Notional Objects
摘要
This chapter pursues two goals: firstly, to throw light both on the role of notional objects in thought economy and on how they are integrated in it; and secondly, the question whether notional objects do exist and, were they to exist, what kind of existence they would have. In the first part of chapter, the question to be dealt with is how notional objects become denizens of the agents’ thoughts and referential values of their languages’ language-to-world system. The focal point will be the question of how the experiences of those agents, as long as each is hooked to a specific world-situation or a life-trajectory, result in a coherent discourse. The indexical theory of proper names plays a central role in answering the question. The second part of the chapter aims to explain intentional objects’ mode of existence and what separates it from the one had by notional objects. To achieve it, I will lean on a few of Roman Ingarden’s ideas. I will hold that notional objects are intentional objects, though not merely intentional objects.