João Lucas Pimenta da Silva Pinto

We aim to reconstruct the controversy between Twardowski and Husserl regarding the paradox of objectless presentations: the conjunction of the theses "every presentation presents an object" (from Brentano) and "not every presentation has a corresponding object" (from Bolzano). We argue that a version of the paradox can be identified already in Brentano; we show that Twardowski develops a radically abstract conception of object that allows him to reject Bolzano's thesis and maintain that even presentations of nonexistent objects have objects; and we present Husserl's alternative solution, which rehabilitates Bolzano's and reformulates Brentano's thesis by suggesting that we refer to nonexistent objects in the use of a discourse which operates under the hypothesis that such objects exist.