by Guillaume Fréchette
DRAFT ONLY, Final version forthcoming in Bonino, Cumpa, Jesson (eds), Defending Realism, Frankfurt, 201*
In the following paper, I will discuss the motives behind Franz Brentano’s judgment contents and the strategies... more
In the following paper, I will discuss the motives behind Franz Brentano’s judgment contents and the strategies offered by him to support them, suggesting that most of these strategies – based on his treatment of true negative existential judgments – are not akin to logical realism in spirit. More generally, I would like to suggest in this paper that although there definitely is a realist concern in Austrian philosophy regarding states of affairs, reducing their introduction to a realist concern is misguided. As shown by the case of Brentano, states of affairs were not always introduced in order to answer the question of what makes our assertions true, but rather to provide a psychological account of judgments that would help to distinguish between the two basic classes of acts: presentations and judgments. I will suggest that Brentano’s way of dealing with states of affairs actually shares some similarities with the way nominalists’ strategies concerning states of affairs are sometimes conducted.
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