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!