Abstract

Meinong had problems with reality: when having an experience, one cannot tell whether its object is real or not. The problem surfaced in many contexts but it was always connected with the notion of presentation {Vorstellung). This concept, as used in the Austrian phenomenological tradition, is ambiguous: a presentation can be (1) the neutral content that is a part of any mental act, or (2) the act of mere presentation, i.e. the combination of a content and the psychological mode of mere entertaining, or (3) the act of perceiving a simple object.Meinong's pupil France Veber first adopted an orthodox Meinongian view of presentation but later he became aware of the problems connected with it. He argued that there are mental acts in which the subject is in direct contact with reahty or, as he put it, "hits" reality. Thus, acts of perception have two functions, those of presenting and "hitting".It is argued, first, that there are interesting parallels between Veber's concept of zadevanje Chitting') and modem theories of direct mental reference, de re acts and indexicality; and second, that although Veber correctly saw the problem, his solution is not quite satisfactory, because he thought that one has to abandon phenomenology (or the theory of objects) in order to account for the experience of hitting reality. A thoroughly phenomenological theory of „hitting" may be possible, after all.