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Thinking about Non-Existence*

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Part of the book series: Phaenomenologica ((PHAE,volume 200))

Abstract

Thinkers who advocate the principle of intentionality necessarily hold that mental phenomena are directed toward an object. We can take our lead here from one of Franz Brentano’s famous remarks: ‘in presentation, something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired, and so on’.1 What is desired is the object of desire.

*Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Husserl-Archives Conference in Leuven in April 2009 to mark Husserl’s 150th birthday and at a workshop on Intentionality and the Problem of Non-Existence at the Royal Irish Academy which was jointly hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin and the School of Philosophy University College Dublin in February 2010. I should like to thank Rudolf Bernet, Tim Crane, Josie D’Oro, James Levine, Claudio Majolino , Eduard Marbach, Dermot Moran, William Lyons and Laszlo Tengelyi for their comments.

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Alweiss, L. (2010). Thinking about Non-Existence*. In: Mattens, F., Jacobs, H., Ierna, C. (eds) Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Phaenomenologica, vol 200. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0071-0_26

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