More on Marty and Grice -- with a caveat: This is the Grice Club! Not the Marty one! :)

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Again from the Stanford encyclopaedia entry by R. Rollinger:

"In his elaboration of this view he opposes three alternative views concerning the division of such phenomena held by certain predecessors and contemporaries: 1) the prevailing view of the nineteenth century in the German speaking world, namely that the phenomena of mind are to be divided into thinking, feeling, and willing, 2) the view attributed to Herbart as well as other philosophers, namely that the mind consists only of presentations (or, as one might also say, ideas), and 3) the view of Meinong and his followers in the Graz school, that there is a class of mental phenomena, called “assumptions” (Annahmen), which lies “between” presentations and judgments (see Meinong 1902, Marty 1905, Meinong 1906, Meinong 1910)."

For the record, Grice DOES cite his fear of Meinongian jungles in "Vacuous Names".

Rollinger goes on:

"Statements"

"(Aussagen)"

"make up the autosemantica which express judgments. This class of expressions received considerable attention from Marty in his early work, especially with regard to the problem of statements which apparently have no subject, so-called “impersonals”"

"(Impersonalien)."

...

"If, for instance, the impersonal

“It is raining”

is under consideration, there is no need to theorize about a mysterious entity to which “it” refers, for this statement only expresses the judgment that there exists the event of raining within the speakers vicinity."

Marty "identifies a class of judgments such as

“This tree is blossoming”

as double judgments

(Doppelurteile),

which is again a notion he explicitly takes from Brentano (Marty 1897: 179 ff.)."

"What is peculiar about double judgments is that the subject term, e.g.

“this tree”,

already expresses an instance of acceptance and there is a predication, e.g.

“is blossoming”,

built upon this acceptance. While the statements which belong to the four classes identified in the traditional square of opposition are regarded as “pseudo-categorical” (i.e. having the appearance of being predicative without actually being so) because they are better expressed in the existential form rather than the predicative one, double judgments on Marty's view are to be considered genuinely categorical because they cannot be reformulated without the subject-predicate form."

"Moreover, he also identifies certain statements as “categoroid”, namely those disjunctive and hypothetical statements which do not express double judgments."

"While Marty ascribes to statements the communicative function (and thus in one sense the meaning)

“that one should judge as the speaker does”,

he points out that a demand on the interlocutor's will is not thereby made as it is in the case of certain other linguistic expressions."

"A statement is, by contrast to these, only “a suggestive of judging”"

(ein Suggestiv zum Urteilen)

(Marty 1908a 288).

"Moreover, there are certain aspects of the judgment which cannot be communicated in a statement, namely whether the judgment is evident or blind and whether it is apodictic or assertoric (Marty 1908a 289 ff.)."

"MARTY: In a narrower sense, however, we call … something in addition the meaning of a statement. Whoever states, “A is”, provided that he himself judges so, treats A as an entity and asks of the interlocutor as well that he, with trust in this externalized conduct of the speaker, should treat A as an entity. In this regard we say also that the statement makes known the being of A and aims at making it known or believes that it is doing so and means it in this sense. And since we often also designate the being of A or that A is, also A‘s being-B or that A is B, as the content of the judgment “A is” or “A is B” and again designate the non-being of A and A‘s not-being-B as the content of the judgment “A is not” or “A is not B”, we can also say: the statement makes known the content of judgment and means it in this sense"

(Marty 1908a: 292)


"While he regards physical and mental things or events as real, he maintains that contents of judgment, i.e. the meanings of statements “in the narrower sense”, have only a co-becoming (Mitwerden), which does not allow them to be characterized as real."

"Contents of judgment and other non-real entities, as Marty understands them, do not include universals of any kind, whether these be genera or species. In short, Husserl's view on such matters is closer to some sort of Platonism than Marty's is. There remains a very definite alliance with Aristotle in Marty's ontology (Marty 1908a 337 f.).""

"As Marty regards statements as autosemantica which manifest judgments and communicate to the interlocutor that he or she is to judge in the same way, he characterizes emotives or interest-demanding expressions"

(interesseheischende A.usdrücke)

"as those autosemantic which manifest not only emotions, but also volitions (which for him and Brentano belong to one and the same class), and communicate to the interlocutor that he or she is to feel or will in the same way."

"MARTY: Is an analogue of the judgment-content really missing in the realm of interest? I don't believe it is. To be sure, a thoroughly subjectivistic and in this sense erroneously “psychologistic” view is very widespread, which does not accept the distinction between what is merely loveable as a matter of fact and what is worthy of love and between a blind compulsion and an “ought” in the sense of a norm of correctness in this realm. However, even though it calls itself “value theory”, it is still unable to give a satisfactory account of the concept of value and disvalue just as the analogous psychologistic doctrine in the realm of epistemology is unable to give such an account of the concept of the true and the false. Only if value and disvalue are truly analogues of the true and the false … can there also be in the realm of interest an analogue of correctness and incorrectness, and both are possible only if there is something independent of the subjective phenomenon of loving and hating and in this sense objective that establishes that correctness of mental conduct, just as the being of the object is the objective foundation for the correctness of the acceptance thereof, its non-being for the rejection thereof. Without such a firm basis and standard all talk of value and disvalue, good and evil, and also of what is in accordance with duty and what is against it, etc. would be without natural justification and sanction"

(Marty 1908, 370).

"The final class of autosemantica for Marty consists of names and other expressions which serve to experess presentations. He calls these “presentational suggestives”

(Vorstellungssuggestive)

and devotes a very extensive chapter of his main work to the treatment of them. (See Marty 1908: 383-489.)."

"He ascribes to these a communicative function just as he did to the other autosemantica."

“MARTY: As the direct purpose of a statement is to evoke in the interlocutor a certain judgment, a presentational suggestive also and especially a name primarily in its proper usage aims at awakening in him a certain presentation, and as that primary intention is ultimately designated as the meaning of a statement, the analogue is called the meaning of the name”

(Marty 1908a 384 f.)"

"The autosemantica which have such function and are everywhere acknowledged as being able to stand as subjects in a predicative connection are called “names”, as exemplified by

“a triangle”,
“a rectangle”,
“an equilateral triangle”,
“a human being who has committed a crime”,
“something red”,
“something round”,
“a red thing that is round”,

and also infinitives such as

“to get up early” and
“to have one's hands full”."

"As regards the presentational suggestives which are not names, Marty points out the usage of language in poetry and fiction (Marty 474 ff.)."

"While the sentences used in such instances may resemble statements, for the most part they have the function of expressing and evoking presentations and are not actually statements. However, these whole sentences are peculiar insofar as the relevant presentations have contents of judgment as their objects. Such presentations of contents of judgment are on Marty's view the acts of consciousness which Meinong erroneously identified as assumptions."

"While it is thus possible to present contents of judgment and presentational suggestives also have a communicative function that is analogous to that of statements and emotives, the question arises as to whether there are also contents of presentation analogous to the contents in the other two cases of mental acts."

"In this regard Marty undertakes to criticize his older view that there are indeed such contents under the heading of “immanent objects” (Marty 1908a 384-406). He no longer holds this view in his later writings and also rejects the notion of a thorough-going analogy between presentations and mental acts of the other two classes. Accordingly he restricts the notion of meaning of presentational suggestives to their communicative function. As regards the old thesis that consciousness is always the consciousness of something, he endeavors to preserve this by appealing to the already mentioned notion of mind-dependent conformity, which may be either actual or potential (Marty 1908a 407-431)."

"Moreover, he continues to uphold the thesis, as already found in Brentano's work, that all mental acts which are not themselves presentations are founded on presentations (Marty 1908a: 479-489)."