Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond

Richard Routley — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:12:53 PDT

To those who have troubled to learn its ways, the jungle is not the world of fear, danger and chaos popularly imagined and repeatedly portrayed by Hollywood, but a complex, beautiful and valuable biological community which obeys discoverable ecological laws. So it is with Meinong's theory of objects, which has often been disparaged, under the "jungle" epithet, as a place to be avoided or razed. Indeed the theory of objects does share some of the beauty and complexity, richness and value of a jungle: the system is not chaotic but conforms to precise logical principles, and in resolving philosophical problems, both longstanding and new, it is invaluable.