Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:29:21.344Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Zeno Vendler on the Objects of Knowledge and Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 1976

Robert Dunn  and
Geraldine Suter
Robert Dunn
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Geraldine Suter
Affiliation:
Griffith University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Chapter V of his book Res Cogitans — “On What One Knows” — Zeno Vendler attempts to maintain the thesis that the objects of knowledge and belief are incompatible, i.e., that the immediate object of believing is a picture of reality and “the immediate object of knowing is not a ('true’) picture of reality but reality itself”. We shall

(I) argue that he fails in this attempt because his “incompatibilism” depends on the view that the that-clauses which are the basic verb objects of know and believe are of a type which reflect a distinction between the subjective and objective dimensions of the mental world; and it is exactly this which he does not establish;

and

(II) question the philosophical significance of the wh-nominal.

In Chapter IV — “Propositions” — Vendler tries to draw a distinction between “the subjective and objective dimensions of the mental world”. The subjective dimension corresponds to the world of propositions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 103 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* We should like to thank Mr. Don Mannison and Professor L.C. Holborow of the Department of Philosophy, University of Queensland, for commenting on an early draft of this paper.

1 Vendler, Zeno Res Cogitans: An Essay in Rational Psychology, Cornell University Press, 1972.Google Scholar

2 Ibid, p. 118.

3 Ibid., p. 81.

4 Ibid, p 99.

5 Ibid, p 95;

Vendler, Zeno Adjectives and Nominalizations,Mouton, The Hague, Paris, 1968, pp. 37–38.Google Scholar

A wh-nominal is a sentence nominalization formed by replacing some element of the sentence to be nominalized, subject, object or adverbial phrase by the appropriate wh-morpheme. For examples, see diagram.

6 Vendler, Zeno Res Cogitans: An Essay in Rational Psychology, Cornell University Press, 1972, p 97.Google Scholar

7 Ibid, p 98.

8 Ibid, p 99.

9 Ibid, pp 105ft.

10 Ibid, p 108.

11 Ibid, p 111.

12 Ibid, pp 111-112.

13 Ibid, p 112.

14 Ibid, p 46.

15 Ibid, p 67.

16 Ibid, p 109-110.

17 Ibid, pp 114-115.

18 Ibid, pp 114-116.

19 Ibid, p 115.