Alexius Meinong's Extraontology

Abstract

The notion of Ausersein/outbeing, proposed by Alexius Meinong, was for a long time in the shadow of the principle of the Ausersein of a pure object, which made it possible to make non-existent objects part of a judgment. This principle was adopted by many followers of Meinong within the framework of analytical philosophy, but the very concept of Ausersein was almost totally ignored. When it’s become an object of research, there appeared several interpretations of it. It was interpreted either as a way of describing the ontological status of non-existent objects, or as a basic property of all objects without exception. Dale Jacquette suggests interpreting Ausersein as extraontology, i.e. a metasemantic category that includes all items. In this article, we will analyse the arguments of modern interpreters of this notion and try to find out which interpretation is most correct.