Alexius Meinong and the members of his school are best known for having opened up a new area of investigation called the 'object theory'. The logical and metaphysical implications of this theory attracted much attention within the last decades. Yet comparatively little is known about the psychological background against which the object theory emerged. It is true that Meinong himself soon came to conceive of the object theory as a completely autonomous discipline. Still\, the psychological analysis of our mental states seems to have been a privileged pathway to the so-called 'mere object' of the object theory. Moreover\, Meinong and his students arguably share the view (notably held by Franz Brentano) that the rise of a scientific philosophy first and foremost requires psychological-descriptive investigations. Consequently\, it is no surprise that they ran descriptive and experimental analyses which gave rise to a number of \;psychology-based theories\, including the theory of assumptions\, the value theory\, the theory of knowledge\, or the theory of relations.
\nStressing the philosophical significance of such psychological investigations\, the conference aims at exploring the various connexions between the object theory\, the researches led in the Graz psychological laboratory\, and the psychology-based theories supported in the Meinong school. A special focus will be put on the articulation between psychological or phenomenological description\, psychological experimentation and conceptual analysis.
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