LANGUAGE AND PROCESS. INGARDENS THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND ONTOLOGY

This paper is devoted to Ingarden's discussion of a possible criticism of language that could be presented by philosophers who deny the existence of solid things that endure in time and retain their identity. Such a possible view is called 'antireism'. Antireists could argue that language distorts reality because we use names to denote processes. In doing so we treat them as objects which have the formal structure of subjects of properties. Ingarden replies (1) that each process has a twofold formal structure, that of a totality of still perishing phases and that of a specific object which is being built in those phases; (2) that although the process has the structure of a subject of properties, it cannot be identified with an enduring thing of the same structure because of this specific twofold characteristic; and (3) that the meaning of the name of a process contains its formal content and the moment of existential characteristic projecting the process as different from a thing.