Abstract

Ingarden’s official ontology of states of affairs is by no means reductionist. According to him there are states of affairs, but they are ontologically dependent onother entities. There are certain classical arguments for the introduction of states of affairs as extra entities over and above the nominal objects, that can be labelled “the problem of composition,” “the problem of relation” and “the problem of negation.” To the first two Ingarden proposes rather traditional solutions, while his treatment of negation proves to be original and interesting. Ingarden doesn’t deny the existence of negative states of affairs altogether, but he (i) accepts only a restricted group of them and (ii) ascribes to them an extremely weak mode of being. Negative states of affairs are construed as supervenient entities, and their supervenience-basis involves two factors: on the one hand the appropriate positive states of affairs, and on the other hand certain mental acts of conscious subjects. They enjoy thus a curious “half-subjective” mode of being.