The study aims at exposing Meinong's ideas that may be of interest to analytic philosophers. It contains all the basic information concerning Meinong's theory of objects with a special focus upon 'objectives', which are Meinong's propositions. Meinong's theory of meaning and his epistemological views are discussed in detail. An outline of his conception of truth, which is classified as firmly realistic, is followed by a review of the critical works touching upon Meinong's epistemological ideas. Finally, Meinong's theory of objects is (...) presented as inspiring the development of Meinongian logics, with his Aussersein as the prototype of an all-inclusive semantic domain. The issues considered include reference of terms and sentences as well as the general features of a Meinongian-style semantics. (shrink)

It is not a common practice to postulate meaning entities treated as objects of some kind. The paper demonstrates two ways of introducing meaning-objects in two logics of natural language, Tichy’s Transparent Intensional Logic and Zalta’s Intensional Logic of Abstract Objects. Tichy’s theory belongs to the Fregean line of thinking, with what he calls ‘constructions’ as Fregean senses, and ‘determiners’ as object-like meaning entities constructed by the senses. Zalta’s theory belongs to Meinongian logics and he postulates a rich realm of (...) abstract Meinongian objects to play the role of meanings. The paper analyses the mechanisms of reference in both conceptions and it offers a comparison of the mediating meaning-objects and the framework designed to expose this mediation in both theories. An attempt is made to expose how the treatment of the meaning entities depends upon the theory of meaning which is assumed. (shrink)

The paper analyses the contemporary notion of an extension of apredicate from the perspective of semantics typical for Meinongian logics, andin opposition to the traditional notion of extension. This leads to a discussionof the types of properties that can be predicated about objects as belonging tothe sets of properties ascribed to them, and such that can be predicated aboutthem only ‘externally’. It is also problematic in which sense nonexistentobjects possess the properties ascribed to them. The concluding remarksconcern some issues related (...) to the truth of predications about nonexistentobjects, which is the basic condition to admit them as belonging to theextensions of predicates in the first place. (shrink)

The paper presents three different Fregean approaches towards the question of truth, all of which can be classified as belonging to the category of minimalistic theories, namely the identity theory of McDowell and Hornsby, the 'modest' conception of truth proposed by Wolfgang Künne and the 'alethic realism' of William Alston. The conceptions are described as realistically biased, in spite of their refusal to accept 'objectual' facts as entities in the world. It is argued that a legitimate position can be distinguished (...) within the current truth-theoretical investigations that can be called 'realistic minimalism about truth'. It is emphasised that the conceptions of meaning which are assumed by Fregean truth theories have an essential impact upon the tendency of such minimalistic theories to gravitate either towards deflationism or towards realism. Four typical characteristics of realistically biased minimalistic theories of truth are distinguished, three of which are also accepted by deflationists of different kinds. These characterisctis are: (1) assuming indefinability of truth, (2) describing truth in terms of identity between the content of a proposition and the fact, (3) accepting the status of truth as a property (the status of truth as a property is questionable for most minimalists, but there are some who accept it), and (4) describing truth as a relational property of propositions with respect to "the ways things are" in reality. Accepting the latter thesis without rejecting the first two must be grounded in assuming a referential conception of meaning, i.e. a conception of meaning according to which separate expressions and the content of a proposition as a whole concern something that is independent of the subject and of the language. Such a semantic base makes it possible for a theory of truth to be minimalistic, in the sense of not trying to define the nature of truth, while remaining realistic with respect to the question of truth. This can only be the case because the assumed referential conception of meaning itself makes the claim that the contents of true propositions express the ways things are in reality. (shrink)