Meinong-Arg Philosophers (Arguments of the Philosophers) by Grossmann Reinhardt

Author:Grossmann, Reinhardt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2010-07-12T23:00:00+00:00

This, in a nutshell, is Meinong’s argument for evidence. Certain unacceptable consequences can only be avoided, he is arguing, if we assume that there are evident judgments and that we can discern their evidence by means of further evident judgments. Furthermore, it is itself evident, as Meinong later adds, that an evident judgment cannot be false. Knowledge is thus distinguished from other kinds of judgment by this feature of evidence. Evidence is a characteristic of judgments, not of their objectives25

Granted that some judgments have this characteristic, the real problem with Meinong’s argument, it seems, consists in the requirement that we be able to discern this characteristic in further judgments.26 Meinong admits that this requirement is fulfilled to a rather imperfect degree; for, ‘It is a fact that doubt and error may arise over whether or not one judges in a given case with evidence.’27 This mental characteristic of judgments is thus not always obvious. According to Meinong, it may even happen that a person who makes an evident judgment overlooks its evidence. On the other hand, it may also happen that a certain objective, which under certain circumstances could be the intention of an evident judgment, is actually judged without evidence. This means that not all true judgments are evident judgments.

It is tempting to interpret Meinong’s theory of evidence as a view about certainty. And this, indeed, is how one of his readers understood the matter. In a letter to Meinong, Edith Landmann-Kalischer argues as follows. If judgments may appear to have evidence when they do not have it, and if judgments may seem to lack evidence when they actually have it, and if, furthermore, only additional inquiries can decide which is which, then we seem to be caught in a circle: evidence is presented as the criterion for the subsistence of objectives, but the subsistence of these objectives is also used as the criterion for the evidence-character of judgments. She concludes with the observation that either evidence is such a distinct experience that every possibility of error is excluded, and it is uniquely co-ordinated to truth, or evidence cannot be the ultimate criterion of truth, since it, in turn, requires to be checked by means of other intellectual operations.28

Meinong, in several letters, makes quite clear that this interpretation of his theory of evidence is mistaken.29 Evidence is not conceived of as an infallible criterion of truth. It does not guarantee to us, so to speak, that we cannot be mistaken. It does not yield certainty. It is not an infallible mark of truth or factuality, Rather, it merely distinguishes between certain mental acts, namely, acts of knowing, and others. ‘If knowing is that kind of experience,’ Meinong says, ‘by means of which we apprehend reality, then it seems to me quite natural that this experience must be different from one which is incapable of apprehending reality; for I do not even apprehend red and green through the same experience.’30 I shall return to this remark in a moment. First, though, let us take a closer look at the earlier quoted argument for evidence.

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