## 1. Brentano's Reism




When arguing for reism Brentano was conscious of some related views of
Leibniz. He even referred to Leibniz's statements (in *Nouveaux
essais*) about the dangers caused by using abstract words.
Brentano's reism was an effect of his departure from Aristotelian
ontology. Brentano's first metaphysics has a rich list of categories,
including substances, modifications, circumstance, etc. Later, he
divided being into things and *irrealia*, and the latter into
immanent objects, contents, relations and so-called
*collectiva*. All items belonging to *irrealia* had the
status of *entia rationis* (beings in the mind or thought
objects). Ultimately, Brentano rejected all *entia rationis*,
that is, intentional objects, immanent objects, states of affairs,
existence and non-existence, modalities, relations, probabilities,
universals, Gestalten, time and space, Aristotelian forms, contents of
judgements, etc.. His final ontological theory was based on the
equality: being = *entia realia* = things. According to
Brentano's later philosophy, things are concrete (particular)
entities. They are fully determined in their properties and are
extended in time. Brentano distinguished two kinds of things, namely
bodies (temporal and spatially extended) and souls (only
temporal).




Brentano offered some methods on how to speak about *entia
rationis* without being committed to their existence. Take the
sentence:



(1)
*a* is a thought object.



One can maintain that (1) refers to an immanent object (sense-data
in the theory of perception are a good example here). According to
Brentano, this sentence means:



(2)
 A person *X* is thinking about
*a*.



Now, (2) is about *X* not about *a*. Another
instructive example concerns universals. Consider:



(3)
 Redness is a color.



Apparently, it seems to refer to two abstracts, namely Redness and
Color. However, (3) means that all red things are red, and, by the
rule of conversion of categorical sentences implies 



(4)
 some colored things are red;

 hence, the ontological commitment of (3) is reducible to
individuals (red things). According to Brentano, terms referring to
*entia rationis* are actually not expressions functioning as
names, but they belong to so-called *syncategorematica* (or
*synsemantica*), that is, the category of expressions not
having an autonomous meaning, but only a contextual one as for example,
logical constants ('and', 'or',
etc.). Omitting sentences, only names of particulars are categorematic
(or autosemantic). On the other hand, the nouns used to refer to
*entia rationis* are useful because they simplify our
discourse. Nevertheless, we could live without abstract terms.




Brentano also offered a quite general argument for reism based on the
idea of intentionality as direction of thinking (and other mental
acts). According to Brentano, the expression 'to think' is
univocal in the sense that it always refers to a definite mental act
directed to something. Accordingly 'to think' always means
'to think of something'. This implies that the expression
'something' is univocal too, because there is no generic
concept comprising both things and non-things as object to which
intentional acts refer. This argument assumes that
'something' is co-extensional with 'being'.
Now, if 'being' is the most general noun, there is no noun
which refers to being and non-being. Hence, if 'something'
refers to a thing at time *t*, it cannot refer to a non-thing
at different time. Although Brentano himself considered this argument
as fully conclusive, it is dubious whether he was right in this
respect. His argument eventually implies that if
'something' refers to the objects *a* and
*b*, both belong to the same ontological category, but not that
they are things, at least, in any ordinary sense. Thus, Brentano's
argument for reism is at most an argument for a unicategorial ontology,
that is, an ontology based on only one kind of object. See section 4
for the further discussion.


## 2. Kotarbinski's Reism




Although Kotarbinski was a philosophical grandson of Brentano
(*via* K. Twardowski, a student of the latter), he developed
his version of reism independently (Wolenski 1996, 357). This
took place in the 1920s. The most extensive treatment of
Kotarbinski's reism is to be found in his
book *Elementy*, published in 1929 (in Polish). In general,
Kotarbinski followed Brentano's criticism of abstract
objects. Kotarbinski worked with a simplified table of
ontological categories proposed by W. Wundt at the end of the
19th century. This table includes: things, states of
affairs, relations and properties. Accordingly, Kotarbinski
stated reism by two theses:



(R1)
 Any object is a thing.


(R2)
 No object is a state of affairs, relation or property.




The thesis (R1) was supplemented by a closer characterization of
things given by



(R3)
 *a* is thing = *a* is a resistant and
extended object (a material body).



Kotarbinski called (R3) "the thesis of pansomatism"
(pansomatism is derived from the Greek term *soma* which means
'body'; hence, pansomatism claims that every object is a
body, assuming that bodies are material). It indicates that reism
defined by (R1)-(R3) is a kind of materialism. Kotarbinski
sometimes used the terms 'reism', 'pansomatism'
and 'concretism' as equivalents.




The theses (R1)-(R3) concern an ontological dimension of reism
or ontological reism. However, Kotarbinski's reism, like
Brentano's version of this view, also has a semantic dimension.
Semantic reism is a theory of language. In particular, it is a theory
of names. According to this account, names occurring in ordinary
parlance can be divided into two categories: genuine names and
non-genuine names (i.e., apparent names, onomatoids). The former
category is reduced to names of things in the sense of (R1) and
(R3). Now, onomatoids seem to refer to abstract objects, but that is a
mistake, because such objects do not exist by standards of
reism. Kotarbinski supplemented this distinction with a theory of
sense. Only sentences with genuine names (and logical constants) have
a literal meaning (sense). If a sentence with onomatoids is
replaceable by a sentence with genuine names only (call such sentences
"reistic"), it is meaningful, if not it is
meaningless. Consider:



(5)
 Wisdom is a property of some people.



It contains two apparent names, namely 'wisdom' and
'property'. Now, according to Kotarbinski, the content
of (5) can be fully expressed by:



(6)
 Some people are wise.



This sentence does not have any apparent name. On the other hand,
the sentence:



(7)
 States of affairs are abstract objects.



is not replaceable by any sentence in which onomatoids are replaced
by genuine names. At first glance, onomatoids are similar to empty
names. Yet there is an important difference between them because
sentences with empty names are meaningful. For example,



(8)
 Centaurs are horses,



does not need to be replaced by a reistic sentence because it is
itself reistic. Kotarbinski believes that (8) is meaningful,
unlike (7), and that this shows that sentences with empty names are
already reistic, unlike sentences with onomatoids, which are
meaningless. Sentences with apparent names have either
meanings *via* reistic translations or they are meaningless
strings of words. Onomatoids are dangerous, because they are sources
of hypostatisation, which consists in committing abstract objects as
really existing, although their existence is apparent only. In
particular, hypostatisation is very common in philosophy (see the
sentence (7) above) and leads, according to Kotarbinski, to
pointless speculations about abstract objects, their kinds, etc.
Therefore, reism provides a weapon against involving philosophy in
unending pseudocontroversies. In particular, reism accuses all kinds
of Platonism to be the source of the hopeless problems and discussions
that stem from admitting the existence of beings, like Platonic
forms.




Some points of Kotarbinski's reism can be illuminated by
pointing out its connections with Lesniewski's calculus of names
(the Lesniewski's Ontology, LO, for brevity). According to LO, a
name is an expression which can stand for the variable *b* in
the sentence:



(9)
 *a* is *b*.



(Lesniewski wanted to have names in the predicative position).
It is assumed that the copula 'is' has so-called
fundamental meaning. It is established by the axiom of LO, which is,
the conjuction of three following sentences:


* There is some *x*, such that *x* is *a*.
* For any *x*, if *x* is *a*, then
*x* is *b*.
* For any *x* and *y*, if *x* is *a*
and *y* is *a*, then *x* is *y*.




This axiom implies that, in order to be true, any sentence of the form (9) must
have a singular name (that is, a name denoting exactly one object) at
the place *a*. Furthermore, the copula 'is' is
devoid of any temporal or spatial connotations. Any sentence with an
empty name in the position of *a* or *b* is false; thus,
(8) is false. The sentence, 



(10)
 *a* is a thing,

which is crucial for reism, is true only if the term *a* is
a name of a particular. Thus, the logical basis of reism implies that
names of things are singular. LO justifies also Kotarbinski's
account of common nouns (general names, according to traditional
logic) as genuine names. Consider the sentence:



(11)
 John is a sportsman,



where 'John' is a proper name, that is, referring to an
individual person. The expression 'sportsman' should be
interpreted as 'one of the sportsmen', that is, it refers
to any individual belonging to the class of sportsmen. It enables the
reader to see a connection between 'John' and
'sportsman' as expressed by:



(12)
 If a person is denoted by 'John', it is
also denoted by 'sportsman'.



A further possible step consists in appealing to mereology (i.e.,
the theory of parts and wholes) and interpreting the class of sportsmen
as a collective (mereological) set. On the other hand, LO does not
motivate the division of names into genuine names and onomatoids. In
particular, Lesniewski himself was not a reist.




Kotarbinski argued for reism mostly pragmatically. One of his
arguments (concerning the dangers of hypostatization) has been pointed
out already. Moreover, Kotarbinski saw reism as a very natural
interpretation of natural language. He stressed that concrete terms
precede abstract nouns in language acquisition and that only bodies (as
defined by (R2), that is, pansomatically) are beings which we encounter
in our everyday experience. Kotarbinski himself considered the
above arguments for reism as sufficient, but he was perfectly conscious
that they provide an inductive and partial support for the reistic
standpoint.


## 3. Problems and Prospects for Reism




Reism had to meet several serious problems. It was very soon observed
that (R2), one of the most important theses of reism, contained
apparent names 'state of affairs', 'relation'
and 'property'. Hence, it should be disqualified as
meaningless by reistic standards. In order to cope with this
objection, Kotarbinski sharply distinguished semantic reism and
ontological reism. He gradually ascribed a greater importance to
semantic issues. For example, he was inclined to consider (R2) as a
statement about the reistic language, that is, providing the condition
for which names are admissible in our language. Another difficult
problem came from various special fields and concerned the reistic
interpretation of mathematics, logic, semantics, psychology sociology
and the humanities. How should a reistic interpretation of set theory
be presented? Is the concept of meaning explainable reistically? How
should psyche, social rules or pieces of art be understood in the
reistic frameworks? Kotarbinski hoped that mereology would
provide a reistic alternative of set theory. He also offered a partial
solution to other difficulties, but he finally recognized that the
successes of reism were very partial. At the last stage,
Kotarbinski considered reism rather as a program than as a theory
of the world and language. However, he always stressed that every
form of progress in reism, even regional or local, is a cognitive
success, because it introduces a language which is free of the dangers
that result from using abstract words. In spite of these difficulties,
reism attracted many philosophers, mainly in Poland. Perhaps
*Tarski* is the most notable example. He expressed sympathy for
reism and even translated one of Kotarbinski's papers into
English, but he used Platonistic methods in his works on the
foundations of mathematics.


## 4. Some Comparisons




Kotarbinski's reism has some affinities with logical
empiricism. Pansomatism is a version of physicalism and semantic reism
which is similar to the formal mode of speech in Carnap's sense. Although
Kotarbinski's later formulation of semantic reism was influenced
by logical empiricism, pansomatism appeared earlier than the Viennese
physicalism. There are several similarties between Kotarbinski and
Brentano, but there are also important differences. For Brentano, an
object is what can be presented. This definition of object is
psychological. Kotarbinski wanted to give an ontological or semantic
(an object is what is denoted by a genuine name) explanation of the
concept of object. For Brentano, 'to exist' means 'to
exist now', but for Kotarbinski, existence is free of all
temporal connotations. The crucial difference is this: Brentano's reism
is dualistic (things are bodies or soul), but Kotarbinski's reism
is monistic (only bodies are things). This difference suggests an
interpretation of reism. If we add Leibniz to this company, we see that
he, Brentano and Kotarbinski share the following thesis:



(RO)
 Only particulars (individuals, concreta)
exist.



On the other hand, the inventory of particulars is different in all
three cases. For Leibniz, only spiritual monads exist, for Brentano,
there are spiritual souls and material bodies, but for
Kotarbinski, only material bodies occur in the world. Thus, we
have one formal ontological thesis (RO) and its three different
metaphysical concretisations. Using Kotarbinski's terms,
concretism points out an ontological feature of reism, but pansomatism
concerns metaphysical matters. If this is accepted, reism in the sense
of (RO) becomes a kind of nominalism. Due to its connection with LO, it
is a fairly strong version of nominalism, probably stronger than any
other. This is due to the fact that identity is defined in elementary
Ontology, but is not definable in standard first-order logic.