Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938) was an Austrian-born Polishphilosopher. He was a student ofFranz Brentano and the founder of theLvov-Warsaw School. His main work,On the Content and Object of Presentations(1894), established the need for the distinction between the contentand the object of a presentation within Brentanian theories of theintentionality of mental acts. The distinction is a psychological,non-platonistic counterpart of Frege's distinction between sense andreference. Other students of Brentano, notably Edmund Husserl andAlexius Meinong, integrated the distinction between content and objectin their works after the appearance of Twardowski's book. Twardowskispoke of contradictory objects before Meinong: he was the firstphilosopher to hold a theory of intentionality, truth, and predicationin which thinking and speaking about non-existents, includingcontradictions, involves presenting and naming non-existents,including contradictory objects. Like Meinong, Twardowski belonged toa tradition of non-idealistic German-language philosophy thatoriginated with Bernard Bolzano, and that influenced, via G. F. Stout,Moore and Russell's transition from idealism to analytic philosophy.After moving to Lvov (now Lviv) in 1895, Twardowski devoted himself toestablishing a tradition of scientific, i.e. rigorous and exactphilosophy in Poland inspired by Brentano's views rather than topublishing his own ideas. As a result, his publishedoeuvre,written in Polish and German, is relatively small. Twardowski'sunpublished manuscripts, often complete sets of lecture notes,constitute a considerable part of his philosophical corpus. Accordingto Roman Ingarden, assessments of Twardowski's achievements and hisrole in history should be considered incomplete and hypothetical aslong as they are based only on his published writings (Ingarden 1948,18). Important projects for the edition and dissemination ofTwardowski's manuscript material have been recently completed or arecurrently ongoing in Austria, France, Poland, Italy, and the Netherlands.^[1]

Twardowski was a sharp thinker and a writer of exemplary clarity. Hewrote on signs, on meaning and reference, and on indexicality andtruth, defending a non-platonistic view of time-independent truth; hewrote on the metaphysics of parts and wholes, on ethics, on thehistory of philosophy, on the relation between philosophy andpsychology, and, importantly, on metaphilosophy. In Twardowski's timespsychology was divided roughly in two camps: ‘Wundtian’experimental psychology and ‘Brentanian’ descriptivepyschology (see the entries onWundt andBrentano); although Twardowski sided mainly with Brentano's way of looking atpsychology, he lectured on themes from experimental psychology such asoptical illusion and established the first laboratory of empiricalpsychology in Poland. He developed a judgment-based theory ofknowledge, and he valued analysis as a fruitful method in philosophy.This notwithstanding, it is a widespread convinction that Twardowski'smost tangible success remains his extraordinary work as educator andinitiator of philosophical activities in Poland. Indeed, Twardowskiwas a talented teacher, like Brentano, and he exerted, through histeaching, a powerful influence on generations of young Polishphilosophers, such as Jan Łukasiewicz, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz,Stanisław Leśniewski (who, in turn, taught Alfred Tarski)and Tadeusz Kotarbiński. This influence regarded first of allmatters of method: Twardowski laid emphasis on ‘smallphilosophy’, namely on the detailed, systematic analysis ofspecific problems—including problems from the history ofphilosophy—characterised by rigor and clarity, rather than onthe edification of whole philosophical systems and comprehensiveworld-views.

• 1. Life
• 2. The Vienna Years: 1891–1895
  • 2.1 On the Content and Object of Presentations (1894): Context, Influence and Historical Background
  • 2.2 ‘The Presented’
  • 2.3 Nonexistent Objects
  • 2.4 Mereology: Parts of the Content and Parts of the Object
  • 2.5 The Position ofContent and Object in Twardowski'sOeuvre
• 3. The Lvov Years: 1895–1938
  • 3.1 On the so-called Relative Truths (1900)
  • 3.2 Actions and Products (1912)
• Bibliography
  • Primary Sources
  • Secondary Sources, References and Further Reading
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life

Kazimierz (or Kasimir) Jerzy Skrzypna-Twardowski, Ritter vonOgończyk was born to Polish parents on October 20, 1866 inVienna, which was then the capital of the Habsburg Empire. From 1877to 1885 he attended the Theresian Academy (Theresianum), the secondaryschool of Vienna's bourgeoise elite. Like many other high-schoolstudents at the time, his philosophy textbook was thePhilosophische Propedaeutik by Robert Zimmermann, Bolzano's‘favorite pupil’ (Herzensjunge). The book coveredempirical psychology, logic, and the introduction to philosophy.

In 1885 Twardowski enrolled at the University of Vienna. The yearafter he became a student of Franz Brentano, for whom he felt“the most sincere awe and veneration” and whom heremembered as “uncompromising and relentless in his quest forrigor in formulation, consistency in expression, and precision in theworking out of proofs” (Twardowski 1926, 20). In addition tophilosophy, Twardowski also studied history, mathematics, physics, andphysiology (with Sigmund Exner, the son of Bolzano's correspondentFranz Exner; ibid., 21). While a student, Twardowski was a closefriend of Alois Höfler, Christian von Ehrenfels, Josef KlemensKreibig, and Hans Schmidkunz—the latter initiated regularmeetings between younger and older students of Brentano and foundedthe Vienna Philosophical Society in 1888. Twardowski defended hisdoctoral dissertation,Idea and Perception—An EpistemologicalInvestigation of Descartes (published in 1892), in the Fall of1891. Since Brentano had resigned from his chair in 1880, Twardowski'sofficial PhD supervisor was Robert Zimmermann. In 1891–1892Twardowski spent time as a researcher both in Leipzig, where hefollowed courses by Wilhelm Wundt and Oswald Külpe, and inMunich, where he attended the lectures of Carl Stumpf, another pupilof Brentano. Between 1892 and 1895 Twardowski earned a living workingfor an insurance company and writing for German-language andPolish-language newspapers about philosophy, literature, and musicwhile working on his Habilitation thesis,On the Content and Objectof Presentations—A Psychological Investigation (1894), andteaching as Privatdozent at the University of Vienna, where he gavecourses in logic, on the immortality of the soul and apracticum on Hume'sEnquiry concerning HumanUnderstanding.

In 1895 Twardowski, then 29, was appointed asextraordinariusat the University of Lvov (then Lemberg, now Lviv, in PolishLwów), one of the two Polish-speaking Universities of theEmpire. He saw it as his duty to export Brentano's style ofphilosophizing to Poland and spent most of his time organizing Lvov'sphilosophical life. He reanimated the Lvov Philosophical Circle andgave lectures aimed at a broader public. He organized his teaching ingeneral ‘core courses’ in logic, psychology, ethics, andthe history of philosophy (given and updated every four years), andplaced less emphasis on specialized courses. Further, he inaugurated aphilosophical seminar and reading room, where he made his privatelibrary available to students, with whom he always maintained closeand frequent personal contacts. Relatively many of Twardowski'sstudents were women (among others, Izydora Dąmbska, MariaLutman-Kokoszyńska, and Seweryna Łuszczewska-Romahnowa, allof whom held philosophy chairs later). At a certain point, Twardowskihad managed to create three concentric circles of philosophicalinfluence: there was the Philosophical Circle, open to all universitydepartments, the Polish Philosophical Society (1904), open toprofessional philosophers, and the journalRuch Filozoficzny,conceived as an organ of promotion of philosophy at large and open toeveryone (1911). Twardowski also established a laboratory ofpsychology in 1907. As he writes, he was waging “a mostaggressive propaganda campaign on behalf of philosophy”(Twardowski 1926, 20). The campaign soon resulted in his lecturesbeing moved to the Great Concert Hall of the Lvov Musical Society whenthe number of students reached two thousand (in the mid-Twenties helectured in the Apollo movie theater, at 7 a.m. in the summer and 8a.m. in the winter, without academic quarter). All this amounted tothe establishment of a philosophical movement that soon became knownas a proper school: first, until the First World War, it was known asthe Lvov School; then, when the Russian-speaking University of Warsawagain became Polish-speaking, and Twardowski's students startinggetting positions and having their own students there, it was known asthe Lvov-Warsaw School (seeLvov-Warsaw School). The name is somewhat inaccurate, for Twardowski's students occupiedphilosophy chairs in all post-war Polish universities, not only inLvov and Warsaw. As has often been pointed out, what all students ofTwardowski had in common was not a particular set of views, but arather distinctive attitude to philosophical problems informed byprecision and clarity that they inherited from Twardowski's generalconception of methodology, and which he valued most highly. Accordingto Jordan, Twardowski led his students

to undertake painstaking analysis of specific problems which were richin conceptual and terminological distinctions, and directed rather tothe clarification than to the solution of the problems involved.(Jordan 1963, 7f)^[2]

In this, Twardowski's students learned what he had learned fromBrentano, namely

how to strive relentlessly after matter-of-factness, and how to pursuea method of analysis and investigation that, insofar as that ispossible, guarantees that matter-of-factness. He proved to me byexample that the most difficult problems can be clearly formulated,and the attempts at their solution no less clearly presented, providedone is clear within oneself. The emphasis he placed on sharpconceptual distinctions that did not lapse into fruitless nit-pickingwas an important guideline for my own writings. (Twardowski 1926, 20)

Twardowski was convinced that the philosophical way of thinking headvocated, namely precision in thought and writing and rigor inargumentation, was directly beneficial to practical life. It was withthe idea of proving exactly this point—by way of his personalexample—that he accepted to head various kinds of committees(among others, the University Lectures Series, the Society for Womenin Higher Education, the Society for Teachers in High Education, theFederation of Austrian Middle-School Teacher Candidates) and to beDean twice and Rector three times in a row (though he repeatedlyrefused to be Minister of Education). All these activities cost him alot of time: in fact, Twardowski's choice to be most of all aneducator and an organizer left him very little time for academicwriting. Besides, as he reports, Twardowski wasn't much interested inthe publication of his ideas. Thus, since he placed high demands onthe clarity and the logical cogency of philosophical work, he set outto publish only when it was required by external circumstances(Twardowski 1926, 30). As a consequence, in his Lvov years, Twardowskipublished little. He officially retired in 1930.

Twardowski died on February 11, 1938.

On Twardowski's life and education in Vienna up to 1895 (as well asTwardowski's early activity in Lvov and Vienna's ‘warparenthesis’ in 1914-1915) see Brożek 2012; Twardowski'sheritage and his achievements as an educator and organizer in Lvov,see Czeżowski 1948, Ingarden 1948; Ajdukiewicz 1959,Kotarbiński 1959 (in Polish: excerpts in English are to be foundin Brożek 2014), Dąmbska 1978, Woleński 1989, 1997 and1998. With special reference to psychology, see Rzepa and Stachowski1993.

2. The Vienna Years: 1891–1895

Twardowski's main publication in the Vienna period is, next to hisdoctoral dissertationIdea and Perception (1891), hisHabilitationsschrift,On the Content and Object ofPresentations (1894), Twardowski's most influential work.According to J. N. Findlay,Content and Object is“unquestionably one of the most interesting treatises in thewhole range of modern philosophy; it is clear, concentrated, andamazingly rich in ideas” (1963, 8).

2.1 On the Content and Object of Presentations (1894): Context, Influence and Historical Background

InContent and Object, Twardowski shares a number of Brentano'sfundamental theses. Five of them are particularly relevant here.According to the first and most important thesis, the essentialcharacteristic of mental phenomena, and what demarcates them fromphysical phenomena, is intentionality. We can sum it up asfollows:

Brentano's Thesis:
Every mental phenomenon has an object towards which it is directed.

Mental phenomena, also calledmental acts, fall into threeseparate classes (second thesis): presentations(Vorstellungen), judgments, and phenomena of love and hate. Inthe mental act of presentation, an object is presented; in a judgment,judged; in love and hate, loved or hated.^[3] Next (third thesis), mental phenomena are either presentations or arebased on presentations. We need to present an object in order to judgeit or appreciate it (though we do not need to judge or appreciate anobject that we might just present). Importantly, however (fourththesis), a judgment is not a combination of presentations, but amental actsui generis that accepts or rejects the object givenby the presentation at its basis (seeBrentano's Theory of Judgment). In keeping with this idea, all judgments (fifth thesis) can be aptlyexpressed in the existential form ‘A is’ (positivejudgment) or ‘A is not’ (negative judgment)(alternatively, ‘A exists’ or ‘A doesnot exist’). In both cases, the judgment has a so-called‘immanent’ object, given by the presentation, which issimplyA.

Both the notion of an object ‘immanent’ in a mental act,as well as, in all generality, the term ‘object’ inBrentano's Thesis, have an ambiguous character. Are the objects ofmental acts fully inside us or not? To correctly judge that the aetherdoes not exist means, in Brentanian terms, rejecting the aether whichis given to one's consciousness by a presentation. But if the aetheris an object immanent in me, fully inside my consciousness, what doesit mean, then, that I rejectit? Is it some mental entityinside my consciousness that I reject? But how could that possibly becorrect? In this case I most certainly have something in my head, andthat something exists. So it cannot be correct that I rejectit—for, ifthat is the aether I reject, thejudgment that the aether does not exist cannot be true. The aethershould be a physical space-filling substance,outside myconsciousness: that is what I am rejecting. But if that is what Ireject, it seems something must be there for me to be able to affirmthat it is not there. This is very puzzling. It was fundamentally dueto difficulties of this kind that Brentano's theory of judgment wassubjected, from 1889 onwards, to continuous objections by philosopherssuch as Sigwart and Windelband. Brentano engaged in the debate in hisdefense, as did his pupils Marty and Hillebrand. It is in this contextthat Twardowski'sHabilitationsschrift was conceived.Twardowski saw that notions such as ‘the object of apresentation’ and ‘immanent object’ were ambiguousbecause in Brentano's writings the object of a presentation wasidentified with that of content of a presentation (Twardowski 1926,10). InContent and Object, Twardowski set out to clarifyexactly the relationship between the two, with far-reachingimplications for Brentano's original position.

The distinction between content and object of a presentation was notnew in Twardowski's time. It was the most fundamental element ofBolzano 1837; it was later present in works of Bolzanian inspiration(Zimmermann 1853, Kerry 1885–1891; on Zimmermann see Winter1975, Morscher 1997, Raspa 1999); and it was also mentioned in worksof Brentanian inspiration (Höfler and Meinong 1890, Hillebrand1891, Marty 1884–1895: article 5, 1894). Nevertheless, thedistinction was by no means common lore. In particular, beforeTwardowski, no Brentanian had endorsed the distinction between contentand object in a way that offered a basis for solving the problems ofBrentano's theory, nor had anyone among the Brentanians devoted anyin-depth study to the issue, although the differences betweenBolzano's and Brentano's theories are such that reworking thedistinction in a Brentanian framework raises philosophical problemsthat are by no means trivial. A major difference concerns the role ofthe content of a presentation and its ontological status, since for aBrentanian the content of a presentation can only be somethingactually existing in one's mind. No Brentanian had thus realised infull the implications that reinterpreting the Bolzanian distinction ina Brentanian key would have. Carrying out this task, and thus helpingBrentano's theory out of its most pressing troubles, was Twardowski'soriginal contribution. He drew inspiration from arguments in favor ofthe content-object distinction present in Bolzano, but hereinterpreted them in a Brentanian framework to sustain conclusionsthat were opposite to Bolzano's and that were new for the Brentanians.One such conclusion, and a major implication of Twardowski's theory ofintentionality, is that there are no objectless presentations,presentations without an object, no matter how strange and improbablethat object is^[4]. Even presentations of contradictory objects have both content andobject. It is this thesis and the conclusions that Twardowski drewfrom it that have had a major impact on the development of Brentaniantheories of intentionality and that opened the way to ontologies asrich as that of Alexius Meinong. On the other hand, this position,together with Twardowski's identification of meaning withpsychological content, prompted Husserl's critical reactions and ledHusserl to the theory of intentionality set out in theLogicalInvestigations (1900/01) where Twardowski's distinction betweencontent and object is taken up (on this, see Schuhmann 1993; onTwardowski's influence and ‘triggering effect’ on Husserl,see Cavallin 1990, especially 28f). Twardowski's ideas were not onlyinfluential on the continent. Via G. F. Stout, who published ananonymous review ofContent and Object, inMind,Twardowski's ideas had an influence on Moore and Russell's transitionfrom idealism to analytic philosophy (van der Schaar 1996).

2.2 ‘The Presented’

The aim ofContent and Object is to distinguish “thepresented, in one sense, where it means the content, from thepresented in the other sense, where it is used to designate theobject” (Twardowski 1894, 4). Its main thesis is that in everymental act a content (Inhalt) and an object (Gegenstand)must be distinguished. This distinction enables Twardowski to clarifythat

Twardowski's Thesis:
Every mental phenomenon has a content and an object, and it isdirected towards its object, not towards its content.

On the basis of the distinction between content and object, Twardowskiis in turn able to clarify Brentano's notion of ‘object immanent(immanentes Objekt) in a presentation’ by identifying itwith the notion of content, and to clarify Brentano's notion of‘object of a presentation’ by identifying it with thenotion of object.

The distinction between the content and the object of a presentationrests on a psychological or epistemic difference which is, roughlyspeaking, the mental counterpart of Frege's distinction between senseand reference. The object of a presentation, says Twardowski usingZimmermann's terminology, isthat which is presented in apresentation; the content isthat through which the object ispresented. An important argument Twardowski gives in favor of thisdistinction—and which strengthens the analogy with Frege'sdistinction—is that we can present the same object in twodifferent ways by having two presentations with the same object butwith different content. Twardowski calls such presentationsinterchangeable presentations (Wechselvorstellungen).The presentation of the Roman Juvavum and the presentation of thebirthplace of Mozart have the same object, Salzburg; however, theircontent differs. To offer a rough analogy, think of an arrow pointingat an object: the object is what the arrow is pointing at, the contentis what in the arrow makes it the arrow it is, that is, its beingdirected to that object and not to another. The act is just the‘being directed towards’ of the arrow. Interchangeablepresentations are like two arrows pointing at the same object.

Twardowski thinks of the difference between act, content, and objectin the following way. An act of presentation is a mental event whichtakes place in our mind at a certain time. The content is literallyinside the mind, and exists dependently on the act, as long as the actdoes. The object is instead independent of the mental act (1894, 1, 4;§7, 36), and, generally speaking, not inside one's mind, althoughin some special cases the object of a presentation might be a mentalitem. This special case is the case in which the content of somepresentation plays the role of the object of another presentation.This is not infrequent, because any time we discuss the content of apresentation, describing its characteristics and its relations toother things, we are presenting it. And for this to be possible, thecontent must play the role of object in the presentation(s) we arehaving (what we would call second-order presentations). To use thearrow metaphor once again, second-order presentations, then, are likean arrow directed towards another arrow.

The way in which Twardowski relates mind and language makes thedistinction between content and object fairly easy to understand.Names are the linguistic counterpart of presentations. By‘names’ Twardowski means the categorematic terms oftraditional logic (‘Barack Obama,’ ‘The President ofthe United States,’ ‘black,’‘man,’‘he’). A name has three functions:first, a name makes known that in the mind of the person using thename an act of presentation is taking place; secondly, a name meanssomething; thirdly, it names an object. Twardowski takes the meaningof a name to be the content of the presentation that, as the namemakes known, is taking place in the speaker (§3), that is,Twardowski takes meaning to be something mental and individual. Thisholds,mutatis mutandis, also for judgments. In this sense, inContent and Object the semantic sphere is dependent on themental sphere. This trait qualifies Twardowski's position aspsychologistic (seePsychologism: PA3). Although his position on meaning underwent a development,Twardowski never adhered to a platonistic conception of meaning likeBolzano or Frege did.

If all this is intuitive, why are the object and the content of apresentation conflated? Twardowski maintains that the reason whycontent and object are often identified comes, among others, from alinguistic ambiguity: both the content and the object are said to be‘presented’ in a presentation (§4). Twardowski offersan analysis of the ambiguity of the term ‘presented’ byappealing to the linguistic distinction betweenmodifying andattributive (or determining) adjectives, and he illustrates itwith an analogy between the act of presenting an object and the act ofpainting a landscape. When a painter paints a landscape, she alsopaints a painting: so we can say that the painting and the landscapeare both painted. But in this situation ‘paintedlandscape’ can have two very different meanings. In the firstmeaning of ‘painted’, a painted landscape is a landscape;in the second meaning of ‘painted’ a painted landscape isnot a landscape, but a painting (like in Magritte'sLa trahison desimages (1928–9): it is a painted pipe we are looking at, nota pipe). In the first case, ‘painted’ is used in anattributive sense (the landscape is a portion of nature that happensto be painted by a painter in a painting); in the second case‘painted’ is used in a modifying sense (that in which,looking at the painting in a museum, someone may say: this is alandscape!). The painted landscape in the modifying sense is apainting, and thus identical with the painting painted in theattributive sense. Analogously, in an act of presentation, the objectcan be, like the painted landscape, said to be ‘presented’in two senses. The object presented in the modifying sense isidentical with the content presented in the attributive sense: it isdependent on the act of presentation, and it is what we mean by‘the object immanent in the act’; the object presented inthe attributive sense is the object of the presentation, what happensto be presented in a presentation, and what is independent of the actof presentation.

2.3 Nonexistent Objects

According to a Brentanian conception of judgment, when we judge, theobject is given to us by an act of presentation. Given this fact,Twardowski's analysis of ‘presented’ in terms of modifyingvs. attributive adjectives is fundamental to understand what isexactly ‘judged in a judgment.’^[5] For it is not only in presentations that we can distinguish act,content and object, but also in judgments. When we pass a judgment, weeither accept or reject an object through a content. All judgmentshave a form which can be linguistically expressed as ‘The objectA exists’ or ‘The object A does not exist.’ Theobject of judgment (A) is what is judged in a judgment. This object isthe object of the presentation at the basis of the judgment, it is notthe content of the presentation; it is the object presented in theattributive sense, not in the modifying sense. The content of ajudgment is the existence or non-existence of the object presented. Itmight seem strange at first to hear Twardowski say that the content ofa judgment is the (non-)existence of the object, but Twardowski hassomething like the following in mind: we judge about the object Athat it exists (orthat it does not exist). Twardowski'sanalysis clarifies what is going on when we judge, in a Brentaniantheory of judgment, that the aether does not exist. Judging that theaether does not exist means rejecting a physical space-fillingsubstance outside my consciousness. The object of this judgment is notmental. However, this does not mean that there is nothing inside myconsciousness: there is a mental content, through which the aether ispresented and judgedas non-existing. That content, present inme, however, exists; it is the aether itself that does not exist.

For a theory of judgment like the one sketched above to work, theobject we judge must be the very object we present. Therefore,Twardowski's thesis must be understood in the strong sense that thereare no presentations which do not have an object: if a presentationdid not have an object, we would not have an object to judge asexisting or non-existing. It is for this reason that a crucial part ofContent and Object is devoted to defending this claim, and toshowing that, despite appearances, every presentation has an object(§5). This is like saying, coming back to our arrow metaphor,that every arrow points at something. Twardowski's strategy is to showthat presentations which are normally deemed by others to beobjectless—i.e., arrows that do not point to anything—arenot such. There exist no presentations without an object: there arepresentations whose object does not exist. Twardowski gives a numberof arguments for his position. Of all these arguments, the key one isan argument based on the three functions of names in language.

If someone uses the expression: ‘oblique square,’ then hemakes known that there occurs in him an act of presentation. Thecontent, which belongs to this act, constitutes the meaning of thisname. But this name does not only mean something, it also designatessomething, namely, something which combines in itself contradictoryproperties and whose existence one denies as soon as one feelsinclined to make a judgment about it. Something is undoubtedlydesignated by the name, even though this something does not exist.(§5, 23)

On the basis of this reasoning and a linguistic analysis of how‘nothing’ functions in language Twardowski rejectsBolzano's claim that ‘nothing’ is an objectlesspresentation by showing that ‘nothing’ is asyncategorematic expression (like ‘and,’ ‘or,’and ‘the’) not a categorematic one. If an expression isnot a categorematic expression, it is not a name; but if an expressionis not a name, it does not need to have three functions. To every namethere corresponds a presentation and vice versa; if an expression isnot a name, then there is no presentation corresponding to it. Ifthere is no presentation corresponding to ‘nothing’because ‘nothing’ is not a name, the question of itsobject does not arise. This argument has been said to anticipate by 37years Carnap's analysis of Heidegger's ‘The nothing itselfnothings.’ (Woleński 1998, 11). The comparison shouldhowever not make one think that Twardowski shared Carnap's attitudetowards metaphysics (see 2.4 below.)

Another argument given by Twardowski for the thesis that everypresentation has an object is based on the different ontologicalstatus of act, content, and object of a presentation. The act and thecontent always exist; and, in fact, they always existtogether,forming a whole in the mind, a unified mental reality, though thecontent has a dependent existence on the act.^[6] The object may or may not exist. Suppose you have the followingpresentations: the presentation of Barack Obama, that of a possibleobject such as the aether, and that of an impossible object, such as adodecahedron with thirteen sides or a round square. The objects ofthese presentations (namely Barack Obama, the aether, and the roundsquare) differ greatly, but they are still all objects. Barack Obamais an existing object; the aether and the dodecahedron with thirteensides are non-existing objects. When we present an object such as adodecahedron with thirteen sides or a round square, the object, thatwhich is named, is different from the content because the contentexists and the object does not. It is the object, not the content,that is rejected in the negative existential judgment ‘the roundsquare does not exist,’ for it is the object that does notexist; the content ‘exists in the truest sense of theword’ (§5, 24).

A third argument rests on the difference between being presented andexisting (§5, 24). Those who claim that there are objectlesspresentations, says Twardowski, confuse ‘being presented’with ‘existing.’ To reinforce his point, Twardowski offersseveral observations, among others, one resting on the claim that itis the object which is the bearer of contradictory properties, not thecontent. This claim will be described later by Meinong and Mally asthe principle of the independence of Being (existence) from Being-So(bearing properties). When we present an object which does not existbecause it is contradictory, i.e. impossible, we need notimmediately notice that that object has contradictoryqualities: it is possible that we discover this successively byfurther reasoning. Suppose now that only presentations with possibleobjects are accepted. Then, Twardowski continues, the presentation ofsomething contradictory would have an object for as long as we did notnotice the contradiction; the moment we discovered it, thepresentation would cease to have an object. What would then bear thecontradictory qualities? Since the content can't be what bears thecontradictory qualities, it is the object itself that bears them; butthen, this object has to be what is presented.^[7]

The arguments above ultimately rest on the idea that every name hasthree functions. This assumption can also be seen, in turn, as restingon an even more basic idea, namely that in all generality‘object’ equals ‘being capable to take up the roleof object in a presentation,’ thus an object is anything thatcan be presented; and anything that can be named by a name (§3,12; §5, 23; §7, 37). Yet, saying that an object is anythingthat can be named by a name and that a name always has the function ofnaming are two sides of the same coin, as are the claim that an objectis anything that can be presented by a presentation and the claim thata presentation always has an object. This cluster of correlativeassumptions is the core of the theory. Only when this core is acceptedcan the other claims put forward by Twardowski (namely (1) that‘being presented’ is not the same as‘existing’ and (2) that objects can possess propertieseven though they do not exist) become convincing parts of a cogenttheory of intentionality. One might note, however, that it is a theoryfor which there are no non-circular arguments, for the theory isacceptable only to those who are already convinced that there are noempty names, that all categorematic terms, including ‘roundsquare,’ ‘aether,’, ‘Pegasus,’ etc. havethe function of naming something, not only the function of beingmeaningful.

As is known, the theory, in Meinong's version, will be the criticaltarget of Russell's ‘On Denoting’ (1905).

2.4 Mereology: Parts of the Content and Parts of the Object

Metaphysics is importantly present inContent and Object, andparticularly important are the mereological considerations Twardowskioffers. According to Ingarden,Content and Object offered“the first consistently constructed theory of objectsmanifesting a certain theoretical unity since the times ofscholasticism and of the ‘ontology’ of ChristianWolff” (1948, 258). One cannot literally agree with Ingardenconsidering the Leibnizian metaphysics in Bolzano'sAthanasia(1827)—hidden in the two-thousand pages of theWissenschaftslehre—and Brentano's work in mereology.Nevertheless, if the impact ofContent and Object is comparedwith that of Bolzano's or Brentano's metaphysics, things aredifferent.Content and Object was a fundamental contribution totherenaissance of Aristotelian metaphysics—metaphysicsin the sense of a general theory of objects—which led to bothMeinong's theory of objects and to Husserl's formal ontology of partsand wholes in the Third Logical Investigation. The story continues,later, with Leśniewski's mereology and Ingarden's ontology. Theheritage ofContent and Object also includes the fact thatTwardowski's pupils had a relation to metaphysics which was vastlydifferent from the approach that was typical, for instance, of theVienna circle (see Łukasiewicz 1936). In Poland, metaphysics wasnot rejected as nonsense, but accepted as a respectable area ofinvestigation to be explored using rigorous methods, includingaxiomatics (see Smith 1988, 315–6; on Twardowski andmetaphysics, see Kleszcz 2016)

Like anyone in pre-set theoretical times, Twardowski has a very broadnotion of (proper) part, covering much more than just the pieces of anobject. Twardowski distinguishes material and formal parts of anobject. The material parts of an object comprise not only the piecesof an object, but also anything that can be said to be a component ofit, such as the series 1, 3, 5 is composed of three numbers (namely,1, 3, and 5). Among the material parts of an object are also itsqualities (Beschaffenheiten) such as extension, weight, color,etc. (1894, §10, 58). The formal parts of an object are therelations (Beziehungen) obtaining between the object and itsmaterial parts (primary formal parts) as well as the relationsobtaining among the material parts themselves (secondary formal parts)(1894, §9, 48 and ff.; §10, 51 and ff.).

In keeping with the tradition, Twardowski calls thematter ofan object the sum of its material parts and theform of anobject the sum of its formal parts. A special kind of primary formalparts are (relations of) properties (Eigenschaften): these arerelations between an object as a whole and one of its material parts,consisting in the whole's having the part at issue (1894, §10,56). Since Twardowski accepts that among the parts of an object thereare the relations in which that object is in, Twardowski's mereologyis, strictly speaking, an atomless mereology: there are no simples(1894, §12, 74). However, we can speak of atoms if we restrictourselves to material parts only (for instance, in the case of thenumber one, we can say it is a simple object only if we consider the(proper) material parts it has, namely zero).

The distinction between content and object enables Twardowski toclearly distinguish conceptualizations regarding parts of the objectfrom conceptualizations regarding the parts of the content (as specialcases of objects). This, in turn, enables Twardowski to offersophisticated considerations, leading him among others to fix clearlythe notion of the characteristic mark (Merkmal,nota) ofan object. Twardowski callselements the parts of the contentof a presentation; he callscharacteristic marks the parts ofthe object of a presentation (§8, 46–7); the characteristicmarks of the object are presented through the elements of the content.The content of a presentation is the collection of the presentationsof the characteristic marks of the object of the presentation. Thenotion of characteristic mark is a relative one because only the partsof an object that happen to be actually presented in the content of apresentation in someone's mind qualify as its characteristics.

For example, one can be presented with a table without thinking of theshape of its legs; in this case, the shape of the table legs is a(material, metaphysical) constituent (of second order), but not acharacteristic of the table. But if one thinks, while being presentedwith the table, of the shape of its legs, then the shape had to beconsidered a characteristic of the table. (§13, 86; Eng. transl.81).

According to Twardowski, it is not possible to present all the partsof an object in a presentation. Given that the number of parts of anobject is boundless, and that we can only present a finite amount ofcharacteristics, the number of the elements of the content istherefore lower than that of the parts of the object (§12,78–9; on this point Twardowski is again indebted to Bolzano(Wissenschaftslehre, §64). It follows that no adequatepresentation is possible of any object (§13, 83).

Like Brentano had done, Twardowski distinguishes, with respect tomaterial parts, metaphysical from physical and logical parts on thebasis of a notion of dependence and separability.^[8] However, differently from Brentano, Twardowski does not construe thenotion of dependence in terms of existence of the objects involved.His notion of dependence needs also to be applicable to non-existingobjects. Consequently, Twardowski construes the notion of dependenceof the parts of an object in terms of modes ofpresentabilityof the parts of an object, i.e. as existence of the parts of thecontent of a presentation (which always exists). The inseparability ofa partp₁ from a partp₂ of anobjectO is not construed in the sense that it is not possibleforp₁ to exist withoutp₂existing, but in the sense that in the content of the presentation ofan objectO the part that representsp₁cannot exist without the part that representsp₂existing, that is, both must be elements of the content of thepresentation of the objectO.

Two material parts of the content of a presentation ofA andofB are mutually separable iffA can be presentedwithout presentingB and vice versa. Mutually separable partsare physical parts. For instance, the parts of the content of thepresentations of the pages and the cover of a book are mutuallyseparable.

Two material parts of the content of a presentation ofA andofB are one-sidedly separable iffA can bepresented withoutB, but not vice versa. Logical parts areone-sidedly separable: for instance, we can have a presentation ofcolor without the presentation of red, but not vice versa.

Two material parts of the content of a presentation ofA andofB are mutually inseparable (but yet distinguishable) iffthey are neither mutually nor one-sidedly separable. Metaphysicalparts are mutually inseparable, e.g. you cannot present separately thebeing colored and the being extended of something colored andextended, although those parts arein abstracto distinguishablein the object.

On Twardowski's mereology see Cavallin (1990), Rosiak (1998) andSchaar (2015, 68 and ff.)

2.5 The Position ofContent and Object in Twardowski'sOeuvre

Content and Object should be seen as part of a bigger researchaim that Twardowski had set for himself. This included developing atheory of concepts and a theory of judgment.

InContent and Object, Twardowski had given a coherent accountof how judgments such as ‘The aether does not exist’ workon the basis of the systematization of the notion of ‘object ofa presentation.’ That systematization however had implicationsfor the theory of judgment which went far beyond the account ofjudgments such as ‘The aether does not exist.’ AlthoughContent and Object contains little on the theory of judgment,Twardowski was well aware of those implications. A letter to Meinongis evidence that Twardowski was developing a theory of judgment whichcontinued the work initiated byContent and Object, whose firstmain outline can be found in Twardowski's manuscriptsLogik1894/5 andLogika 1895/6 (Betti & van der Schaar 2004,Betti 2005).

In his ‘Self-Portrait’ Twardowski also remarks that it wasthe question of the nature of concepts that brought him toContentand Object. The issue ensued from Twardowski's research on aparticular concept in his doctoral dissertation, Descartes' concept ofclear and distinct perception. Since concepts are a species ofpresentations, Twardowski saw that he had first to investigatepresentations in general, and thus to dispel the ambiguities that thenotion of ‘the presented’ carried with itself (Twardowski1926, 10). Work on concepts is to be found in the manuscriptLogik1894/5, where concepts are defined as presentations withwell-defined content, inImages and Concepts (1898) and inThe Essence of Concepts (1924), where presentations withwell-defined content (i.e. fixed by a definition) are called‘logical concepts.’ An important role in Twardowski'stheory of concepts and definitions is played by the notion ofpresented judgment, i.e. judgments not really passed, but merelypresented (in the modified sense). Twardowski's investigation of thenotion of (logical) concept is important to understand his attitudetowards objectivity and unicity of meaning, i.e. his relationship topsychologism on the one hand, and the role of the theorizations inContent and Object of two notions: that of the object of ageneral presentation (which disappears for instance inLogik1894/5) and that of indirect presentations on the other hand.

3. The Lvov Years: 1895–1938

Among the issues that Twardowski only sketched or left open in hisVienna years and investigated later are, next to theories of truth andknowledge (Theory of Knowledge, 1925; see Schaar 2015, Chapter5.3), the relationship between time and truth (‘On the So-calledRelative Truths,’ 1900) and that between linguistic meaning andthe content of mental acts (‘Actions and Products,’ 1912).Particularly important themes to mention are the relationship betweena priori or deductive sciences,a posteriori orinductive sciences and the notion of grounding (‘A Priori and APosteriori Sciences,’ 1923), and the relation betweenphilosophy, psychology and physiology (‘Psychology vs.Physiology and Philosophy’, 1897b). Well worth mentioning areTwardowski's writings on issues of philosophical methodology(‘On Clear and Obscure Philosophical Style,’ 1919/20;‘Symbolomania and Pragmatophobia,’ 1921). He also left arelatively substantial corpus of writings in ethics (‘On EthicalSkepticism’, 1905-24).

Twardowski's publications during his Lvov years are in Polish, but ofthose writings that Twardowski considered as important academicpublications we normally also have German versions. Especiallyimportant and influential among these are ‘On the So-CalledRelative Truths’ (1900) and ‘Actions and Products’(1912).

3.1 On the so-called relative truths (1900)

‘On the So-Called Relative Truths’ (henceforth:Relative Truths) is a work of fundamental importance for thedevelopment of the idea of absolute truth in Poland. Scholars havedeemed its impact to have reached as far as Tarski's work on truth(Wolenski & Simons 1989). It certainly influenced the1910–1913 discussion on future contingents which involvedKotarbiński, Leśniewski, and Łukasiewicz, which servedlater as metaphysical foundation for Łukasiewicz's three-valuedlogic (Woleński 1990). Twardowski's position is distinctive andinteresting because it is a non-platonistic theory of absolute truth,though it is difficult to say exactly what place it occupies withrespect to Leśniewski's nominalistic or to Tarski's platonisticapproach (for these labels see Simons 2003: section 2.) One of thereasons why it was important for Twardowski to defend ananti-relativistic notion of truth was that relativism jeopardizes thepossibility of constructing ethics as a science based on principles(on Twardowski's ethics, see Paczkowska-Łagowska 1977). This aspect is important because Twardowski is usually characterizednot as a builder of systems, but as championing ‘smallphilosophy.’ This is correct, in some sense, but it should notmake one mistakenly think that there is no unity sought inTwardowski's thought, or that his works are separate small occasionalcontributions without overarching ideas in the background governingtheir development.

InRelative Truths, Twardowski opposes Brentano's ideas on therelationship between time and truth, and sides instead with Bolzano's views.^[9] By ‘truth,’ Twardowski means a true judgment and by‘absolute truth’ he means a judgment true independently ofany circumstance, time, and place.

The main claim ofRelative Truths is that every truth (falsity)is absolute, i.e. no judgment changes its truth-value relatively tocircumstance, time, or place. Although Twardowski's treatment isgeneral, and is not confined to the relation between truth and time,it is his ideas on the latter that were particularly important forlater discussions. We can characterize Twardowski's view in thisrespect as the view that a judgment is truefor ever andsince ever, that is:

Omnitemporal truth:
For any judgmentg, ifg is true at a timet, then it is true also at an arbitrary timet′ past or future with respect tot (the sameapplies,mutatis mutandis, to falsity).

Twardowski's aim is to defend this claim against those who argue thattruth is relative on the basis of examples of elliptical sentences(such as ‘I don't’), sentences with indexicals (‘myfather is called Vincent’), sentences of general form(‘radioactivity is good for you’), and sentences aboutethical principles (‘it is wrong to speak against one's ownconvictions’). Those who argue that truth is relative on thisbasis, says Twardowski, make a mistake. They confuse judgments, whichare the real truth-bearers, with the (type) sentences expressing them.But sentences are merely the external expression of judgments, andoften they do not express everything one has in mind when judging. Forhuman speech has a purely practical task; it can perfectly serve itscommunicative purposes and yet be strictly speaking ambiguous orelliptic.

Twardowski's main point is that we can disambiguate ambiguoussentences or integrate elliptic ones in such a way that they becomethe appropriate means of expression of the judgment that they actuallyand strictly speaking express (Twardowski 1900, 156)—we can makesentences eternal, as we would say in our Post-Quinean age. Once weshow that eternalization is possible, the confusion on whichrelativists rely is dispelled. For instance, if standing in Lvov onthe High Castle Hill, I assert that it is raining,

I do not have in mind just any rain, falling at any place and time,but I voice a judgment about the rain fallinghere and now(Twardowski 1900, 151).

One could object that the true sentence ‘it is raining here andnow’ is relative because it may become false, i.e. be true whenuttered in Amsterdam and become false when uttered in the Dry Valleyin Antarctica. Twardowski observes that this impression is, again,only due to the ambiguity of the indexicals ‘here and now’in the sentence. Take thus the sentence

(i) It is raining here and now,

when uttered in Lvov, on 1 March 1900, in accordance with theGregorian calendar, at noon, Central European Time, on the High CastleHill. That sentence expresses the same judgment as

(i*) On 1 March 1900, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, atnoon, Central European Time, it is raining in Lvov, on the High CastleHill and in its vicinity.

According to Twardowski, the difference between the two sentences isonly in their brevity and their practical use. Take now thesentence

(ii) It is raining here and now,

when uttered in Krakow on 2 March 1900, in accordance with theGregorian calendar, at noon, Central European Time, on the CastleHill. That sentence expresses the same judgment as

(ii*) On 2 March 1900, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, atnoon, Central European Time, it is raining in Krakow, on the CastleHill and in its vicinity.

It's not that we have in (i) and (ii) one and the same judgment; wehavethe same sentence, which expresses twodifferentjudgments, (i*) and (ii*). Therefore, one cannot argue that thesame judgment can turn from true to false.

It is apparent that [the judgment expressed by (i) and (i*)], which[...] asserts that it is raining, is true not only at a particulartime and place, but is always true. (Twardowski 1900, 153)

[...] Only sentences can be said to be relatively true; yet the truthof a sentence depends on the truth of the judgment expressed by thatsentence; usually a given sentence can express various judgments, sometrue, some false, and it is thus relatively true because it expressesa true judgment only under certain conditions, i.e. if we consider itas an expression of a judgment which is true (Twardowski 1900, 169).

Notice that Twardowski is not saying that judgments can be integratedorcompleted: the judgments we formulate in our head, and whichare true or false, arecomplete and fully unambiguous. It isfor this reason that he can think that the procedure of completingsentences as expressions of judgments can be carried out.

An important thing to notice inRelative Truths is thatTwardowski, differently from what Meinong and Łukasiewicz were todo, did not question the principle of contradiction or the principleof the excluded middle.

Twardowski's idea that one can have absolute truth in an all-changingworld has been recently taken up by Simons (2003).

3.2 Actions and Products (1912)

For quite some time Twardowski thought that logic was dependent onpsychology^[10], and continued to hold the psychologistic idea of meaning as mentalcontent fromContent and Object. In his‘Self-Portrait,’ Twardowski says that he changed his mindin an anti-psychologistic sense because of Husserl'sLogicalInvestigations (1900/01).^[11] ‘Actions and Products’ (1912) is the first printed workwhere Twardowski favors an ‘Aristotelian’ view of idealmeaning, i.e. of meaningin specie, which he associates withthat of Husserl's in theLogical Investigations.

In marking the line of demarcation between logic and psychology on thebasis of the distinction act/product which underlies his theory ofmeaning, Twardowski writes:

Indeed, a rigorous demarcation of products from actions has alreadycontributed enormously to liberating logic from psychologicalaccretions. (Twardowski 1912, §45, 132)

Twardowski's mature theory of meaning is connected with the rigorousdefinition of the distinction betweenactions andproducts of actions (while inRelative Truths he speaksof judgments as actions or products). On the basis of grammaticalanalyses, purporting however to show logically salient differences,Twardowski establishes a basic distinction betweenphysical,psychical (i.e.mental), andpsychophysical actions andtheir products. The analysis is reminiscent in philosophical style ofthat of ‘the presented’ inContent and Object,though more general, and a nice example of the method which has becomenow strongly associated with analytic philosophy.

The relationship between an action and what results from it, itsproduct, is exemplified linguistically in the relationship between averb and the corresponding noun as internal complement (Twardowski1912, §1, 10; §8, 107):

	Act	Product
Physical	running	run
Mental	judging	judgment
Psychophysical	speaking	speech

A psychophysical product (e.g., a speech) differs from a mentalproduct (e.g., a judgment) because it is perceptible to senses; itdiffers from a physical product (e.g., a run) because in thepsychophysical action which produces it (speaking) a mental action isalso involved, which has bearing on the physical action, and thus onits product (§10). In some cases, a psychophysical productexpresses a mental product; for instance, a sentence is apsychophysical product which expresses a mental product, ajudgment.

Twardowski points out that the meaning of the noun‘judgment,’ like other nouns (‘mistake’), isambiguous between action and product. A judgment in the sense of theaction (a judging) is ajudgment in the psychological sense,while a judgment in the sense of the product is ajudgment in thelogical sense (§14) (a third meaning of‘judgment’ is that of ‘disposition, aptitude to makecorrect judgments,’ §15).

Twardowski points out that he uses ‘judgment’ in the senseof ‘judgment in the logical sense,’ i.e. the product ofthe action of judging, and he clarifies that what he means now by‘judgment-product’ is the content of judgment inContent and Object (§24, n. 37, 117). Exactly as it wasthe case there, the judgment exists as long as someone performs thecorresponding action of judging; for this reason, it is called anon-enduring product (§23, 116).

Non-enduring products do not exist in actuality separately from thecorresponding actions, but only in conjunction with them; we can onlyanalyze them abstractly apart from these actions. On the other hand,enduring products can and do exist in actuality apart from the actionsowing to which they arise (Twardowski 1912, n. 41, 116).

Enduring products last longer than the action which producesthem; they originate from a transformation or a rearrangement ofpre-existing physical material in the course of the action: footprintsin the sand are enduring products arising from the change ofconfiguration of grains of sand (the material) as a product of theaction of walking applied to that material (Twardowski points out thatthe product is not the grains of sand arranged in some way, but thearrangement itself, §26). If actions are processes, non-enduringproducts areevents whereas enduring products presentthemselves asthings (§ 27). Among enduring products, wefind physical products (such as footprints in the sand) andpsychophysical products (such as paintings). A mental product, such asa judgment, is never enduring (§29), but it can have itsexpression in an enduring psychophysical product, such as awritten sentence.

The process of preserving non-enduring products such as judgments inenduring products such as written sentences is a complex one(§37), and goes in two steps.

In step one a spoken sentence is produced which expresses a judgment,in such a way that the judgment is the meaning of the sentence and thesentence is the sign of the judgment. The process goes as follows. Anon-enduring mental product, a judgment (together with the action ofjudging), which is non-perceptible, gives rise—by being its(partial) cause—to a non-enduring psychophysical product, aspoken sentence, which is perceptible. In this case, the spokensentence is the expression of the judgment (§30). Now,ifthe spoken sentence becomes itself a partial cause ofanotherjudgment, which (we would say) is a token of the same type of theinitial judgment (by partially causing an action of judging whichproduces that other judgment in another person or at a different timein the same person),then the spoken sentence can also count asthesign of the judgment, and the judgment as themeaning of the expression (§32, §34). The conditionjust sketched in the antecedent is fundamental: without it, a sentencep might very well have been an expression of a judgmentj once (j was a partial cause ofp), but nomeaning is linked withp: for, ifp is incomprehensible,namely it is not a partial cause of another judgmentj′,then nothing can be said to be its meaning (§31).

Step two is topreserve the spoken sentence (a non-enduringpsychophysical product) in an enduring psychophysical products, a written sentence.^[12] When a judgment is preserved in this way, it has in the sign anexistence calledpotential. This is because the sign may at anymoment cause the formation of an identical or similar judgment(Twardowski 1912, §34), and it will be able to (partially) causejudgments as long as it lasts. In consequence of this,‘meaning’ can therefore also mean

the capacity to evoke a mental product in the individual on whom apsychophysical product acts as a sign of that mental product, or, morebriefly, the capacity to bring the corresponding mental product toawareness. (Twardowski 1912, n. 51, 125.)

Once they are preserved in this two-step way, non-enduring productsassume not only the illusory appearance of enduring products, but alsoof products which are somehowindependent from the actionswhich produce them. The appearance of independence is made stronger bythe fact that we do as if one and the same judgment-product existed inall individuals, althoughmany judgment-products are elicitedby the written sentence-product. All these many judgments aredifferent from each other, but, insofar as we consider a judgment tobethe meaning of a sentence which is its sign

there must be a group of common attributes in these individual mentalproducts. And it is precisely these common attributes (in which theseindividual products accord) that we ordinarily regard as the meaningof the psychophysical product, as the content inherent in it, providedof course that these common attributes correspond to the intent withwhich that psychophysical product was utilized as a sign. [...] Thus,we speak of only a single meaning of a sign—barring cases ofambiguity—and not of as many meanings as there are mentalproducts that are aroused or capable of being aroused, by that sign inthe persons on whom it acts. Now, a meaning conceived in this matteris no longer a concrete mental product, but something at which wearrive by way of an abstraction performed on concrete products.(Twardowski 1912, §39, 128)

To this passage, Twardowski appends a note referring to Husserl'snotion of ideal meaning. The relationship between Husserl's andTwardowski's notion of meaning as well as the status of Twardowski'sunique meaning has been and remains object of discussion (seePaczkowska-Łagowska 1979, Buczyńska-Garewicz 1980, Placek1996, Brandl 1998, Schaar 2015, 108). These matters should beconsidered as yet unsettled.

The introduction of the notion of the unique meaning of a sentenceleads Twardowski to make a further distinction between substitutive(artefacta) and non-substitutive judgments. Substitutive judgmentsaren't real judgments, but fictitious ones. The latter are in fact thepresented judgments ofContent and Object; the difference isthat inActions and Products, Twardowski applies the concept ofsubstitutive judgments explicitly to logic: the sentences uttered orwritten by logicians-at-work are not sentences which express or haveas meanings judgments which are really passed by them, but onlypresented judgments, produced thus by actions ofpresenting—which are different actions from actual judging acts.This happens for instance when a logician constructs a valid syllogismmade up of materially false sentences to give examples of formallyvalid inferences (§44, 130). In this case, the logician does notactually judge that all triangles are square, that all squares areround, and that all triangles are round, but she merelypresents the corresponding judgments. The sentences ‘alltriangles are square,’ ‘all squares are round,’ and‘all triangles are round’ are not real sentences, butartificial ones, because they are “expressions of artificialproducts that substitute for actual judgments, namely merelyrepresented judgments” (Ibid.). The meanings of these artificialsentences are artificial judgments, because they are merely presented,not passed. These artificial judgments are the subject-matter of logic(on this point, Twardowski is again indebted to Bolzano). Operatingwith surrogate sentences such as ‘all triangles aresquare’ constitutes the most extreme example of “makingmental products independent of the actions owing to which alone theycan truly (actually) exist” (§44, 131).

Twardowski's distinction between acts and products is presently beingre-discovered in act-based theories of semantic content, within whichTwardowski's notion of product is considered an interestingalternative to the notion of proposition (as the mind-independent andlanguage-independent content of assertions, meaning of sentences,primary truthbearer, and object of propositional attitudes). SeeMoltmann 2014.

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• Kazimierz Twardowski on the Content and Object of Presentations at Raul Corazzon's Theory and History of Ontology site

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Bolzano, Bernard |Brentano, Franz |Brentano, Franz: theory of judgement |Husserl, Edmund |Ingarden, Roman |intentionality |Leśniewski, Stanisław |Lvov-Warsaw School |Meinong, Alexius |mereology |nonexistent objects |psychologism |Wundt, Wilhelm Maximilian

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Lieven Decock, Wim de Jong, Iris Loeb, Venanzio Raspa,Stefan Roski, Maria van der Schaar, two anonymous reviewers, the SEPeditor Ed Zalta, and to my students Koen Kramer, Remco Reisig andJeroen Smid for helpful comments on an earlier version. Work on thisentry has been supported by ERC Starting Grant TRANH Project No203194.