Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Meinong Matters

  • Philosophy Always Resurrects Its Dead

    Etienne Gilson famously remarked that "Philosophy always buries its undertakers."  That is the first of his "laws of philosophical experience." (The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Scribners, 1937, p. 306) As a metaphilosophical pronunciamento it is hard to beat.  It is equally true that philosophy always resurrects its dead.  Let that be my first law.  The history…

  • A Routley/Sylvan Argument for the Utter Nonexistence of Past Individuals

    Many of us are inclined to say that purely past individuals (James Dean, Scollay Square, my cat Zeno, anything that existed but does not exist now), though past, yet exist.  Of course, they don't presently exist.  But why should only what presently exists, exist? Why should that which loses the temporal property of presentness fall…

  • The Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann Solution to the Problem of Intentionality

    Perhaps the central problem to which the phenomenon of intentionality gives rise can be set forth in terms of an aporetic triad: 1. We sometimes think about the nonexistent.2. Intentionality is a relation between thinker and object of thought.3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist. The datanic first limb is…

  • The Dead and the Nonexistent: Meinong Contra Epicurus

    Are there nonexistent objects in the sense in which Meinong thought there are? One reason to think so  derives from the problem of reference to the dead. The problem can be displayed as an aporetic tetrad: 1. A dead person no longer exists.2. What no longer exists does not exist at all.  3. What does not…