Metaontology

Brentano’s theory of judgment serves as a springboard for his conception of reality, indeed for his ontology. It does so, indirectly, by inspiring a very specific metaontology. To a first approximation, ontology is concerned with what exists, metaontology with what it means to say that something exists. So understood, metaontology has been dominated by three views: (i) existence as a substantive first-order property that some things have and some do not, (ii) existence as a formal first-order property that everything has, and (iii) existence as a second-order property of existents’ distinctive properties. Brentano offers a fourth and completely different approach to existence talk, however, one which falls naturally out of his theory of judgment. The purpose of this chapter is to present and motivate Brentano’s approach.