Chisholm, Roderick M. (ed.) - Realism and the Background of Phenomenology

Writing on Meinong in 1904, Bertrand Russell formulated a set of theses which might be taken to define "realism," in one of its most significant philosophical senses. Russell's theses were these: "that every presentation and every belief must have an object other than itself and, except in certain cases where mental existents happen to be concerned, extra-mental; that what is commonly called perception has as its object an existential proposition, into which enters as a constituent that whose existence is concerned, and not the idea of this existent; that truth and falsehood apply not to beliefs, but to their objects; and that the object of a thought, even when this object does not exist, has a Being which is in no way dependent upon its being an object of thought."¹ These theses, taken with Franz Brentano's doctrine of "intentionality" -- his description of what it is for a presentation or belief to have an object -- will help us to understand the development of twentieth-century realism and the background of phenomenology.