certain (in)famous esoteric thinkers like Nietzsche or De Sade – share a common intuition that our moral claims are in an important sense objective. We believe that they can be right or wrong; and we believe that if they happen to be right, then they are binding for each human being conducting a similar action in similar circumstances. Now Hume drew our attention to the fact that our valuations do not follow from descriptions of the actions in question. There seems to be nothing in the “descriptive content” of the world around us that could make them true or false and in face of that it becomes very puzzling how they ever could be right, objective or committing. As we all know Hume’s solution proclaims emotions as the basis of our moral valuations. Calling something right or wrong should be in the first place understood as an expression of our emotional attitude toward it. This move explains a part of the initial puzzle, but it also leaves us with a certain unpleasant consequence. It seems that in the strict sense emotions could be neither rational nor true, and consequently we can hardly imagine any conclusive moral argument. De gustibus non disputandum est. Our feeling of objectivity vis a vis our moral valuations has to be classified as a kind of illusion and what follows is a kind of moral relativism or scepticism. Some philosophers are happy with this conclusion, but some others find it untenable. Brentano and his followers belonged to the second group. They generally accepted Hume’s claim that emotions constitute the basis of our moral valuations but developed interesting strategies to avoid his relativistic conclusions.