This volume addresses key aspects of the philosophical psychology elaborated by Alexius Meinong and some of his students. It covers a wide range of topics, from the place of psychological investigations in Meinong’s unique philosophical program to his thought-provoking views on perception, colors, “Vorstellungsproduktion,” assumptions, values, truth, and emotions.

This volume addresses key aspects of the philosophical psychology elaborated by Alexius Meinong and some of his students. It covers a wide range of topics, from the place of psychological investigations in Meinong’s unique philosophical program to his thought-provoking views on perception, colors, “Vorstellungsproduktion,” assumptions, values, truth, and emotions.

This book presents an historical and conceptual reconstruction of the theories developed by Meinong and a group of philosophers and experimental psychologists in Graz at the turn of the 19th century. Adhering closely to original texts, the contributors explore Meinong's roots in the school of Brentano, complex theories such as the theory of intentional reference and direct reference, and ways of developing philosophy which are closely bound up with the sciences, particularly psychology. Providing a faithful reconstruction of both Meinong's contributions to science and the school that arose from his thought, this book shows how the theories of the Graz school raise the possibility of engaging in the scientific metaphysics and ontology that for so long have been considered off limits.

This book presents an historical and conceptual reconstruction of the theories developed by Meinong and a group of philosophers and experimental psychologists in Graz at the turn of the 19th century. Adhering closely to original texts, the contributors explore Meinong's roots in the school of Brentano, complex theories such as the theory of intentional reference and direct reference, and ways of developing philosophy which are closely bound up with the sciences, particularly psychology. Providing a faithful reconstruction of both Meinong's contributions to science and the school that arose from his thought, this book shows how the theories of the Graz school raise the possibility of engaging in the scientific metaphysics and ontology that for so long have been considered off limits.

"Herbartism in Austrian-Hungarian philosophy" is often an obligatory reference, but even if quoting Herbart and his school is frequent, reading them attentively is less evident. Because Herbartism reached its peak in the second half of the 19th century, and was effectively institutionalized as "official philosophy" of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at least in Prague and Vienna, criticizing Herbartism often means discussing the "Austrian", "philosophical" and "institutional" criteria of the object under consideration. As the history of the Austrian tradition and theoretical reflections in this field expand, discussion of this tradition is becoming more and more tight and precise. The contributors in this volume recall the historical and conceptual importance of Herbartism in the field of Austrian philosophy, by addressing several aspects of his specific realism: philosophical, theoretical, pedagogical, psychological, and aesthetical.

This collection of fourteen original essays addresses the seminal contribution of Franz Brentano and his heirs, to philosophy of language. Despite the great interest provoked by the Brentanian tradition and its multiple connections with early analytic philosophy, precious little is known about the Brentanian contribution to philosophy of language. The aim of this new collection is to fill this gap by providing the reader with a more thorough understanding of the legacy of Brentano and his school, in their pursuit of a unique research programme according to which the analysis of meaning is inseparable from philosophical inquiries into what goes on in the mind and what there is in the world. In three parts, the volume first reconstructs Brentano’s pathbreaking thoughts on meaning and grammatical illusions, exploring their strong connections with the Austro-German tradition and analytic philosophy. It then addresses the multifaceted debates on the objectivity of meaning in the Brentano School and its aftermath (Meinong, Husserl, Ingarden, Twardowski and the Lvov-Warsaw School). Finally, part three explores Brentano’s wider legacy, namely: Husserl’s theory of modification and typicality, Bühler’s theory of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions, and Wittgenstein’s thoughts on guidance and rule-following. The result is a unique collection of essays which shows the significance, originality and timely character of the Brentanian philosophy of language.

This book explores the thought of Alexius Meinong, a philosopher known for his unconventional theory of reference and predication. The chapters cover a natural progression of topics, beginning with the origins of Gegenstandstheorie, Meinong’s theory of objects, and his discovery of assumptions as a fourth category of mental states to supplement his teacher Franz Brentano’s references to presentations, feelings, and judgments. The chapters explore further the meaning and metaphysics of fictional and other nonexistent intended objects, fine points in Meinongian object theory are considered and new and previously unanticipated problems are addressed. The author traces being and non-being and aspects of beingless objects including objects in fiction, ideal objects in scientific theory, objects ostensibly referred to in false science and false history and intentional imaginative projection of future states of affairs. The chapters focus on an essential choice of conceptual, logical, semantic, ontic and more generally metaphysical problems and an argument is progressively developed from the first to the final chapter, as key ideas are introduced and refined. Meinong studies have come a long way from Bertrand Russell’s off-target criticisms and recent times have seen a rise of interest in a Meinongian approach to logic and the theory of meaning. New thinkers see Meinong as a bridge figure between analytic and continental thought, thanks to the need for an adequate semantics of meaning in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, making this book a particularly timely publication.​