Семантика и метасемантика в школе Ф. Брентано

Abstract

The article analyzes a semantic theory proposed by the main representatives of the Brentano School and clarifies the characteristic features of the Brentanist philosophy of language. The first section identifies the specificity of Brentano’s functional approach to language, and separately examines how Brentano de­fined the communicative meaning of expressions. The second section reproduces the scheme in accordance with which A. Marty studied language communica­tion, and also discusses in detail his method of descriptive analysis of meanings. On the example of the doctrine of the inner linguistic form, it is shown what in­fluence descriptive psychology had on semantic research. On the example of the doctrine of the judgmental content it is demonstrated how Marty explained the representative properties of expressions. In the third section, A. Meinong’s semantic theory is reconstructed. It is discussed how Meinong interpreted the se­miotics of E. Martinak and how he approached the issue of defining the concept of meaning. The problem of the unity of sentences is particularly analyzed and Meinong’s solution is reproduced. It is shown what changes Meinong made to the theory of meaning, and what influence the theory of incomplete objects had on his semantic doctrine. The interpretation and evaluation of Meinong’s late semantic theory is proposed. Finally, in the fourth section, E. Husserl’s the­ory of meaning is analyzed. It is shown that Husserl distinguished several senses of the concept of meaning and considered the main sense to be the one that al­lows identifying the concept of meaning with the concept of content. The clarifi­cations made by Husserl to the thesis of the ideality of meanings are discussed. It is demonstrated that the new concept of meaning analysis associated with the clarified thesis makes it possible to evaluate Husserl's semantic theory as more universal than Meinong’s theory.