Meinong, Alexius(1853–1920)
Alexius Meinong studied under Franz Brentano at the University of Vienna from 1875 through 1878 and taught at the University of Graz from 1882 until his death. In 1894 he established at Graz the first laboratory for experimental psychology in Austria. Some of his psychological writings fall within this area, but most pertain to what Brentano called descriptive psychology. The philosophical works, referred to below, also pertain to descriptive psychology.
Meinong's most important contributions to philosophy concern the theory of objects, the theory of assumptions, the theory of evidence, and the theory of value. He also discussed, at considerable length, the nature of the emotions and their relation to intellectual phenomena, imagination, abstraction, wholes and other "complex objects," relations, causality, possibility, and probability.
Theory of Objects
The two basic theses of Meinong's theory of objects (Gegenstandstheorie) are (1) there are objects that do not exist and (2) every object that does not exist is yet constituted in some way or other and thus may be made the subject of true predication. Traditional metaphysics treats of objects that exist as well as of those that merely subsist (bestehen) but, having "a prejudice in favor of the real," tends to neglect those objects that have no kind of being at all; hence, according to Meinong, there is need for a more general theory of objects.
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