Alexius Meinong
1853-1920 · Phenomenology · Prominent
Meinong was an Austrian philosopher who studied under Brentano and founded the theory of objects. Think of the golden mountain, or the round square. He held that these are genuine objects of thought with settled properties, whether or not anything answers to them. The mountain is golden though no such mountain stands anywhere. Russell attacked the theory, and most philosophers followed him.
Signature
The position Meinong is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Universals
- strongly leans Realism
- Perception
- Indirect Realism
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- strongly leans Realism (0 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (97 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Meinong refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Indirect Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment
What is the proper role of emotion?