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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
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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

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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.