LI 1

Sorry for deserting you all. I've had a busy month, but now I'm ready to discuss LI 1. As I'm sure you all have noted, there's a lot in the first investigation to discuss. I think this is partly because it is really rich philosophically, and partly because of the zigzaging that Husserl mentions in the introduction (or was it the prolegomena?). Husserl constantly introduces new concepts without spending much time clarifying their place in his system or their essential features. So almost immediately we are faced with all of the primary themes of the Investigations: the structure of intentionality, parts and wholes, the theory of content, the theory of fulfillment, and of course, the subject of LI 1, the theory of expressions. One nice aspect of this is that the reader gets in view almost all of Husserl's (immense) project almost immediately, though how it all fits together is far from clear.

In LI 1 two areas really struck me. The first is Husserl's very clearly articulated internalism, and the second is his relation to Frege. I will deal with them in turn.

By Husserl's internalism I mean his claim that all meaningful acts, including expressions, gain their meaning from inner experiences. So though we can have an intuition (e.g. see) a meaningful gesture, the gesture is not meaningful in and of itself, but is an indication of an inner experience. Similarly, though we hear someone speaking, what makes that speech meaningful is the speaker's inner meaning giving act. I found this interesting because most of the philosophy that I've been influenced by (MP, MH) have rejected this idea. For them meaning is determined through external phenomena, either background social norms or bodily (depending on the type of meaning). Obviously there's a lot more to say about this, but not now.

Interlude: Husserl takes on a lot of Kantian terminology, doesn't he? Intuitions, judgments, etc. All from Kant.

Husserl's relation to Frege is the subject of a fair amount of scholarly work of which I have read very little of; however I am in the process of writing a paper on meaning in Frege so this is on my mind. In Uber Sinn und Bedeutung, which is usually translated as On Sense and Reference, Frege makes a distinction between the sense of a proper name and it's reference. Broadly speaking this can be thought of as the distinction between what a word means and what it picks out in the world; though Husserl rejects the terminological distinction (both obviously have the same meaning auf Deutsch), he accepts the gist of the philosophical distinction (Section 13 I think). The distinction, according to Husserl, must be maintained for two reasons. In the first place because two names can differ in their meaning but name the same object. For example Hesperus and Phosporous mean (respectively) the morning star and the evening star, but they both pick out the planet Venus. In Frege's terminology Hesperus and Phosphorous are each a sense and they have one reference, Venus. In the second place, the distinction must be maintained because two expressions can have the same meaning but refer to two different objects. For example "a horse" always has the same meaning (sense), but is context sensitive, picking out different horses in different contexts.

One weird thing: I said that Husserl only accepts the gist of Frege's distinction. This is because, ror Frege sentences do not refer to (real) objects, but truth values (weird!), Husserl doesn't even mention this (at least not in the bits I've read), which seems good. I'm not quite sure why Frege thinks sentences don't refer to (real) objects, but he doesn't.

Unofficial Thoughts

After some telephonic build-up, I'm posting my translation of Unofficial Thoughts, a 1948 essay by Yakov Druskin, a Russian mathematician and philosopher. You will see how, without engaging in direct polemic with Husserl, of whom Druskin was aware, he presents a sceptical view of signs and their relation to meaning. I hope this short essay might refresh our minds and help our digestion of the properly Husserlian matters. I'll be grateful for your remarks on the essay and/or the translation.

Yakov Druskin. Unofficial Thoughts

29 January 1948

Unofficial thoughts are thoughts not from reason, or even, not founded in reason, but certain thoughts of this kind are some of the most intelligent. This is something never understood by Tolstoy. Reason is official. Unofficial thoughts are fruitless, meaning that one cannot build any system out of them. They are unfounded, found nothing themselves, do not lead anywhere, do not have any application—moral or any other kind.

Might some classification of unofficial thoughts be possible? Even if so, it might only be empirical, meaning superficial, outward. Among unofficial thoughts belong the majority of the most interesting arguments about the soul, death, and God. The thought of the existence of unofficial thoughts is itself an unofficial thought.

There are unofficial thoughts. There is an impulse to squeeze an unofficial thought into a system of official thoughts. So, when an unofficial thought is contemplated for a long time, it is perverted until it finally becomes official. In the same way, unofficial thoughts are perverted and become official if one attempts to classify them.

An unofficial thought belongs to the final remainder that partakes in no system whatsoever, and one cannot deduce anything from it because if I make such a deduction it [the unofficial thought, AR] will be perverted and become official.

The most unofficial of all: the soul.

The most unofficial of thoughts: the Good news.

An unofficial thought is connected to a certain temptation. In itself, it is not a temptation, but it is related to a temptation, as when I see a certain margin of error in an equilibrium.

Every conviction is official. But this in itself is an official thought. Better to put it this way: an unofficial conviction lacks the form of a conviction. Even better: to say nothing at all.

A thought that permits no further inference is a fruitless or empty thought. But perhaps some, a very small share of such thoughts are unofficial? Then they are not empty. The most infertile of thoughts is the Good news. The conclusions people draw from it are usually banal, moral, and official. But this very thought, the most infertile of all thoughts, turned out to be the most fertile: it changed the world and, most important, the soul.

Is it needed to discuss one’s thought, that is, to think about it, which means repeating and memorizing it? The messengers neither memorize nor remember anything. Maybe a yurodivy speaks like a messenger. I think Bashilov was like that. Not only did he not care to repeat or remember his thought, he simply could not repeat it or remember it. In repeating it, he already turned it into something different. Each thought of his was new, i.e. a revelation. This is the meaning of yurodstvo: to be like a messenger in real life. But no one can learn it: the language of messengers is a gift: gratia gratis data. For Bashilov, the language of messengers was a native tongue… But for those unworthy of yurodstvo, repetition and memorization are necessary. Kierkegaard wrote about this, too.

I had some intention and committed an act: I moved from state A to state B. But between states A and B there was a certain thought “a” and a certain characteristic—a quantum of thought, a criterion of its permissibility: X. So that A → X(a) → B. The state B is conditioned, or determined, by the thought “a.” But X which permitted me to have the thought “a”: is that X determined? I think that there are undetermined quanta of thought—hence the consciousness of guilt and responsibility. If X is the norm of what is permissible, it is still me and not someone else who accepts it as the norm. It might be that the majority of norms are inculcated by the upbringing, fear—meaning that they’re determined. But conscience and shame before oneself are not reducible to upbringing alone.

We think in general concepts. But a general concept does not communicate reality. We combine realities into concepts. But a combination of realities is too a general concept, and as such, it too does not convey reality. Concepts and thoughts signify relations. But that which relates, stands in relation, we know not—we do not even know whether it does stand in relation, because relation is a general concept and does not convey reality.

All of us are insane, but we have a shared language. Not even a language but shared words and rules for combining them—grammar. Each one speaks of something that’s his own, and the other does not understand him, but thanks to the shared language and shared grammar sometimes it looks as if one were understood. To break out of this insanity would mean to see and understand that between I and you lies a chasm that cannot be traversed. I am speaking here not of some emotional or psychological but principal—gnoseological and metaphysical—incomprehension.

I’ll take an example—a naïve one, but no matter how incredible, it cannot be refuted logically. I take the simplest proposition, such as 7+5=12, and try to understand this proposition not as a set of formal logical relations, but essentially—noumenally. It is, after all, a person who utters this proposition. Once it too was for him a discovery, a living thought—a thought that was not, to his mind, an abstraction but a revelation. Then he got used to that thought, it grew threadbare and became an abstract thought—a set of relations among abstract symbols.

I am seeking the primal element, an atom of the noumenal, i.e. a vital comprehension, and that is why I take the simplest thought: 7+5=12. It has the form of a totality, meaning that if I go ahead and write the symbols 7+5, anyone at all shall write after the symbol “=” the symbol “12.” Two mathematicians with the help of identical signs will demonstrate identically that it cannot be any other way. But I doubt that they have an identical understanding of the noumenal meaning of those signs. They know only the rules of connecting those signs and, if one of them could enter directly into the soul of the other, then maybe he would say: “You’ve written down all the symbols correctly, but what you understand by them is not at all an identity but a summer evening, and your proof, as you understand it, despite the correct arrangement of symbols, is not a proof at all but a description of a stroll alongside a lake on a summer evening.”

Life is irrational; language is rational: we speak using general concepts. If I want to express something irrational, I assert the equivalence of two incompatible propositions or states of affairs. But I cannot utter them at once—I utter them one after the other and then assert the equivalence, requiring the listener to combine in a single moment what I uttered sequentially. This means that I presuppose in myself and in him an ability for intellectual contemplation, which Kant denied in writing but in actuality presupposed and required.

The equivalence of two inconsistent propositions or states of affairs is unthinkable, and therefore it is already not a thought but intellectual contemplation. If immediate communication of thought were possible, immediate wordless communication of the contents of contemplation would probably also be possible. If people were able to achieve this, they would return to a golden age, and it would become the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. From the time when people stopped communicating their thoughts immediately and until the time when they regain that ability, people are actually insane: we speak nonsense, supposing that there’s sense in it.

A logical question arises: what is “sense”? Relations among concepts may be identical while their meanings may differ. For example, let there be a proposition a ⊃ b, meaning that a is in b. Let α be the object of the concept a and let β be the object of the concept b. Seeing a certain relation between objects α and β, everyone might say, identically: a ⊃ b. But, firstly, do we see and understand the relation of α and β identically? We call them identical names and connect identically these names that we invented, but do we see and understand those relations identically? [This is a key presupposition in the semantic tableau method. AR] And secondly, do we understand identically the relation of each object to its own concept, α to a and β to b? For we communicate in signs—general concepts—and our mind has established rational relations among those concepts, whereas the world, life, soul, and spirit are a-rational. But even logic and logical relations themselves are understood by everyone differently. Maybe when someone says “argument” what he means by that is what I mean by “function.” The rules for connecting variables may remain exactly the same, because they are created precisely to be used with symbols that in themselves do not express anything. But does it follow that—in content, and not only in form—we understand identical connections identically?

There is a certain kind of incompatibility, especially in value judgments, when someone says, for example: “How intelligent is the design of the human body,” substantiating this only by examples of those organs in those cases when they function normally. But if one recalls that all people get sick and die—for the most part, not from being sated with life, like the Biblical patriarchs, but accidentally, or from illnesses, or simply get sated with life before their time—or that there are many unintelligent organs, one might as well say that the human organism is designed unintelligently. These two propositions cannot be called equivalent, simply because they express nothing at all beyond the human need to utter general judgments, i.e. a simple desire to talk, a preference for talking rather than keeping silent. This kind of behavior is typical of the insane. Therefore we are all precisely insane. But, having uttered this, I, too, speak like an insane person. My insanity in this case consists in uttering a general judgment without having sufficient grounds for it. I was coming from empirical, and moreover, rational grounds. I discussed rationally illnesses, premature satiation with life, and premature death. But how do I know that they’re premature, that illness has no purpose, when in my experience it has been granted me to see its purpose and the madness of the wise who deemed that is has no such purpose? For a human being is not a body, not an organism but God’s image and likeness. When my arguments cross their proper boundary, I become a madman. I pick up distinct inklings, although they are mere inklings, of a supra-rational, irrational rationality, of the existence of Providence, but I reduce the life of a person to merely the life of a human organism, and supplant absolute rationality with my own limited, irrational rationality.

There is, in fact, only one kind of insanity or source of all insanity: disbelief.

When I utter a general judgment without having faith, and when I do not utter a general judgment without having faith, and when I keep silent without having faith—I am insane. Can I draw any conclusions from this? Yes. Can I express it in words to myself or another? Only as a madman. And again, there are two senses here: an elementary one and the other one, of which Apostle Paul says: “a temptation for the Jews and a madness for the Greeks.” [?] And also: “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the things that are mighty” (I Cor. 1:27).

In life there are excesses and deficiencies. Let’s suppose that God instantaneously turned all the excesses into deficiencies and all the deficiencies into excesses. Will anybody notice this change—given that all the relations remained exactly the same, only the plus became the minus and the minus the plus? But even if someone would, he would not be able to express it, because the relations have remained the same, and the language of general concepts reflects only relations, but not contents. Even if every instant God would turn excesses into deficiencies and deficiencies into excesses—even then, no one would be able to express it to someone else or even to oneself…

What I just wrote, no one else will be able to understand; that is why it is asserted that no one undertands anyone, and even when one has understood, he has not really understood, and when he hasn't understood, he has understood, but even the latter cannot be understood. But I myself can no longer understand what I wrote just now, because "just now" is already not now but, as they say, "a different now" that does not exist now: now—is always now, the only now, just the same as my soul. For the soul is the very thing of which I, in a completely singular manner, say: mine. Mine is my soul, exactly in the now, and "just now" is no longer mine: mine is the now of my soul. Between you and I there is a chasm, and an equal chasm is between me now and me just now, between me and myself, and there's no natural way to traverse this chasm. That is why we talk to one another and think that we understand, but apart from the rare cases of noumenal intercourse, when words themselves may be unnecessary, no one understands anyone or even oneself. We are all insane—including myself: instead of keeping silent, I speak.

If I travel on a train and the train changes its direction to the opposite and I miss the change of direction because the windows are curtained and I cannot see where we travel and to what destination, then how can I find out whether the train is traveling forward or backward? It will seem to me that the train is always going in the same direction. It is the same way between people, and for any person and himself. We go along, seemingly together, and I go along with myself—but we change our direction, without noticing it, so often that we've in fact parted ways a long time ago and are actually going in opposite directions still thinking that we're going along together. But the opposite also happens: we thought that we had noticed a change of direction and that we had parted ways and now walk in opposite directions, but in actuality the changes of direction aligned themselves accidentally and we are walking in the same direction even though we do not know where we're going. We know nothing and understand nothing—neither others nor ourselves—and can only ask God to grant us a noumenal understanding of one another and ourselves—at least an inkling of noumenal understanding.

"When I say, my foot is uncertain, may your mercy, O Lord, strengthen me; and when my grief multiplies in my heart a consolation from you will refresh my soul." (Psalm 94). [Check quote; the Russian and English Bibles were translated from different sources. AR]

flogging dead horses (cf. sec. 12!): a little more on signs

Originally this was going to be a comment on Q's last post, but it was getting out of hand, so I'll burden you all with it right up front:

Q, I agree with you that, if there is a distinction between Anzeichen and Bezeichnen, than it is not a primary one, for certainly Husserl is concerned in the first instance to firmly establish the distinction between Anzeichen and Expression as two different but related kinds of Signs. Now, I'm going to be boring and say that we're both half right--or rather, that you're right, there are ( I think) Anzeige that do not bezeichnen, but that all the Anzeige that H. is really concerned with actually do bezeichnen, and that the rest of the first chapter bears this out along the way to (at least in a preliminary fashion) distinguishing Indicators (an-) and Expressions.

Firstly, I think you're right in the main that the canals on Mars, say, do not really "designate", "denote" or "stand for" a Martian civilization, but I don't think that the essential distinction is between arbitrary and non-arbitrary signs. As H. says, "these and similar distinctions [between Martian canals, knots in handkerchiefs, and brandings] do not destroy the essential unity of the concept of 'Anzeichen.'" It's essential characteristic is that the existence of the indicator suggests the existence of the indicated. There are many kinds of indicators, some arbitrary, some not. Thus, while in sec. 2 an important example of Bezeichnen is marking with chalk, in sec. 16, H. can say that "the robber's chalk mark is a mere Anzeichen (a marking)."

Arbitrary or not, none of them operate according to logical necessity: they point to things (Hinweis) without demonstrating them (Beweis). They are all within the domain of Association (here H. is in agreement with Hume, as sec. 4 shows). I don't think Hume would say that smoke is an arbitrary sign for fire, but only that it does entail with logical necessity the existence of fire, and there H. is in complete agreement. In fact, for H., anything that points to something else non-logically is an Anzeige. Wide net indeed.

Now, stepping gingerly over the fresh horse carcass, one or two comments on Anzeichen and Meaning of Bedeutung, the distinction H. is really after. Supported by the passages I quote below, I think one can very roughly but not entirely inaccurately say the following. All fully communicative speech (between at least two people) consists of Meanings (Bedeutungen) and Anzeichen, and that latter in two respects. First (1) as a sign of what the speaker means (my saying "It's raining" is a sign of my thinking that it's raining, or designates me as one who thinks that it's raining--this is what H. calls Kundgabe (enunciation?); second (2) the expression points to or designates (by means of its Meaning) a certain object or range of objects (in Anya's example, 'the cat is on the mat' points to/designates/names a cat, and says that it's on the mat). It is especially the second kind of Anzeichen (which definitely 'bezeichnets') that requires Bedeutung, whose operations H. is trying to explain in the first place.

I hope this -zag in the conversations hasn't been entirely wrongheaded. If it is, please set my aright.

Those quotes:

sec. 5. "we distinguish from indicative signs (anzeigenden Zeichen) the meaning ones, expressions."

sec. 7: "...all expressions in communicative speak serve as indicators (Anzeichen). They serve the hearer as signs (Zeichen) for the "thoughts" of the speaker."

sec. 11: Kundgabe (manifestation, enunciation) of my psychic act; but an expression of its meaning

sec. 12 - the expression says something, and speaks about something

sec. 13: "the expression (Ausdruck) designates [bezeichnet] (names) by means of its meaning (Bedeutung)."

sec. 16: mitbezeichnen (Mill's "connotation"): "such names as denote/designate (bezeichnen) a subject and contain in themselves an attribute; ... non-connotative names [are] such as denote a subject without ... indicating (anzuzeigen) an attribute as adhering to it"

"The robber's chalk mark is a mere Anzeichen (marking), the proper name an expression. // Like any expression at all, the proper name works in its enunciatory (manifesting? kundgebenden) function as an Anzeichen." (sec. 16)

Anzeichen and Bezeichnen....(I.1.1-2)

* Since Brian suggested this, I'll just start a new post.

"Designate" and the English translator's "stand for" somehow both make sense to me. After reading the first two sections, I still understand Bezeichnen as a special case of signs (Zeichen) that can be indicators (Anzeige) which indicate (Anzeichen). So your remark about the fullest sense of signs seems to me not to require Bezeichnen in the sense as Husserl describes it. I take my bearings based on the last sentence in sec. 2, parag. 2. The keywords are "arbitrary (willkuerlich)," "constructed (gebildeten)," and "create (schafft)." I understand this to mean that, of all entities that are signs, there is a subclass that is artificially created by us and the link between the sign and the thing indicated is also arbitrary. Husserl seems intent on restricting Bezeichnen only to these artificially created symbols, thus the example of stigma, and his explanation that we use this word with regard to the "action that creates the marks." Before this, he mentioned examples where the signs are not created (but discovered?) by us, such as the canal is the sign of the existence of Martians. As I understand this, the canal is not constructed by us, we did not create the canal, and further, the connection between the existence of the canal and the existence of the Martians is not arbitrary. Thus in this case we do not speak of the canal as bezeichnen but only anzeichen the existence of Martians.

(Digression: Simmias sees a harp and thinks about Cebes. I see this somehow as an arbitrary connection - someone in love with someone else can come up with all sorts of wayward associations - but it is not specifically "created" for the sake of "indicating" something. It fits half of the description of Bezeichnen. Does Husserl have a word for this sort of thing, or does he just count it as a non-Bezeichnen example? Or this - I bump my head when I woke up this morning, and I believe it is a sign that I'm gonna have a rough day. I didn't create the bumping of my head but I did create the connection although from my own point of view I didn't create anything but saw it as a connection "out there." Does this count as designating? I would guess not: whether it is arbitrary or not is perhaps irrelevant in this case, but rather whether it is an association based on insight [analyzed in sec. 3 where he talks of Hinweis and Beweis]. I await for your thoughts about this.)

So, again, concerning what you said about the full sense of sign, I think that's right on: the relationship between the signifier and the signified requires context (although Husserl does not explicitly say so I think you're still right about this) and (at least one) thinking being to really make a sign a sign. But I don't understand "contexts" and "thinking being" as implying bezeichnen. In the Martian example, we do need to presuppose a bunch of background knowledge about life and the environmental conditions that could make it emerge, and also ourselves who are investigating - without these, the canal is just a canal and cannot be a sign of the existence of Martians. But these do not, as far as I can see, "designate" in Husserl's sense the canal as a sign of the existence of Martians; still, without any designating, the background knowledge and the thinking being seems to me to make the canal operate as a sign in the full sense. So turning back to Anya's question about that sentence in sec.1, I can only understand it in a simple way that means there are signs like the canal on Mars that don't bezeichnen at all.

This distinction seems relatively unimportant since Husserl is more interested in carving out the unity of Anzeichen as a whole (no mentioning of Bezeichnen in sec.2, parag. 3). However, thinking over this made me realize that a fundamental disagreement between him and Hume can be detected here - the latter would definitely reduce all signs to arbitrary connections in imagination. Even smoke as a sign of fire is "arbitrary" for Hume. Here I'm inclined to say that the onus probandi is on Hume, because his is the counter-commonsensical view, whereas Husserl's view, despite all our fusions and confusions in ordinary language, is more in tune with the way we think of these things (or so I think). The most interesting thing for me is: can Husserl succeed? It seems to me that he is always willing to concede to rival views somewhat, but these concessions always endangers his own account.

Apologies for my prolixity...:P

The wood and its trees: Investigation II, Chap 1

I'm posting this when my memory is still fresh and I can deal with both the wood and the trees as I like it.


The introduction explains why the problem of abstraction (both as the act of abstracting and the result acquired from abstraction - Husserl sometimes prefers the other word "ideation.") pertains to the problematic of pure logic. (1) Among categorial distinctions of meanings there is the distinction between individual and universal objects. This will be attempted in chap. 1. (2) A more important reason is that ideal meanings (here he says spezifischen Einheiten) constitute the realm of pure logic. A last remark in the intro defends an epistemological idealism, which "recognizes the ideal as the condition of the possibility of objective knowledge in general." This makes the whole enterprise in LU look especially like a modification of Kant now (I find it hard to resist this line of thought), where the phenomenological analysis of acts and breaking them down into particular- and universal-intuiting act-moments replaces transcedental deduction. Tell me what you think of this.

§1 The distinction between species-object and particular-object, and the distinctive ways of representing (Vorstellen) them can only be shown by Evidenz. The latter in turn is to be given by the clarification of the relevant representations (Vorstellungen). Namely, phenomenology shows the way to let ourselves "see" the Evidenz; thus, any writing of phenomenology in and of itself is not a demonstration of the Evidenz of Evidenz, but only a means to it. Through the words in the book we should appropriate for ourselves the proper attitude of reflection to get to the things themselves. For a pertinent example of how this works see §4 below.

To show that this distinction holds as it appears to our consciousness, Husserl starts from what is common in the species-intending-act and the individual-intending-act: the same sensible content is given in the same way of grasping it (Auffassungsweise). In my own words: the way the object appears to us seems the same. I think of my mom far away, I think of a triangle - both seem to be objects not in sight. By the same token, even in thinking of the triangle I draw and in thinking "triangle" as a universal, what appears (Erscheinung) to the consciousness may in both cases be the same - the triangle I draw. But by showing what is common between them, this example also points to the difference in an obvious way: triangularity is the "content," the "idea" so to speak which the act intends, while the individual-intending-act only intends to "what actually appears." Husserl himself gives a reference to VI. §46 on founding and founded acts: intuitions (or: sense perceptions) are founding while the Meinen towards species are founded (i.e. the categorial intuition). "In allen Faellen sei das individuelle Moment ein anderes, aber 'in' jedem sei dieselbe Spezies realisiert; ..." This is so fucking Aristotelian. Come to think of it this is not surprising given that his teacher Brentano is an Aristotelian. "Wie alle fundamentalen logischen Unterschiede, ist auch dieser kategorial. Er gehoert zu der reinen Form moeglicher Bewusstseinsgegenstaendlichkeiten als solcher. (Vgl. dazu die VI. Untersuchung, Kap. 6 u.f.)" Already two references to the bitchy VI. My paraphrase of this sentence: the distinction between universals and individuals is the basis of all possible pure forms as logical objectivities for consciousness.

§2 I don't have much to say about this section, but there is a passing note about the crisscrossing of the two dichotomies individual / species and singular / universal. According to Husserl this will give us four kinds of judgments. I quote the examples below:

(1) Individually singular: Socrates is a man.

(2) Species-ly singular: 2 is an even number.

(3) Individually universal: All men are mortal.

(4) Species-ly universal: All analytic functions are differentiable; All purely-logical propositions are apriori.

The first two do not seem hard to understand: the number 2 is a singular species, namely 2 itself among numbers. I have a bit of trouble with the latter two. Conjecture: It seems that "all men are mortal" counts as type (3) and not (4) is due to the fact that what is mortal are the individual men that are each an instantiation of the species "man." While every analytic function and purely-logical proposition are already a species. I can't think of some way to put this more clearly, but it seems that two senses of "one" are distinguished: "one" in the sense of being able to be picked out as some one object for consciousness (which is here called "singular"), ultimately founded in the grasping of "unity" (another sense of "one"), and "one" in the sense of "being something" in which the species-being shows itself to consciousness ("individual"). "Being something" only pertains to the perceptive realm. This is all my attempt at interpretation, but I cannot help but wonder about Plato's Parmenides.

§3 Sameness and Identity (Gleichheit and Identitaet). Sameness: when in everyday language we say "this and that are the same" we focus on the aspects or the attributes which are identical between them. But in Husserl's view, that means sameness is ultimately founded on identity, namely the identity of species: e.g. the rose and my blush are the same in virtue of the moment of the meaning "redness" being identical. If we insist the redness (as species) that inheres in the rose and that that inheres in my blush are different then one cannot avoid an infinite regress problem. One should not define identity as the limit condition of sameness: this strongly reminds one of the famous recollection argument as offered in the Phaedo. "Identity is absolutely undefinable, but not sameness."I take its undefinability to mean that it can only be seen with the mind's eye, and if you can't see it then it cannot exist relative to your state of knowledge. Sameness is the relation between objects and a self-same species: Socrates and Plato are both human.

§4 A phenomenological "showing" of why understanding identity as the limit condition of sameness must be wrong. We compare two intentions. (1) Grasping any group of objects in an intuitive sameness as a unity; knowing their sameness with one Schlage; knowing the sameness in single acts of comparison. (2) Second intention: grasping the attribute which constitutes the aspect of sameness and of comparison as an ideal unity. Then Husserl asserts that these two intentions evidently have different objects. Evidently?! I need help here. One would need to "see" that and reflect on them to get to the difference. Husserl goes on: in the second intention no intuition of sameness or comparison is required. Even though one may reply that we need comparisons and practice to "see" the ideal unity, Husserl thinks this is irrelevant, since the evidence does not "lie in" those comparisons (but in the newly founded act). I can't understand this quite well. The difference between the two intentions seems to be this. I see a bunch of people. According to this account, there can be two senses in which we say "they are all human." Either I intend them as a collection, each of the members in it sharing one or some common attributes as my interest guides me to notice (the first intention), or I turn the attention to that attribute itself and "see" how it is always the self-same moment in each individual member. Husserl's statement implies that there are cases where we only need one individual to have the second intention, while the first one always requires a comparison of several individuals.

Why the empiricist approach is wrong: they are unable to say what imparts unity to the field. There will be a problem of how identity is arrived at through similarities (the Humean problem or Quine's argument against the similarity-set approach to natural kinds seem comparable). The Husserlian criticism is that this will cause infinite regress of comparisons of similarities. The upshot: universals are unavoidable. §5 is a continuation of his critique of empiricism and psychologism (which, according to him, splits the unity into the manifold of the subsumed objects). Two versions: Mill (who insists on the identity - H. thinks it is inconsistent) and Spencer (who consistently insists on sameness, but just falls to the problems already mentioned). Don't see anything worth mentioning...

§6 A quick overview of what is to follow in investigation II. He notes that he will criticize competing theories as a way of showing and testing the correct theory. Thus the latter part of the title of this investigation. I wonder if one can say that the whole method is phenomenology plus historical criticism (the latter part looks like a sort of dialectics, perhaps). It seems to intimate the later thought in Crisis about sedimentation and historical reduction and all that...Empiricism and new theories confused the psychological explanation of experience and the "logical" illumination of their thought content. It should already be clear by now what this means. The wordplay of Er-klaerung and Auf-klaerung is also worth pondering (the English translation gives "explanation" and "classification" respectively. The former is pretty standard and good, but I have trouble with the latter. My rendering might be "to make sense of" and "to throw light on the matter.") The latter is the foundation of an epistemological-critical enlightening of the "possibility" of knowledge. Competing theories do not pay attention to the "descriptive content [Gehalt] of the consciousness of abstraction." There is a puzzling ending here: a distinction between (besides psychologically explanatory and epistemologically clarifying) phenomenological and objective analysis - this confusion makes that which is only assigned by the mean-ing to the objects assigned also to the acts themselves as their real constituents. I do not understand what this means, and I may even got the sentence wrong. But Husserl promises to treat all the issues in detail in further chapters. So I'm moving on and see if he keeps it.

My Copy has Arrived

Greetings fellow Husserlians and soon-to-be Husserlians. My copy of the first volume arrived today. I begin on the prolegomena tomorrow. That is all.

Notes on the First Investigation

I started to read this right after mid-May, and then got on and off, only managing to finish the first investigation today. Thus I'm unable to get into details now. I'll express my overall impression below coupled with some notes I made about the latter part of this investigation.

The overall purpose of Husserl here seems to be this: revealing the proper objects for the science of pure logic. He holds a sort of "realism" in the medieval sense, but that is a bit misleading (more below); in any case he argues for the priority of object rather than the subject. He has a few enemies in mind: nominalism, psychologism, and maybe more? To argue against the former, he needs to make the distinction between indicating (Anzeichen or Hinweisen) and mean-ing (Bedeuten). To argue against the latter, he makes, among other distinctions, that between what is meant (Bedeutung) and mean-ing. He grants that psychologically speaking what is going on in every one's mind when they're expressing the same meaning can be different (that is, the Humean picture got it partly right - every one has a different triangle in mind when they speak of the class "triangle." Cf. the end of section 33 for a different version of this claim), but even so it is the self-same meaning that is expressed: one should not confuse the two. What is more telling is that this also links back to the distinction between sign and meaning stated in the beginning: meaning is there whether we know it or not; but we inevitably must know it through signs - that is, the human condition is that signs and meanings do have a necessary even if not essential relationship. These examples show, I think, the very spirit Husserl conducts this investigation: he notices, even spends time elucidating the changing elements in our communication of thoughts (such as the utterance, the sounds of particular individuals, the language, and so on), but always turns back to show how after this there is still something unchanging, and finally constitutes the proper realm for the investigation of what he calls pure logic.

To actually get to his answer beforehand, I think a paragraph in section 28 (i.e. the part where he argues that meaning and mean-ing are different) helps hugely to get to the spirit of Husserl's philosophy. One of the reasons he offers for the assertion that fluctuations in mean-ing do not imply the fluctuations in meaning is this: ideally speaking, subjective expressions can always be "translated" into objective ones. (BTW, for understanding Husserl's use of the term ideal, one should turn to section 32 for clarification - and I think ideal means roughly the way we get to know species or categories. But here "ideally" seems more like the normative ideality, what do you guys think?) Skipping the paragraph following one will read this fantastic sentence: "In fact it is clear that our opinion that every subjective expression can be replaced by an objective one fundamentally says nothing else but the unlimitedness of objective reason." It's really a restatement of Parmenidean wisdom: everything that is can be grasped by the mind. Or in other words, every being can be understood perspectivelessly. Husserl here and in the end of the first investigation admits that this is not yet in fact true and may not be possible especially with regard to the essentially occasionalistic expressions he discussed in section 26-7; on the other hand it seems also to be a truth that is inherent in our experience of pursuing knowledge, in our striving to understand. Whether Husserl has a way of arguing for this or it is already implicit in this investigation in ways that I cannot see or it is an unquestionable axiom of his enterprise, I do look forward to your views on this matter.

I said above their is a sort of "realism" in the medieval sense in this investigation, but that requires clarification. It is only realism in the sense that Husserl insists that meanings are a class of concepts in the sense of universals, and they are objects ready for us to investigate. But he is not willing to follow a vulgar Platonism where universals as having an ontological status "separate" from particulars we observe in the world (see sec. 31 for his own words on this problem). As far as I can tell, Husserl does not linger on the ontological problem, but focusses more on the epistemological side of the matter: he seems to more or less see universals as validity conditions for any sort of material logical propositions.

So now we seem to get the answer for the fundamental question: what are the proper objects for the science of pure logic? He gives out various formulations in sec. 29, 31, 33, 34. My attempt at a summary of them: (1) The universals (or species, categories) in various sciences investigated by a phenomenological reflection on meanings as expressed by mean-ing acts. For example, an elucidation of "red" and colors gives us the basis of a science of colors or other sciences related to color. (2) The laws between the universals as derived only from the meaning of the universals themselves. He further points out these laws will give us resources for distinguishing meaningful and nonsensical, true and false, and so on, assertions. I can't think of any example, and this shows that I do not really understand what he has in mind here - need help. But overall, it seems pretty clear to me that "pure logic" is not what we call by "formal logic" (although he does use this as examples): it is more like a philosophical justification of why the other sciences can actually work as autonomous disciplines (and one would have to go to the preface in Vol. II to reconsider this point).

Some scattered remarks. A. In sec. 34 he notes that the meaning-unit is not always what we intend in acts of consciousness. In talking about the redness of the rose, the object I intend is the redness of this particular rose I perceive, but nevertheless redness as the self-same identical meaning constitutes a moment in my expressions of the redness of the rose. This again links back to a part in the preface where Husserl notes that phenomenological description requires an "unnatural" turning of the mind: our natural way is to orient ourselves out towards the world, but phenomenology is to turn the mind towards these orienting acts themselves, and only by this can the objects of pure logic be revealed to us. Thus the possibility of pure logic seems to be of a piece with the possibility of doing phenomenology. B. An interesting remark appears in sec. 30 n. 1: he states that "intentional" could both refer to the meaning or the object intended: I wonder whether this will be important when we get to the sixth investigation? Anyway I'm leaving this as a note, and await your comments!