Filippo Casati, "Three Meinongs Plus One"

LLS
March 9, 2015
All Day
347 University Hall

Abstract: Paraphrasing Jorge Luis Borges (2010), thinkers walk through the infinite library of Babel trying to collect and classify intuitions, ideas and theories. Among those thinkers, some philosophers are particularly keen to collect and classify objects (Varzi 2005). But what is an object? Are all objects necessarily existent objects? Can we meaningfully refer to non-existent objects? What makes an object an object? What is the objecthood of an object (if there is any)?

In my talk, I will try to explain how a Meinongian philosopher would reply to those questions. I will introduce and summarize three ontological ways of being Meinongian starting with the so-called naive one. After analysing the main problems of this theory (Berto 2013), I will discuss other two ways of being Meinongian: the Nuclear way (Routley 1980, Parsons 1980) and the Modal one (Priest 2005, Berto 2013). Finally, I will present an original interpretation of Martin Heidegger's meta-ontology supporting the idea that the Heideggerian Nothingness (Das Nichts) can be interpreted as an expansion of the three Meinongian theories previously discussed (Heidegger 1977; Heidegger 1996; Heidegger 2002; Heidegger 2012).

Filippo Casati is a PhD student at University of St. Andrews.

To ask questions about accessibility or request accommodations, please contact Michelle Brown at 614-292-7914 or brown.930@osu.edu. Two weeks' advance notice will allow us to provide seamless access.