Abstract
This paper serves as a kind of field guide to certain passages in the
literature which bear upon the foundational theory of abstract objects.
The foundational theory assimilates ideas from key philosophers
in both the analytical and phenomenological traditions. I explain how
my foundational theory of objects serves as a common ground where
analytic and phenomenological concerns meet. I try to establish how
the theory offers a logic that systematizes a well-known
phenomenological kind of entity, and I try to show the various ways
the theory systematizes the ideas of many analytic philosophers. The
ideas of Plato, Leibniz, Frege, Russell, Goedel and even Kripke become
connected through those of Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, and Mally.
The field guide will not only document the passages in which the
distinction between two kinds of predication originates, but also
document the other surprising, and often unrelated, contexts where the
distinction reappears in the work of others. It will also document
ways in which the theory can be used to represent precisely the ideas
of the philosophers mentioned above. The resulting guide will bring
together the works of many different authors, including some clearly
within the analytic tradition, some clearly within the
phenomenological tradition, and some who straddle the divide.