Intentional Objects and their properties : a critical appraisal of Meinongian Logics (B. Leclerq)

Conférence | Talk

Bruno Leclerq

(Université de Liège)

Intentional Objects and their properties : a critical appraisal of Meinongian Logics

Source : Wikipedia

According to Alexius Meinong, statements such as "The round square is round (and square)", "The golden mountain is made of gold", "Pegasus has big wings" or "Unicorns have a horn on their forehead" should be seen as talking about some genuine (yet inexistent or even impossible) objects, and should be considered as true or false whether these objects possess the properties that are here attributed to them or not. On the contrary, Frege and Russell's logical analyis tends to make these "objects" appear as concepts (or propositional functions) that can be meaningful eventhough they are not satisfied by any object at all. After a brief presentation of Meinongian logics as well as of their benefits and drawbacks compared to classical logic as well as to standard modal logics, we will show that Meinongian logics not only require a clear-cut distinction between two kinds of properties (nuclear and extranuclear) but also between two kinds of predications (encoding and exemplification) and, eventually, between two kinds of objects (those which encode and those which exemplify their properties), which somehow restores Frege's clear-cut distinction between concepts and objects as well as between first order and second order properties. 

Friday, January 17th, 2014

3:00pm

University of Ottawa

Desmarais Hall (55, Laurier East)

Room 8161