On the Cognition of States of Affairs

The theory of speech acts put forward by Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different 80rt$ of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the corresponding speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition. It is hoped that it will also do something to justify the author's belief that Reinach's writings have a more than merely historical interest. It will be presupposed in what follows: (1) that there are certain core situations in which knowledge is gained or secured: principally situations in which objects and states of affairs are directly given in perception; (2) that these core situations are surrounded by a periphery of what might be called natural deformations: modified, derivative or non-standard cases. These are either cases where things go wrong in standard ways, or they are cases involving greater complexity, for example as a result of the intervention of inference, memory or the testimony of others; (3) that there may occur also isolated cases of unnatural deformations (we might also call them unnatural instances of natural kinds), departing from the relevant standard instances in irregular ways. Aristotle, too, distinguished in his philosophy of nature between regular nonstandard instances, instances which deviate from their kind in a law-governed way