Santambrogio. Meinongian Theories of Generality (Article)

Meinongian Theories of Generality Author(s): Marco Santambrogio Source: Nos, Vol. 24, No. 5 (Dec., 1990), pp.
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Meinongian Theoriesof Generality

MARCO SANTAMBROGIO
OF BOLOGNA, ITALY UNIVERSITY
Facing the problem of making semantic sense of some complex expression in ordinary language, one can sometimes adopt the "easy" way out claiming that the expression is not to be taken at face value. Then one feels free to appeal to some purportedly deeper level of analysis, where no urge is felt, for one reason or another, of assigning any one semantic value to it. E.g., one can claim that what appears to be a complex but unitary expression is such only at the surface level, whereas it is to be paraphrased away at the level of logical form. Being entirely faithful to ordinary language, i.e., keeping the appeal to the surface/depth dichotomy to a minimum, is usually much more difficult. Meinong, it seems to me, tried to adopt the latter strategy, while Russell gave an outstanding example of the former in his theory of definite descriptions. In this, however, as in so many other ways, he was simply following Frege. There are sentences containing definite descriptions for which Russell's analysis obviously fails, namely those such as "The whale is a mammal", "The horse is a four-legged animal", etc., where no individual whale or horse is meant in particular. Russell, however, did not have to bother with them: in fact, Frege had already dealt with them and the way he had done so is the paramount example of the strategy of paraphrasing away. As we all know, the sentence "The horse is a four-legged animal" is taken by Frege to mean "All horses (or, all normal specimen of horses) are four-legged". The expression "the horse", as a whole, has disappeared from logical form and so has the need of making semantic sense of it and assigning it some entity or other. In fact, the idea of having "indefinite" entities play this role was ridiculed by Frege (see, e.g., "What is a Function?") just as much as he did in the case of "variable"
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objects ("indefinite" and "variable" or "arbitrary" objects actually amount to the same thing). It is not at all obvious, however, that the sentences "The horse is a four-legged animal" and "All horses are four-legged" are equivalent in meaning. For one thing, the latter seems to require that we somehow run through all the individual horses, in order to see that it is true-an idea which is certainly absent from the former and which raises a number of difficult problems of its own, due to the possible infinity of the objects we might have to run through. I have considered these matters at length elsewhere (see my "Frege on variables and variable objects"). This is one of the reasons (the most compelling one, to my mind) why some among Frege's contemporaries, notably Meinong, Twardowski and Erdmann decided to remain faithful to ordinary language and continued to think that there must be some entity corresponding to the expression "the horse". After all, this was entirely in keeping with the tradition in logic which, in its Platonic quarters at least, did acknowledge such universal entities as the horse(and what is the use of having such entities, if it is not to account for general, or universal propositions?) It must be emphasized that Meinong's incomplete objects, as the referents of definite descriptions in the "generic" use, are just the "indefinite" or "variable" objects that Frege tried to ridicule, as this point has not received much attention in the literature. However, in order to illustrate the details of the doctrine of general objects as referents of such expressions as "the horse", I shall not discuss Meinong, despite the fact that he is the best known figure in this tradition. A much clearer and more compact statement of that doctrine is to be found, e.g., in Twardowski's book, On the Content and Object of Presentations.1 After sketching in the briefest outline Twardowski's version of that doctrine, I shall defend it and present the leading ideas of a formal semantics for general objects.
TWARDOWSKI'S THEORY OF GENERAL OBJECTS.
That definite descriptions in the generic use refer to general objects is stated by Twardowski in so many words: "The substantive in connection with the definite article is the genuine name for the general object; in languages which have lost 'the definite article, its name is the substantive without an addition" (Twardowski, 1977: 100-101). The main example he considers is the familiar one of "the triangle", going back to Aristotle. Now, what kind of entity is the triangle? It is a Platonic idea, it is "a group of constituents which are common
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to several objects" and it is a whole that belongs together and subsumes individual objects (ibid.).2 By means of it one can conceive that which is common to all objects of individual presentations of triangles (i.e. all individual triangles) and thereby grasp all triangles in a single mental act: "If one admits this, as one surely must, then one concedes also that the object of a general presentation [i.e. a general object] is different from the objects of individual presentations which are subsumed under it" (p. 99). Of any one among the latter one can affirm, e.g., that it has an area of, say, two square inches, a right angle, and so on. But the general presentation of the triangle is neither the presentation of a right-angled triangle, nor that of a triangle with a certain colour, or area, or location. Similarly, Meinong stated at some point that the idea "fish" cannot intend the class of all fish, since it intends not even some fish, much less the totality of all fish; it intends a fish, a single fish, but not any particular fish (see Grossmann, 1974: p. 42). Most important is the statement that such sentences as "The triangle has inner angles summing to 180 degrees" and "All triangles have inner angles summing to 180 degrees" cannot be equivalent in meaning: "This follows, among other things, from the fact that one can have a general presentation also in those cases where the number of objects of the corresponding individual presentations . . . is infinitely large" (Twardowski, 1977: 98). Plainly, Twardowski (just like Meinong) is here echoing Locke's theory of general and abstract ideas. The following passage is clearly meant as a defence of Locke from one of Berkeley's attacks: Nobody can intuitively conceive of a "general" triangle; a triangle which is neither right-angled, nor acute-angled, nor obtuse-angled and which has no colour and no determinate size; but there exists an indirect presentation of such a triangle as certainly as there exists indirect presentations of a white horse that is black, of a wooden cannon made of steel, and the like. (Twardowski, 1977: 101) Now, just like its Lockean version, this theory underwent a number of objections. Lesniewski, one of Twardowski's pupils, found at the beginning of his philosophical career a simple argument that conclusively established, he thought, the absurdity of it. The following principle, he argued, must hold of general objects: each one of them has exactly those properties which are common to all individual objects represented by it. It can be stated formally thus:
(*)
Q(the P)
-.
(x)(Px
-1
Qx)
-here "Q" and "P" are any pair of predicates and "the P" is the name of the general P. This principle is not explicitly stated,
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to the best of my knowledge, by Twardowski (or Meinong), but it is not an implausible way of expressing the idea that a general object is what is common to all the subsumed individuals. Unfortunately a simple argument shows that (*) leads to absurdities.3 Lesniewski was impressed by his discovery (which apparently prompted the mistrust in informal philosophical arguments that was to be a permanent feature of his thought). However, there is no need to be overwhelmed by it-for one thing, it is not at all obvious that (*) is the only way of formally stating the intuitive principle-e.g. there might exist a restricted but otherwise plausible version of it. We shall come back to this. Among Twardowski's critics we also find Husserl. In the second of his Logical Investigations, he acknowledges 'general objects' and distinguishes them from ordinary individual objects; he also carefully distinguishes theform 'The A' from the form 'All the A's' on logical grounds and is prepared to take the former-'The Red', for example-as referring to some general object. However, he forcefully claims that Twardowski's theory runs into the same difficulties as Locke's absurd theory of the general triangle. The following passage is meant as a criticism to both of them: Locke should, above all, have reminded himself that a triangle is something which has triangularity, but that triangularity is not itself something that has triangularity. The universal idea of triangle, as an idea of triangularity, is therefore the idea of what every triangle as such possesses, but it is not therefore the idea of a triangle. If one calls the general meaning a concept, the attribute itself the concept's content,every subject having this attribute the concept's object,then one can put the point in the form: it is absurd to treat a concept's content as the same concept's object, or to include a concept's content in its own conceptual extension* [Husserl's Footnote*: I should not therefore think it correct to say with Meinong (Humestudien, I, 5) that Locke confuses the content and the extension of the concept]. (Husserl, 1970, II, $11, pp. 359-60, vol. 1) (Husserl's terminology is clearly different from Twardowski's). Now, it is certainly possible to frame a theory of attributes along these lines, that is, to take e.g. the attribute of triangularity as an abstract object, whose properties are different in kind from, though related to, those of individual triangles. Theories of attributes have been developed in various forms and, although it is by no means a trivial task to construct such a theory, nobody ever supposed that it is an intrinsically incoherent one-contrary to what happens with general objects. But Husserl is simply wrong in confusing Twardowski's or Locke's general triangle with triangularity. We shall later expand on this distinction. (He is also wrong in assuming that
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the absurdity of Locke's general triangle has been proved conclusively by Berkeley). None of these criticisms is fatal to the theory we are interested in. Similarly, there is no reason to be overwhelmed by Berkeley's objections to Locke, or by Frege's arguments against a closely related circle of ideas or by David Lewis' sarcasm aimed at the universally generic pig of "the dark ages of logic" (see Lewis 1970: 52). I shall here try to defend the doctrine of general objects, mainly by exploring the philosophical foundations of a formal semantics for them.
FINE'S SEMANTICS.
In modern logic, apart from Russell's The Principles of Mathematics there is only one attempt, to the best of my knowledge, at vindicating this theory of generality by giving it a formal semantics meeting modern standards of rigour. It is given by Kit Fine, in Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects, 1985. I shall briefly sketch it here and then I shall explain why it seems to me that, useful as it is in other respects, it is not entirely appropriate as an explication of the TwardowskiMeinong theory. After that, I shall explore an alternative approach, which is more in their spirit. First, Fine gives us a domain I of ordinary individuals supporting a standard model for first-order language L. Second, he supplements the domain I of individuals with a disjoint set A of arbitrary for short. A-objects are equipped with a partial objects-A-objects, which ordering relation <, representing the relation of dependence holds among arbitrary objects whenever one of them is introduced or defined in terms of one or more others. E.g., we can introduce arbitrary objects by some such let-clause as 'Let a and b be two arbitrary numbers' and then introduce some other object by the clause 'Let q be their mean': clearly, the latter object depends on the former and we write, according, q<a, q<b. Thirdly, we fix some non-empty set V of partial functions from A into I. Such functions are meant to represent the range of each one of the A-objects, i.e. which values (=ordinary individuals) it can assume, given the values assumed by the objects upon which it depends. One can think of the general triangle as that A-object which is sent by the functions in V onto the set of all individuals which are triangles in the classical model built on I. Now, let a new style of constant' symbols, a, b, c, . . . name the A-objects. (To this end, one can take the free variable symbols of a first order language acknowledging the distinction between free and bound variables, and let them unambiguously denote A-objects. According to Fine, arbitrary or general objects are in fact the variable
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objects which pre-Fregean logicians had been so fond of and which were afterwards superseded by the quantifier/bondage conception of the variable). The truth definition unambiguously determines the logical behaviour of A-objects. Let F(a,, . . . ,ad be a formula in which those symbols for A-objects occur as shown within parentheses. The formula is true in a generic model M* for arbitraryobjects iff all formulae F[al/f(a,), . . . an/f(an)J, obtained by substituting the names of A-objects with the names of their respective images along each one of the partial functions f in V, are true in the standard first-order model M, built on the domain I of ordinary individuals. The intuitive idea is that an A-object has precisely those properties that it is already that all individuals in its range have-assuming known what it is for an individual to have a property. A full blown semantics can be given along these lines. It answers quite a few of the usual objections brought against Locke, in particular Berkeley's. In a nutshell, Berkeley noted that, if there existed such an object as the general or arbitrary number, then it would have to be either odd or even, since all individual numbers have the complex property of being either odd or even. But it cannot be odd, for not all individual numbers are odd and it cannot be even for the very same reason. It then follows that an arbitrary object can have a disjunctive property without having either of the disjuncts. It was thought that this in itself was fatal to Locke. Fine however neatly accounts for this. Any formula of the form F(a)v -F(a)-a being any true, since we apply the clause for disjunction in the A-object-is ordinary truth definition only after projecting a onto the ordinary individuals in its range: no matter how we project it, the individuals thus obtained all satisfy any instance of the Excluded Middle. It does not follow from this that either F(a) or -F(a) holds. In deriving his conclusion, Berkeley appeals to the principle according to which a general object satisfies exactly those properties which are common to all individuals in its range. Fine calls this the Principle of Generic Attribution, but of course he does not assume it in Lesniewski's form: a different form of it is incorporated into the truth definition itself, stating that an A-object has a property iff all individuals in its range have it. Whatever its merits on other grounds, however-in particular, as a defense of Locke-it is debatable whether Fine's semantics can be taken as an explication of the Twardowski-Meinongian theory. As Fine himself acknowledges,4 the fact that A-objects are constructed "from below", in terms of ordinary individuals, runs against one of the leading ideas of both Twardowski and Meinong. Both of them believed that an individual is a complex (a collection, a bundle) of other entities-whether such primitive entities are properties, par-
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ticularized properties or instances, or still other entities, we can leave open for the time being. But in Fine's semantics it is the other way around: in a sense, A-objects are complexes of individuals; moreover, sentences concerning ordinary individuals must already have been evaluated before we can start evaluating those concerning A-objects. The dependence on ordinary individuals is also responsible for some perplexing features of Fine's arbitrary objects. Consider first the clause 'Let x andy be two real numbers' introducing, according to Fine, two A-objects. This is already puzzling, for the clause seems to refer to two independent objects having the same range. Since the properties of independent A-objects are entirely fixed by the properties of the individuals in their respective ranges, we face a choice here: either we countenance indiscernible but distinct objects or we deny that they are independent after all. Fine chooses the latter: what is really introduced by that clause are not two independent arbitrary real numbers, but the arbitrary ordered pair of reals-x andy being its first and second component respectively, which are clearly distinct as A-objects. Now the problem is, if we always follow this strategy of positing arbitrary n-tuples instead of n independent A-objects, then as soon as we introduce two syntactically distinct names for arbitrary objects, we immediately know that we have two distinct objects. There will be little to discover about such objects, if their identity or their diversity are so easily ascertained. If, on the other hand, we cannot always follow that strategy, then we need some criterion to tell us when it is: but such a criterion is likely to be what was needed in the first place to tell us when two arbitrary objects are distinct. Be that as it may, let us go back to the clause 'Let x andy be arbitrary reals'. As it is ordinarily used, it does not exclude that x andy be the same (ordinary) number; but it does not exclude that they be distinct either. It then follows that the equality x =y ought to turn out to be neither true not false according to the truth definition. And yet, if x and y are, as Fine maintains, distinct, it is definitely false that they are identical and the identity statement ought to turn out false. In fact one can even doubt that the equality has here its usual meaning. For instance, there is nothing in Fine's definitons to prevent a situation like this to occur in a model: two arbitrary objects, a and b are such as to make a = b true (for every in V projects them both onto the same individual) and yet they are two distinct entities. Moreover, consider such formulae as x = i and x = b, i being an individual and b an A-object. An A-object satisfying the former must be distinct from i (as the domain of individuals is disjoint from the set of A-objects); and an A-object satisfying the latter can be distinct from b, as in the case b is independent.
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In connection with problems such as these, Fine has suggested that two relations of equality must be distinguished, one relating ordinary individuals while the other relates A-objects. Thus, two A-objects a and b can be distinct as A-objects without forcing a = b to be false (' =' being the relation defined on individuals). Even if this distinction could solve all the problems mentioned above which is not certain-I find this move perplexing. To posit two kinds of properties and relations, one for arbitrary objects and the other for ordinary individuals, is not in itself objectionable (indeed, it is in the Meinongian spirit). But how could there be two relations of identity,given that identity is the (unique) relation holding between any one object and itself? Surely, there are different sorts of criteria of identity: abstract entities, e.g., cannot be distinguished in the same ways as material objects, and natural kinds are distinguished in still others. But the identity relation itself does not thereby change. I have no doubt that all these puzzles can be answered. But in any case the difference in philosophical perspective between Fine's semantics and Twardowski's and Meinong's theory of general objects is such that it may be worth trying a different route.
A DIFFERENT PROPOSAL
Let us first of all clarify intuitively the notion of a general object, tradition. This tradition following the Meinong-Twardowski acknowledges that general objects can be "given" to us prior to the individuals which they subsume. Furthermore, as Platonic ideas, they are intuitively arranged in an order relation, according to their greater or lesser generality: the horse is, as a general object, less general than the mammal, but more general than the white horse. Plato's "definitions" of the sophist in The Sophist (219 A ff.) are just meant to explore some fragments of that relation, which we shall indicate by '?<'. a ?b will express the fact that object a is less general or more specific and definite than b. Evidently, this is not the same relation as set-theoretical inclusion holding between the extensions of, say, the properties of mammalhood and of horsehood (although it is clearly related to it). It must be emphasized that a < b does not order the degreesof definiteness of a and b, but a and b themselves. (That is to say, blue-12715, which is less general than generic blue, does not count as less general (<<) than generic green, say). There are several mechanisms in language by means of which one can pass from any description, such as "the horse", to a more specific one, such as "the white horse" (adjectivation and conjunction of properties being the obvious examples). Corresponding seman-
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tic operations map general objects into more specific ones. This has not been systematically studied by modern logic.5 We shall not go into it; instead, we will take the order relation as given, without considering how; in other words, we will start with a domain of general objects, A, together with an order relation <<. What kind of order is it? One can think that, given any number of general objects, we can find an object that is more general than all of them, and is the least general of all such objects. Accordingly, we shall assume at least that general objects form a completelattice, A*.6 The next point to clarify is that raised by Husserl, namely the difference between general objects and other related entities. Let us first list some such kinds of entities. First of all, we have the properties, which are expressed in language by predicates like "x is a triangle (or triangular)". What properties are, and in what may consist the "incompleteness" characterizing them, according to Frege, we do not have to decide here. Properties have extensionse.g., the set of all triangles. Attributes, such as triangularity, which Husserl invites us to consider, are still another kind of entity: as it is not clear in what sense triangularity might be taken as incomplete, attributes must be different from properties, as well as from extensions. One thing is clear, however, if we are to follow Husserl: attributes in general do not satisfy the corresponding properties and therefore fall outside their extensions. Triangularity, e.g., is not triangular. The triangle, on the other hand, as a general object referred to by the description "the triangle", is triangular. More generally, an entity referred to by a definite description in the generic reading must satisfy the corresponding property. The contrast between triangularity and the (general) triangle closely parallels the one familiar in traditional or pre-Fregean logic between abstractand universal counting as abstract if it does not concreteuniversals,-a participate in itself, concrete if it is selfparticipating. To which of these two kinds of universals Plato's Ideas belong, is debatable (see e.g., Kneale and Kneale, 1962: 19-20). (But of course-, neither triangularity nor the general triangle are universals in the strict traditional sense, as the latter were conceived as capable of playing the twofold role of subjects and predicates at the same time. Clearly this does not hold of either triangularity or the triangle, of which properties can be predicated but which are not themselves predicable of other things). There are other kinds of related abstract entities; species or kinds, e.g., are clearly related to all the other entities just mentioned, but they ought not to be taken as identical with any one of them. However, we can avoid considering them here. Our claim is only that general objects are perfectly well conceivable and not at all absurd, as Husserl and others thought.
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This is then the first of the principles we shall take as characterizing, in purely structural terms, general objects: (A) The P is P.
Here 'P' is any unary predicate and 'the P' is the corresponding definite description in the generic reading. Unfortunately, as we shall see, (A) is too general as it is and needs some qualification. Meinong, incidentally, assumed it in its present, unrestricted form, according to which even the round square, e.g., is square and round. In order to formulate our second principle, let us consider the order relation again. There is a whole class of properties which are hereditary in the sense that, whenever a general object has any one of them, all the less general objects also have it. E.g. if the general triangle has inner angles summing to 180 degrees, then the same holds of the general rectangular triangle, of the general isosceles triangle, etc. This can be expressed as follows: (B) For every general objects a and b, such that a>> b, and every formula F(x) not containing symbols for relations, if F(a) then F(b). This principle is in need of qualification. For one thing, there are properties that clearly do not satisfy it: one can, e.g., think of the citrus without thinking of the lemon, the orange, the tangerine, etc.-one may not even be aware that tangerines exist. Something similar holds for belief and there is a sense in which one can say that it is possible for the general triangle to be isosceles, whereas this is clearly impossible for the general scalenon triangle. I conjecture that the properties for which (B) fails are precisely the intensional ones. Incidentally, this may give us an independent criterion for intensionality. We shall assume that (B) holds for all the extensional properties. On the other hand, suppose that, for some given a, all objects suppose that the bi such that bi<<a, have some property F(x)-e.g., corvus corax, the corpus cornix, and all the others, corresponding to the subspecies of the species corpus, have the property of loving a particular kind of food, the explanation of this being possibly different in each case. Now, it seems that we are perfectly justified in attributing the property F(x) to a itself-to the corpus.This means strengthening principle (B): (C) For every extensional F(x), not containing symbols for relations, F(a) holds iff F(b) for every b such that b<<a. Our next step consists in generalizing (C) so that it can also account for relations. The problem with relations is this. Consider the state-
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ment 'The corvusis attached to its offspring'. We have two general objects here: the corpus and the offspring of the corpus, which are related to each other. Now, principle (C) invites us to consider all the objects less general than those mentioned in the statement; but we cannot consider those that are less general than the corpus infrom those that are less general than the offspring of the dependently corpus, or we might end up asserting that the corpuscorax loves the offspring of the corvuscornix, which is false. That the corpusis attached to its offspring means that the corpuscorax is attached to the offspring of the corpus corax, the corpus cornix to the offspring of the corpuscornix, and so on. In Fine's terminology, what we have here is a case of dependence. The way I propose to deal with dependence is, however, different from Fine's. Fine has a special order relation, < (utterly unrelated with our <<), to determine which A-objects depend upon which other objects, together with functions (forming the set V) to express how the former depend upon the latter. I feel that it is both formally more satisfactory and conceptually clearer if we unify these two ingredients of dependence and exhibit them syntactically in the linguistic expression standing for arbitrary ( = general) objects. To this end, let us introduce a bit of formal syntax. For any property F(x), i.e., for any formula with exactly one free variable, x, let THETAx. F(x) -be a term (to be interpreted as the general F, of course). Within F(x) other THETA-terms can occur, though not THETAx.F(x) itself. The syntax of the THETA-operator is just like that of Hilbert's EPSILON operator. If C(x) is the property of being a corpus, and O(xy) is the relation 'x is the offspring of y', then THETA x. O(x, THETAy. C(y)) expresses 'the offspring of the corpus'. It is the syntactic expression depends itself which shows immediately that the offspring of the corpus on the corpusand that the mode of dependence is the relation O(xy). Since THETA-terms can occur nested into other terms-although no such term can occur within itself-the whole structure of dependence is immediately visible and it is clear that the dependence relation is transitive, asymmetrical and irreflexive. In generalizing (C) to arbitrary relational formulae, we have to consider, for any n-tuple <a,, . . . , an> of general objects, the less general n-tuples. However, we cannot take just any n-tuple <bi, . . ., bn> with ai >> bi, i < n +1, as being less general than <a, . . ., an>, or we would be ignoring dependences. Let us call a shift any function S mapping the set of general objects into itself, which is such that (i) each object a is mapped either to itself or to some b such as a>> b; (ii) the order relation >> is preserved and (iii) all relations expressible in the language L are preserved, that is, R(a,b) implies R(S(a),S(b)). Let S be a
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variable ranging over shifts. Then, given any n-tuple <a,, . . .. an>, its admissible refinements are just the n-tuples of the form < S(a1), . ,S(an) > . Let I be the identical shift: I(a) = a, for every a. This is then our final formulation of the second principle: (D) For all extensional F(xi, . . ., xJ, F[xi/ai, . . . x /naa] iff F[xi/S(a, . I xn/S(an)], for every shift S, different from the identical shift I.
.
This is comparable with Fine's Principle of Generic Attribution, but it differs from it if only because it does not even mention individuals. (D), like (A) above, sharply distinguishes general objects from attributes, for there is no reason to think that it applies to the latter, not even with respect to a restricted class of predicates. I have proved (in my "Generic and Intensional Objects" in Synthese, 1987) that a full formal semantics can be given satisfying both principles (A) and (D). The definition of reference and truth satisfies all the usual Tarskian requirements. The denotation of a term such as THETAx.F(x) is set as the join (in the lattice theoretic sense) of all general objects satisfying F(x), and it proves that this object itself satisfies F(x), provided it is different from the minimum object in the lattice. The minimum must exist, since the lattice is assumed to be complete; such an object can be thought of as the overdefined, impossible or otherwise non exemplified general object, the round square and the golden mountain. As I do not know how to separate the analytic from the synthetic, I do not distinguish the round circle, which cannot exist because of its "inner" incoherence, from the golden mountain, which might exist for all our logical theory is concerned, but whose existence is excluded on other grounds, e.g. by our physical or economic theories and by (external or global) incompatibility with other possible general objects. Were a general method found for distinguishing the golden mountain from the round square, a whole class of distinct impossible objects can be posited, instead of the unique one-to be written as OA-which I presently consider. Accordingly, principle (A) is satisfied in a restricted form: the F is F, provided that it is not (one of) the impossible object(s). That (D) is also satisfied is an immediate consequence of the fact that that semantics really amounts to a special case of Beth semantics for intuitionistic logic. To have an idea of why this is so, consider that it is easy to order the set of shifts on the general objects; the shifts themselves can be thought of as stages of knowledge and therefore play the role of nodes in a Beth model. The mathematical details are given in my "Generic and Intensional Objects", mentioned above.
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In the model we have been considering, no room is left for individuals: the domain of discourse consists entirely of general objects. In the Meinong-Twardowskian tradition, in fact, one cannot take individuals as given: rather, they are "constructed" out of abstract "constituents" which have some kind of precedence for us. Such constituents do not exist as such; they exist "in" the individuals. Let us try then to introduce individuals in our semantics as particular sets (or bundles) of general objects, and then explain what "'existence" means. As a first step in this direction, let us characterize those properties which are satisfied by just one individual (traditional logic referred to them as speciesinfimae). The task is not quite trivial, as we cannot yet refer to individuals in the definitions at this stage-although we are informally guided by the intuitive idea of an individual. There is an indirect way of achieving the same result, however, through general objects; in other words, we can find a structural condition on general objects, which can be described without mentioning individuals, characterizing the properties satisfied by just one individual. As I said, the lattice of general objects being complete, it has a minimum, OA' to be thought of as the round square, or any other impossible general object. Given two general objects a and b, suppose that there is no other object but OA that is less general than both, i.e. a b = OA-take as a, e.g., the square and, as b, the round (figure). Then we say that a and b are incompatible:there is no way of "putting them together" without producing an inconsistency. Let us now think of any definite description in the generic reading, "the man", say, and the general object which it refers to, the (general) man. There are many (individual) men, some short, some tall; no one can be both short and tall. Accordingly, there must be two incompatible general objects, the short man and the tall man, both less general than the man. It is plausible to suppose that, whenever a predicate is satisfied by several individuals, the corresponding general object can be made more specific in at least two incompatible ways. It is not so with predicates which are satisfied by just one individual, "x is presently king of Spain", say. (Throughout this informal discussion, "individual" is used in the intuitive sense, which we must explicate). Then of course the corresponding general object-the present king of Spain, as a general object, which is different from the individual who is king of Spaincan still be made more specific in more than one way: the present
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tall king of Spain and the present bald king of Spain, say. But suppose that any two such specifications, a and b, are incompatible; either a or b by aFib = OA. Then either a = OA or b = OA-i.e., itself was already impossible. At this point, the reader might wonder: let the present tall king of Spain be a and the present short king of Spain be b; then presumably aFb = OA and yet it does not appear that either a = OAor b = OA. However, recalling what was said above about the golden mountain, it will be seen that, in fact, either a = OA or b = OA: as a matter of fact, it is the present short king of Spain which is just as impossible (externally) as the golden mountain; in neither of these objects is there any inner incoherence but, on the background of some theory, physical or otherwise, they are incompatible with things which are known to exist (e.g., pictures showing king Juan Carlos being taller than average, assuming some theory as to their reliability). Let us now define a definitegeneral object as any general object a such that for any b,c such that ba<<a c <<a, if b,c*OA then b and c are compatible. (Here and in what follows b <<a does not exclude that b is equal to a). Definiteness characterizes those general objects which correspond to predicates satisfied by one individual only. (Here again "individual" is used informally, as we are on our way to explicating formally the notion of an individual as a certain complex or bundle of general objects. In no way does the formal definition above mention individuals; it is entirely framed in terms of notions belonging to the theory of general objects.) Recalling that general objects are referred to by such phrases as "the P" "P" being any unary predicate-in the generic reading, we see that definite general objects are referred to by such phrases as "the P", where "P" is satisfied by just one individual, i.e. by proper (in Russell's in thegenericreading. In the ordinary reading, sense) definitedescriptions definite descriptions still refer to ordinary individuals, as we shall see as soon as individuals are available to us in our formal semantics. We shall later come back to the Meinongian theory of definite descriptions. Now let a and b be such that any two a' and b' such that a' ?a, and b' <<b are compatible. We call such a and b coincident.When individuals will be formally introduced in our semantics as certain sets of general objects, it will be easy to prove that if a and b are coincident, then they are both definite and can only occur in (i.e., intuitively, be exemplified by) the same individual. As an example of such a's and bVs,we have therefore "the present king of Spain" and "the king heir of Alphonse Bourbon" -i.e. two proper definite descriptions of the same individual. The relation of coincidence is symmetrical and transitive, but of course it is not reflexive in general:
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it is reflexive only when it is defined. As a matter of fact it almost exactly amounts to Castafieda's notion of consubstantiation (see Castafieda, 1974: 13). We can now introduce individuals. Of course, it would be a serious mistake to identify an individual with any one definite general object. The latter is the object of some presentation, to use Twardowski's phrase; but an individual can be presented in many different ways. Let us then assume that the ways in which an individual can be presented form a set; if we hold some version of the so called bundle theory, we can actually say an individual is the set of its presentations. More cautiously, we shall define a pseudo-individual (something that is in a one to one correspondence with an individual) as any maximal set of compatible general objects, not containing OA and containing at least one definite general object. We clearly want to exclude OA since, although we can think of the round square, there is no individual it can possibly present. As to the golden mountain and Zeus' preferred unicorn, in this world they both collapse to OA (which does not prevent us from being able to think of them or even hallucinate them) and are therefore no part or presentation of any individual; but in other worlds, they can be different from OA and then there will be (pseudo-)individuals to which they belong. The requirements that a pseudo-individual contain at least one definite object, follows from the fact that no matter how many general objects we put together, we have no guarantee of capturing a unique individual (in the intuitive sense), unless uniqueness is already built into at least one of them. E.g., no finite or even infinite conjunction of such predicates as "being a unicorn", "being white", "being mythological" and so on, is clearly sufficient to single out a unique individual-similarly for the set of the corresponding the general objects. On other hand, we do achieve uniqueness as soon as we have at least one predicate such as "being Zeus' preferred unicorn" which has uniqueness built in, and to which a definite general object corresponds. This accounts well, I feel, for Twardowski's claim that "The object of the general presentation is a part of the object of a subsumed presentation, a part which stands in the relation of equality of certain parts of objects of other individual presentations" (Twardowski, 1977, p. 100). Pseudo-individuals bear a clear similarity (together with equally clear dissimilarities) with those bundles of consubstantiated guises which are the ordinary material objects, according to Castafieda (Castafieda, 1974: 23 ff.) (but in general any pseudoindividual contains infinitely many non-definite objects). There are a few results about this semantics that are worth mentioning. First, it is easy to prove that definite objects are exactly
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those objects that belong to exactly one pseudo-individual. This, of course, is as it should be. Second, coincident objects are not intersubstitutable, that is, there are formulae F(x) such that F(a) holds but F(b) fails to hold, for coincident a and b. This is not quite trivial in view of the fact that a and b must be exemplified by (i.e. occur in) the same individual. We must now explain this fact. Then we will come back to individuals.
REFERENCE
Meinong and his followers are often accused of unduly overpopulating our ontology. Similarly, one can ask: why does Twardowski have general objects, while admitting that they do not exist? Is it necessary to have two senses of existence? My claim is that it is not so much existence that has to be taken in two different senses, as reference.Then it will be seen that no ontological inflation is involved. First of all, I take existence to mean just this: an entity, i, exists iff there is a determinate answer to every question concerning it or in other words, for every F(x) either F[x/i] or -F[x/i] holds. The Tertium Non Datur is the hallmark of existence or reality. This is entirely in the Meinong-Twardowski tradition. In the semantics outlined above definite descriptions refer to general objects. As a special case of definite descriptions we have the proper ones; they refer to definite general objects. But of course a proper definite description must also refer to an ordinary individual, in the ordinary sense of "referring". No individual is a general object and vice versa. So we have here two distinct referents for the same expression. The first thing I intend to surmise is that in both cases what we have is a bonafide notion of reference. What is a notion of reference? Of course we cannot expect any not easier than the parallel one about truth. easy answer-surely For reference is just part and parcel of truth. The definition of reference is that part of the whole definition of truth dealing with linguistic units which fall short of being a sentence. Any correlation between terms and other things that can be extended to a proper truth definition just is a notion of reference. In this sense general objects are indeed the referents of definite descriptions since the semantics outlined above does give us a definition of truth, meeting all the usual constraints. Intuitively however one can look at reference in at least one of two distinct ways-the same holds for the notion of truth, too, but I do not have to go into that here. First, we can take something as the referent of an expression occurring in a statement if it is
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that about which the statement says something true or false. But, second, the referent of an expression can also be taken as that which to truth. In both cases makesthe statementtrue(orfalse), or its contribution reference is relative to some statement or other: no expression has reference in isolation. That there is a difference between the two senses of reference, is clear in the case of expressions which are not terms, for normally predicates, operators and the like have reference in the latter, not in the former sense. But it is with terms that the distinction is interesting, if sometimes blurred. Let us consider the statement "Smith's murderer, in such and such awful circumstances is (must be) insane", in the attributive reading-I am here assuming the attributive/referential distinction as introduced by Donnellan (see Donnellan, 1966). The statement is about Smith's murderer, whoever he/she is. That he/she is Smith's murderer in such and such circumstances is what makes him/her the referent of the description, in the sense of being what the statement is about. However, this is not all the definite description does in that statement. If we ask, What makes that statement true? or equivalently, What makes the individual in question satisfy the predicate 'is insane'? then again the answer is, That he/she is Smith's murderer in such and such circumstances-assuming that the circumstances are fully described, so as to make the foulness of the murder quite evident. Being such a murderer, having behaved so abnormally, is something we can cite as a reason, in order to show that we attribute insanity justifiably. This contribution of the definite description does not consist just in its reference in the first of the two senses, for it is not the individual as such, as being that particular individual, that makes the statement true-in fact either we do not know or we do not care who that individual in particular is. What we mean by uttering the statement in question attributively is, rather, that qua Smith's murderer in such and such circumstances, Smith's murderer is, and can be said to be, insane.7 Here the definite description gives both what the statement is about, and what makes it, whatever it is, satisfy the predicate: it has reference in both senses. It is not so for every term. Consider the statement "Jones was brave". No doubt, it is about the individual called Jones; this is the referent of "Jones" in the first sense. But if we ask "What is it that makes Jones satisfy the predicate 'x was brave'?", one cannot answer "It is Jones". What must be cited is something in Jones, some fact about him or a trait of his character, which can be taken as a justification (however partial) of the statement. This is not something the proper name can give us, for the proper name simply refers in the first sense to an individual without giving any presentation of it from a particular side. And it can only be a presen-
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tation of an individual from this or that side, that can make us see why it satisfies a predicate. To the other extreme, take "The whale is a mammal"; as Twardowski and Meinong observed, this is not about the totality of whales; it is not about the whale, either, for no such object exists. "The whale" here has no referent in the first sense; however, it has reference in the second sense for, if we ask, "How can you say this is a mammal?", it makes sense to answer "It is a whale!". What we mean by saying that the whale is a mammal is precisely that any individual which is a whale, in so far as it is a whale, is a mammal (of course this entails that every individual whale is a mammal, but not the other way around). The referent of a term, in the first sense, is an existing individual; in the second sense it is rather the way an individual can be given or presented, a way that is either relevant or irrelevant to the truth of the statements in which the term has reference. General objects are, or correspond to, the ways individuals can be given; they can only be referents in the second sense of "reference". In other words, they are not that aboutwhich we talk in ordinary circumstances but, rather that throughwhich we refer to individuals. (Incidentally, "way of giving an individual" and "presentation" are just the Fregean and Brentanian names of Aristotelian forms). It is now apparent why no ontological inflation is involved in the Meinongian move of supplementing the universe of "objects" with the general (Meinongianly: incomplete) ones. Furthermore, we now see how Meinong and Twardowski could consistently protest their nominalism: general objects are non-existent, in that not for every F(x), either F(a) or -F(a) holds (a being any general object). Later we shall see that the Tertium Non Datur does hold for individuals. The distinction between two senses of reference also accounts for the attributive/referential distinction in the use of definite descriptions. In: (1) Smith's murderer is insane, in the referential reading, the subject term "Smith's murderer" is immaterial, from our present point refers, to an individual-it of view, whether that individual is the one that uniquely satisfies, as a matter of fact, the description, or the one that is thought by the speaker or the hearer (or both) to satisfy it uniquely. In the attributive reading, on the other hand, (1) ought to be taken as a shorthand8 for "Smith's murderer in such and such awful circumstances is insane" and the definite description refers2 to some general object: having so foully murdered Smith is a reason relevant to justifying the attribution of insanity. It is a general reason,
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in the sense that anybody fulfilling that description and in so far as he fulfils it, is liable to be called insane; hence the appropriateness of the clause, which is sometimes added in order to signal that the attributive reading is meant, "whoever he is". Being able to refer2 to presentations, we can also account for such expressions as qua, quatenus, as such, as far as, etc. for which traditional logic invented the theory of reduplicatio. Consider the following configuration of strokes:
If we see it as, or under the description'a token of the type 7', then we can assert that it is the result of concatenating these configurations:
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I I I and
That is, it can be obtained from them qua token of the type 7. The same does not hold of it qua token of the type 2 (that it can also be presented as a token of type 2, can be seen by rotating the page by 90 degrees).9 Now we are also in a position to see the intuitive reason explaining the failure of intersubstitutability, in the semantics outlined above, of two definite descriptions pointing to the same individual (i.e. belonging to the same pseudoindividual): definite descriptions, both proper and improper, if taken to refer2 to general objects, are to be understood as always prefixed by "as such" or other similar expressions. Consider this example: Benjamin Franklin was both the inventor of the bifocals and the general postmaster (in 1779); he was also a benefactor of mankind and a powerful man. The remarkable properties are not on equal footing. In the following sentences: (2) The inventor of the bifocals, as such, was a benefactor of mankind, (3) The general postmaster, as such, was a powerful man, the definite descriptions are clearly not intersubstitutable: the general postmaster as such was not a benefactor of mankind, nor was the inventor of the bifocals a powerful man. These distinctions are lost if descriptions are taken to refer directly referr) to individuals without the mediation of the presentations (i.e., general objects) which are their referents2. Let us now revert to the reconstruction of the notion of an individual within our semantics. Being sets of general objects, pseudo-
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individuals clearly do not belong to the domain of a model, as defined so far. Let us then supplement the domain with a set of new elements, one for each pseudo-individual that can be formed in the original domain. Let them be called individuals. Terms, as we have seen, can have reference either of type 1 or type 2, or both. Typically, proper names have only the former kind of reference, as they have no descriptive content which can be used to justify an assertion; let them be assigned individuals as their referents,. Proper definite descriptions in the referential use come close to performing the function of proper names. Their descriptive contents are used in order to fix the individuals they refer to, but they are not used in the process of justifying the assertions in which they occur; hence they have reference1, but no references. A proper definite description in the attributive use, as I said above, has both kinds of reference, for its descriptive content both fixes the unique individual satisfying it and gives a reason for it to satisfy the predicate in the assertion in which it is used. Accordingly, it will be assigned the unique singular object satisfying it as its referent2 and the unique individual in which the latter occurs as its referent,. Improper definite descriptions, such as "the whale" (unless the context makes it clear that some particular whale can be singled out as the only relevant one in the vicinity) will only be assigned a general object, as their reference2. Now we must specify the truth conditions for sentences containing terms that have reference,. Formally, let the language L be supplemented with a new style of individual constants, i, j, k, . . .. to be interpreted into the set of individuals. Let i' be the pseudoindividual corresponding to individual i. Here is our noninductive truth definition for sentences containing the new individual constants. Definition. Let F(ii, . . ., i) be any sentence with the individual constants as shown. F(il, ... , i) is true iff there are general objects a,, . , an such that akEik', for k < n +1, and such that a is true according to the truth definition for general F(al, ..., objects. Let us now see what kind of truth we have thus defined. First of all, it is easy to see that this is a bonafide truth definition, in the sense that, e.g., F&G is true just in case F is true and G is true, that if F is true then - F is not true, etc. Moreover, it can be proven that for any F(x) in which the only terms occurring are individual constants and x, and any individual constant i, either F(i) or -F(i) holds, and therefore F(i)v -F(i) holds. The same does not hold for general objects. It can be proven, in other words, that all individuals exist and they are the only existing entities. (It will be remembered
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that existence, in the present context, is not a property expressible by an ordinary predicate: something exists if it is determinate in every respect, that is, for every (sufficiently definite) question we might care to ask about it, there is exactly one definite answer-in other words, for every prediate F(x), either F(i) or -F(i) holds). It is also easy to prove that, given any definite general object, there is exactly one (pseudo)-individual to which it belongs; there is therefore a close connection between definiteness (of a general object) and existence (of the unique individual to which it belongs). It can also be proven quite easily that, if a and b are two coincident general objects, then they are both definite and belong to the same (existing pseudo-)individual. The definition above says that an individual has a property, F(x), just in case there is a general object in the corresponding pseudoindividual that satisfies F(x). As general objects are in fact presentations of individuals, this means that a presentation of that individual can be found which is such as to justify attributing the property F(x) to anything that can be similarly presented (trivially, if a general object a, satisfies F(x), then any individual containing a also satisfies F(x), according to the definition). This in turn means that an individual has a given property only if a general reason can be given for its having it; in other words, it is not the individual per se, so to speak, in virtue of being that very individual, that has a property, but only in so far as it can be given as, or qua, such and such. This notion of truth I shall call mediate, in view of the fact that it is closely reminiscent of a notion of mediation employed by Kant. It is meant to contrast with bare truth: if F(x) holds of individual i per se, without there being any general characterization of that individual, however detailed, to warrant attributing F(x) to it (and to all the individuals that can be similarly characterized), then F(i) is barely true, for i has F(x) in its bare individuality. Indexicals and proper names provide examples of bare truths (possibly, not the only ones): "being individual i", "being here" and the like, seem to be properties applying to individuals per se, for I cannot think of any general characterization of an individual warranting its being this very individual.
A PARALLEL WITH THE THEORY OF GUISES
The semantics I have outlined was developed in the first place not in order to account for either Meinong's or Twardowski's doctrines, but in an effort to understand some of Kant's theories. It comes as no great surprise, therefore, that it bears a rather close similarity with another Kantian construction, namely Castafieda's Theory of
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Guises, as set forth in "Thinking and the Structure of the World" in Philosophia, 4 (1974). I shall here point first at some points of contact, and then at some of the discrepancies. First, the ontological picture emerging from the semantics of general objects is similar to that associated with the Theory of Guises in that the substances in the world, the individual material objects which I call individuals, are conceived of as composed of infinitely many components. I think of the latter as aspects or presentations, corresponding to all the descriptions (definite and indefinite) applying to an individual. Such aspects are usually taken as somehow related to the senses of descriptions, rather than being their referents, but I have tried to show that they can in fact be "objectified" and referred to, even if ordinary assertions are not about them. All this is rather close to the Theory of Guises; the latter takes ordinary objects as bundles of infinitely many consubstantiated guises. As guises (Meinongianly) satisfy the principle "The F is F", they are in fact the concrete universals of pre-Fregean logic. Guises are referred to by such terms as "the F"-"the man next door", "the circle", etc.: in themselves, without considering matters of predication, they seem to be utterly indistinguishable from what I call general objects. Reference to guises is primary, according to Castafieda; it is clearly reminiscent of the notion of references, which is fundamental in the semantics for general objects, in the sense that the truth definition is framed in terms of it. There is a difference, however, in that guises seem to be that aboutwhich we ordinarily talk according to the Theory of Guises, whereas general objects can be referred to without being talked about(it will be remembered that two senses of "reference" were distinguished above). In any theory aiming at constructing ordinary individuals out of "presentations", the need arises of distinguishing those presentations that can only present exactly one individual from the rest. Intuitively, these correspond to the proper definite descriptions. They are, according to Castafieda, the existing guises, which can enter exactly one bundle of consubstantiated guises. Consubstantiation is the fundamental notion, in terms of which all this can be defined. Apart from terminological differenes (e.g., I prefer to follow common usage and say that ordinary individuals, rather than presentations, exist; what correspond to existing guises in the semantics for general objects, are then the definitegeneral objects), this is just what I tried to achieve by means of the notion of coincidence, which is, as a matter of fact, the same notion as consubstantiation-the only difference being that the latter is taken as primitive, whereas coincidence is defined in lattice theoretical terms; one can then prove, rather than postulate, that it possesses the right structural properties. It
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will be remembered that if two general objects a and b are coincident, then they are both definite, and therefore belong to exactly one (pseudo-)individual (the same for both); every (pseudo-)individual exists in the sense that it satisfies the Excluded Middle. Consubstantiation plays a crucial role in the Theory of Guises, far more central than that of coincidence in the semantics for general objects, as "empirical" predication is defined in terms of it. Although it is in fact possible to define some kind of predication in terms of coincidence, I have given a direct definition of truth of the standard kind. It is here, I think, that the gulf between the two approaches appears: whereas the ontology of the two theories is, apart from minor differences,'0 the same, the kinds of predication they consider differ. First, as I am skeptical that the a priori and the empirical components of truth can be sharply separated, I have only one definition of truth and of predication instead of the several kinds considered in the Theory of Guises, none of which entirely overlaps with mine. (The fact that a separate clause is provided for sentences containing individual constants, in the semantics outlined above, does not mean that a different notion of truth or predication is appealed to). That the whale is a mammal or, for that matter, that the whale is a whale, counts as true in the semantics for general objects just in the same sense as that the whale is a playful creature. This means, among other things, that the one kind of predication we have in the semantics for general objects entirely accounts for Castafieda's Meinongian predication. Second, the semantics for general objects goes beyond the scope of the Theory of Guises, in the sense that it accounts for the truth of such statements as "The whale is playful'", "The robin sings" etc., which are not easily dealt with in the Theory of Guises: the kind of predication involved in them evidently cannot be Meinongian predication, but neither can it be consubstantiation, as "the whale" is not an existing guise and consubstantiation only holds between existing guises. Non existing guises can only enter in internal or Meinongian predication, conflation and identity, none of which can possibly account for the truth of those statements. (If those statements are taken as analytic and if Meinongian predication is meant to account for all there is to analyticity, then this fact does point to a serious limitation in the Theory of Guises; but I do not think either that such statements are analytic or that Meinongian predication is just analytic predication. Still, those statements are true and this has to be explained somehow). Given the wider scope of the semantics for general objects (in the sense just illustrated) and having defined truth independently from the notion of coincidence ( = consubstantiation), some simplifica-
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tions are possible; e.g., individuals can be defined as maximal sets of compatible objects, including the non-definite ones ( = non-existing guises, in Castafieda's terminology). In other words, The Circle appears as a constituent in any circular individual object-just as both Meinong and Twardowski claimed. A detailed comparison with the Theory of Guises is rendered somewhat difficult by the fact that it is formalized only in part. But, apart fom technicalities, I think I see a substantial agreement between the Theory of Guises and the semantics for general objects, as far as the basic metaphysical perspective is concerned. It has to be stressed, though, that on the latter more properties can be predicated truthfully of non definite general objects, than just those holding of non existing guises, according to the former.
INTENTIONALITY
That sentences in which reference is made to general objects can have a definite truth value, is enough to grant the latter the status of objects;and yet, they do not exist. I have tried to show that no tension is involved here. In fact, we are all familiar with something that fits that description, namely whatever our mind conceives as an object. There are good reasons, I surmise, to take general objects as being just the objects of thought, intentional objects. I am concerned here with verbs of propositional attitudes, such as "seek", in the object-complement construction. It has at times been suggested that intentional verbs are basically expressive of what Russell called 'propositional attitudes' and that therefore the term occurring as a complement of such verbs in most cases in natural language is, for logical purposes, to be so paraphrased as to uncover a sentential complement. Quine's treatment of 'hunt' and 'want' in "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes" is paradigmatic in this respect. However, it is debatable whether any satisfactory reduction exists of the object-complement construction to the sentential-complement one. In any case, I will only concern myself in what follows with such sentences as "I seek a sloop" (in the sense that what I seek is mere relief from slooplessness) where "a sloop" is taken as a genuine term. Let me first of all list some well known phenomenological data about intentional objects. First, intentional objects (just like the if I seek a sloop, what I want is a general ones) are indeterminate: sloop, but it does not have, e.g., any particular size or colour. Second, most intentional objects do not exist. Third, the substitutivityof identicals fails as far as intentional objects are concerned. Fourth, if I am seeking a sloop (not a particular one, just relief from
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slooplessness), there is a sense in which I am seeking each and every sloop, since all of them will do, and yet I am not seeking all sloops. Now, let us naively ask ourselves, what is it to be seeking a sloop? Well, we must start with some idea, however vague and inadequate, of what it is that we are seeking, what general form it must exhibit. This is absolutely crucial, for there is no seeking without it. Then we focus on one thing at a time and we compare it with the idea we have. Each time the comparison fails, a new thing is picked up and examined, until the comparison succeeds. It has been suggested-among others by Twardowski-that all these phenomenological data can easily be accounted for simply by taking some intentional object or other as the denotatum of the term in complement position-in other words, by taking intentional objects as what is sought. This will not do, however, since nobody, seeking a sloop, seeks an indetermined, abstract and possibly non existent object (it is useless in any case to twist the meaning of "seek" so as to be able to say that we seek such objects, after all). The intentional object is not what we seek; rather, it is, or corresponds to, the idea we already have in mind when the seeking starts, and with which we compare each one of the things we pick up in turn. Now that we have general objects to represent the intentional ones, we can picture the semantics of the sentence "I seek a sloop" as follows. This sentence is true iff (i) I have activated a procedure, interpreting "seek", which takes two kinds of inputs: (a) general objects, and (b) individuals, and tests whether a matching occurs (i.e. whether the former occurs in the pseudo-individuals corresponding to the latter)-the procedure continues, examining ever new individuals, until one is found matching the general object; (ii) the sloop, as a general object, has been fed as input (a) into the procedure. That one may be seeking non-existent unicorns is no more puzzling in this perspective than that a function is everywhere nonnull: it just means that the procedure never stops.
NOTES 'Although it is not widely known nowadays, the importance of this short book was acknowledged both in and out of the Brentanian school, as well as its influence on Meinong and Husserl. The leading role of Twardowski in Polish philosophy is also an interesting subject in itself. 2It is debatablewhetherthis is to be taken as an explicit avowal of Platonism. Twardowski maintains that there are Platonic ideas, i.e. general objects, as objects of general presentations, that is, of mental acts. This is entirely consistent 'with his denying that they exist as, e.g., material mind-independent individuals do. Here is Twardowski's own relevant statement: "Plato's ideas are nothing else but objects of general presentations. Plato attributes existence of these objects. Today, we do not do so any more; the object of the general presentation is presented to us, but it does not exist; and one can say, at most, that it exists in the sense that it can be found in the objects of the corresponding individual presentations in
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a form which is modified by the individual characteristicsof these individual presentations" (Twardowski, 1977, p. 101). Qx), take Px as being the property x = x, so 3In the formula Q(theP) I. (x)(Px -_ that "the P" is to be read as "the self-identical", Qx as the property of being equal to the self-identical: x = the P. By substitution we have the P = the P -. (x)(x = x -_ x = the P), from which it follows, by applying ModusPonens,that (xXx = theP), asserting that there is only one object in the universe. This elegant formulation of Lesniewski's argument is due to Bacon, "The Untenability of Genera", Logiqueet Analyse,65/66 (1974): 197-207. In this paper, Bacon does not consider, however, the possibility of restricting somehow the original formula, e.g. requiring that "the P" is not to occur in Qx. Incidentally, with this restriction, the formula expresses a basic fact of the method of "adjoining indeterminates" in topos theory, for which see lemma 4.17 in John Bell, Toposes andLocalSet Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 1988. 4'In general, an arbitrary object with certain values is the Meinongian object with the properties common to those values. The important differences between the two theories should be noted though. First, my arbitrary objects are specified 'from below', in terms of the values they take; Meinongian objects are specified 'from above', in terms of the properties they have. This makes a big difference both to the formulation and development of the respective theories" (Fine, 1985, p. 41). 5This is not entirely fair to the theory of properties, as developed, e.g., in Bealer's andConcept, Quality Oxford, ClarendonPress (1982), where a number of operationson properties are defined. Clearly, one can then define an ordering on properties just as it is customary to do with formulae via Lindenbaum's algebra. 6Some further assumptions have been made in my paper "Generic and Intensional 73 (1987), such as distributivity of the lattice of general objects. Such Objects", in Synthese, assumptions are needed mainly for technical reasons, although they also have a clear intuitive content. 7Traditional logic deals with statements of the form "x is y, qua z" in the theory of reduplicatio. What is "duplicated" here is the reference of the definite description. 8Often, the description of the relevant circumstances can be left out, as the context of the utterance makes it clear anyway; nevertheless, such a description is an unarticulated constituent,-to employ Perry's felicitous expression-of the content of the statement. It is in fact hard to imagine any context at all in which the statement (1) could properly be used attributively, in which a description of the relevant circumstances does not figure either as an articulated or as an unarticulated constituent. 91nhis paper "Intentionalityand Identity in Human Action and PhilosophicalMethod", in Nods 13 (1979): 235-260, Castafieda observes that the logical form of such statements as 'X's A'ing is quaA'ing a B'ing" can be interpreted in three distinct ways: (a) 'quaA'ing' modifies, i.e. is part of, the subject; (b) 'qua A'ing' is part of the predicate, and (c) 'qua A'ing' is a modality modifying the sentence 'X's A'ing is a B'ing'. Clearly, our construal in the main text is along alternative (a). 10E.g., it is a minor difference, in my view, that Castafieda does not have singular terms referringto concrete individuals, whereas I do. But it is noteworthy that singular terms referring to individuals in my framework do not refer in the same sense as, e.g., THETAterms referring to general objects. It will be remembered that two senses of referring have been distinguished in the main text; individuals can only be referred to in the sense of being what is talkedabout. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bacon, John 1974 "The Untenability of Genera", Logiqueet Analyse,65/66; 197-207. Bealer, George 1982 Qualityand Concept,(Oxford: Clarendon Press). Bell, John 1988 Toposesand Local Set Theories. An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell).
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Castafieda, Hector-Neri 1974 "Thinking and the Structure of the World.", Philosophia 4 (1974): 3-40. 1979 "Intensionality and Identity in Human Action and Philosophical Method", Noas 13: 235-260. Donnellan, Keith 1966 "Reference and Definite Descriptions", The Philosophical Review, 75: 281-304. Fine, Kit
1985 Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects (Oxford: Blackwell).
Frege, Gottlob 1970 "What is a Function?", in Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, by P. Geach and M. Black (Oxford: Blackwell). 1968 The Foundations of Arithmetic, Engl. Trans. by J. Austin (Oxford: Blackwell). Grossmann, R. 1974 Meinong(London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Heyer, G. 1985 "Generic Descriptions, Default Reasoning and Typicality", Theoretical Linguistics, 12: 33-72. Husserl, Edmund 1970 LogicalInvestigations, Findlay's transl. (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Kneale, W. and Kneale, M. 1962 The Development of Logic, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lewis, David 1970 "General Semantics,", Synthese 22: 18-67. Luschei, E. 1962 The Logical System of Lesniewski (Amsterdam: North Holland). Russell, Bertrand 1903 The Principles of Mathematics, (Cambridge University Press). Santambrogio, Marco 1987 "Generic and Intensional Objects", Synthese 73: 637-663. forth- "Frege on Variables and Variable objects", in K. Mulligan, ed., Essayson Ontology, coming Kluwer. Twardowski, Kasimir 1977 On the Content and Object of Presentations, translated by R. Grossmann (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff).

Santambrogio. Meinongian Theories of Generality (Article)

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Meinongian Theories of Generality Author(s): Marco Santambrogio Source: Nos, Vol. 24, No. 5 (Dec., 1990), pp.

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