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The attentive reader of Meinong's essay "Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung..." will notice that, from the very beginning, he introduces the concept of non-independence in relation to the facts of direct experience or perception. There must be a reason for Meinong's use of the negative forms "non-independence' and non "dependence' when quite acceptable terms from any dictionary are available. The reason is the following: we exist in a world in which observable events are independent of each other; that is, we live in a world which cannot be identified in a flux of experiences which are totally interconnected or — to use an expression by W. James — bound by "ubiquitous relations". Least of all do we exist in a world which fluctuates through continuous gradations which neither separate one event from another nor reduce themselves into definite borders between one thing and another, as happens in Bergson's metaphysics, where the task of fashioning this indistinct flux into "facts'is left to needs and to purely pragmatic exigencies. From the beginning, Meinong's thought assumes a world which is no more than what it actually is, when it is not being merely thought or represented, but when it is being carefully observed in an endeavour to avoid the distractions of a philosophical language corrupted by the idea that everything is within everything and that everything depends on everything else. Before it is problematized or even "spoken', Meinong's world is that collection of enumerations which any of us, at this moment-now, finds within his or her ascertainable horizon and considers in the spirit of one who has the task of filling an inventory. In short, Meinong's world is the world as it is.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8676-4_11

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