The next point of criticism concerns the relation of content and object.
The reference of thoughts to objects is not, I believe, the simple
direct essential thing that Brentano and Meinong represent it as being.
It seems to me to be derivative, and to consist largely in BELIEFS:
beliefs that what constitutes the thought is connected with various
other elements which together make up the object. You have, say, an
image of St. Paul's, or merely the word "St. Paul's" in your head. You
believe, however vaguely and dimly, that this is connected with what
you would see if you went to St. Paul's, or what you would feel if you
touched its walls; it is further connected with what other people see
and feel, with services and the Dean and Chapter and Sir Christopher
Wren. These things are not mere thoughts of yours, but your thought
stands in a relation to them of which you are more or less aware. The
awareness of this relation is a further thought, and constitutes
your feeling that the original thought had an "object." But in pure
imagination you can get very similar thoughts without these accompanying
beliefs; and in this case your thoughts do not have objects or seem to
have them. Thus in such instances you have content without object. On
the other hand, in seeing or hearing it would be less misleading to
say that you have object without content, since what you see or hear is
actually part of the physical world, though not matter in the sense of
physics. Thus the whole question of the relation of mental occurrences
to objects grows very complicated, and cannot be settled by regarding
reference to objects as of the essence of thoughts. All the above
remarks are merely preliminary, and will be expanded later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account