In keeping with the subject of the First Investigation, the first sentence of its first paragraph invokes an ambiguity and announces the first distinction in the work: The terms 'expression' and 'sign' are often treated as synonyms, but... Distinctions will proliferate continuously throughout this Investigation, somewhat in the fashion described by young William Empson in Seven Types of Ambiguity:
...Thus [the prose statement] 'The brown cat sat on a red mat' may be split up into a series: 'This is a statement about a cat. The cat the statement is about is brown,' and so forth. Each such simple statement may be translated into a complicated statement which employs other terms; thus you are now faced with the task of explaining what a 'cat' is; and each such complexity may again be analysed into a simple series; thus each of the things that go to make up a 'cat' will stand in some spatial relation to that 'mat.' 'Explanation,' by choice of terms, may be carried in any direction the explainer wishes; thus to translate and analyse the notion of 'sat' might involve a course in anatomy; the notion of 'on' a theory of gravitation.
I shall soon review the sequence of concepts as they occur in the First Investigation and attempt to work out their place in the family tree of distinctions, their definitions, characteristics, and relations. Naturally, anyone who wishes to jump into the genealogical research should not worry about cutting the line. For now, a distinctive quote to help us all attune ourselves to the style in which the Investigations will proceed:
Every sign is a sign for something, but not every sign has 'meaning,' a 'sense' that the sign 'expresses.' In many cases it is not even true that a sign 'stands for' that of which it is a sign.
Verily I say unto you, the whole matter requires more thorough discussion. For one thing, if anyone wishes to comment on the meaning of the second sentence of the two just quoted, I'd be most tickled to hear your explanation.
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So Husserl means there are cases that, say, x is a sign of y, but x does not stand for y. Examples? I turn to section 2 for help: "Only in the case of signs arbitrarily and brought about with the purpose or indicating, does one speak of *standing for* [Bezeichnen], .." (I changed the English translation a little to follow the original more closely.) So "to stand for" can only serve as a subset of "to indicate" (one aspect of any sign, the other being "to express"). To use Husserl's own example, Martian canals indicate the existence of martians and is a sign of their existence but do not "stand for" their being. On the other hand, a flag indicates and stands for a nation.
ReplyDeleteA sidenote: although Husserl himself does not always seem to adhere to this distinction, there is a difference between forms such as "Bedeuten" and "Bedeutung." The former refers to the act of consciousness, the subject's act of "mean-ing," while the latter refers to the noema, "what is meant." In section 28 the translator rightly translates them as "act of meaning" and "meaning" respectively, but sadly this is not practiced as consistently as one would wish. For example, in the sentence following the one Anya you raised a question about there appears "Bedeuten" where the translation only gives "meaning." Similarly for "Anzeichen" (to indicate) and "Anzeige" (indication), and so on. This may not be a big deal, but still It would have been better if the translators left it for the readers to judge whether Husserl is using the right word in each case.
sorry, the quote should be "..with the purpose *of* indicating."
ReplyDeleteMy text just arrived today, so this by way of gradually catching up. As Q said in his post, the first several sections of the first Investigation seem to be concerned primarily with distinguishing between Signs and Meanings (Anzeige and Bedeutung) or perhaps more precisely, Signs and Acts of Meaning (Bedeuten). I haven't really got into Bedeuten yet, but it seems worthwhile to clarify Signs a little.
ReplyDeleteHusserl seems to cast a wide net here, so we have to do our best to find the edges of this net. The sentences you've quoted here, Anya, seem to constitute the first demarcation. Now, I will defer to literally anyone when it comes to German, but "stand for" doesn't seem entirely right for Bezeichnen, especially in the passage Q quotes, where H. is speaking of the branding of a slave, marking something with chalk, etc. To me, 'designate', or even 'to mark' seems more appropriate, since H. lays emphasis on the human intention behind the act of Bezeichnen. So, when H. says previously that some signs do not "designate" that for which they are called signs, I suggest that he means something like "some signs do not successfully designate, what people intended them to be a sign of" (either because it was a bad sign, or simply because it has lost its context, relevance, or there was no one around). If this is correct, then I take it that every Sign in the most precise sense actually does "designate" something, and that those that don't are not signs in the fullest sense. From section 2: "Something is only to be called a Sign (or Indication, Anzeichen) in the proper sense when and where it actually serves as a Sign (Anzeige) for something for a thinking being" (i.e., when it actually 'designates' something for and to someone). Bezeichnen, then, actually gives a positive characterization to Sign that might otherwise be overlooked. But, H. warns, we should not confuse the act of designating with the act of meaning. But this comment is getting far too long, so we'll leave that one for later. Does any of that actually make sense?