A crítica de Russell a Meinong na perspectiva de on denoting

Abstract

References to the early 20th-century debate involving Alexius Meinong and Bertrand Russell are quite common. Each of the contenders contributed an extremely important work to the development of recent philosophical thought. On the one hand, we have Meinong‟s 1904 On the Theory of Objects, on the other, Russell‟s famous 1905 paper On Denoting. Thus, I shall here attempt to reconstruct the basic tenets of both the theory of objects and the rival theory of descriptions. In the first part of the article, I will present Meinong‟s theory of objects, along with some considerations on the influence of Brentano‟s school. In the second part, I shall focus on Russell‟s theory of descriptions, emphasizing its relation with the prior work The Principles of Mathematics, from 1903. In closing, I will present an evaluation of each of the theories, arguing that their merits outweight the reciprocal criticisms. This is intended as to not contribute to the recurrent stigmatization of Meinong‟s theory, and also as an attempt to relate Russell‟s 1905 criticisms to his own theses in PoM