Bergmann Gustav (1906–87), Austrian philosopher, the youngest member of the Vienna Circle. Born in Vienna, he received his doctorate in mathematics in 1928 from the University of Vienna. Originally influenced by logical positivism, he became a phenomenalist who also posited mental acts irreducible to sense-data (see his The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, 1954). Although he eventually rejected phenomenalism, his ontology of material objects remained structurally phenomenalistic. Bergmann’s world is one of momentary bare (i.e. natureless) particulars exemplifying (phenomenally) simple universals, relational as well as non-relational. Some of these universals are non-mental, such as color properties and spatial relations, while others, such as the ‘intentional characters’ in virtue of which some particulars (mental acts) intend or represent the facts that are their ‘objects,’ are mental. Bergmann insisted that the world is independent of both our experience of it and our thought and discourse about it: he claimed that the connection of exemplification and even the propositional connectives and quantifiers are mind-independent. (See Meaning and Existence, 1959; Logic and Reality, 1964; and Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, 1967.)
Such extreme realism produced many criticisms of his philosophy that are only finally addressed in Bergmann’s recently, and posthumously, published book, New Foundations of Ontology (1992), in which he concedes that his atomistic approach to ontology has inevitable limitations and proposes a way of squaring this insight with his thoroughgoing realism.
See also METAPHYSICS , VIENNA CIRCLE.
W.He.