Reinhardt Grossmann

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Reinhardt Seigbert Grossmann (born January 10, 1931 in Berlin ; † July 2, 2010 in Austin , Texas) was a German philosopher who emigrated to the United States at the age of 19 and was primarily concerned with ontology and the problem of universals .

Life

After completing his studies at the University of Education, Grossmann went to the USA at the age of 19, where he began studying at the University of Iowa with the psychologist Kurt Levin and the philosopher Gustav Bergmann . In 1958 the doctorate took place . Grossmann taught at the University of Illinois until 1962 . He then went to Indiana University , where he stayed until his retirement in 1994. He spent the last years of his life in Austin, Texas, after a stroke in 2001 in a care facility.

philosophy

Ontological questions have priority in Grossmann's thinking. In doing so, he takes a realistic standpoint with regard to the universals.

The subject of his first book The structure of Mind , which Grossmann dedicates to his teacher Gustav Bergmann, are mental acts and their objects , such as the question of whether someone who thinks of a unicorn is also related to a unicorn. Behind this is the question of whether non-existent objects can have a reality . If you answer the question in the affirmative, you take a realistic position . On the other hand, if one rejects the notion that the mind can go beyond the limits of its own consciousness , one takes a position of idealism . Against the background of this problem, Grossmann developed his own ontology, epistemology and theory of consciousness. The core thesis is that mental acts are also things (p. 142). For him, perceptions are mental acts and as such are always propositional , i.e. H. the intention of a mental act is expressed by a declarative sentence. Perceptions are different from beliefs and judgments . For Grossmann, mental acts are given through experience from the internal perspective and can relate to actual or possible facts . He discusses his views against the background of “ Meinong's idealism” and “ Frege's conceptualism ”.

In Ontological reduction , Grossmann takes a particularly strict form of Leibniz 's theorem of identity (48-51), according to which identity is only given if two entities have all properties and relations, including intentions and possibilities (modes) in common. According to this, there is not even an identity between “Reinhard Grossmann” and the “author of Ontological reduction ” or between “2 + 2” and “4”, because the convictions with regard to the respective entities can be different. The identity thus relates to the descriptive expression of an entity and not to the entity itself. On this basis, Grossmann discusses how relationships between different facts are represented. His question is how there can be abstract objects like properties, classes, connections or numbers in addition to facts like trees, pain or thoughts (p. 3). Grossmann's solution is to perceive things immediately. When you see three red robes, you don't see the robes that have redness and the number three as properties, but you see the shape of the robes, the red and the number three. Colors and numbers are self-perceptible entities. Numbers are numerical quantifiers like “all” and “some” are general quantifiers (p. 102). For Grossmann there is no difference between logical and factual truths.

The book The categorial structure of the world deals with the basic categories of individuals, properties, relations, classes, numbers and facts. Grossmann discusses the basic question of ontology about the nature of being and comes to the conclusion that there is no particular way or type of being. Accordingly, being and existence are to be equated. Individuals are particulars and not a bundle of properties. Properties are universals and essential properties are those that an entity has according to law. There are no complex properties. Relationships cannot be reduced to their foundations and identity is a two-digit relationship. The relation between mental acts and their objects ( intentionality ) must be distinguished from the relation between words and objects based on a representation . Grossmann calls the intentionality of the references of mental acts to non-existent objects "abnormal" relations similar to the connection "or" between facts. Classes cannot be equated with properties and differ from spatial wholes. Numbers are neither multiples, nor properties, nor classes, but quantifiers and thus independent entities that are constitutive for facts. Facts are not to be understood as true statements, but as existing facts. A special category are structures that, for Grossmann, consist of individual things, properties or relations and are characterized by a special relation. Structures are wholes or spatial and changing individual things

Phenomenology and existentialism: an introduction is a critical examination of Husserl , Heidegger and Sartre , whose philosophy Grossmann discusses in woodcut in part against the background of Descartes , Brentano and Kierkegaard . With regard to Husserl, he addresses the contrast between universals and individual things in relation to the difference between perception and eidetic intuition. With Heidegger he deals with the meaning of the concept of being and criticizes Heidegger's various conceptual distinctions. On Sartre, Grossmann analyzes the concepts of the ego and the nothing and discusses the question of freedom and necessity .

Epistemologically, Grossmann tries in The fourth way: a theory of knowledge to develop a position that results in a connection between empiricism and realism. He regards this as the fourth way compared to the approaches known in the history of philosophy of combining rationalism and realism (Descartes), empiricism and idealism ( Berkeley ), and rationalism and idealism ( Kant ). For Grossmann, like for David Armstrong , facts are the basic building blocks of the world. Individuals and properties exist only as building blocks of facts. Here he deals with the theory of perception on the basis of intentionality in connection with Meinong and Brentano, the question of self-confidence and mathematical knowledge. Topics are first and second qualities, fear, pain, analyticity, necessity or the nature of numbers.

Fonts

Books

  • The structure of Mind . The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1965.
  • Reflections on Frege's philosophy . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1969.
  • Ontological reduction . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1973.
  • Meinong . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1974.
  • The categorical structure of the world . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1983.
  • Phenomenology and existentialism: an introduction . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1984.
  • The fourth way: a theory of knowledge . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1990.
  • The existence of the world. An introduction to ontology . Routledge, New York-London 1992; German: The existence of the world. An introduction to ontology, Ontos, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 978-3-93720238-9

Important essays

  • Conceptualism , in: The Review of Metaphysics, 14, (Dec. 1960), 243-254
  • Frege's Ontology , in: The Philosophical Review, 70, (Jan., 1961), 23-40
  • Non-Existent Objects. Recent Work on Brentano and Meinong , in: American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (Jan. 1969), 17-32
  • Russell's Paradox and complex predicates , in: Noûs 6 (1972), 153-164
  • Bergmann's Ontology and the Principle of Aquaintance , in: The Ontological Turn, ed. by Moltke Stefanus Gram and Elmar D. Klenke, Iowa University Press, Iowa 1974, 89-113
  • Nonexistent objects versus definite descriptions , in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (4/1984), 363-377
  • Thoughts, objectives and States of Affairs , in: Grazer Philosophische Studien 49 (1995), 163-169

literature

  • Javier Cumpa and Erwin Tegtmeier (Eds.): Phenomenological Realism versus Scientific Realism: Reinhardt Grossmann - David M. Armstrong Metaphysical Correspondence , Ontos, 2009, ISBN 978-386838051-4
  • Javier Cumpa (Ed.): Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann , Ontos 2010, ISBN 978-3-86838063-7

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Grossmann, Reinhardt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grossmann, Reinhardt Seigbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 2, 2010
Place of death Austin