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Meinong explains assumptions (Annahmen) as a fourth class of psychical phenomena, belonging to an intermediate class supplementing Brentano's division between presentations (Vorstellungen), judgments (Urteile), and emotions (Gefühle). If thought is free to assume anything, even nonactual and metaphysically predicationally impossible intended objects, as Meinong supposes, then as Meinong follows the tracks from Brentano's intentionality thesis, there must be nonexistent intended objects assumed for consideration by thought independently of their ontic status. We must be able to think about and say true things about intended objects regardless of whether or not they happen to exist, their existence or nonexistence being an independent matter once they have satisfied identity conditions as distinct intended objects. Meinong's phenomenology of assumption is discussed as key to the intuitive basis for his object theory comprehension principle, by which the semantic referential domain is populated with distinct identity condition-satisfying existent and nonexistent intended objects, perhaps among at least one other category.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-18075-5_3

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