Abstract
Meinong introduces the concept of implexive being and non-being to explain the metaphysics of universals, and as a contribution to the theory of reference and perception. Meinong accounts for Aristotle’s doctrine of the inherence of secondary substances in primary substances in object theory terms as the implection of incomplete universals in complete existent or subsistent entities. The derivative notion of implexive so-being is developed by Meinong to advance an intuitive modal semantics that admits degrees of possibility. A set theoretical interpretation of Meinong’s mereological concept of the implection of incomplete beingless objects in existent or subsistent complete objects is proposed. The implications of Meinong’s concept of implection are then exploited to answer extensionalist objections about ‘Meinong’s jungle’, defending the ontic economy of an extraontological neo-Meinongian semantic domain that supports individual reference and true predication of constitutive properties to beingless objects. Meinong’s distinction between implexive being and non-being makes it possible to refute the popular but mistaken criticism that Meinongian semantics is ontically inflationary by showing that a revisionary object theory in addition to an ontology of actually existent particulars need at most posit in its extraontology a single maximally impossible object in which all other beingless objects are properly implected.
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Notes
- 1.
An earlier source is the Greek word ‘emplexon’. Leverett, ed. 1950, 406.
- 2.
- 3.
Brentano 1966a. Brentano’s later Aristotelian reism culminates a lifetime’s effort to incorporate Aristotelian ideas into Austrian and middle European philosophy against the then prevailing tide of German idealism, beginning with his (1862) dissertation, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles through the (1867) Habilitationsschrift, Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, (1911b) Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes, and (1911c) Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung, and including the three editions of Brentano’s Aristotelian, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt from 1874 through the 1911a edition as Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene. See Kotarbinski 1976; Körner 1977; Jacquette 1990–91.
- 4.
Berkeley 1949–58a, II (Treatise), 45. Berkeley 1949–58b, II (Three Dialogues), 192–4. Hume 1975, 154–5: ‘An extension, that is neither tangible nor visible, cannot possibly be conceived: and a tangible or visible extension, which is neither hard nor soft, black nor white, is equally beyond the reach of human conception. Let any man try to conceive a triangle in general, which is neither Isosceles nor Scalenum, nor has any particular length or proportion of sides; and he will soon perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas.’
- 5.
Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe, 178: ‘Besonders geeignet sind vielmehr Begriffsgegenstände, wie uns deren etwa durch Definitionen gegeben werden. Das Dreick z.B., darin hatte der sicher nicht überrationalistische Locke gegen Berkeley und gegen viele Spätere) am Ende doch recht, ist als solches weder gleichseitig noch gleichschenklig, weder rechtwinklig noch schiefwinklig, noch das Gegenteil davon: es ist in diesen Hinsichten und noch in vielen anderen eben unbestimmt. Gegenstände dieser Art stehen in deutlichen Gegensatz zu solchen, die, wie wir deren oben zuerst betrachtet haben, in bezug auf alle wie immer gearteten Gegenstände bestimmt sind. Man kann solche Gegenstände mit Recht vollständig bestimmte nennen, Blaues, Dreieck und ihresgleichen dagegen unvollständig bestimmte.’
- 6.
Berkeley 1949–58, II (Treatise), 29–40; II (Three Dialogues), 192–7. Hume endorses Berkeley’s theory of representative generalization in place of abstract generalization in 1975 [1777], 158, n. 1: ‘…all general ideas are, in reality, particular ones, attached to a general term, which recalls, upon occasion, other particular ones, that resemble, in certain circumstances, the idea, present to the mind.’
- 7.
Meinong completed his 1877 Habilitationsschrift on Hume’s nominalism, undertaken on Brentano’s recommendation, and appearing as the Hume-Studien I in 1878 in the Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften. It was followed by a sequel in 1882, on Hume’s nominalist theory of relations, the Hume-Studien II. See Meinong ‘Selbstdarstellung’, 1921. An English translation of Meinong’s Hume-Studien I, II, respectively, on Hume’s nominalism and theory of relations (AMG I, II), is offered by Barber 1970; 1971.
- 8.
Nun darf uns aber das Verhältnis des unvollständigen Gegenstandes zum vollständigen nicht nur hinsichtlich dessen interessieren, was es nicht ist, sondern auch hinsichtlich dessen, was es ist, zumal dabei zur Geltung kommen kann, was mutmaßlich oft genug eigentlich gemeint worden ist, wenn man zur Beschreibung der Sachlage die Relation das Teiles zum Ganzen heranzog. Ohne Zweifel bedeutet es nämlich doch etwas für “die Kugel”, when “eine Kugel”, genauer also, wenn diese oder jene bestimmte Kugel existiert, und als Tropus oder Analogie ist der Wendung “die Kugel existiert in dieser oder jene bestimmten Kugel” sicher ein guter Sinn beizulegen. Ich versuche der Gefahr, Ähnliches für gleich zu nehmen, durch besondere Benennung vorzubeugen, indem ich von “der Kugel” sage, sie sei in der Billiardkugel meines Freundes “Implektiert”.
- 9.
Meinong distinguishes between implection and related logical-metaphysical relations to which it is akin, notably implication (Implikation and Implizieren), and what Meinong refers to suggestively as ‘impresence’ (Impräsenz). AMG VI, 195, 200, 249–50, 402–4.
- 10.
- 11.
See Findlay 1995, 125: ‘…only the attributes of existents have genuine being, and the characteristics of which these attributes are instances have only a sort of derivative being in their instances’. In note 5, Findlay identifies the derivative being in question as ‘implexive being’.
- 12.
Findlay 1995, 213: ‘Only if, by a priori necessity or by the fundamental pattern of nature, all the existent or subsistent objects in which a given incomplete object is embedded have a certain property, will be a fact that this incomplete object has the property in question implexively.’
- 13.
Findlay 1995, 213: ‘Some of the implectentia of ‘the triangle’ are isosceles, some are scalene, some equilateral. It is therefore ‘possible’ for ‘the triangle’ to be isosceles, scalene, or equilateral, and such possibilities are mere possibilities, and not facts. ‘The triangle’ would only be scalene implexively if all its implectentia were scalene; as only some are, we can only say that there is a certain tendency to make the implexive possession of this property by ‘the triangle’ a fact. The magnitude of all such possibilities will depend on the range of implectentia involved.’
- 14.
Ibid., 77, 103–112. See Jacquette 1985–86.
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- 16.
Routley 1980, v. I thank Richard Routley (Sylvan) (posthumously) for directing me toward Kneale as the likely origin of the phrase ‘Meinong’s jungle’.
- 17.
Russell’s Introduction was first published in 1919, after his conversion to radical referential extensionalism. Russell’s interpretation of Meinong’s object theory as committed to the being-predication thesis begins with his earliest critical commentaries. See Russell 1971, 36: ‘The process suggested by Meinong’s argument is…exceedingly and curiously complicated. First we think of a golden mountain, then we perceive that we are thinking of it; thence, we infer that there is a presentation of a golden mountain, and thence finally that the golden mountain subsists or has Being.’ Also 59: ‘The immanent object does not exist, according to Meinong, and is therefore no part of the mental state whose object it is; for this mental state exists. Yet, although not part of any mental state, it is supposed to be in some sense psychical. But it cannot be in any way bound up with any particular mental state of which it is the object; for other states, at other times and in other people, may have precisely the same object, since an object or a proposition can be presented or believed more than once. I confess these facts seem to me to show, without more ado, that objects and propositions must always have being…’.
- 18.
My use of the term ‘extraontology’ is intended as a direct translation of Meinong’s concept of the Außersein, denoting a semantic domain of beingless incomplete and impossible objects, which Meinong also speaks of as inhabited in an ontically absolutely neutral way by the pure homeless object beyond being and non-being.
- 19.
See Simons 1991. In Section 5 on ‘Implexive Containment’, 294–6, Simons argues that Meinongian implection of incomplete objects in existents or subsistents has all the formal properties of mereological containment, provided that the constitutive-extraconstitutive property distinction is enforced, but is not itself a genuine mereological part-whole relation. Simons’ example involves the existence of the proper parts of George Washington and the nonexistence but only implected existence of George Washington’s implexive parts. The problem is clearly related to Meinong’s discussion of the relative degrees of possibility of instantiation of a Goethe or Beethoven. Here we must distinguish between Goethe and Beethoven on the one hand, and whatever subset of the Sosein set of constitutive properties of these persons might be thought sufficient to instantiate an instance of a Goethe or a Beethoven. It is not immediately clear how this might be done, except by nominal stipulation of a set of essential properties that fall short of the complete haecceity or individuating essence of Goethe himself or Beethoven himself. For other incomplete but not impossible objects like the golden mountain or Pegasus, there is no clearcut basis by which to regard such objects as something more individual and less universal than such standard examples of universals as the ideal state or the color blue.
- 20.
The beingless maximally impossible object as the Meinongian One is in other ways obviously quite different from the Parmenidean concept of the One interpreted as the only Reality.
- 21.
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Jacquette, D. (2015). Meinong’s Concept of Implexive Being and Non-Being. In: Alexius Meinong, The Shepherd of Non-Being. Synthese Library, vol 360. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18075-5_8
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