ABSTRACT
But if one must speak about such entities, then one should be consistent and affirm that in addition to whatever is a thing, there is a second set of entities, subsisting quite independently of reason, and that these might be called entia non realia, but not entia rationis. However, I am not prepared to do this, as you are aware. I would say that relations and concepts such as shape, extension, position (I am speaking of the concreta in question) are included among things. The mode of conception of these things is a special one, given only in cases of complicated apperception where parts are distinguished within a whole. As for the so-called abstract names, such as “colour”, I would say that psychologically they are not true names but are quite different parts of speech. Similarly for “the being of A”, “the non-being of A”, “the impossibility of A”. These ostensible names are actually equivalent to such expressions as “that A is”, “that A is not”, and “that A is impossible”. Obviously the latter are rudimentary locutions which need to be completed, as in “I believe that A is”, “I wish that A were not”, “I deny that A is impossible”, and so on. I am convinced that the doctrine of “reflection upon the content of a judgement” is a complete delusion: there is no ground for saying that the so-called content of judgement might be presented merely as an idea and without involving any kind of judgement. To be sure, one can conceive of a person judging without judging in the same way oneself. But the rest is an absurd fiction. What goes on in the mind when one says “I am supposing (ich stelle mir vor) that A is, that it is not, that it is impossible” must be ascertained by means of an exact psychological analysis. Once this is accomplished, then we shall also have some inkling as to what happens when one “supposes that A is good”, “supposes that A is bad”, and so on. What leads to the entia rationis is best recognized in those cases where this term is most appropriate-i.e. in “A as object of thought”. If I say “I
am thinking of A, who is clever”, I am connecting the thought of myself as someone thinking in a specific manner with the thought “A is clever”; that is to say, I am related to “clever” in a wholly different way than I am when, thus thinking, I call myself clever.11
