The Constituents of the Content

Abstract

The difference between object and content of a presentation is not absolute, but, in Kerry’s words, relative.¹ It is true that the content of a presentation cannot at the same time and in the same sense be also the object of this presentation. But nothing prevents the content of a presentation from being conceived of as the object of another presentation, and for psychological investigations this is even necessary. This is always the case when one, for example, asserts that one conceives of something. This assertion affirms an object of a presentation, for affirmation and denial, as we have seen, aim at such an object; but the object of affirmation and denial, and hence also of an activity of conceiving which aims at what is affirmed and denied, is the content of a presentation. Therefore, the content of a presentation is always conceived of as the content of that act which aims at the object conceived of through this content; but it can also be presented through a different act, and this in such a way that the content of the earlier act is now the object of the new act of presentation. In regard to the presentation of the horse, the horse is the object of this presentation; in regard to the presentation of the presentation of the horse, however, the presentation of the horse is the object; and it is an object in respect either to its act, or its content, or both, so that the content of the presentation of the horse is an object of the presentation of the presentation of the horse. The content of a presentation can thus quite easily be an object of a presentation if this presentation is a so-called presentation-presentation [Vorstellungsvorstellung], that is, the presentation of a presentation.²