Hintikka - Mind, Meaning and Mathematics - Husserl, Frege PDF

MIND, MEANING AND MATHEMATICS
SYNTHESE LffiRARY
STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Managing Editor:
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University
Editors:
DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley
THEO AF. KUIPERS, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California
JAN WOLEN-SKI, Jagiellonian University, Krak6w, Poland
VOLUME 237
MIND, MEANING
AND MATHEMATICS
Essays on the Philosophical Views
of Busserl and Frege
Edited by
LEILA HAAPARANTA
Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.Y.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mind, meaning, and mathematics essays on the philosophical views of
Husserl and Frege I edited by LeIla Haaparanta,
p. cm. -- (Synthese library; v. 237)
Includes indexes.
1. Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938. 2. Frege, Gottlob, 1848-1925.
3. Phenomenology. 4, Analysis (Phi losophy) I. Haaparanta, Lei la,
1954- II. Series.
B3279.H94M46 1994
193--dc20 94-317
ISBN 978-90-481-4366-5 ISBN 978-94-015-8334-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8334-3
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved

© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1994.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
INTRODUCTION ix
Part I
DAGFINN F0LLESDAL I Husserl and Frege: A Contribution to

Elucidating the Origins of Phenomenological Philosophy 3
Part II
MARTIN KUSCH I The Criticism of Husserl's Arguments against

Psychologism in German Philosophy 1901-1920 51
RICHARD TIESZEN I The Philosophy of Arithmetic: Frege and

Husserl 85
CLAIRE ORTIZ HILL I Husserl and Frege on Substitutivity 113
J.N. MOHANTY I Husserl's 'Logic of Truth' 141
Part III
BARRY SMITH I Husserl's Theory of Meaning and Reference 163
DAVID BELL I Reference, Experience, and Intentionality 185
LEILA HAAPARANT A I Intentionality, Intuition and the Computa-

tional Theory of Mind 211
DALLAS WILLARD I The Integrity of the Mental Act: Husserlian

Reflections on a Fregian Problem 235
INDEX OF NAMES 263

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 270
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The idea of editing a volume on Husserl's and Frege's philosophical views

was originally suggested to me by Professor Jaakko Hintikka. I am very
grateful both for the suggestion and for his support during the project. I
would also like to thank the authors of the essays for accepting my invitation
to contribute to the volume and for their co-operation and patience during the
editorial process. It has been a great pleasure for me to work with them. My
special thanks are due to Ms. Auli Kaipainen for preparing the text for
publication, and to Kluwer Academic Publishers for accepting the collection
for Synthese Library.
The Editor
vii
LEILA HAAPARANTA
INTRODUCTION
That the so called analytic tradition and continental philosophy have started
a dialogue, indeed a very fruitful one, does not count as news any longer.
However, things which many of us now take for granted were far from being
obvious in the fifties, perhaps partly because in those days analytic philoso-
phy was in full bloom and was not willing to view itself as a historically
conditioned tradition. Another reason was that continental philosophy did not
want to acknowledge the permanent value of analytic clarity but saw it only
historically as an outgrowth of logical positivism.
However, there were a number of brave scholars who took the decisive
step and introduced phenomenology to analytic philosophers. What this step
required was the simple realization that Husserl and Frege took part in a
discussion which was going on in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth
century and that they were on speaking terms, in spite of differences in
opinion and polemic argumentation which is a sign of a living academic
community.
Now that the analytic tradition has become interested in its historical
roots, the relations between Husserl's and Frege's views have become a
particularly important point of interest. Husser! has been and can be consi-
dered via Frege's philosophy, but Frege can also be considered in terms of
Husserl's philosophy of logic; we may even say that Husserl serves to give
a deeper philosophical content to the themes discussed by Frege. It can be
seen from the present collection of articles that the emphasis is moving
towards Husserl, who is adopting a central role in the philosophy of logic
and mathematics as well as in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
This collection brings together both work done by those who have long
participated in the discussion on Hussert's and Frege's philosophical views
and who are still active in it, and the contributions by philosophers who have
come to the field later, either continuing or challenging the interpretational
lines introduced by the pioneers. The title of the volume Mind, Meaning and
Mathematics is meant to cover the main themes discussed in the essays.
ix
x INTRODUCTION
The first part of the book contains the English translation, made by
Claire Ortiz Hill, of Dagfinn Fellesdal's early classic on Husserl and Frege,
which is an extremely clear and perceptive discussion of the potential influ-
ences of Frege on Husser\. His early thesis from the year 1958 deals with
Husserl's development between 1891 and 1900. Fellesdal argues that Frege
may have played a significant role in the change in Husserl's development
and in Husserl's new conception of a series of central philosophical prob-
lems. He also suggests that phenomenology must have been conceived of
between 1894 and 1896. The analogy between Husserl's and Frege's theories
of meaning is mentioned in his work. However, as is well known, the
comparison between sense and reference and noema and object was devel-
oped by Dagfinn Fellesdal later in another classical article on Husserl's
notion of noema, which was originally published in The Journal of Philoso-
phy in 1969.
In his early thesis, Fellesdal presents and discusses Husserl's antipsy-
chologistic arguments. The second part of the book opens with a paper on the
same theme. Martin Kusch, in his paper on Husserl's antipsychologism,
gives a detailed presentation of the reception of those arguments in the
German philosophical community in the beginning of the twentieth century.
A great number of less known philosophers are introduced and new historical
facts revealed in Kusch's contribution.
In his paper 'The Philosophy of Arithmetic: Frege and Husserl', Richard
Tieszen seeks to compare Frege's and Husserl's ideas on arithmetic and
stresses the importance of this kind of project, as Husserl's ideas are largely
unknown to many people working in the analytic tradition. He argues that
"Husserl's post-psychologistic transcendental view of arithmetic is still a live
option in the philosophy of mathematics, unlike Frege's logicism". He also
claims that it is superior to Frege's later views. However, Tieszen also notes
that Frege's arguments against views like Husserl's should not be ignored,
either. He further points at some of the connections between phenomenology
and constructivism in logic and mathematics. Tieszen sees Husserl's specific
value in that Husserl stresses the role of informal rigor and critical analysis
along with the technical work done by mathematicians.
In her paper 'Husserl and Frege on Substitutivity', Claire Hill studies
Frege's views on substitutivity and identity in the Foundations of Arithmetic
in connection with Husserl's objections to them. She establishes links be-
tween these issues and Frege's reasons for abandoning his logical work in the
INTRODUCTION xi
wake of Russell's paradox and discusses Russell's efforts to find solutions for
paradoxes connected with Frege's logic. Hill also discusses Husserl's compe-
tency to confront issues in Frege's logic and suggests that the study of
Husserl's philosophy could provide clues as to the significance of Russell's
paradox for logic and epistemology.
In his paper on Husserl's 'Logic of Truth', J.N. Mohanty focusses on
Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929) and discusses Husserl's
third stratum of formal logic, which Husserl labels as logic of truth. Hus-
serl's distinction between pure logical grammar, logic of consequence and
logic of truth has been widely recognized, and, as Mohanty remarks, it may
have influenced the development of logic in the twentieth century. However,
the very idea of logic of truth and the essence of the distinction between logic
of consequence and logic of truth are neglected themes in the literature. In
his paper, Mohanty discusses various suggestions for interpreting Husserl's
logic of truth. He also shows how Kant's distinction between formal and
transcendental logic anticipates Husserl's distinction between the second and
the third stratum of formal logic.
While the second part concentrates on the philosophical problems of
mathematics and logic and on Husserl's and Frege's historical surroundings
from the point of view of these problems, the third part of the collection
brings together articles which primarily deal with the problems of mind and
meaning. In his paper 'Husserl's Theory of Meaning and Reference', Barry
Smith discusses the contribution of Central European thought to the early
development of analytic philosophy. His first concern is Frege's and Hus-
serl's strategies in relation to the problems of psychologism. As Husserl and
Frege both argued that thoughts are external to the mind, they had to find a
way of connecting thoughts to our empirical activities of thinking and
reasoning. Frege's solution was that language does the job of a mediator,
with no explanation on how it does it, while Husserl takes it to be the case
that our mental acts themselves effect the link to meanings. Smith argues
against Dummett that the expression and the sense which animates it are not
conceived by Husserl as separate but that in Husserl's view act moments and
language moments constitute a single entity. He claims that in the Logical
Investigations Husserl was able to argue for a non-psycho logistic conception
of thought and yet preserve the tie between meaning-entities and cognitive
activities.
xii INTRODUCTION
David Bell's article 'Reference, Experience, and Intentionality' continues

the discussion on the analogy between Husserl's noemas and objects and
Frege's senses and references. Bell seeks to show that the view according to
which Husserl's basic doctrines can be elucidated by those of Frege, even if
it was an important insight, brings about a fundamental misinterpretation of
Husserl's early philosophy. Bell pays special attention to the Logicallnvesti-
gations and discusses such basic notions as objectivity, object and reference.
He also stresses the connection between Brentano's philosophy and Husserl's
early views. Bell concludes that Husserl's methodological and doctrinal
commitments make it impossible to identify his basic concepts with those of
Frege's realist philosophy.
The paper by Leila Haaparanta, entitled 'Intentionality, Intuition and the
Computational Theory of Mind', begins with the thesis put forward by
Hubert Dreyfus that there are great similarities between Husserl' s phe-
nomenology and Jerry Fodor's computational theory of mind. The article
seeks to show that the success of the comparison presupposes an interpreta-
tion of Husserl's phenomenology which sees Husserl's noemas as mediators
between intentional acts and the objects of those acts. The author develops a
new interpretation which she labels as the geometrical model; thereby she
seeks to reconsider the claim that Husserl was an anticipator of cognitive
psychology and artificial intelligence.
In his article, dealing with the mental act, Dallas Willard presents
"Husserlian reflections on a Fregian problem". The problem he raises is that
of the connection between consciousness and its object. Frege attempts to
interpret it in terms of his distinction between idea, sense and reference. In
other words, the question is how the person or the 'soul' is conscious of the
object or reference. Willard first discusses Frege's statements concerning
Thoughts and Bedeutungen in detail and then turns to Husserl's method of
conceptual analysis. Even if he is not willing to argue that Husserl's struc-
turing of the act/object nexus is superior to Frege's, he still thinks that
Husserl's account meets some of the problems which disturb Frege's analy-
sis. Willard suggests that by bringing Husserl's resources to bear upon
Frege's difficulties, we could also gain a new perspective into philosophical
problems which are still far from being solved.
PART I
DAGFINN F0LLESDAL
HUSSERL AND FREGE:

A CONTRffiUTION TO ELUCIDATING THE ORIGINS
OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHyl
AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
This essay was written when I was studying mathematics in G6t-

tingen in 1954 - 55 with a fellowship from the German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD). At that time my background in phi-
losophy was limited to a one semester course that is compulsory
for all students in Norwegian universities. However, Professor
Arne Nress liked the essay and suggested that I submit it as a
Master's Thesis in philosophy at the University of Oslo. He also
arranged to have it published in the monograph series of the
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, where it appeared in
1958. I am indebted to Arne Nress for taking this interest in my
work, and also to the German Academic Exchange Service for
their support.
Unfortunately, my inexperience in philosophy is all too appar-
ent throughout the essay. However, rather than rewriting it, I have
left it in its original form. I thank the editor of this volume for
arranging to have it translated and published and I am most grate-
ful to Dr. Claire Hill for her meticulous translation.
PREFACE
One volume of Husserl's first major philosophical work, the Philosophy

of ArithmetiC? a series of "Psychological and Logical Investigations",
was published in the year 1891, but the work was never completed.
The explanation for this came some ten years later in the foreword
to the Logical Investigation?:
3
L. Haaparanta (ed.), Mind, Meaning and Mathematics, 3-47.
© 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
4 DAGFINN F0LLESDAL
The course of my development has led to my drawing apart as

regards basic logical convictions from men and writings to whom I
owe most of my philosophical education, and to my drawing rather
closer to a group of thinkers whose writings I was not able to
estimate rightly, and whom I consulted all too little in the course of
my labors. (LI, 43)
I began work on the prevailing assumption that psychology was the
science from which logic in general, and the logic of the deductive
sciences, had to hope for philosophical clarification. (LI, 42)
The Logical Investigations opens with a classically conducted attack

on "psychologism". Once freed of all its various guises psychologism
proves to be so inconsistent, that Husserl exclaims:
One might almost say that it is only inconsistency that keeps psy-
chologism alive: to think it out to the end is already to have given
it up, unless extreme empiricism affords a striking example of how
so very much stronger ingrained prejudices can be than the most
certain testimony of insight. (LI, 111)
At the same time, Husserl presented his first, as yet not completely
worked out, ideas for a new philosophical method, phenomenology,
which he hoped would be able to realize the dream of all philosophers of
a presuppositionless philosophy.4 Although phenomenology evolved so
much after the Logical Investigations that some scholars 5 consider Ideai
(1913) to be Husserl's first phenomenological work, phenomenology
must have been conceived between 1891 and 1900, between the publica-
tion of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, where phenomenology is generally
not referred to,7 and the publication of the Logical Investigations, where
Husserl was consciously trying to develop what he called the phenom-
enological method. s That this accords with Husserl's own view of his
development comes out clearly in the foreword to the second edition of
the Logical Investigations where he characterizes this work as a "break-
through". (LI, 43)
Husserl gives two reasons for this breakthrough:
HUSSERL AND FREGE 5
1. In "mathematicizing logic" he had come to know an "unerring

discipline having mathematical form and method" which greatly aroused
his interest in the "relationship between formal arithmetic and formal
logic" and in the fundamental questions connected with it "regarding the
essence of the form of knowledge as distinct from its matter, and regard-
ing the meaning of the distinction between formal (pure) and material
determinations, truths, laws." (LI, 42)
2. Psychological foundations for a philosophical clarification of logic

proved unsatisfactory. And Husserl began to doubt whether:
... the objectivity of mathematics, and of all science in general, could

be reconciled with a psychological foundation for logic. In this
manner my whole method, which I had taken over from the convic-
tions of the reigning logic, that sought to illuminate the given
science through psychological analyses, became shaken, and I felt
myself more and more pushed towards general critical reflections on
the essence of logic, and on the relationship, in particular, between
the sUbjectivity of knowing and the objectivity of the content known.
(LI,42)
Both these reasons bring to mind one of Husserl's greatest critics,

eleven years older mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege who
had levelled a devastating attack9 on the Philosophy of Arithmetic in
1894. While the other reviewers lO had written of the book in quite
laudatory terms, Frege carried out a thorough critique reminiscent of the
one he had made of Benno Erdmann's Logikll the year before in the
introduction to the Basic Laws of ArithmeticP And the result was no
more gratifying.
Frege, who was a professor in Jena, was one of the most brilliant
logicians of the 19th century. In his works Conceptual Notation 13
(1879), the Foundations of Arithmeticl4 (1884), Function and Concept
(1891) and the Basic Laws of Arithmetic I-II (1893 -1903), and in a
series of articles, the most important of which were "On Concept and
Object" (1892) and "On Sense and Reference" (1892),15 he showed that
arithmetical propositions were analytic and that arithmetic thus might be
considered a branch of logic. In so doing, he established the foundations
6 DAGFINN F0LLESDAL
of mathematical logic and did so in such a brilliant far-sighted way that

Whitehead and Russell could write in the preface to their masterwork on
logicism Principia Mathematica that: "In all questions of logical analysis
our chief debt is to Frege. ,,16 Frege's writings were, however, complete-
ly ignored by his contemporaries, and in the introduction to the Basic
Laws of Arithmetic he complained that no one, not even scholars in the
same field, read his writings (BL, xi). Bertrand Russell could still write
in 1901: "In spite of the great value of this work (Frege's Conceptual
Notation) I was, I believe, the first person who ever read it - more than
twenty years after its publication. ,,17
We know, however, that Husserl knew all Frege's writings, and
although he knew "mathematizing logic" and other logics through
SchrOder's gigantic Vorlesungen aber die Algebra der Logik,18 the
thought comes readily to mind that it was precisely the logicist Frege
who awakened his interest in the relationship between formal arithmetic
and formal logic.
Frege was also one of the few who may have figured significantly
in the major shift in Husserl's view of the relationship between psychol-
ogy and logic. Frege was not only one of the first to attack psycholo-
gism, he was the one who did so the most forcefully and with the most
insight.
But did Frege influence Husserl's development during these decisive
years? And if so, what influence did he have?
Husserl himself provides us with no answer. While the Philosophy
of Arithmetic contains a series of attacks on Frege and his anti-psycholo-
gism, he is only mentioned twice in the Logical Investigations, in an
insignificant little remark about Frege's use of the words "Sinn" and
"Bedeutung" (LI, 292), and in a footnote where referring to the rela-
tionship between mathematics and psychology, Husserl writes:
See in addition the fine statement of Natorp 'Uber objektive und

subjektive Begriindung der Erkenntnis', Philos. Monatshafte XXIII,
p. 265f. Cf. also G. Frege's stimulating work Die Grundlagen der
Arithmetik (1884), p. vi f. I need hardly say that I no longer accept
my criticism on principle of Frege's antipsychologistic position as
set forth in my Philosophie der Arithmetik, I, pp. 129-32. I may
here take the opportunity in relation to all of the discussions of these
HUSSERL AND FREGE 7
Prolegomena, to refer to the Preface of Frege's later work Die

Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. I (Jena, 1893). (U, 179 n.,
Findlay's translation has been emended.)
Scholars who have taken up the problem have come to widely

divergent conclusions.
Marvin Farber writes in The Foundations of Phenomenology:
Furthermore, although Frege has been credited with the demolition

of the Philosophy of Arithmetic and with turning Husser! away from
his early position, that contention cannot be sustained by the facts.
Frege did indeed successfully point out inadequacies in that work,
but he by no means discredited it as a whole; and the fact that
Husserl's confidence in his work was not seriously shaken is shown
by the frequent references to it in his later writings. 19
The Dutch logician E. W. Beth seems to disagree with this when he

writes:
It is possible to assign Frege a well determined place in the panthe-

on of speculative philosophers: on the one hand, he was the disciple
of H. Lotze, on the other, his objections to psychologism led to the
conversion of E. Husserl: in his Logical Investigations the latter
renounced psychologistic doctrines to adhere to the platonism of
Bolzano and Lotze; it is curious, however, that Husserl never
completely succeeded in assimilating Frege's theories although he
had a great deal of influence on certain eminent Polish logicians like
Lucasiewicz and Lesniewski. 2o
Beth is not the only one who thinks that Husserl did not fully realize
the depth of Frege's objections. Without mentioning Frege, John Wild
writes in an article on Husserl's critique of psychologism:
Husserl's effort to build up a "reine Logik" independent of ontolo-

gy, leads only to a new type of psychologism more dangerous than
before. 21
8 DAGFINN F0LLESDAL
Levinas had countered that contention ten years earlier:
Quite the contrary, it was a new ontology of the consciousness that

was developed in the second volume of the Logical Investigations to
replace the naturalistic ontology, and it is this ontology which has
been taken for psychologism.22
Farber is the only one of the scholars cited to have examined the
relationship between Husserl and Frege more closely.23 Farber's analysis
is very good in many respects, but rather incomplete, and his presenta-
tion of Frege's views is inaccurate in some respects.24
Besides Farber, only Andrew Osborn has studied Husserl's rela-
tionship to Frege closely. Osborn's study,2s which is written for the
general public, devotes only a few pages to this topic. It is merely a
summary of Frege's review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic in simpler
form.
The situation then is that while Husserl's relationship to a series of
thinkers with whom he came into direct or indirect contact, as for
example Brentano, Bolzano, Horbiger and Kiilpe, has been investigated
to some extent,26 no one has devoted a thorough study to his relationship
to Frege, although the remarks cited show a need for more clarity.
POSING THE PROBLEM
This work is a causal-historical study of the relationship between Husserl

and Frege. The questions we wish to answer were raised in the previous
section: "Did Frege influence Husserl's development during these
decisive years (1891-19OO)? And if so, what influence did he have?"
For the word 'influence' and for the other terms designating causal
relations used in this study we will use the definitions we provided in the
work "Kausale Relationen,,27 which due to their length and highly formal
character we prefer not to cite here.
It is essential that because our definitions are based on so-called
"causal laws" - a class of general synthetic conditionals - the follow-
ing proposition be analytic: "The truth of statements that events are
causally connected 'can' not be 'guaranteed'."
HUSSERL AND FREGE 9
The same holds for the probability of such statements.28

This does not, however, assign causal-historical studies a special
place among scientific endeavors. For all sciences built upon general
implications, for example all the natural sciences, typically fail to
provide any "guarantee" of the truth or probability of their conclusions.
Yet, one is surely justified in saying that they instill confidence in these
conclusions.
The manner and means by which the natural sciences instill this
confidence cannot, however, be readily carried over into a branch of
intellectual life where it is hard to perform experiments, and where the
complexity of the subject matter appears to be so great as to rule out the
possibility of "explaining" all observations with the help of a small
number of simple, general conditionals.
The kind of confidence in general conditionals which natural scien-
tists try to instill by means of their experiments, historians must often
accept as given. To a certain degree historians can instill or increase
confidence in such conditionals, for example, through psychological or
sociological research or by using examples drawn from history which
"confirm" the truth of the conditionals. It is, however, usually easier for
them to instill confidence in the remaining propositions that are used in
historical reasoning, propositions saying that historical events with
certain features have taken place. This will as a rule be the main part of
their task. Natural scientists are almost always mostly interested in
general conditionals and are seldom greatly interested in isolated inci-
dents unless they offer an opportunity to choose from among competing
general conditionals. For historians the relationship is rather the oppo-
site. They are mostly intrigued by particular events, preferably what is
unique in them, just that which makes the event unsuitable to falsify
general conditionals having a wide range of applications. 29
However, even in pure "descriptive" historical work a choice must
be made in that only "relevant" historical events are to be discussed.
The criteria for relevance are not always explicity expressed. They may
be formulated in individual historical works without need of any kind of
general synthetic conditionals. One can, for example, study the Hus-
serl- Frege relationship from a purely logico-doctrinal point of view
without appealing to any general synthetic conditionals involving causal-
ity.3o
10 DAGFINN F0LLESDAL
This work brings such a comparative logico-doctrinal investigation

very much to mind, especially since the main part of the work, which
we have called "Analysis", nearly entirely consists of a comparison
between Frege's views on a series of central philosophical questions and
the change which took place in Husserl's views on these questions from
1891 to 1900. The fundamental significance of these questions for
phenomenology and a general theory of knowledge is enough by itself to
arouse interest in such a comparison of the viewpoints of these two
thinkers.
We hope, however, to be able to show that such a comparison is
also of historical interest, and that this comparison, together with the
remaining smaller portions of this study, can instill confidence that a
causal relationship may obtain between Husserl's becoming acquainted
with Frege's views and the inception of phenomenology.
This study is primarily intended to be such a contribution to eluci-
dating the origins of phenomenology.
We have asked ourselves two questions. The first was "Did Frege
influence Husserl's development from 1891-1900?" The second: "What
influence did he have?".
One analytic consequence of our definitions is: If we are confident
that events adequate to "explain" Husserl 's development during the years
1891 -1900 are inaccessible through the means available to us, then the
first of these questions can not be answered affirmatively either in this
work, nor in a complete investigation of the origins of phenomenology.
(The second question as to what influence he had, does of course not
arise in this case).
We are confident that such "inaccessible" events could adequately
"explain" Husserl's development,3! and for this reason our answer is not
affirmative. But is it negative? In this work we wish to try to instill
confidence that the answer is not negative either, and that for this
reason, again as an analytic consequence of our definitions, Frege may
have played a significant role in Husserl's development during the years
1891 to 1900. We also wish to try to show the way in which we think he
may have been significant.
We will finally pose the problem in the following way: What signifi-
cance may Frege (Le. the event of Husserl's becoming acquainted with
HUSSERL AND FREGE 11
Frege's point of view) have had for the origins of phenomenology (Le.
Husser!'s philosophical development during the years 1891-1900)?
We wish to focus on the significance we are especially confident
Frege may have had, and so we wish to base our study on the following
"causal law: ,,32
"That a philosopher encounters great difficulties integrating into his
philosophy propositions in whose truth he has a great deal of confidence,
that while working on these difficulties he becomes acquainted with
arguments which show that these difficulties can be surmounted if and
only if he changes his fundamental philosophical position, and that
furthermore this fundamental position has made a good part of the
reasoning grounding his philosophy inconsistent,
and that he accepts the arguments
is sufficient
that he changes his fundamental philosophical position accordingly
so that in his opinion neither the arguments, nor the reasoning upon
which he may base his new philosophy are any longer affected by
them."
This "causal law" meets the requirement we place on a causal law
in "Kausale Relationen" for it to be used to instill confidence that one
event may have had significance for another event.
Our study will accordingly show that the origins of phenomenology,
or events "entering into" this event, meet all the criteria stated in the
consequence of the "causal law". It will show that the event of Husser!'s
becoming acquainted with Frege's position, or one or more events
"entering into" this, meets all the criteria stated in one or more proposi-
tions of the antecedent of the "causal law", and that the remaining
propositions in the antecedent are true.
Because Husserl is the philosopher who has in this case changed his
fundamental philosophical position, and since the changes which interest
us here are those we have called "the origin of phenomenology", that is,
the changes mentioned in the preface having taken place between the
Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891) and the Logical Investigations (1900) the
first of the three propositions in the antecedent of the causal law is in
this case equivalent to the proposition: "Prior to 1900 Husser! encoun-
tered great difficulties while working to integrate into his philosophy
propositions in whose truth he had a great deal of confidence. " We have
already shown in the preface that this statement is true: when Husserl
was stating the reasons for his philosophical breakthrough, he recounted
that he had encountered great difficulties while working on the Philoso-
phy of Arithmetic when he tried to integrate the proposition: "Mathe-
matics and all science in general are objective" into his philosophy.33
The second of the three propositions in the antecedent of the "causal
law" is in this instance equivalent to the proposition: "While attempting
to integrate the proposition: 'Mathematics and all science in general are
objective' into his philosophy, Husserl became acquainted with argu-
ments which showed that the difficulties he was encountering could be
surmounted if and only if he changed his fundamental philosophical
position, and that furthermore this fundamental position had made a
good part of the reasoning grounding his philosophy inconsistent." The
central portion of this study consists of an examination of the relevant
arguments of Frege's with which Husserl became acquainted, and in an
analysis of the changes in Husserl's philosophical position after he had
become acquainted with those arguments.
Through this analysis we wish to try to show that the following
proposition, which is in this instance equivalent to the consequent of the
"causal law", is true: "After becoming acquainted with Frege's argu-
ments Husserl changed his fundamental philosophical position so that in
his opinion the arguments and the reasoning upon which he based his
new philosophy were no longer affected by them".
The changes meeting the criteria stated here are what we mean by
"the significance Frege may have had for the origins of phenomenolo-
gy".34
Husserl's new philosophy is presented in the Logical Investigations,
and while developing it he would therefore have been able to take into
consideration all Frege's arguments he had become acquainted with up
until then. Before beginning our analysis we must, then, answer the
question: "Which of Frege's arguments was Husserl acquainted with
prior to 19OO?"
If we can begin with the assumption that Frege's arguments were
always adequately expressed in his writings, this question can best be
answered by first finding out which of Frege's writings Husserl knew.
Were this inquiry to show that particular writings of Frege were un-
known to Husserl, we would then need to find out whether prior to the
presentation of his new philosophy Husserl had any other access (for
example, through letters and conversation) to the arguments presented by
Frege in those writings.
We are, however, especially interested in those of Frege's argu-
ments to which Husserl had access while he was still engaged in integrat-
ing the proposition: "Mathematics and all science in general are objec-
tive" into his original philosophy.
In order to be able to find out what arguments were involved, we
still have to answer one preliminary question: "When did the decisive
change in Husserl's development happen?" In conformity with our
"causal law", we will be specifically interested in those of Frege's
arguments that HusserI had direct access to before this decisive change,
while he was still struggling to preserve his fundamental psychologistic
position.
So our study actually consists in answering these two preliminary
questions, and in systematically comparing Frege's arguments and the
changes that took place in HusserI's philosophical views between the
Philosophy of Arithmetic and the Logical Investigations.
Now only one proposition in the antecedent of the causal law
remains, the third and final one which in our case is equivalent with the
proposition: "HusserI accepts Frege's arguments".
That Husserl did this, and that this final proposition in the antece-
dent is true, seems to follow from the note already cited from the
Logical Investigations, where Husserl says:
I no longer accept my criticism on principle of Frege's antipsycholo-

gistic position as set forth in my Philosophy of Arithmetic I, pp.
129 - 32. I may here take the opportunity in relation to all of the
discussions of these Prolegomena, to refer to the Preface of Frege's
later work Die Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. 1 (Jena, 1893).
(LI, 179 n.)
In the conclusion we will discuss how much credence HusserI's

statement may be accorded.
ANALYSIS
Two Preliminary Questions
Which of Frege's writings did Husserl know?

The many attacks Husserl made on Frege in the Philosophy of
Arithmetic indicate that he knew Frege's works up to 1890. Husserl
confirms this to be the case when in his "Reply to the Previous Reply of
Mr Voigt" in the 1893 Vierteljahrsschrift fUr wissenschaftliche Philoso-
phie, he disputes the contention of the one year younger mathematician
Andreas Voigt that the ideas Husserl had set forth in the article "The
Deductive Calculus and Intensional Logic"35 were already to be found in
Peirce's and Frege's writings. Husserl explains as follows: "I have
before me the writings of the brilliant scholar from Jena whom I regard
very highly: I do not find any trace at all of the disputed thoughts in his
writings. "36
Since, as mentioned, Husserl refers to "On Sense and Reference"
(1892) and the Basic Laws of Arithmetic, vol. 1 (1893) in the Logical
Investigations, he undoubtedly knew all Frege's writings prior to 1893.
The survey of German writings on logic which Husserl wrote for the
Archiv fUr systematische Philosophie 37 indicates that he also read articles
Frege published in the years 1894-1900 soon after they appeared,
among them also the review of Philosophy of Arithmetic.
Next, the following question needs clarification:
When did the decisive turning point in Husserl's development occur?
The answer to this question will decide which of Frege's writings
must be considered particularly important for the following analysis.
Husserl explains in the foreword to the second edition of the Logical
Investigations that the Prolegomena to Pure Logic was the reworking of
two series of lectures given in the summer and autumn of 1896 (LI, 47).
So the decisive change in his development must also have taken place
before 1896.
In the foreword to the Philosophy of Arithmetic he explained that the
manuscript of the second volume was for the most part ready, and that
it should be published within about a year (PA IX). That in spite of this
the second volume was never published could indicate that the shift had
already taken place by 1891-1892. Husserl's two attacks on SchrOder'S
and the subsequent polemical exchange with Voigt,39 however, display

no trace of any such a change.
The solution must then be found in the articles entitled "Psycho-
logical Studies of Elementary Logic"40 which were published in 1894.
The title indicates that Husserl was assuming that logic must still
look to psychology for c1arification.41 Titles, however, can be deceptive,
and since portions of the article comprise a part of the third logical
investigation "On the Theory of Wholes and Parts" (U, 435 ff. Cf.
especially 449 n. 2) and of the fifth and sixth logical investigation (LI,
694 n.), one cannot simply label it psychologistic.
The articles have a clear descriptive-psychological orientation.
However, this is not only to be found in the Philosophy of Arithmetic,
but is also present in the Logical Investigations. Husserl was himself
once so careless as to characterize phenomenology as descriptive psy-
chology.42 What is decisive, however, is the fact that the basic orienta-
tion in the articles is clearly psychologistic, hence the same as in the
Philosophy of Arithmetic. This is especially clear in paragraph 7 of the
second article where, among other things, Husserl says:
For all of psychology, and for psychology of knowledge and logic

in particular, inquiry into the psychical functions under discussion,
especially the exceedingly remarkable one of representation, appears
to me to be of fundamental significance.
For logic, since concepts, judgments and all other logical operations
themselves belong together in that distinguished group. In particular,
I think I may be permitted to say that no theory of judgment can do
justice to the facts which is not grounded in a deeper study of the
descriptive and genetic relationships of intuitions and representa-
tions. 43
It can therefore be concluded that the turning point in Husserl's

development which led to his break with psychologism, and so was
decisive for his conception of phenomenology, took place between 1894
and 1896.
For this reason it is natural to use Frege's critique of the Philosophy
of Arithmetic as the basis for this analysis. In what follows this critique
will be discussed point by point and this should show the extent to which
the points criticized are changed in the Logical Investigations.
FREGE'S REVIEW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC
Frege begins his review with a brief summary of the first parts of
Husserl's book. The summary sets out in very clear terms what Frege
finds at times lacking in Husser!. He finds two points in the exposition
needlessly unclear: the relationship between "multiplicity" and "num-
ber", and the distinction between a "relation of difference" and a "col-
lective relation".
1. "Multiplicity" - "Number"
Frege formulates his objection in this way:
The words 'the concept of number comprises the same concrete

phenomena as the concept of multiplicity (PA, 9), though only via
the extensions of its species concepts, those of the numbers two,
three, four ... ' might lead one to infer that they are co-extensive. On
the other hand, multiplicity is supposed to be more indefinite and
more general than number. The matter would probably be clearer if
falling under a concept had been more clearly distinguished from
being subordinated to one. (FR, 313)
Frege had himself carried out a similar investigation in the Founda-

tions of Arithmetic, and he found there that the concept "number" can
not by explained by identifying it with a "multiplicity", "set" or "plural-
ity" (FA, § 28), first because the concept will not cover the numbers 0
and 1, and secondly because the meaning of the expressions proposed is
very vague. Frege opted for equivalence classes and settled for the
following definition:
the number which belongs to the concept F is the extension of the

concept "equal to the concept F" (FA, § 68)
To this definition Frege adds the comment:
I believe that for "extension of the concept" we could simply write

"concept". (FA, § 68, n. 1)44
In the Philosophy of Arithmetic (pp. 89-90) Husserl returns to the

"multiplicity" - "number" relationship saying:
The former (the concept of number) is to be grasped as the generic

concept which originates as the species concept out of the compa-
rison of numbers or multiplicity forms which are definite and
already distinct from one another: the concept of multiplicity,
however, arises directly out of the comparison of concrete sets.
(PA, 89)
This explanation is clearer than the one which Frege discusses on

page 9. On page 88, Husserl defines "number" as "a common name for
the concepts two, three, four, etc.", while explicitly emphasizing the
difference between the concepts two, three, four, and the names two,
three, four, etc .. So in the Philosophy of Arithmetic the concepts "mul-
tiplicity" and "two", "three", "four", etc., originate in the same man-
ner, through abstraction from concrete sets, while 'number' is a common
name for the already distinct, definite "multiplicity" -forms or numbers
two, three, four, etc ..
In the Logical Investigations "multiplicity" and "number" are
included in pure logic, and of course fall into "the pure or formal
objective categories" (LI, 237). Husserl adds to this that these concepts
"are independent of the particularity of any material of knowledge" (LI,
237) and so stresses:
Not that psychological questions as to the origin of the conceptual

presentations or presentational dispositions here in question, have
the slightest interest for our discipline. This is not what we are
inquiring into ... we are concerned with insight into the essence of
the concepts involved, looking methodologically to the fixing of
unambiguous, sharply distinct meanings of words. (LI, 237 - 38)
So in the Logical Investigations we seek in vain for the "objective

correlates" of the concepts "multiplicity" and "number" in "the sphere
of real objects, which is in fact no other than the sphere of objects of
possible sensory perception", and Husserl explicitly emphasizes that this
is valid for both the sphere of the "outer" senses and that of the "inner"
senses (LI, 782). We will indeed be led to these concepts by an act, but
"not in these acts as objects, but in the objects of these acts, do we have
the abstractive basis which enables us to realize the concepts in question"
(LI, 783 -4). Or as Husserl says in Ideas:
Hence, if anyone loves a paradox, he can really say, and say with
strict truth if he will allow for the ambiguity, that the element which
makes up the life of phenomenology as of all eidetical science is
"fiction", that fiction is the source whence the knowledge of "eter-
nal truths" draws its sustenance. (ID § 70)
So the most important difference between the Philosophy of Arithme-

tic and the Logical Investigations in this respect appears to be that while
the concepts "multiplicity" and "number" are found through abstraction
from "real" objects, "ideal" objects are the basis for abstraction in the
Logical Investigations.
So Husserl ended not far from Frege who asserted that the concepts
"multiplicity" and "number" had to be defined with the help of 'objec-
tive objects' (FA, § 26 ff.).
2. "The relation of difference" - "Collective connection"
"For the collective connection" Husserl found it necessary "to have

recourse to a new class of relations completely distinct from all others"
(PA, 69). Of Husserl's attempt to define this "completely distinct class
of relations", Frege says:
I miss here the statement of the distinction between the relation of

difference and the collective connection which in the author's
opinion is likewise a mental relation because there is no union to be
noticed by intuition in the presentations contained in the act. (FR,

314)
HusserI's use of the two expressions 'relation of difference' and

'collective connection' shows that they do not designate one and the
same relation. Thus on page 79 he uses the expression 'in both cases' of
the relations themselves. On pages 78 -79 he shows that both relations
are clearly distinct from primary relations, but in no place does he seek
to state or clarify the difference between the two.
Frege's criticism of HusserI's blurred concepts in this case, as in the
previous one, appears intially to be directed towards a couple of inconse-
quential flaws in the way his views are presented. That Frege considers
these flaws to be symptoms of far more basic weaknesses in HusserI's
work becomes increasingly clear as he proceeds with his review.
It is worth noting that while in the Philosophy of Arithmetic the
concept of relation is taken from John Stuart Mill and is defined by
appealing to "states of consciousness", in the Logical Investigations it is
one of the "pure, formal objective categories" (LI, 237). It evolves in
precisely the same way as the concepts "number" and "multiplicity".
After this introduction, Frege begins his analysis:
3. "Number" - "Concept"
He characterizes HusserI's conception of numbers as naive and by this

means that the "statement of number is not a statement about a concept
or about the extension of a concept". (FR, 315)
HusserI and Frege definitely agree that a number is not "a psychical
fact" (PA, 11) (FA, § 21), yet HusserI maintains that:
No doubt at all remains with regard to the concrete phenomena

which form the abstractive basis of the concepts in question. They
are sets, multiplicities of definite objects. (PA, 9)
For this reason he distances himself from Frege's attempt to:

Ground arithmetic on a series of formal definitions from which all

the theorems of this science may be derived in a purely syllogistical
manner. (P A, 130)
In Husserl's opinion this attempt is destined to failure because:
The concepts of multiplicity and unity are directly based on primi-

tive, elementary psychic data, and thus belong among concepts
which are undefinable in the way indicated. The concept of number
is, however, so closely connected with these that one can scarcely
speak of a definition for it. (PA, 131)
Frege's view of the concept of number was indicated in point 1

above. A brief remark in the Logical Investigations shows how com-
pletely Husserl had taken over the formal, logical view of numbers:
In relation to such theories, the arithmetics of number, of ordinal

number, of magnitude, of "quantite dirigee" etc., are more or less
like mere individual singulars. To each a formal generic Idea corre-
sponds, a theory of absolute integers, or real numbers, of ordinary
complex numbers etc., in whose case 'number' is to be taken in a
generalized, formal sense. (LI, 243)
4. "Presentation"
Husserl finds that the transition from concrete phenomena to general

concepts presents some difficulties:
It was clear to begin with that the particular characteristic of the

individual objects collected in the form of a multiplicity could not
contribute anything to the intension of the general concept belonging
to it. The only thing that could be taken into consideration in form-
ing this concept was the connection of the objects in the unitary
presentation of their set. (PA, 67 -68)
And now Husserl wants to investigate this "collective connection".

He finds that it is not given in the content of the presentation, but in the
mental acts which make the content of the presentation into a whole. The
"collective connection" can then only be clarified by reflection on these
mental acts (PA, 79).
Frege finds this procedure questionable for two reasons:
First, Husser! is reducing the original concrete phenomena to
presentations, and thereby gives them an opportune, but very dangerous
"pliancy". (FR, 316)
Second, and this is the most important thing for Frege, in the
process the differences between presentation and concept, presentation
and thinking, and thereby also the boundary between subjective and
objective vanish (FR, 317). Frege finds the main cause of this confusion
in the careless use by "psychologists" of the word "presentation", and
he underscores this in a series of his works. He says this in his attacks
on psychologism in the Basic Laws of Arithmetic:
Because the psychological logicians fail to recognize the possibility

of there being something objective that is not actual, they take
concepts to be presentations and thereby consign them to psycholo-
gy. But the true state of affairs makes itself felt too forcibly for this
to be easily carried through. From this there stems an equivocation
on the word "presentation": at some times it seems to mean some-
thing that belongs to the mental life of an individual and that merges
with other presentations with which it is associated, according to the
laws of psychology; at other times it seems to mean something
standing apart from everyone in the same way, where a possessor of
the presentation is neither mentioned nor even tacitly presupposed.
(BL, XVIII)45
And in the article "On Sense and Reference", Frege not only intro-
duces well-defined and very significant distinctions between "signs",
"sense", and "meaning", but also declares that "the meaning and sense
of a sign are to be distinguished from the associated presentation" (GB,
59). At the same time he points out that "one need have no scruples in
speaking simply of the sense, whereas in the case of a presentation one
must, strictly speaking, add whom it belongs to and at what time" (GB,
90).
Frege is succinct: "If number were a presentation, then arithmetic
would be psychology. But arithmetic is no more psychology than, say,
astronomy is". (FA, § 27)
When in his exhaustive discussion of psychologism in the Prolego-
mena Husserl so often and so forcefully stresses the gap between "sci-
ences of the ideal and sciences of the real", and says there is a funda-
mental difference between the "psychological connection among presen-
tations, judgments, insights, surmises, questions, etc." and the "logical
connection, i.e. the specific connection of the theoretical Ideas .... " (LI,
185-86), one is inclined to think that he is in complete agreement with
Frege. But, while Frege only very seldom uses the word "presentation",
one encounters it rather often in Husserl's writings, and it plays a very
important role in his fifth logical investigation, "On Intentional Expe-
riences and their Contents". In fact, it plays such an important role that
he finds it necessary to devote an expanded chapter to studying the many
ambiguities of the words "presentation" and "content of a presentation".
This already leads us to suspect that Husserl and Frege may not
agree that the word 'presentation' is to be kept outside the domain of
pure logic.
In fact, much in Husserl's phenomenology appears to indicate that
Beth was right to state that "Husserl never completely succeeded in
assimilating Frege's theories" .46 While Frege says in his criticism of
psychologism:
In the end everything is drawn into the sphere of psychology; the

boundary that separates objective and subjective fades away more
and more, and even actual objects themselves are treated psychologi-
cally, as presentations. (BL, XIX)
Husserl states in his sixth investigation:
Being an object is no positive characteristic, no positive kind of

content: it designates the content only as the intentional correlate of
a presentation. (LI, 736)
Husserl's statement is not necessarily a sign of reversion back to

psychologism and its confusion of concepts. The statement is rather to be
understood as a normative definition, which indicates that the rela-
tionship between the words "presentation" and "object" is not the same
in Husserl and Frege. And while Frege did not believe that the concept
"presentation" should be used in pure logic, it became a basic concept
for Husserl. Husserl believed that all "objects" reach our consciousness
through "presentations", "individual objects" as well as "general ob-
jects" which among other things include numbers (in the ideal sense) and
the ideal, pure logical unities, like concept, proposition, truth, or what
on the whole Husserl calls logical "meanings" (LI, 340-41). In the first
logical investigation Husserl says: "Everything that is logical falls under
the two correlated categories of meaning and object." (LI, 325)
Thus for Husserl "presentation" is not only closely linked with
logic, but has fundamental significance for it.
Nonetheless, in spite of Frege's critique, the place of presentations
in the Logical Investigations seems to be rather closer to the one which
they had in the Philosophy of Arithmetic. In this connection it is interest-
ing to note that in Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl stresses that
in the Philosophy of Arithmetic he had tried to clarify the basic concepts
of arithmetic by investigating the acts which gave rise to them. This
was:
a phenomenologico-constitutional investigation; and at the same time

it was the first investigation that sought to make "categorial objec-
tivities" of the first level and of higher levels (sets and cardinal
numbers of a higher ordinal level) understandable on the basis of the
"constituting" intentional activities, as whose productions they make
their appearance originaliter .... 47
There is an important difference, however, for, as was previously

mentioned, Husserl in the Logical Investigations, was concerned with
separating the many ambiguities in the word "presentation" from one
another as a way of avoiding the pernicious mixing of subjective and
objective which Frege criticized. And it is important to note that a
couple of statements Frege made on the matter indicate that he would not
have raised any essential objections to the ways in which Husserl used
the word "presentation" in the Logical Investigations. In Foundations of

Arithmetic, Frege concedes that objective "presentations" form a part of
logic, but that they can be divided into "objects" and "concepts", and
that he, however, uses the word "presentation" exclusively for subjective
"presentations". Frege notes that by associating both meanings with the
word, Kant (whose view of logic Husserl in the main shares, (Cf. LI,
214-15» gave his doctrine a very subjective, idealist complexion and
made his true view difficult to discover. (FA, § 27 n.)
5. "True" - "Being taken as true"
In the Philosophy of Arithmetic "a set (collectivity, multiplicity) appears

sometimes as a presentation (pp. 15, 17, 24, 82) and sometimes as
something objective (pp. 10-11, 235)" (FR, 318). Frege thought that
for this reason Husserl was not in a good position to distinguish between
"being taken as true" and "being true", and he accords this fact funda-
mental significance. "Surveying the whole question, it seems to me that
the source of the dispute lies in a difference in our conceptions of what
is true. For me, what is true is something objective and independent of
the judging subject; for psychological logicians it is not." (BL, xvii)
As already mentioned in the preface, the fact that Husserl perceived
this fundamental weakness in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, follows very
clearly from his statement in the foreword to the Logical Investigations.
There he stated that while working on the second volume of the Phi-
losophy of Arithmetic he was not in a position to establish a clear and
continuous bridge between psychological connections of thinking and the
logical unity of the thought-content, and that he felt himself pushed
towards critical investigations into the relationship between the "subjec-
tivity of knowing and the objectivity of the content known" (LI, 42).
The result of these and other similar investigations would be the Logical
Investigations.
The main arguments in Husserl's attack on psychologism in the
Prolegomena are closely linked to this contrast between the subjectivity
of psychology and the objectivity of pure logic. 48 The arguments are in
many respects reminiscent of those Frege used in 1893 and 1894, and
although, as mentioned, Husserl was already conscious of this weak
point in psychologism while working on the second volume of the

Philosophy of Arithmetic in 1891-92, a comparison of the arguments of
these two thinkers will be of major significance for this study.
Frege's point of departure is the word 'true'. Our view of the nature
of logic is determined by what we mean by this word. Frege himself
assigns objective meaning to the word, strictly distinguishing between
'true' and 'being taken for true'. He is above all criticizing the confusion
of these two concepts by psychologistic logicians. If by 'true' one means
what Frege means by 'being taken for true', then strictly speaking one
must add 'for whom' and 'at what time'. Only a few psychological
logicians do that, and so they are often led into bewildering unclarity.
Hence it is the unclarity and inconsistency of the psychologistic logicians
that Frege is attacking. He limits himself to this because in his opinion
consistently executed psychologism can not be combatted through purely
logical means. He expresses this in the following way:
The question why and with what right we acknowledge a law of

logic to be true, logic can answer only by reducing it to another law
of logic. Where that is not possible, logic can give no answer. (BL,
xvii)
Frege states that when we say that a logical proposition, for example
the principle of identity, cannot be rejected because that would go
entirely against our nature and would make all thought impossible, we
are not talking about what is true, but about what we take to be true, and
we are no long moving within the realm of pure logic. For this reason
he does not try to "demonstrate" the objective nature of logic.
HusserI also concentrates on the inconsistency of psychologistic
logicians. He first shows that some of the common arguments against
psychologism are irrelevant,49 and afterwards presents the arguments he
finds decisive. He agrees with Frege that an objective and absolute logic
cannot be grounded empirically and statistically, and that for this reason
one must distinguish between "true" and "being taken for true", between
"ideal laws" and "real laws". HusserI believes that psychologism in all
its various forms is based on a kind of relativism (LI, 145 -46). In a
critical analysis he tries to show the logical untenability of such a rela-
tivism and therefore the absolute nature of logic.
Since, as mentioned, Frege held that it was impossible to establish

or contest the objectivity and unconditional nature of logic with the help
of purely logical arguments, Husserl's views on this matter are of great
interest.
By relativism, Husserl means the view that all truth is relative -
relative with respect to either the judging subject (individual relativism)
or to the judging group or species (species relativism, or anthropologism
if the group is the human species). (LI, 138)
Husserl first discusses individual relativism.
He believes that he can refute this purely objectively by pointing out
that "the content of such assertions rejects what is part of the sense or
content of every assertion and what accordingly cannot be significantly
separated from any assertion" (LI, 139). In so doing Husserl is openly
alluding to the "self-evident conditions for the possibility of a theory in
general" mentioned in the introduction to his critique of relativism. Since
one of these conditions is precisely the self-evidence (Evidenz) which
provides the judging person with "luminous certainty" of not merely
holding something to be true, but of actually being in possession of the
truth (LI, 135), Husserl is doubtlessly right if the subjectivist were to
accept this basic principle. That is, however, precisely what he does not.
If Husserl's "objectively valid demonstration" corresponds to
Frege's "logical demonstration", Husserl should now be able to convince
the subjectivists of their error by using logical arguments. Husserl,
however, concedes that he is not capable of this because subjectivists are
not disposed in the same normal way we are; they have no sense of self-
evidence (Evidenz) (LI, 139). And self-evidence is a necessary part of
Husserl's "objectively valid demonstration".
The reason why Husserl can reject subjectivism through "objectively
valid demonstration", while Frege cannot, lies, therefore, in Husserl's
"self-evidence". The decisive meaning of this concept for the rela-
tionship between Husserl and Frege will become increasingly clear in
what follows.
Husserl introduces six arguments against specific relativism:
1. If the same proposition can be true for one group, for example the
human species, and false for another, then the proposition is both
true and false at the same time, and this conflicts with the meaning
of the words "true" and "false". Because "what is true is absolutely

true 'in itself; truth is one and the same, whether humans or non-
humans, angels or gods apprehend and judge it". (LI, 140) The
argument, then, is succinct: It is contradictory to assert that truth is
not absolute, because it is absolute.
This is also a case of one assertion set against another, in that
Husserl is again making it entirely a question of self-evidence.
2. Husserl's next objection is basically the same, although it takes a

somewhat different form: If one accepts that a group of thinking
beings may have logical principles other than those we humans
have, this is contradictory if they mean the same thing by 'false' and
'true' as we do since the basic principles "pertain to the mere sense
of the words as understood by us." (LI, 141) The argument is
therefore: It is contradictory to assert that logical arguments are not
unequivocally determined by our conception of true and false since
the logical principles are unequivocally determined by our concep-
tion of true and false.
If these thinking beings mean something different by 'true' and
'false' than we do, then the whole dispute is just a dispute about
words, Husserl continues, since then they are not talking about truth
and falsehood.
Hence: Either the relativist means that truth is absolute, and
then he cannot mean that it is relative, or he means that truth is rela-
tive, and then he is not talking about truth for truth is absolute.
Once again Husserl's argument is based on self-evidence: that
truth is absolute.
3. Husserl's third argument is directed against the confusion between

"ideal laws" and "real laws" by relativists. When relativists base
truth relativistically on the constitution of a group or a species, or
on a "fact", they then give truth a factual character. This is absurd
since this makes truth individual and time bound when it is really
absolute. One must not confuse judgments as real, causally deter-
mined acts with the truth of the judgment, the latter being ideal and
independent of all "fact".
Husserl completely agrees with Frege when he reserves the

word 'truth' to indicate absolute truth. If by 'truth' one means
relative truth, one must strictly speaking indicate what it is relative
to.
In all of the arguments which have been studied up to this point
that which Husserl is trying to prove, viz. the absolute nature of
truth, is contained as a "petitio principii" in the form of a reference
to self-evidence. But three of Husserl's arguments have yet to be
examined. Is the same true of them?
4. Husserl's fourth argument is that the basic principle of the relativists

that "there is no truth" is equivalent to the proposition "the truth is
there is no truth". And this is obviously contradictory.
The principle Husserl is attacking is, however, a relativistic
statement about absolute truth. 'Truth' is used relativistically first,
and then in the absolute sense the second time. The meaning of the
proposition would then be: "I hold it to be true that there is no
absolute truth." And this is not an obvious contradiction. 50
5. Husserl's next argument is ontological in nature: according to

relativism it should be possible for a species to be so constituted as
to lead it to take it to be true that such a constitution does not exist.
Here we are obviously faced with a contradiction. Hence, any
relativism allowing such consequences is untenable. If this argument
is what Frege understands by a logical argument, Husserl has shown
that relativism is untenable, and thereby, as previously mentioned,
achieved what Frege took to be impossible. The progress vis-a-vis
Frege is in this case significant, and an analysis of it will be of great
importance.
The above contradiction, then, lies in the fact that "the truth-
conditioning, and therefore existent constitution should condition the
truth (among other truths) of its own non-existence." (LI, 142)
If one assumes that relativists (and possibly Frege) accept
among other things that the "principium contradictionis" is to be
deemed a necessary condition of logical validity, then it is logically
impossible for this constitution both to exist and not to exist.
It is assumed that "the truth conditioning constitution does not

exist" is a true proposition in the relativistic logic whose incon-
sistency Husserl would show. A necessary and sufficient condition
for the validity of Husserl's argument is, then, that "the truth condi-
tioning constitution exists" is also a true proposition in the same
logic. This form of existential judgment does not, however, have
any place within Frege's logic (FA, § 53), and for this reason
Husserl's arguments have not achieved what Frege takes to be
impossible.
If the relativist does not see the logical necessity in Husserl's
reasoning from the "truth conditioning" to "existing", then Husserl
has come no further, and once again he can only point to the "self-
evidence" of the reasoning. 51
6. Husserl's sixth argument is that relativism is obviously in conflict

with the "self-evidence of immediately intuited existence, i.e., with
the self-evidence of 'inner perception' in the legitimate, indispensa-
ble sense". (LI, 143 -44)
The reference to self-evidence is so clear here as to make
analysis superfluous.
When we compare Husserl's and Frege's attacks on relativism, and

thus on psychologism, we find that both men attack the tendency of
relativists and psychologistic logicians to make conceptual confusions. In
addition they also both argue that relativists who assert that truth is
absolute, or reason as if it were, are in no position to produce a consis-
tent theory.
Frege holds pure relativism to be false, but believes it is impossible
to conduct an objective proof of its falsity because such a proof would
have to be based on fundamental principles which are subjective, that is,
held to be true. Husserl believes that it is possible to show in an objec-
tively valid way that pure relativism is also untenable. It is apparent,
however, that all his arguments are more or less manifestly constructed
on certain fundamental principles he calls evident, and which must be
objective if Husserl's arguments are to be objective.
Husserl's arguments against relativism are moreover also significant
because the fact that he made many references to these arguments in his
later works 52 shows that he considered them to be a valid demonstration

of the untenability of relativism.
6. Definition
Frege continues his review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic with an

examination of Husser!'s views on definition.
Husser! believed that it was surely very important to separate
concepts one from the other by means of rigorous definitions, but that it
was carrying things too far to try to define concepts which by reason of
their elementary character neither can be defined nor should be defined.
He found attempts to define what is meant by the equality or difference
of numbers particularly dangerous because these definitions had led to a
series of false definitions of the concept of number itself. (PA, 103)
If, for example, one says that two sets have the same number of
elements if there is a one-to-one correspondence between the elements of
the two sets, one is forgetting that the fact that such a correspondence is
possible is not the equality itself which obtains between the number of
elements of the two sets, but that the one-to-one correspondence only
shows that the equality is present, and so is a necessary and sufficient
criterion of this equality (PA, 114). One has thus defined the extension
of the concept, and not its intension.
This error can be avoided by using the symbolical concept of
number as one's point of departure, Husser! says. According to him:
"the simplest criterion for numerical equality is precisely that the same
number results when counting the sets compared."
Frege observes that this "counting" is also based on a one-to-one
correspondence, namely that between the number words from '1' to 'n'
and the elements of the set.
Husser! on the whole doubts the usefulness of definitions. Either the
definiendum and the definiens mean precisely the same "presentation",
and then the definition is obviously circular, or they mean different
"presentations" and then the definition is false. (PA, 106-07)
In Frege's opinion Husser!'s doubt reveals a fundamental difference
between the psychological logicians and mathematicians. For the former,
the "sense" of the words is the only important thing, for the latter the
"reference" of the words. Frege refers to his article "On Sense and
Reference" where he clarified the relationship between what he calls a
"sign", its "sense" and its "reference", and showed the far-reaching
logical consequences of this tri-partite distinction, among these being the
fact that concepts cannot be alike in the genuine sense of the word, but
concepts having the same extension can be called alike.
Much in the Logical Investigations reminds one of Frege's views on
concepts and definitions. Thus in the investigation entitled "Expression
and Meaning", HusserI introduces a tri-partite distinction between
"expression", "meaning" and "object" (LI, 287) reminiscent of Frege's
distinction in "On Sense and Reference". That Frege was basically
dealing with the same tri-partite distinction only comes out in a brief
comment (LI, 292) stating that Frege's terms 'sense' and 'meaning' are
so laden with ambiguities that HusserI does not find it advisable to diffe-
rentiate between them.
All doubt as to the importance 'of definitions is dissipated in the
Logical Investigations where definitions are considered as indications of
the objective meaning of the expressions defined (LI, 324). Thus con-
cepts become "ideal unities of meaning" classifiable with propositions
which can be true or false. Propositions are accordingly not based upon
mental acts, "acts of presentation or of taking something to be true", but
upon other propositions or upon concepts. (LI, 324)
His contempt for the structural relation between concepts is replaced
by a fervent belief in the significance of a "pure theory of meaning
forms" which constitutes a part of pure logic, and is a prerequisite for
logic as "pure theory of validity" (LI, 525 - 26). This theory of forms
deals with, the "mere possibility of judgments, as judgments" (FTL, 50),
thus with problems of the same kind as those Frege treated in the last
part of "On Sense and Reference" (GB, 63 ft).
HusserI, however, remains firm in his conviction that for concepts
and their definitions the intension, not the extension, is the main thing.
He points out that when we define a concept our intention is not directed
toward the particular objects which fall under the concept, but toward
the unity of meaning referred to, and from this he concludes that:
The empiricistic attempt to dispense with species as objects by

having recourse to their extensions can therefore not be carried out.
It cannot tell us what gives unity to such extensions. (LI, 345)
In accordance with this he also attacks conceptual realism for having

led people "to dispute, not merely the reality, but the objectivity of the
species" (LI, 340). That those who deny the objectivity of the species
are wrong, in Husserl's opinion, clearly follows from the fact that our
intentions can be directed toward a species, for example the number two,
without being directed towards the individual objects which fall under
the species, in this case two individual single objects.
7. "Equality"
Frege adds some observations regarding Husserl's views on equality to

his critique of Husserl's treatment of definitions in the Philosophy of
Arithmetic.
Husserl believes that the concept of equality cannot be defined, and
that each attempt at defining it must inevitably be circular or end in
infinite regress (PA, 104-05). Husserl finds Leibniz's definition
"Eadem sunt, quorum unum potest substitui alteri salva veritate" ques-
tion-begging, and he prefers to define equality for particular purposes in
the following way:
We simply say that any contents are equal to one another when
precisely those properties (internal or external) which form the focus
of interest are equal. (PA, 108)
Frege stresses that Leibniz's definition does not deserve to be called

a definition (FR, 320; FA, § 65). It may rather called an explanation of
identity (FA, § 65), and thus is worthless for psychologists since diverse
"presentations" can by no means be identical. Furthermore, Frege uses
the words 'equality' and 'identity' to mean the same thing, since all
expressions containing the word 'equality' (not 'identity') can be re-
placed by expressions containing only the word 'identity' (FA, § 65;
GB, 56 n.). He is thus in a position to use 'identity' to define 'equality'
(not 'identity'), but he believes that 'identity' cannot be defined since

any definition presupposes identity (FR, 320).
In the Logical Investigations Husserl shows that when two things are
the same with respect to color, then their "color species" are identical
(LI, 343). In the same way Frege showed in the Foundations of Arithme-
tic that when two things are the same with respect to color, their colors
are identical (FA, § 65).
Husserl sums up the results of his inquiry writing:
Identity is wholly indefinable, whereas 'equality' is definable:

'equality' is the relation of objects falling under one and the same
species. (LI, 343)
It is worth noting that though only terminology reveals that it was

Husserl, not Frege, who made this remark, the statement is very re-
miniscent of Husserl 's analysis of equality in the Philosophy of Arithme-
tic.
The remainder of Frege's review is a thorough investigation of these
objections on matters of principle, and no new arguments are introduced
which are of significance for this study.
It should, however, be mentioned that Frege believed the psycholo-
gical investigations of the Philosophy of Arithmetic to be of great value,
and that he ends his review by directing psychologists's attention to
Chapter 11. Husserl would later view the book in the same way. (LI,
480 n.)
ARGUMENTS FROM FREGE'S REMAINING WRITINGS
In his critique of psychologism in the Basic Laws of Arithmetic, Frege

considers the normative character of logic to be of great importance.
This argument is not included in the review of the Philosophy of Arith-
metic. This is, however, one of Frege's arguments which Husserl was
acquainted with before the decisive turning point in his development, so
it is important for this study.
The normative character of logic
Frege believed that one's conception of logic is completely determined

by one's conception of the basic laws of logic. The word 'law' can,
however, be understood in two ways: it can express what is, and it can
prescribe what ought to be. And when these two meanings are used
interchangeably, the result will inevitably be some kind of psycho log ism.
If the laws of logic stood in the same relationship to thinking as the
laws of nature do to material phenomena, logic would then be a part of
psychology, and that it is not. Its laws are prescriptive and are so
exclusively, Frege maintains (BL, xv). Because truth
... is independent of being acknowledged by somebody or other, then

the laws of truth are not psychological laws: they are boundary
stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow,
but never displace. It is because of this that they have authority for
our thought if it would attain truth. (BL, xvi)
The reason Frege has so little to say about the normative character
of logic in his review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic is probably that the
work was more mathematico-psychological than logical. In the Logical
Investigations HusserI is no longer mainly concerned with mathematics,
but rather with problems of pure logic. The normative character of logic
is one of these problems. In contrast to Frege, HusserI finds that the
normative character of logic cannot be a decisive argument against
psychologism. A psychological logician can reply: "a necessary use of
the understanding is none the less a use of the understanding, and
belongs, with the understanding itself, to psychology" (LI, 92). If one
believes that what is essential to the ideality of logic is its normativity,
one walks right into the trap of psychologism because "the fundamental
sense of ideality, which puts an unbridgeable gulf between ideal and
real, is thereby lost". (LI, 217)
Characteristic of a normative discipline is its "basic norm", the
"definition" of what is to be deemed "good" (LI, 85). Each normative
discipline presupposes a theoretical discipline which investigates the
interconnections of the knowledge content without the valuation (LI, 86
ff.). In order to shed light on the relationship between logic and psychol-
ogy, one must therefore inquire as to which theoretical discipline norma-

tive logic is based on. Husserl found that psychology was one of these
theoretical disciplines, but that it could be omitted without logic entirely
disappearing, and so it was not an "essential" part of its foundations.
Only "pure logic" was "essential" for normative logic. (LI, 96)
This "pure logic" is ideal, independent from psychology and all
other real sciences. Its ideality has nothing to do with normativity, and
must not be thought of as an ideal of perfection, a goal to strive toward,
but exclusively in contrast to reality. For this reason the ideal, not the
normative character of logic, is the decisive argument against psycholo-
gismo
The opposite of a law of nature, as an empirically based rule regard-

ing what in fact is and occurs, is not a normative law or a prescrip-
tion, but an ideal law, in the sense of one based purely on concepts,
Ideas, purely conceived essences, and so not empirical. (LI, 175)
Husserl and Frege both take as their points of departure the fact that
logical laws are ideal in nature, that they are " .. .ideal unities ... re-
maining untouched by the flux of subjective presentations and
thoughts ... " (LI, 321) (Cf. BL, xvi). When, despite this, they ascribed
completely different significance to the normative character of logic, the
reason is that Frege not only believed that "any law asserting what is,
can be conceived as prescribing that one ought to think in conformity
with it" (BL, xv), but in addition he was of the opinion that the laws
"which prescribe universally the way in which one ought to think if one
is to think at all" were ideal in nature, so that it was not necessary to
distinguish between the ideal and the normative. Husserl's arguments
appear, however, to indicate that this distinction must be maintained.
CONCLUSION
The results of this study can be summed up briefly:

The Logical Investigations differs from the Philosophy ofArithmetic
in basic philosophical conception, which is psychologistic in the Phi-
losophy of the Arithmetic, and phenomenological in the Logical Investi-

gations.
Closer examination of the development of Husserl's thought shows
that phenomenology must have been conceived of between 1894 and
1896.
Since it must be taken for certain that Husserl knew all Frege's
writings, it seems reasonable to assume that these writings, and especial-
ly Frege's critical 1894 review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, played
a significant role in this sudden and decisive shift in Husserl's basic
philosophical position. This assumption finds further confirmation in the
fact that Husserl cites the encounter with mathematical logic and doubts
as to the tenability of psychologism as two important reasons for this
shift.
Because in 1894 Husserl had not yet tried to overcome the difficul-
ties he encountered while working on the second volume of the Phi-
losophy of Arithmetic by revising his basic philosophical position, it is
possible that it was precisely Frege's review which instigated this.
It can in any case be established that Husserl read Frege's critique
at a time his thought was entering a new phase, and that it was a valu-
able stimulus to him just at the time the decisive shift in took place.
Comparing Frege's arguments and Husserl's development from the
Philosophy of Arithmetic to the Logical Investigations gives those having
confidence in the "causal law" formulated above reason to believe that
Frege may have played a significant role in the change in Husserl's
development and in Husserl's new conception of a series of central
philosophical problems.
If one compares Frege's perspective with the change which one can
observe has taken place between the Philosophy of Arithmetic and the
Logical Investigations, one finds that the descriptive-psychological
investigations whose worth Frege acknowledged without appearing to
have attached any essential importance to them in clarifying the philo-
sophical foundations of logic are just as much in evidence in the Logical
Investigations as in the Philosophy of Arithmetic.
Concepts like "self-evidence" and "presentation" which Husserl had
already used in the Philosophy of Arithmetic and in "Psychological
Studies of Elementary Logic" are still of fundamental importance, but
now come within a consistently developed terminology, and so have
partially taken on a somewhat different meaning than the one they had in
his first work. They, along with a series of other central concepts like
"multiplicity" and "number", have been freed of the subjectivity and
imprecision Frege criticized so vigorously in his review.
Husserl's views on concepts and definitions have changed entirely,
but nonetheless still differ from those of Frege. Among other things, in
the Logical Investigations Husserl accords far greater importance to the
intension of concepts than Frege does.
Husserl distinctly differs from Frege in his views on the normative
nature of logic. By clearly severing the theoretical from the normative
sciences, he seems here to have come further than Frege.
Most important is, however, the marked difference between the
arguments both thinkers use against psychologism.
While Frege finds it impossible to prove the untenability of pure
relativism, Husserl believes that this is possible. Both believe that logic
can only take us from one proposition to another, and that we use
unproven preliminary suppositions or axioms in order to avoid circular-
ity or infinite regress (LI, 176 -77) (BL, xvii). The disagreement,
however, comes in Frege's regarding any such foundation as being
"taken for being true", whereas Husserl holds with self-evident certainty
that any foundation given us through self-evidence is objective.
This difference marks all their arguments against psychologism.
While Frege is content to criticize inconsistent psychologism, Husserl
finds any form of psychologism or relativism untenable. We see, how-
ever, that all Husserl's arguments make an appeal to self-evidence.
And so this study of Frege's significance for the origins of phe-
nomenology leads to an appreciation of Husserl's concept of self-evi-
dence.
When Husserl maintains that self-evident propositions are objectively
valid, Frege must see this as a confusion of "being true" and "being
taken to be true", and as psychologism in disguise.
For his part, Husserl must feel that in maintaining that the basic
propositions of logic are only "taken to be true" Frege ends up in pure
relativism.
For both, then, the views of the other must appear to be a kind of
psychologism.
Husserl's arguments against relativism do not resolve this difficulty

because the untenability of relativism figures as a "petitio principii" in
the arguments as a whole.
If one assumes that Husserl and Frege both believed that a theory
had to be consistent to be tenable, the problem can be resolved providing
one of the two theories proves to be inconsistent. If both theories are
consistent, the problem still remains unresolved since in this case consis-
tency cannot be a sufficient condition for the tenability of a theory; the
theory that both theories concerned are tenable is of course inconsistent
and consequently untenable.
Husserl believed that a theory which mixed "ideal laws" and "real
laws" was untenable because "no conceivable ladder can be set up
between ideal and real means".
For this reason he stressed that neither feelings nor other "sensory
perceptions" could be decisive criteria for self-evidence since this would
be reducing self-evidence to "empirical facts". (LI, 194)
As Kynast and Nress have shown, because of this very gap between
the "real" and the "ideal" one cannot maintain, as Husserl does, that we
really are certain that particular logical propositions like "modus bar-
bara" are self-evident. "We may actually have a great deal of apodictic
knowledge, but it cannot be known (in the strict sense of Husserl) that
we have" .53 For "That I actually have self-evidence in instances of a
judgment is a judgment about an empirical state of affairs. ,,54
Attempts to refute this argument do not prove very convincing. 55
If Husserl's conception of self-evidence now makes his new phi-
losophy inconsistent, this, as we have seen, destroys the whole basis of
his arguments against psychologism and his argumentation becomes a
typical example of what Frege meant by "psychologism".
This has two interesting consequences:
First, it must be considered settled that Wild, and not Levinas, has
provided the most accurate characterization of Husserl's development
from the Philosophy of Arithmetic to the Logical Investigations.
Second, and as concerns us this is the most remarkable, if that is the
case then Husserl was catastrophically wrong about precisely the one
matter about which he believed he may have been essentially more
perceptive than Frege.
We have, however, taken the allegation that HusserI was wrong

from two attacks on phenomenology which like most such attacks are
essentially based on HusserI's Prolegomena. The experience of phe-
nomenologists is that most such attacks are due to misunderstandings,
and the possibility that Kynast's and Nress's arguments against HusserI
can be shown to be based on such misunderstandings can therefore not
be dismissed. 56
Whatever one thinks about the tenability of phenomenology, how-
ever, one can draw the following conclusions from this study:
Although HusserI frequently refers to particular descriptive-psycho-
logical analyses in the Philosophy of Arithmetic in his phenomenological
writings, this is, as we have shown, no indication that Frege had not
rather severely shaken his confidence in the tenability of his original
philosophical position (and consequently also no indication that Frege
could not have shaken this confidence).
Farber's view of the relationship between HusserI and Frege is,
therefore, not entirely in agreement with the results of our study.57 We
believe we have established that his statement about Frege's significance
for the origins of phenomenology, which we cited in the preface, is
untenable. It is untenable, not because the grounds for it are wrong, but
because closer study of the HusserI- Frege relationship shows that it is
irrelevant - unless one believes that Husserl's early position was
descriptive-psychological and not psychological. And not once does
Farber, who is among those most intent upon stressing the continuity of
HusserI's development, appear to think this (see, e.g., The Foundation
of Phenomenology, p. 18).
We have found that on one point (his views on self-evidence)
HusserI developed in an entirely different direction than our "causal
law" apparently should have had us expect. Does this mean our "causal
law" is false, or is there an error in our study in some other respect?
That the first two propositions in the antecedent are true appears to
be established beyond any doubt. Due to the great confidence we have
in the truth of our causal law, HusserI's views on self-evidence compel
us to focus our attention on the third proposition of the antecedent and
on the conclusion.
There are two alternatives:
1. HusserI did not accept Frege's arguments regarding "being taken

for true", but believed them untenable. The third proposition in the
antecedent would then be false and our "causal law" "saved". In that
case Beth was definitely right in declaring: "HusserI never succeeded in
completely assimilating Frege's theories." We doubt, however, that Beth
believed HusserI to be guilty of so categorically underrating Frege's
arguments. And our doubt is increased by the fact that HusserI's italiciz-
ing the word "principle" in his approving mention of Frege's arguments
in the Logical Investigations (LI, p. 179 n.) is the sole indication of any
reservation HusserI makes.
We are for this reason inclined to believe that HusserI accepted
Frege's arguments, that the third proposition of the antecedent therefore
is true, and that the "salvation" of our "causal law" lies in the conclu-
sion, in the expression "in his opinion".
2. If this supposition is correct, HusserI must have believed that
there was something about his concept of self-evidence that made it
invulnerable to Frege's arguments.
He admits in other words that Frege's arguments apply to any
attempt that would base apodictic knowledge on logic alone, yet believes
they do not apply to the route to apodictic knowledge he had opened up
with the phenomenological method.
HusserI does not go into why Frege's arguments do not, in his
opinion, apply to his line of reasoning any more than Beth goes into why
he believes HusserI never completely understood Frege.
Nor would Kynast's and Nress's arguments have been able to help
us out of this predicament - unless we had been able to show that the
inconsistency in question could have been foreseen by anyone who had
seen the profoundness of Frege's argument.
The analysis of HusserI's arguments against the relativists we
examined in this study makes it, however, possible to answer this
question. In these arguments HusserI presents a series of considerations
which in his opinion show that relativism is untenable. We have seen
that throughout his reasoning he understands the basic principles of
relativism in a way different from the way relativists themselves do. If
HusserI believes these arguments are to be not only a proof that rela-
tivistic statements about truth are "self-contradictory" when the word
'truth' is used in the sense of 'absolute truth', thus a 10 page proof for
something that is a foregone conclusion, but rather arguments of a nature

adequate to persuade a non-phenomenologist of the untenability of rela-
tivism, then this difference in views is precisely what we maintain Beth
meant by "inadequate understanding".
Presuming this to be so, our study provides support for Beth's
statement that "Hussed never completely succeeded in assimilating
Frege's theories".
When the results of our study are viewed in light of the history of
20th century philosophy two clear tendencies are apparent:
First: Of the two attacks on psychologism we have compared in this
work, Frege's attack is as good as forgotten, while Hussedleft his mark
on the development of ideas for decades. In Ueberweg's great standard
work Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, where Frege is barely
mentioned and not linked at all with the fight against psychologism, one
reads: "It was the Logical Investigations which inaugurated the battle
against psychologism and by its impact vanquished it" .58
Second, and this is in our opinion more extraordinary, Hussed's
arguments seem also to have convinced non-phenomenologists of the
untenability of relativism. Thus the above cited work characterizes
Hussed's significance in the following way:
Hussed's influence has been so considerable that the Logical Investi-

gations surely can be singled out as the most influential and most
momentous philosophical work to have appeared up until now in the
new century. His fight against psychologism had particular impact,
especially on the younger generation of scholars. 59
The word 'particular' indicates that an analysis of the impact of

Husserl's battle against psychologism might produce interesting results.
University of Oslo
NOTES
1 Originally published as Husserl und Frege, ein Beitrag zur Be-

leuchtung der Entstehung der phtinomenologischen Philosophie, Oslo:
Aschehoug, 1958. Translation by Claire Ortiz Hill.
2 Edmund Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik, Halle: Pfeffer, 1891.
Cited in the text as PA.
3 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, New York: Humanities
Press, 1970 (1900-1901). Cited in the text as LI.
4 See for example LI, 263; 10 § 18 as cited in note 6.
5 For example Werner Illemann, Die vorphllnomenologische Phi-
losophie Edmund Husserls und ihre Bedeutung jar die phllnomenologi-
sche, Dissertation, Leipzig, 1932, p. 70.
6 Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phe-
nomenology, New York: Colliers, 1962 (1913). Cited in the text as 10.
7 Although there are many phenomenological features also in the
Philosophie der Arithmetik. See for example Husserl's own statements
LI, 204 n.; 449 n. and many others.
8 See for example LI, 248 -66.
9 Gottlob Frege, "Review of E.G. Husserl, Philosophieder Arithme-
tik r, anthologized in Frege's Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic
and Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984, pp. 195-209. Cited as FR
are the pages of the original German article as given in the margins of
the 1984 translation.
10 Franz Hildebrand, GtJttingische gelehrte A nzeigen , Band 17
(1893), pp. 175-80; A. Elsas, PhilosophischeMonatshefte, XXX, Band
(1894), pp. 437 -40; W. Heinrich, Vierteljahrsschrift jar wissenschaft-
liche Philosophie, Neunzehnter Jahrgang (1895), pp. 436-39.
11 Benno Erdmann, Logik, Halle: Niemeyer, 1892.
12 Gottlob Frege, Grundgesetze der Arithmetic, vol. I & II, Jena:
Pohle, 1893 -1903. The English translation of volume I: Basic Laws of
Arithmetic, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964 is cited as BL
following the German pagination included in the translation.
13 Gottlob Frege, Begrif.fsschrift, Halle, 1879.
14 Gottlob Frege, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Breslau: Marcus,
1884. The English translation: Foundations of Arithmetic, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1986, 2nd ed. rev. is cited in the text as FA.
15 "Function and Concept", "On Concept and Object", and "On

Sense and Reference" are anthologized in Translations from the Philo-
sophical Writings oj Gottlob Frege, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980, 3rd ed.,
cited in the text as GB.
16 Arthur North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathe-
matica, vol. 1, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950
(1910), p. VIII.
17 Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy,
London: Allen & Unwin, 1919, p. 25 n. 2.
18 Ernst SchrOder, Vorlesungen Uber die Algebra der Logik (exakte
Logik) , I. Band, Leipzig: Teubner, 1890, II. Band erster Teil, Leipzig,
1891. Later: III. Band. Algebra und Logik der Relative, erster Teil,
Leipzig, 1895. The remaining parts of the work were published after
SchrOder's death. Husserl reviewed the first volume in the GlJttingische
gelehrte Anzeigen.
19 Marvin Farber, The Foundation oj Phenomenology, Cambridge,
MA, Harvard University Press, 1943, pp. 16-17.
20 E.W. Beth, Les Jondements logiques des Mathematics, 2nd ed.,
Paris: Louvain, 1955, p. 119.
21 John Wild, "Husserl's Critique of Psychologism", Philosophical
Essays in Memory oj Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1940, p. 42.
22 Emmanuel Levinas, La tMorie de l'intuition dans la pMnomeno-
logie de Husserl, Thesis, Paris: Alcan, 1930, p. 33.
23 Farber, The Foundation ... , pp. 55-58.
24 Alonzo Church has corrected the most important of these inaccu-
racies in his review of the book in the Journal oj Symbolic Logic, vol.
9 (1944), pp. 63 -65.
25 Andrew Osborn, Edmund Husserl and his Logical Investigations,
2nd ed., Cambridge MA, 1949.
26 See for example Jan Patocka's bibliography in Revue interna-
tionale de Philosophie, tome I (1938-39), pp. 374-97.
27 Since the definitions in this work are built step by step on a small
number of undefined basic concepts, and given in a highly formal logical
terminology, precise reproduction of these definitions would require
several pages and interfere with this work in form and content.
All necessary information about the definitions will be given in the

section below called "Posing the Problem".
28 G.H. von Wright provides clear and easily readable reasons for
these statements in "The Logical Problem of Induction", Acta Philosop-
hica Fennica, Fasc. III, Oxford, 1941, 2nd ed. rev.
The truth of the statements is naturally dependent on how the words
and expressions figuring in the assertions are defined. Especially impor-
tant are the words which we have placed in quotation marks, and which
we use throughout the study in the sense given in von Wright's work.
29 These remarks are based on the author's impression after reading
works in history and the natural sciences. Historical research involves
observations based on empirical study as examined by Ottar Dahl in his
work Om arsaksproblemer i historiskforskning (On causal problems in
historical research), Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1956.
30 However, such a work would naturally presuppose the truth of a
series of general conditionals from many different branches of science
(for example on how "sources" are viewed).
31 For example, we are confident that the difficulties Husserl en-
countered while working on the second volume of the Philosophy of
Arithmetic along with reflections and other "unavailable" events in
Husserl's intellectual life are sufficient to explain his development.
32 Since in this work we assume that the reader already has confi-
dence in this "causal law", and since we do not wish to try to increase
this confidence, we are only formulating it explicitly in order to make
the connection clearer in the work. "Causal laws" are not generally
explicitly formulated in historical works (Ottar Dahl, op. cit. p. 143),
and according to Aristotle there is no reason to do so, for a line of
reasoning is clear if it lacks only premises in which one has a great deal
of confidence (Aristotle, Topica, 8 Chap. 12, 162b, freely cited). In this
work we have omitted most such ancillary premises without saying any-
thing.
33 It is obviously possible that Husserl also encountered other
difficulties of this kind prior to 1900. When we concentrate on the
difficulties which he encountered while working on the Philosophy of
Arithmetic, the reason is that, as we will see, Frege's arguments reached
him precisely while he was dealing with these difficulties.
34 It is obviously not impossible that by appealing to other "causal

laws" we could instill confidence that Frege also played a significant role
in other changes in Husser!'s philosophy from 1891-1900. But the
following is valid for all the "causal laws" we know: if they can be used
to instill confidence that Frege may have been significant for such a
change, the causal law this work is based on can do the same. As far as
we know our study is for this reason complete in this respect.
35 Edmund Husserl, "Der Folgerungskalkiil und die Inhaltslogik",
Vierteljahrsschrift fUr wissenschaftliche Philo sophie , 15 J ahrgang (1891),
pp. 351-356.
36 Edmund Husser!, "Antwort an die vorstehende Erwiderung des
Herrn Voigt", Vierteljahrsschrift fUr wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 17
Jahrgang (1893), p. 511.
37 Edmund Husserl, "Bericht tiber deutsche Schriften zur Logik aus
dem Jahre 1894", Archiv fUr systematische Philosophie (Neue Folge der
Philosophischen Monatshefte) III. Band (1897), pp. 216-44; "Bericht
tiber deutsche Schriften zur Logik in den Jahren 1895 -98", this same
journal IX. Band (1903), pp. 393-408, and pp. 523-543 and X. Band
(1904), pp. 101-25.
(Frege is not mentioned in these surveys, apparently because his
German language works in these years are limited to brief commentaries
on his own works and the works of others).
38 Edmund Husser!, "Ernst SchrOder, Vorlesungen Uber die Algebra
der Logik (Exakte Logik), I. Band, Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1890 (Recen-
sion)", GOttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, Erster Band (1891), pp. 243-
78, and "Der Folgerungskalkiil und die Inhaltslogik", Vierteljahrsschrift
fUr wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 17 Jahrgang (1893), p. 51.
39 Edmund Husser!, "A. Voigt's 'elementare Logik' und meine
Darlegungen zur Logik des logischen Kalkiils", Vierteljahrsschrift fUr
wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 17 Jahrgang (1893), pp. 111-20, and his
"Antwort an die vorstehende Erwiderung des Herrn Voigt" in the same
volume, pp. 508 -11.
40 Edmund Husser!, "Psychologische Studien zur elementaren
Logik" I-II, Philosophische Monatshefte, XXX, Band (1894), pp.
159-191.
41 LI, p. 42, cited page 4 of this text.
42 LI, pp. 262 -63. See also Edmund Husserl: "Bericht fiber deut-
sche Schriften zur Logik in den Jahren 1895 -99", Archiv fUr systemati-
sche Philosophie, IX Band (1903), pp. 397-400, and his "Philosophie
als strenge Wissenschaft", Logos, Band I (1910-11), p. 319.
43 Husserl, "Psychologische ... ", p. 187.
44 The appropriateness of Frege's definition is apparent, among
other things, in that the brilliant creator of set theory Cantor defined
cardinal numbers in a similar way. In 1902 Russell identified the car-
dinal number M with the set of all sets equivalent to M in precisely the
same way as Frege, and von Neumann used a modified form of Frege's
definition in 1928.
45 BL pp. ix -x; See also Wilma Papst, Gottlob Frege als Phi-
losoph, Dissertation Berlin, pp. 22-23.
46 See preface.
47 Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1969, p. 87.
48 This is not an original statement. Jacob Klein said as much in the
article "Phenomenology and the History of Science", Philosophical
Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1940, p. 146: "Now Husserl's radical
criticism of psychologism implies anything but a simple opposition
between neverchanging "abstract" principles and everchanging "empiri-
cal" things."
49 He rejects, among other things, one of the arguments Frege used,
namely the normative character of logic. This is dealt with later on in
this study.
50 Werner Illemann shows this in Die vorphl1nomenologische Phi-
losophie Edmund Husserls und ihre Bedeutung fUr die phllnomenologi-
sche, Dissertation, Leipzig, 1932, p. 41 f.
51 This "cogito" is one of Husserl's many points of contact with
Descartes. Not without reason did Husserl entitle his first French work
Meditations Cartesiennes.
52 For example in "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft", Logos,
Bd. I (1910-11), p. 295.
53 Arne Nress, "Husserl on the Apodictic Evidence of Ideal Laws",
Theoria XX (1954), p. 63.
54 R. Kynast, Das Problem der Phllnomenologie, eine wissenschajts-

theoretische Untersuchung, Breslau: Trewend & Granier, 1917, p. 59.
55 For example, Wilhelm Reimer, "Der phanomenologische Evi-
denzbegriff", Kant Studien, Band 23 (1919), pp. 290-91.
56 We hope to come back to this important question in a more
epistemologically directed work on the phenomenological method.
57 Some of Farber's statements on Frege's significance for Husserl's
development are more in agreement with the results of this study than
the one cited in the preface. See, for example pp. 5, 57 -58, 98 of his
The Foundation of Phenomenology.
58 Friedrich Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie,
pt 4, Die Deutsche Philosophie des XIX. lahrhunderts und der Gegen-
wart, Basel, 1951, p. 506.
59 Ibid., p. 512.
PART II
THE CRITICISM OF HUSSERL'S ARGUMENTS
AGAINST PSYCHOLOGISM
IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 1901-1920
In recent years, a number of philosophers have re-examined Frege's and

Husserl's arguments against psychologism in logic and epistemology.
Surprisingly enough, this renewed interest in psychologism and its
'refutation' has not to date led to any historical work on the reception of
Frege's and Husserl's arguments in German academic philosophy at the
time. In this paper, I shall take a first step towards filling this lacuna by
giving an overview of critical reactions to Husserl's arguments (as
presented in his Prolegomena to the Logische Untersuchungen) between
1901 and 1920.
To provide, within the confines of a single paper, a concise sum-
mary of the critical evaluations of Husserl's argument is no easy task.
Husserl's ideas were attacked in more than fifty texts, and the widely
varying repudiations were based upon a considerable number of different
philosophical positions. Here I can neither explain the reasoning of every
critic at length, nor focus in detail on the philosophical frameworks from
which these objections derived. Instead, I shall first group objections and
criticisms roughly around Husserl's key antipsychologistic theses, and
then, in summary, provide a bird's-eye-view of the most important
critical texts by means of a table.
In many cases it seems artificial to separate attacks on one element
of Husserl 's antipsychologism from rejections of other ingredients of his
overall argument. After all, since Husserl's main theses are interrelated,
reproval of one thesis often implies repudiation of other key assumptions
as well. I shall deal with this difficulty in two ways. Some contested
issues will be referred to several times, and some other ideas will be
brought up only once despite the fact that they are central to Husserl's
antipsychologistic argument as a whole. I shall quote more extensively
51
52 MARTIN KUSCH
than is common practice in scholarly work. On the one hand, I wish to

convey a flavour of the polemical character of many criticisms. On the
other hand, it seems appropriate to make some key passages available to
the anglophone reader, especially as most of the texts cited here have not
yet been translated into English.
NORMATIVE ANTIPSYCHOLOGISM,
AND LOGIC AS A NORMATIVE DISCIPLINE
Husserl's first crucial claim in the Prolegomena is that logic as a norma-

tive-practical discipline, i.e. logic as a set of norms for correct rea-
soning, must be based upon logic as a theoretical, descriptive, science
(LU §14-16). Every normative discipline is based upon theoretical
sentences which in turn belong to one or several different, non-norma-
tive, theoretical disciplines. Put in a nutshell, Husserl reasons as follows.
Given a normative sentence of the form ...
(a) An a ought to be fJ
and given furthermore that ...
(b) 'Y is the constitutive content of the value predicate "good" (as
defined for all a by some "basic norm")
... Husserl proposes that the acceptability of (a) depends on the truth of
the non-normative sentence (c):
(c) Only an a which is fJ has the attribute 'Y.
Thus, for example, the justification of (a') ...
(a') A promise (= a) ought to be kept (= fJ)
. .. depends both upon the basic norm (b')
(b') The furthering of trust among human beings (= 'Y) is good

PSYCHOLOGISM 53
... and upon the non-normative sentence (c')
(c') A promise (= ex) which is kept (= (3) furthers trust among

human beings (= 'Y) (§16).
Husserl's analysis of normative disciplines is linked to a criticism of

earlier, normative, antipsychologism. This brand of antipsychologism,
advocated by the Neokantians, amongst others, held that psychology can
be separated from logic by the is/ought distinction. This analysis con-
flicts with Husserl's insistance that logic is primarily a theoretical, non-
normative science. And thus it does not come as a surprise that Husserl
holds that proponents of psychologism (i.e. advocates of the view that
the essential foundations of logic as a practical-normative discipline are
provided by psychology) have no difficulty defending their views against
normative antipsychologism (i.e. the view that logic is normative where-
as psychology is descriptive and theoretical). In response to the is/ought
distinction the psycho logicist is entitled to stress, for instance, that
thought as it ought to occur is but a special case of thought as it in fact
occurs (LU §17-19).
Several authors took exception to Husserl's claim according to
which logic as a normative-practical discipline (Kunstlehre) must be
based upon logic as a theoretical science. Often, but not always, the
same critics also defended normative antipsychologism as a sufficient
defence against psychologism.
To shield a normative conception of logic was of special importance
to the Southwest-German School of Neokantian philosophers (Windel-
band, Rickert, Kroner). This school had long been committed to drawing
the line between logic and psychology in terms of the value/fact opposi-
tion (e.g. Windelband 1884). Husserl's rebuttal of normative antipsy-
chologism forced these Neokantians either to defend the ought/is distinc-
tion as a sufficient way of separating logic from psychology, or else to
explain why the value/fact opposition does not coincide with the ought/is
dichotomy.
As early as in 1904, in the second edition of his Der Gegenstand der
Erkenntnis, Heinrich Rickert claimed that Husserl's attack on normative
antipsychologism was much less convincing than Husserl's criticism of
psychologism (1904: 88). However, only two later texts by authors of
54 MARTIN KUSCH
the Southwest-German School of Neokantians, written by Rickert (1909)

and Kroner (1909), reacted to Husserl's challenge in greater detail.
Suffice it here to briefly present Kroner's response.
Rickert's student Richard Kroner agrees with Husserl that "the
meaning of logical sentences is not exhausted by their role as technical
rules of thought". But Kroner does not accept Husserl's further claim
according to which logical sentences are about ideal, abstract beings.
Kroner proposes that logical laws are imperatives, and that these impera-
tives are founded on values. Put differently, Kroner rejects Husserl's
view according to which all normative disciplines are based upon theo-
retical sciences (1909: 241).
Kroner argues for this conclusion by showing that not all ought-
sentences are founded on non-normative, theoretical sentences. In his
view, only ought-sentences that express hypothetical demands fit Hus-
serl's analysis. For instance, the hypothetical ought-sentence (a) ...
(a) If you want to ride a horse well, you ought to be able to control
it, sit tight, etc .
... indeed presupposes the theoretical, non-normative sentence (b) ...
(b) Riding a horse well is possible only if one is able to control the
horse, sit tight, etc.
However, categorical ought-sentences demand a different analysis. The

categorical ought-sentence (a') ...
(a') The warrior ought to be courageous
... is not based upon the theoretical sentence (b') ...
(b') It is part of the concept of the good warrior that he is coura-

geous.
In the case of categorical ought-sentences, the order of presupposition is

the other way around: the non-normative sentence (b') derives its justifi-
cation or meaning from the normative one (a') (1909: 242). To model
PSYCHOLOGISM 55
the relation between (a') and (b') on the relation between (a) and (b)
"would be to practice moral philosophy in a Socratic fashion, i.e. it
would imply a one-sided intellectualistic interpretation of the concept of
value. Instead, the categorical demand that tells the warrior to be coura-
geous is a demand that comes from his consciousness of duty, and it is
the fulfilment of this demand which makes the value predicate 'good'
applicable" (242).
Kroner thinks that the case of logic is similar to the case of morals.
The highest logical norm is something like (a") ...
(a") Every reasoner ought to think what is true
... and this norm is primary with respect to (b") ...
(b") It is part of the concept of the good reasoner that she thinks
what is true.
And this analysis of the most basic logical norm also applies to all other
logical norms (1909: 242). Thus, for instance, the non-normative sen-
tence (b"') ...
(b"') Abiding by the Principle of Non-Contradiction is part of the

notion 'thinking-what-is-true'
... is secondary with respect to (a"') ...
(a"') Every reasoner ought to think what is true, and thus, amongst
other things, she ought to abide by the Principle of Non-Contra-
diction.
The Southwest German School of Neokantian philosophers did not

stand alone in opposing Husserl's arguments against normative anti-
psychologism. Rickert and Kroner were joined by Wilhelm Schuppe
(1901: 18), Julius Schultz (1903), Hans Maier (1908; 1914: 313-338),
and Johannes Volkelt (1918: 395).
For example, Schultz too repudiates Husserl's idea that normative
sentences or disciplines depend upon theoretical sentences or sciences:
56 MARTIN KUSCH
" ... our logician pretends that a normative sentence can be turned into a
theoretical sentence by means of a simple transformation. 'An A ought
to be B' he reformulates as 'only an A which is B has the attribute C';
and then he claims that the resulting sentence is purely theoretical and
contains no normative element. That is really a curious slight of hand!
The conjurer shows us an empty hat, shakes it and then - to our aston-
ishment - pulls a few piglets or a bouquet of roses out of the hat. Does
not the credulous audience realise that the normative element has simply
slid from the 'ought' of the first sentence into the 'C' of the second?"
(1903: 13) Schultz regards Husserl's pure logic as "a stillbirth": "No
really, that would be a sad theoretical discipline that ran alongside the
rule-giving discipline [i.e. normative logic] as if it was its shadow. The
latter would say, for instance, 'deduce according to mode X', and the
first would echo: 'the mode X is correct here'. On such meals the newly
born pure logic will not be able to nourish itself!" (1903: 14).
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN REAL AND IDEAL LAWS
In §§21-24 of the Prolegomena Husserl argues for a sharp distinction

between the "real laws " (Realgesetze) of the natural and human sciences,
and the "ideal laws" (Idealgesetze) of logic and mathematics. He does so
by arguing that psychologism has three main empiricist consequences, all
three of which can be refuted:
(A): First Consequence: If logical rules were based upon psycho-

logical laws, then all logical rules would have to be as vague as
the underlying psychological laws. - Refutation: Not all logical
rules are vague. And therefore not all logical rules are based
upon psychological laws.
(B): Second Consequence: If laws of logic were psychological laws,
then they could not be known a priori. They would be more or
less probable rather than valid, and justified only by reference
to experience. - Refutation: Laws of logic are a priori, they
are justified by apodictic self-evidence, and valid rather than
probable. And therefore laws of logic are not psychological.
(C): Third Consequence: If logical laws were psychological laws,
PSYCHOLOGISM 57
they would refer to psychological entities. - Refutation: Logi-

cal laws do not refer to psychological entities. And therefore
logical laws are not psychological laws.
The distinction between real laws and ideal laws was criticised in
very general terms by Paul Natorp (1901: 282) and Dimitri Michalt-
schew (1909: 83). Other critics went into much greater detail. Several
commentators maintained that (A) is a petitio principii (Heim 1902: 27;
Heymans 1905: 32-33; Lapp 1913: 53; Schlick 1910: 409, 1918: 128).
Schlick puts the objection most succinctly: "One sees immediately that
one might with equal right infer the opposite [of Husserl's (A)]: since
logical structures, inferences, judgements and concepts undoubtedly
result from psychological processes, we are entitled to infer from the
existence of logical rules that there are perfectly exact psychological laws
as well. ... The proponent of 'absolute' logic cannot defend his position
simply by claiming that all psychological laws are vague; for this
amounts to a petitio principii" (Schlick 1910: 409). Schlick rejects the
vagueness assumption even for those psychological laws that are not
(also) logical: " ... all processes in nature and mind occur according to
laws, and these laws are without exceptions just like the rules of formal
logic. The laws are not inexact, our knowledge of them is insufficient -
this is a huge difference" (1918: 128).
Some of Husserl's critics also discard (B), i.e. they reprove Husserl
for claiming that laws of nature are probable and known by induction,
whereas laws of logic are outside the realm of probability and known a
priori. As concerns laws of nature, Moritz Schlick (1910) and Willy
Moog (1919) object that not all laws of nature are merely probable.
Schlick makes this point by accusing Husserl once again of a petitio
principii: "He who regards logical principles as exact laws of thought
[and thus as laws of nature] will of course deny that all laws of nature
are merely probably valid ... " (1910: 410). Moog holds that Husserl's
view of laws of nature is wrong even in the case of the physical sci-
ences: "There certainly are psychological and physical laws which have
only an approximate validity. However, in the case of a law of nature
like the law of gravity, it is inadequate to speak of a mere probability of
its validity" (1919: 10). Moreover, Moog feels that Husserl "confuses
the material content of laws of nature with their meaning and sense.
58 MARTIN KUSCH
Even though a law of nature relates to the empirical world, has empirical
content, and is discovered empirically, a law of nature nevertheless does
not have to be merely empirical. It can contain an a priori core, ... "
(Moog 1919: 13).
Husserl's characterisation of logical laws as known a priori met with
even more opposition. According to Gerardus Heymans, all epistemolo-
gy can say, for the time being, with respect to a logical law like the
Principle of Non-Contradiction is that "probably all human beings reject
contradiction" (1905: 66). Our knowledge of logical laws is more
probable than our knowledge of other psychological laws only "because
we experiment, throughout our life, daily and every hour, with these
elementary relations between phenomena of consciousness" (1905: 33).
Wilhelm Jerusalem is ready to admit that we are more sure of the
truth of mathematical and logical laws than we are convinced of the truth
of physical and biological laws. Nevertheless, Jerusalem remains un-
willing to treat mathematical and logical laws as known a priori. Mathe-
matical and logical laws seem more reliable because they "are derived
from judgements whose truth has always proven itself". Moreover,
Jerusalem suggests that "psychologicists" like himself will proceed on
the hypothesis that laws of logic are laws of nature: "That we are part of
nature and that our mental development happens according to laws of
nature, this for us is no dogma but a rule of method. And we follow this
rule as long as it proves itself fruitful. We infer: No law of nature is
known a priori. Logical laws are laws of nature. Logical laws are not
known a priori. - Husserl reasons completely differently. His syllogism
goes as follows: No law of nature can be known a priori. Logical laws
can be known a priori. Logical laws are no laws of nature. - But his
minor premise is, for Husserl, not a rule of method but an arbitrarily
posited dogma. He does not allow anyone to question this dogma"
(1905: 103).
In the context of their objections to Husserl's conception of logical
laws as laws that are known a priori, some authors also explained their
own views on how our knowledge of logical laws is to be characterised.
These authors tried to characterise this knowledge as being neither
inductive nor a priori.
Julius Schultz suggests that we start out in logic by following the
example of geometry and construct different logical formal systems
PSYCHOLOGISM 59
almost arbitrarily. The starting point might be different axioms that have
on occasion been regarded as necessary. However, in a second step, we
have to make a choice between different systems: "And it is here that
facts of experience will be decisive. Firstly, the 'true' logic will have to
be based upon the general constitution of the human species; and second-
ly, it had better be necessary for existing sciences. In this way logical
sentences are not deduced from these facts (that would indeed be
absurd). Instead, we test the arbitrarily constructed tables of the a priori
with the help of those facts. Only in this sense do psychology and the
critique of science justify logic; and a justification in this sense does not
lead to any inner contradiction" (1903: 29).
Ernst Durr (1903), Hans Cornelius (1906), Leonard Nelson (1908),
Wilhelm Schuppe (1901) and Christoph Sigwart (1904) all agree, pace
Husserl, that our knowledge of logical laws is not a priori. According to
Nelson, Husserl's denial that logical laws can be discovered and justified
by psychology is based on an oversight. Only a psychological study of
the human mind can show that the logical basic laws are the conditions
of the possibility of our experience. Husserl overlooks that this proof
does not deduce logical laws from psychological laws (1908: 170).
Sigwart claims that only the psychological analysis of our self-conscious-
ness can lead to the discovery of logical necessity: "If contradictions did
not appear as factually impossible in our real, concrete train of thought,
how could we ever come to deem them impossible?" (1904: 24). And
Schuppe and Durr deny that the distinction between a priori knowledge
and inductive knowledge is exhaustive: "The received opposition be-
tween empirical and a priori knowledge is rather unclear .... That there
is salty stuff is something no-one can deduce a priori; it is knowledge
based on experience. But this knowledge is not gained inductively; it is
simply found .... The objects of logic, even though they are not found
in sense perception, are similar. They owe their being-known to the
reflection of thinking upon itself.... And insofar as this coming-to-know
[of logical determinations] is based upon finding something within the
given, this coming-to-know can be called an experience" (1901: 14; cf.
Durr 1903: 543; similarly Cornelius 1906: 406).
As concerns (C), Schlick (1910) challenges Husserl's claim that laws
of logic do not imply the existence of matters of fact. Schlick maintains
that psychological acts of judgement and logical sentences are inter-
60 MARTIN KUSCH
twined, such that the logical sentence and its truth "can never be found
independently of the act of judgement; the logical sentence is included in
the latter and results from it via abstraction .... the logical sentence has
its place only in the mental experience and does not exist outside of it in
any sense. The two cannot be separated; the judgement as logical struc-
ture, as 'ideal meaning' ... comes to be, once one abstracts, within the
real experience of judging, from all individual and temporal elements.
And even though one can abstract from all individual-psychological
factors, one cannot abstract from the psychological in general. In other
words, one cannot understand logical sentences as structures without
psychological qUality. Pace Husser!, logical sentences imply the exist-
ence of experiences of judging. For if we take away, from any chosen
judgement, everything which is psychological, we only remain with the
matter of fact that the judgement expresses and upon which it is based"
(1910: 405; cf. Eisler 1907: 18).
Finally, I need to introduce two authors that censure Husser! for
setting the ideal laws of logic too sharply apart from the real laws of
human psychology. Joseph Geyser misses in the Prolegomena an ex-
planation of "how it comes to be that the soul's actual creation of
thought processes leads, in general, to results that conform to the logical
laws and norms .... there is no alternative to the explanation that some-
how the logical realm gains causal influence upon thought processes.
Insofar as Husser! completely rejects any such causal influence, there
remains a lacuna in his argument against the psychologicists ... " (1916:
226). Melchior Palagyi finds Husser!'s assumption that the wor!d of facts
is governed by the principle of causality absurd. As Palagyi sees it, the
principle of causality is itself an ideal law. And thus Palagyi can argue
that Husser! is confused about the whole distinction between real and
ideal laws: "In Husser! 's conceptualisation, both kinds of laws blend into
one another in such a way that one cannot take seriously the alleged
unbridgeable difference between the two. But how then does Husser!
differ from the 'psychologicists' whose unforgivable mistake is supposed
to be their inability to distinguish correctly between real and ideal laws?"
(1902: 46).
PSYCHOLOGISM 61
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION

OF LOGICAL PRINCIPLES
Philosophers who advocate psychological approaches to logic will natu-

rally also question Husser! 's rejection of psychological interpretations of
logical principles. In LU §§26-29, Husser! argues that all psychological
interpretations of logical principles distort these principles. In order to
establish this claim, Husser! criticises eight psychologistic reformulations
of the Principle of Non-Contradiction. One of the reformulations at-
tacked is Spencer's: "The appearance of any positive mode of conscious-
ness cannot appear without excluding a correlative negative mode; and
... the negative mode cannot occur without excluding the correlative
positive mode." Husser! regards this reformulation as a tautology since
positive and negative modes already form a pair of contradictory oppo-
sites. But the Principle of Non-Contradiction is no tautology, according
to Husser! (§26).
Only one author, Moritz Schlick (1910), challenges Husser!'s
criticism of "psychologistic" reformulations of the Principle of Non-
Contradiction directly. As already seen above, Schlick holds that logical
sentences and acts of judging cannot be separated from one another.
From this it follows, according to Schlick, that Husserl's reproach of
Spencer's psychological reformulation of the Principle of Non-Contradic-
tion is misplaced: "According to Spencer this principle is 'simply a
generalisation of the universal experience that some mental states are
directly destructive of other states'. This is completely right as long as
one takes 'mental states' to refer to the right kind of conscious processes
and as long as one takes into account that Spencer does not, of course,
try to explain the factual effectiveness of the principle in thought. He
just tries to explain how we arrive at the knowledge of his formulation
and how we arrive at the knowledge of the validity of his formulation.
Husser! only quotes the sentence that follows the above quotation,
namely 'that the appearance of any positive mode of consciousness
cannot occur without excluding a correlative negative mode; and that the
negative mode cannot occur without excluding the correlative positive
mode'. Husser! laments that this sentence is far from being a correct
representation of the Principle of Non-Contradiction, and that it is a
mere tautology. However, one cannot accuse Spencer of a serious
62 MARTIN KUSCH
mistake here, and one cannot accuse him of having missed the tauto-
logical character of his formulation. This is because Spencer himself
continues (... ): 'the antithesis of positive and negative being, indeed,
merely an expression of this experience'. The meaning of Spencer's
formulation as a whole is not tautological; only the sentence that Husser!
quotes and reproves is tautological" (1910: 408).
FALLACIES AS COUNTEREXAMPLES TO
PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF LOGICAL LAWS
Husser!'s attack (in LU §§27 - 31) on a psychological interpretation of

the laws of syllogistics was directed mainly against the Dutch psycholo-
gist and philosopher Gerardus Heymans. Husser!'s main argument
against a psychological interpretation of the laws of syllogistics was,
roughly, the following inference:
If the laws of syllogistics were (hardwired) psychological laws of

thought, then no human reasoner could ever deviate from these
laws.
Human reasoners commit fallacies, i.e. they deviate from the laws
of syllogistics.
The laws of syllogistics are not (hardwired) psychological laws of
thought.
In his reply, Heymans challenges Husser!'s claim that fallacies are de-
viations from the laws of syllogistics. As Heymans sees it, someone who
does not derive the right conclusion from given premisses is confused
about the meaning of the major, middle or minor terms, not lacking
knowledge of the inference schemes. In the case of fallacies the causes
of the deviation from the laws of syllogistics are "as it were, prior to the
thought processes. The premisses are not the right ones, or are not
clearly grasped or wrongly understood; but a principal difference in laws
of thought [between laws of thought in the cases of correct and incorrect
inferring] cannot be claimed to exist" (1905: 69)
Essentially the same reply is suggested also by Julius Schultz: " ...
PSYCHOLOGISM 63
the laws of thought do not lose their power over our brains when the
common fallacies occur; fallacies are due to mistakes of memory or
comprehension, they are due to mistakes that distort the meaning of the
premises" (1903: 26-27).
SCEPTICISM, RELATIVISM, AND ANTHROPOLOGISM
The core of Husserl's reproach of psychologism is the following argu-

ment
Sceptical relativism is self-refuting.

Psychologism amounts to sceptical relativism.
Psychologism is self-refuting.
Before turning to the critics' response to the second premise and the
conclusion of this argument, it is worth mentioning that several authors
also question the first premise.
Doubts about Husserl's charge that relativism and scepticism are
self-refuting doctrines were first expressed by Paul Natorp (1901). In his
review of the Prolegomena Natorp hints at the possibility that Husserl's
arguments against relativism and scepticism are guilty of a petitio: "[For
Husserl] scepticism is ... absurd. (But perhaps only for those who want
strictly valid theories at all costs. The sceptic might say that he too
wants such theories, but that he feels that they are an impossible ideal
... ). Husserl then studies scepticism and sceptical relativism in its
individualistic form; he claims that 'as soon as this position is formu-
lated, it is already refuted' - at least for those who understand the
objectivity of logic. (But this is precisely what the sceptic denies.)"
(1901: 274).
More detailed criticisms of Husserl's - and Rickert's (1892, 1904)
- "refutations" of scepticism and relativism were provided by H. Asch-
kenasy (1909), Hans Kleinpeter (1913: 45-46), Hugo Renner (1902,
1905: 4-5), and Julius Schultz (1903).
For example, Aschkenasy (1909) contests Husserl's claim (LU §36)
according to which the notion of a mind which does not abide by (our)
64 MARTIN KUSCH
logical laws is nonsensical. While Aschkenasy grants that we cannot

form a "clear idea" (/dare Vorstellung) of a consciousness with a diffe-
rent logic, he argues that we are nevertheless justified to form the
"concept" of such consciousness: "Epistemology has the right to operate
with concepts that cannot, without contradiction, be realised in a clear
idea .... Such a concept is, for instance, the notion of the transcendent
object, i.e. the notion of a being which is independent of consciousness.
Any attempt to represent the transcendent object in a mental idea leads
straight into a contradiction. After all, it is part of the concept of con-
sciousness that all its contents are immanent. The same observation
applies to the concept of the epistemological [transcendental] subject. It
cannot be thought either. This is because the epistemological subject is
meant to be a subject that can never become an object ... " (1909: 393-
94).
Moreover, Aschkenasy contends that the relativist can, without
contradiction, deny the claim that logic, i.e. "the norm", is absolute. All
the relativist has to insist on is that even though "every fact is justified
by and through the norm, the norm itself can never be justified". In the
debate between the relativist and the absolutist, Aschkenasy suggests, the
burden of proof lies on the side of the absolutist: "The relativist objects
to the absolutist as follows: 'All you can rely upon is the fact that the
norm happens to exist. But if you go further and claim that the norm is
valid without condition, then I shall wait until you have proven this
claim. But in fact you cannot establish this claim without arguing in a
circle by proving the norm through the norm. And thus I cannot accept
that the norm is the unconditioned presupposition of all consciousness'"
(1909: 397).
However, Aschkenasy's relativist does not claim that there could be
a different truth, and that he could conceive of a different logic in any
detail. He merely defends the possibility of a consciousness that is not
governed by our logic: "The relativist says this: Truth, i.e. reality, is
that which forces me in a certain direction, and it is that which I cannot
escape insofar as I come-to-know. There is only one truth, for I call
'truth' all that which coerces me in this way (... ). But I can posit -
conceptually - the possibility that this coercion might not exist for a
different consciousness. What I postulate in this way is toto genere
different from what I find in my consciousness; and therefore the notion
PSYCHOLOGISM 65
of truth is not applicable to the different consciousness that I posit. I thus

do not claim that a different truth is possible; for we can speak of truth
only when we presuppose the very norm [i.e. the logic] that I am
negating right now" (1909: 399).
Julius Schultz is concerned especially with the following argument
of Husserl's Prolegomena: If truth were relative to, and thus dependent
upon, the human species, then, if the human species did not exist, there
would be no truth. But then it would be true that no truth exists. And
thus truth cannot be relative to, and dependent upon, the human species
(LU §36). Schultz finds this argument utterly confused: "I smell scholas-
ticism! What do we mean when we say: 'in this or that case there would
be no truth'? We hardly mean: 'there would exist the truth that, in that
case, no truth exists'. This truth exists now, for me who happens to have
a human constitution and who imagines this unreal possibility. The
present truth states that without subjects that are able to judge there
would be no judgement and no truth, but our opponent twists this
present truth into the hypothetical truth that under certain conditions
there would be no truths. With Husserl's recipe one could equally well
argue: If no speaker existed, there would be no sentences; but then the
sentence that no sentences exist would still exist." (1903: 31)
THE INDEPENDENCE THEORY OF TRUTH
Central to Husserl's attack on psychologism as a form of sceptical

relativism is his assumption that truths-as-such exist, i.e. that truths exist
that are independent of whether or not they are ever grasped by any
reasoner. Schlick (1910) baptised this assumption "the independence
theory of truth". A considerable number of critics turned against this
theory. (Brief rejections that I shall not take up here are Brentano (1911:
180-81), and Gomperz (1908: 24-25).)
Since Husserl provided the clearest statement of the independence
theory of truth in the context of his criticism of Christoph Sigwart, it
seems only fair to start the summary of repudiations with this author. In
the Prolegomena Husserl disagreed with Sigwart's claim that no judge-
ment can be true unless it is actually thought by someone. Husserl
regarded it as part of the meaning of the law of gravity that the law is
66 MARTIN KUSCH
true for all times, i.e. even prior to its discovery and regardless of
whether it is ever formulated by any intellect (LU §38).
Sigwart (1904) responds by accusing Husserl of conflating truth with
reality: "In the original sense of the terms, only assertions or opinions
can be true or false. And assertions or opinions necessarily presuppose
thinking subjects who entertain the opinions or utter the assertions. To
postulate 'sentences' as independent essences is sheer mythology. Insofar
as Husserl speaks of 'contradictory facts' that cannot both be true, he
conflates 'true' and 'real'. And thus Husserllapses into the same concep-
tual confusion that the German Criminal Code is guilty of when it speaks
of ... 'pretence of false facts' .... Only an opinion, a report about a fact,
can be false. But a fact is simply there oo. When no judgements have
been made, then there is nothing of which 'true' or 'false' could be
predicated. Of course, the planets did move, already long before New-
ton, in a way that conforms to the law of gravity. However, before
Newton formulated his theory (oo.) no true sentence about these move-
ments existed within human knowledge. After Newton formulated the
law of gravity as a sentence, this sentence became, due to its content,
true for the past as well" (1904: 23).
Sigwart's critical footnote was expanded into a long article by his
student Hans Maier (1914). Suffice it here to add only that Maier
distinguishes between two senses in which 'true' and 'false' can be
predicated of judgements. Prior to Newton, the law of gravity was
merely hypothetically, or possibly true, i.e. it would have been true had
it been pronounced. But "only those judgements can be called categori-
cally true which actually figure in acts of judging". Put differently, for
Maier truth is a relation between a "transcendently given" fact, on the
one hand, and a judgement figuring within an act of judging, on the
other hand. And thus it makes no sense to speak of truth when one
relatum is absent (1914: 324). (cf. Schultz 1903: 25; 1907: 34-35).
Schlick (1910) follows Sigwart and accuses Husserl of a conflation
between 'truth' and 'reality' (403). However, Schlick goes further than
Sigwart by seeking an explanation for Husserl's alleged conflation: "The
mistake of the independence theory is based upon a fallacious distinction
between ideas and objects of ideas. In the case of concrete ideas, say
ideas of [physical] objects that I can [literally] grasp, this distinction
makes sense; after all, I distinguish between the book lying in front of
PSYCHOLOGISM 67
me on the table, and my idea of that book. But, in the case of abstract
ideas, object and content coincide, i.e. the object of the idea is nowhere
to be found, except within that very idea. And thus logical sentences and
acts of judging are absolutely inseparable" (1910: 407).
Husserl's distinction between the act and content of judgements was
attacked by other critics as well. Wilhelm Jerusalem (1905) introduces
his objection in the context of a defence of species relativism. Jerusalem
focuses especially on Husserl's claim that "the same content of a judge-
ment cannot be true for one species and false for another". Jerusalem
replies: "If the two species in question are totally differently organised,
or 'constituted', then there are no contents of judgements that are
identical for both. For some purposes one can distinguish between the
act and content of a judgement, by reflecting on, or attending to, one or
another of the two. But the act and the content cannot be separated in
such a way that the one could remain constant while the other is chang-
ed. The act and the content of a judgement penetrate each other com-
pletely and every change in the act leads to a change in the content. ...
Thus it is not absurd to restrict truth to human knowledge; what is
absurd is rather to speak of identical contents of judgements in the case
of differently organised species" (1905: 104).
The earliest objector to the act-content distinction was Melchior
Pahigyi (1902). Pahigyi concerns himself foremost with constructing
examples where a strict division between the act and the content of a
judgement would be impossible: " ... let us study the combination of the
sentences 'I am thinking now that I am thinking now'. In this case I
reflect on my thinking with an act of thinking. How can it be possible to
abstract from my thinking - when my thinking is the content of my
thinking? I feel justified to claim that in such a sentence abstracting from
the thinking person and her thought is impossible precisely because that
from which we are asked to abstract, forms the content of the sentence.
And thus I have shown that Bolzano's and Husserl's demand that we
should think the content of a judgement independently of the thinking act
of a person cannot be fulfilled in such cases" (1902: 28-29).
With Palagyi originates a further line of attack against Husserl's
independence theory of truth. According to this criticism, the indepen-
dence theory of truth leads to relativism, scepticism and agnosticism (cf.
Michaltschew (1909: 93) and Lapp (1913: 42-64». Palagyi is especially
68 MARTIN KUSCH
upset about Husserl's claim (directed against both Erdmann and Sigwart)
that there could be species that are mistaken about everything: "But how
could we then exclude the possibility that we humans are such a species
... 1 We see where the pursuit of Bolzano's ideas leads us. Husserl takes
Bolzano's mistaken thought of 'truths-as-such' dead-seriously and thus he
ends up in an incredible scepticism" (1902: 61).
Yet another objection to truths-as-such was suggested by Karl Heim
(1902: 8) and taken up by Michaltschew (1909: 397). Heim attacks the
notion of possibility that is invoked when Husserl speaks of truths-as-
such as "ideal possibilities". Husserl allows for truths that might never
be known, i.e. he allows for possibilities that will never become actual.
However, for Heim there simply are no such possibilities: "[Husserl's]
epistemology is correct only if it is logically justified to speak of mere
possibilities that can never become actualities .... [But] it is senseless to
speak of mere possibilities that will never be actual" (1902: 8).
Husserl's equation of psychologism with species relativism was
directed mainly against Sigwart and Erdmann. I started this section with
Sigwart's reply, but Erdmann's response still has to be reported.
In Erdmann's case Husserl goes to even greater lengths in order to
unmask what he regards as fatal flaws and inconsistencies. The central
issue for Husserl is Erdmann's claim that logical laws are merely hypo-
thetically necessary, i.e. that logical laws are necessary only for mem-
bers of the human species up until the present. (§40).
Husserl's list of objections to this theory is long. The three main
objections are the following (LU §40).
First, if logical laws were, as Erdmann assumes, real, natural,
psychological laws, then we should, pace Erdmann, be able to imagine
alternative logics. After all, we can always imagine alternatives to
empirical laws.
Second, Erdmann believes that our thinking could change so radi-
cally that our present logical laws would no longer be valid. This belief
is absurd. Only psychological, empirical laws are variable and have
exceptions, but logical laws are invariant and without exception. Erd-
mann's theory allows for a future race of logical Ubermenschen with a
partially or completely new logic. But these Ubermenschen could only be
counted as mad by the standards of us "logically ordinary folks".
Third, the proponent of anthropologism cannot defend his relativistic
PSYCHOLOGISM 69
stance by pointing out that our evidence for the uniqueness of logic is,
inevitably, our apodictic self-evidence. If we give up the belief in
apodictic self-evidence, never mind whether it is qualified as "ours" or
not, we end up in absolute scepticism and then all of Erdmann's theory
goes by the board as well.
In a footnote to the second edition of his Logische Elementarlehre
(1907), Erdmann opines that a detailed discussion of Husserl's views
would be fruitless insofar as his own and Husserl's views are too far
apart (1907: 533). However, Erdmann's argument for the hypothetical
necessity of logic in the second edition differs slightly from the argument
in the first edition. In an additional, new paragraph Erdmann links his
thesis to theological concerns, on the one hand, and to a critique of
rational psychology, on the other hand: "We are unable to prove that the
logical basic laws of our thinking ... are the conditions and norms of all
possible thinking. Thus we have to allow for the real possibility of a
thinking that differs from ours. This concession has to be made, first of
all, because science is not meant to exclude the religious convictions of
religious consciousness ... [Le. science has no right to infer with the
belief that God may have a different logic]. Secondly, this concession
also has to be made insofar as ... it is no more than an empirical expe-
rience that we think and an empirical experience of how we think. This
experience is not changed by the fact that we are indeed bound to the
conditions of our thinking, and that our valid thinking has to submit to
the logical norms that we formulate. We are not even able to claim that
our thinking will always he bound to these conditions and norms, for we
have no right to assume that our thinking will be eternal. The days of
the human species on earth are numbered too ... We could proclaim our
thought invariable only if we were able to directly grasp the essence of
our soul as an independent, invariable substance - in the way assumed
by a rational psychology - and if we could deduce the invariability of
our thinking. But this we are unable to do as long as we hold on to the
idea that psychology can determine the stock and connections of psycho-
logical life-processes only via observation - like any other science of
facts. Finally, our thinking has developed out of less complicated forms
of mental representation, and thus we have no right to rule out further
development towards higher complexity of thought, a development that
calls for different norms. Be it added, however, ... that we have no
70 MARTIN KUSCH
reason to expect such further development ... But here we are concerned
not with probability but with possibility" (1907: 531-32)
To conclude this presentation of criticisms to Husser! 's independence
theory of truth, it remains to be mentioned that there were also some
philosophers who, by and large, agreed with Husser!'s views but felt that
these views could be argued for more precisely. Both Max Frischeisen-
Kohler (1912: 15-17) and Richard Honigswald (1914: 80-83) fall into
this category. (Cf. also Koppelmann 19l3: 10 - 17 .)
SELF-EVIDENCE
In Husser!'s criticism of psychologism, the category of self-evidence

figures in two ways. On the one hand, Husser! claims self-evidence for
his thesis according to which no other species could have a different
logic, (§40). On the other hand, Husserl stresses that purely logical
sentences say nothing about self-evidence and its conditions, and he
rejects the use of self-evidence as a criterion of truth (§51). In this
second context, Husserl grants self-evidence a role only in the following
"ideal" sense: to every truth-as-such corresponds, ideally or conceptual-
ly, a possible judgement of some possible (human or nonhuman) intellect
in which that truth is experienced as self-evident (§50).
Critics of Husserl's view on self-evidence attack one or both of
these lines of thought. In other words, some criticise the use of self-
evidence in Husser!'s argument against relativism, while some object to
Husserl's rejection of self-evidence as a criterion of truth. Others claim
that Husserl's views of self-evidence in two contexts contradict one
another. And finally, several authors find Husserl's own use of the
category of self-evidence simply confusing, unclear, metaphysical and
psychologistic.
Natorp (1901) warns that Husserl's sentence "truth is an idea that
becomes an actual experience when instantiated in an evident jUdgement"
could easily be "misunderstood as metaphysics". At the same time,
Natorp expresses doubts whether such an interpretation would indeed be
a misunderstanding: "Or should it be understood as metaphysics?"
(1901: 276-77). The notion of self-evidence in Husser! and his fol-
lowers reminds Theodor Ziehen of "intuition and intellectual perception
PSYCHOLOGISM 71
in Schelling's sense" (1920: 307). And Wilhelm Wundt (1910) laments

that Husserl never provides a clear definition of self-evidence.
According to Wundt, Husserl never gives satisfactory definitions of
his key terms. Wundt suggests the following explanation for Husserl's
alleged inability to define self-evidence: "Even more strange than the
failure of psychologism is the fact that logicism [Le. Brentano's and
Husserl's position] fares no better. The latter fares no better despite its
emphatic appeal to the self-evidence of logical laws. This is because
logicism's appeal [to the self-evidence of logical laws] moves in a
continuing circle: it declares logical laws self-evident, but then again it
bases self-evidence upon the validity of logical laws. In order to escape
this circle, logicism can do no better than explain that self-evidence is an
ultimate fact which cannot be further defined. And since a fact can only
be regarded as existing if it is somehow given within a perception
(Anschauung, intuition), it is understandable that logicism treats imme-
diate perception and indefinability as equivalent modes of justification.
... However, since every immediate perception is a psychological
process, the appeal to immediate perception amounts to a relapse into
psychologism ... " (1910: 623 - 25).
Heim (1902), Kleinpeter (1913), Moog (1919), and Schultz (1903)
all feel that Husserl has gone wrong either in claiming self-evidence for
his case against the 'psychologistic' sceptic, or then in employing the
category of self-evidence at all. Heim objects that Husserl has no right
to appeal to his feeling of self-evidence against the sceptic. Husserl's
emphatic insistence on self-evidence "might just as well be the language
of a lunatic who emphatically praises his fixed idea as the only key to
knowledge of the truth and who declares that everyone who disagrees is
mentally insane" (1902: 18). Moog sees Husserl's reliance on self-
evidence as a residue of psycho log ism (1919: 36). Kleinpeter stresses the
same point more emphatically: "The basis of Husserl's whole philosophy
suffers from a dilemma: on the one hand, he rejects all experience and
all psychological considerations; on the other hand, he builds his whole
system upon a psychological fact that is completely incompetent in logic.
Husserl has remained a psychologicist in the worse sense of the term"
(1913: 40).
Schultz does not accuse Husserl of psychologism but he too deems
Husserl's reliance on self-evidence a crucial mistake. According to
72 MARTIN KUSCH
Schultz we cannot trust our feeling of self-evidence because this feeling

has proved to be highly unreliable in the past: "since many sentences
which were once regarded as apodictic have now been recognised as
doubtful or mistaken, all evidences have to be taken to court ... " (1903:
28). For Schultz this court is manned by biologists, historians and
psychologists who work towards a "natural history of self-evidence"
(1903: 6) (cf. Jerusalem 1905: 95).
Turning from repudiations of Husser!'s own reliance on self-evi-
dence to criticisms of his rejection of psychological self-evidence, two
critics must foremost be mentioned: Elsenhans (1906), and Schlick
(1910, 1918). (cf. also Lapp (1913: 57 -59, Vol kelt 1918: 287 -88.)
Theodor Elsenhans seeks to defend psychological self-evidence as
"the ultimate criterion" in epistemology and logic (1906: 96), and he
regards Husser! as one of the few modern logicians that have tried to
present a case against this criterion. However, Elsenhans questions
whether Husserl's formula "truth is an idea that becomes an actual
experience when instantiated in an evident jUdgement" really amounts to
a genuine alternative: "Do we really get rid of the view of self-evidence
as 'a contingently added feeling'? Is there really any other way to speak
of 'experience', of 'fit' or of 'actual experience' ... than to take this
experience as the experience of some individual, as the psychological
process that occurs in singular thinking beings? ... As soon as we regard
self-evidence as an 'experience', be it that we regard it as an experience
of the 'truth' itself, then the only conceivable place for this experience
is the singular individual" (1906: 97).
Schlick (1910, 1918) is especially concerned to point out that
Husserl's two treatments of self-evidence contradict one another. As
Schlick sees it, when rejecting self-evidence as a criterion of truth
Husserl reproaches the very psychological self-evidence that Husser!
himself relies on in his attack on scepticism and psychologism (1910:
415 -16; 1918: 123). In the earlier text, Schlick writes as follows:
"[Husser!'s] absolute, independent truth would be unrecognisable in
every sense. Even if it could, through a miracle, enter into the human
intellect, how in the world could we recognise the truth as the truth?
According to Husser! the criterion is self-evidence. At one point he
begins a defence of the independence theory with the words: 'The
following relation is self-evidently given (durch Einsicht gegeben)'; some
PSYCHOLOGISM 73
pages later we read, as if to confirm the ear!ier claim: 'If we were not
allowed to trust self-evidence any more, how could we make, and
reasonably defend, any assertions at all?' But this obviously amounts to
nothing else than a flight into the theory of self-evidence! It is beyond
doubt that in these quoted sentences Husser! advocates 'the real theory
of self-evidence', a theory that he himself rejects with the following
drastic words: 'One feels inclined to ask what the authority of that
feeling [of self-evidence] is based upon, how that feeling can guarantee
the truth of a judgement, how it can 'mark a statement with the stamp of
truth', 'announce' its truth, ... ' Nothing can hide the fact that our author
here contradicts himself, not even the appeal to his distinction between
ideal possibility of self-evidence relating to 'sentences' and real self-
evidence relating to acts of judging. After all, in this context we are
dealing with factual, real knowledge of the truth, i.e. with real, psycho-
logical self-evidence. In fact it is only this real self-evidence that exists
... " (1910: 415).
THOUGHT-ECONOMICS
Finally, it remains to be mentioned, that Husser! regards "thought-

economical" justifications of logic as hopeless as psychological ones.
According to Husser!, laws of logic are not justified when it is pointed
out that their employment has survival-value for the human species, or
when it is shown that their employment makes human knowledge more
easy to unify. To argue in this way is to commit the fallacy of hysteron-
proteron. The logical ideal of a deductively unified body of knowledge
cannot be justified by the evolutionary trend towards a deductively
unified body of knowledge. This is because invoking this trend is already
to invoke the logical ideal. In other words, the validity of the ideal of
rationality and unification is presupposed by thought-economy, and it is
not explained by it. We evaluate factual thought in terms of the ideal
norm and then notice that factual thought often takes place as if it were
guided by the ideal principle (§56).
Husserl's criticism of thought-economics was also contested. Klein-
peter (1913: 39) remarks only generally that Husserl has failed to
understand the central idea of Mach's theory, but Jerusalem (1905) goes
74 MARTIN KUSCH
into somewhat greater detail: "An especially instructive example of the

dogmatic character of Husserl's argumentation is his criticism of the
principle of thought-economy, a principle which Mach has formulated .
... [Husserl writes:] 'The ideal validity of the norm is the precondition
of any sensible talk of thought-economy ... We notice the hysteron
proteron . ... Pure logic is prior to all thought-economy and it is absurd
to base the latter on the former.' It is obvious how Husserl's argument
goes .... Why doesn't thought-economy explain the origins and the
validity of logical laws ... 1 Only because this would conflict with
Husserl's dogma of the a priori nature of these laws. We psychologicists
believe that logical laws are a result of the development of scientific
thought and develop further together with scientific thought. We believe
this because it is in agreement with a conception of mental life that has
thus far always proven itself to be true. For us this belief is no dogma
but a heuristic rule of method. Nothing shows that logical laws are a
priori. ... My reading of Husserl's argument against thought-economy
suggests to me that the author tries to say this: 'Thought-economy is a
good, enlightening principle. It is useful for logic. But it cannot be used
as a justification of logic because it cannot be found in my logical
bible'" (1905: 97 -98).
FURTHER ACCUSATIONS AND COMMENTS
Up to this point, I have focussed on specific objections to particular el-

ements of Husserl's antipsychologism in the Prolegomena. However, a
summary of these specific objections does not exhaust the topic of this
paper, i.e. the reception of Husserl's antipsychologism in Germany
between 1901 and 1920. What needs to be added to the above summary
is an overview of the more general comments and accusations that
concern Husserl's antipsychologistic argument as a whole.
First, more than a dozen authors felt the need to deny emphatically
that they, or other members of their respective schools, were advocates
of psychologism. These authors can be divided into two groups: those
that Husserl had explicitly accused of being psychologicists, and those
that he had linked to psychologism without even mentioning their names.
Of the first group, Cornelius, Erdmann, Hofler, Lipps, Mach, Meinong,
PSYCHOLOGISM 75
Sigwart, and Wundt, all denied the charge at least for their own position
(Cornelius (1906: 401-2, 1916: 48-49), Erdmann (1907: 32), Hotler
(1905: 323), Lipps (1903: 78), Mach (1904: 593-94), Meinong (1902:
197, 1907: 143), Sigwart (1904: 23), Wundt (1910». The second group
consists of writers that Husserl yoked to psychologism indirectly. On the
one hand, Husserl wrote in his "Preface" that his antipsychologism
became possible only once he had distanced himself from the doctrines
of his teachers (1900: 7); thus Husserl's teachers, Brentano and Stumpf,
as well as their followers, e.g. Hotler, Meinong and Marty were all tied
to the positions that Husserl rejected. Moreover, even prior to Husserl's
Logische Untersuchungen, the standard account of contemporary phi-
losophy in turn of the century Germany, Part Three of Heinze-Ueber-
weg's Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, had already presented
the Brentano School under the heading "psychologism" (1897: 274-76).
Small wonder, therefore, that all of these philosophers felt the need to
stress that they had nothing to do with the relativistic psychologism that
Husserl attacked (Brentano (1911: 179-81), Hotler (1905: 323); Mei-
nong (1902: 197), Stumpf (1907: 33». On the other hand, Husserl had
suggested that much of Neokantian philosophy amounts to a psycholo-
gism in disguise. Husserl never explained this link in detail but wrote
that "transcendental psychology too is psychology" (1900: 102). Neo-
kantian philosophers were obviously angered by this remark. This much
can be seen from the fact that both Natorp and Rickert quote this sen-
tence, reject the accusation, and go on to turn the charge of psycholo-
gism around, i.e. turn it against Husserl himself (Natorp (1901: 280);
Rickert (1909: 222, 227».
Secondly, in turning the charge of psychologism (and relativistic
scepticism) against Husserl himself, Natorp and Rickert did not stand
alone. Indeed the accusation was made by almost twenty authors between
1901 and 1920 (Busse (1903), Cornelius (1906), Eisler (1907), Heim
(1902), Jerusalem (1905), Kleinpeter (1913), Kroner (1909), Lapp
(1913), Maier (1908), Meinong (1913), Michaltschew (1909), Moog
(1919), Natorp (1901), Nelson (1908), Palagyi (1902), Rickert (1909),
Sigwart (1904), Stumpf (1906), Wundt (1910». However, different
authors disagreed over the question what Husserl's psychologism (or
relativistic scepticism) consisted of. A first group regarded Husserl as a
psychologicist because Husserl supposedly based his pure logic upon the
76 MARTIN KUSCH
allegedly psychological notion of self-evidence (Heim 1902: 1, 18;

Kleinpeter 1913: 40; Moog 1919: 35; Natorp 1901: 280; Sigwart 1904:
23; Wundt 1910: 612). A second party claimed that psychologism
returned in Husserl's very criticism because of Husserl's idea that laws
of logic are laws about ideal beings. Put differently, these authors
wished to maintain that any form of Platonism in logic is but a psycholo-
gism in disguise (Kroner 1909: 27; Moog 1919: 26-27; Rickert 1909:
195 -96). A third band of philosophers saw Husserl relapse into psy-
chologism, scepticism and relativism because of his distinction between
ideal laws and truths, on the one hand, and real laws and events on the
other hand. Members of this third group regarded this distinction as
psychologistic or relativistic either because they thought that Husserl had
failed to explain how ideal laws and truths could ever be known (Michal-
tschew 1909: 57, 83; Lapp 1913: 64), or else because they felt that
Husserl had not drawn this divide in a convincing way (palagyi 1902:
42-55). And finally, according to a number of critics Husserl was a
closet psychologicist insofar as he regarded his "phenomenology", or
"descriptive psychology", as the proper place for foundational studies in
logic (Busse 1903: 154; Cornelius 1906: 406; Jerusalem 1905: 131;
Maier 1908: 360; Meinong 1913: 502; Nelson 1908: 71; Rickert 1909:
227; Stumpf 1906: 34-35).
Thirdly, a number of writers added the further charges of "scholasti-
cism", "aristocratic metaphysicism", "mysticism", "logicism" and
"formalism" to the accusation of psychologism. Varieties of the first
three invectives appear in Jerusalem (1914: 9), Lapp (1913: 42-43,52,
59), Maier (1908: 53), Moog (1919: 27,34), Sigwart (1904: 24), Wundt
(1910: 580), and Ziehen (1920: 307); the formalism/logicism charge can
be found in Natorp (1901: 281), Palagyi (1902: 1-9), Schultz (1903:
13-19-20), Uphues (1903: 4) and Wundt (1910: 516, 603). We have
encountered the accusations of mysticism and scholasticism already
above. Suffice it here to mention one example of the formalism charge.
The formalism charge is developed in greatest detail by Palagyi
(1902). According to Palagyi, logic and epistemology are endangered not
only by the psychologism of physiologist intruders into philosophy, but
equally by formalistic tendencies in modern mathematics (1902: 12). In
Husserl's sympathy for modern mathematical treatments of logic, Pala-
gyi welcomes the attempt to free logic and philosophy from psychology
PSYCHOLOGISM 77
but, in that very same sympathy, he also detects a mathematical impe-

rialism: "As one can see, mathematics is no less selfish than any of the
other special sciences; mathematics too wishes to suck up logic com-
pletely. Logic is supposed to resolve totally into mathematics, and for
this end it is supposed to renounce psychology" (1902: 5).
CRITICISMS AND ACCUSATIONS: A SUMMARY
Perhaps the easiest way to summarise the various criticisms of, and
accusations against, Husserl's attack on psychologism is to present the
most significant criticisms in the form of a table (Figure 1). As this table
makes clear enough, all ingredients of Husserl's case against psycholo-
gism were questioned repeatedly, and by many different authors. Espe-
cially Husserl's distinction between ideal and real laws, his independence
theory of truth and his theory of self-evidence attracted the attention of
his critics. It is also striking that almost every second author who
commented critically on Husserl's arguments charged Husserl with the
very psychologism Husserl had allegedly refuted. And finally, while all
of the accused pleaded not guilty to the charge of psychologism, only
one author, Wilhelm Jerusalem was willing to accept "psychologism" as
a label for his own views.
University of Edinburgh
78 MARTIN KUSCH
OBJECTIONS
e
"
~
"...e
....
..,"
)
~
CRITICS
, I
PSYCHOLOGISM 79
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82 MARTIN KUSCH
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RICHARD TIESZEN
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC:

FREGE AND HUSSERL
The work of Frege and Husserl on logic and mathematics might, from
a modern perspective, be compared under three main headings: mathe-
matical logic, philosophical logic, and the foundations of mathematics.
Under the first heading there is little room for comparison. Frege
surpassed nearly everyone in the history of logic, to say nothing of
Husserl, in his technical achievements and discoveries. Husserl contrib-
uted virtually no technical work to the development of mathematical
logic. Under the second heading, however, there is a great deal of room
for comparison. Many of the issues raised by Frege and Husserl involv-
ing language, meaning, reference, judgment, platonism about logic, and
other matters are still actively debated in research in philosophical logic.
While there is some overlap between the three areas, the grounds for
comparison are different again in the foundations of mathematics. Frege
had a technical program in mind for the foundations of mathematics in
his logicism and, as we know from the Grundlagen der Arithmetik, it
was a program shaped by certain philosophical ideas. The program was
formulated so precisely in the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik that it could
be seen to fail. That is, it was possible to derive a contradiction from the
basic laws of arithmetic as these had been formulated by Frege, and
subsequent attempts to repair the damage led to developments that were
farther and farther removed from Frege's effort to clearly and decisively
derive the principles of number from logic. Very late in his career, but
still several years before GOdel established the incompleteness theorems
for Principia Mathematica, Frege came to abandon his logicism com-
pletely and to develop some work based on his new 'geometrical' ideas
about arithmetic.
Husserl was far less interested than Frege in technical work in logic
and foundations. While many of his ideas lend themselves to mathemati-
85
86 RICHARD TIESZEN
cal development, Husserl himself did not pursue the details. As a phi-
losopher, he cautioned against the 'blind' or uncritical development of
formal work. In the Logische Untersuchungen (LU), for example, he
says that mathematicians are primarily technicians and as such they tend
to lose sight of the meaning or essence of their theories, and of the
concepts and laws that are the conditions for their theories (Husser!
1900-01, pp. 243-245). On the other hand, he says that philosophers
overstep their bounds when they fail to recognize that the only scientif-
ically legitimate development of mathematics requires technical work. In
LU and other writings Husserl argued that while the philosopher's
critique of knowledge and the mathematician's technical work require a
fundamental division of labor, they are nonetheless mutually complemen-
tary scientific activities.
Not surprisingly, Husser!'s strongest contributions are to be found
in the philosophy of mathematics. I shall in fact argue that, in its general
outline, Husser!'s post-psychologistic, transcendental view of arithmetic
is still a live option in the philosophy of mathematics, unlike Frege's
logicism. It is also superior to Frege's late views on arithmetic in several
important respects. I hope to show, in the process, that we still have
something to learn by comparing and analyzing the ideas of Frege and
Husser! on arithmetic, all the more so because Husserl's ideas are still
largely unknown to many people in the analytic tradition of philosophy.
In spite of the fact that his logicist program failed, Frege contributed
many important arguments on foundations and he raised many interesting
objections to views like Husser!'s. The tension from some of these
objections has not yet dissipated and I shall remark on them at different
points in the paper.
FREGE ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF ARITHMETIC: LOGICISM
Frege and Husser! approached the foundations of arithmetic in very

different ways, although they agreed on several general points about
mathematics. Neither was content with formalism in the style of Hilbert,
both argued against psychologism, both objected to conventionalism,
pragmatism, and naturalism about mathematics, and both appeared to
uphold some form of mathematical realism. In order to deepen our
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC: FREGE AND HUSSERL 87
understanding of their differences, let us start by recalling, in outline,

some of the distinctive features of Frege's views on the foundations of
arithemtic.
Already in the Begriffsschrift Frege distinguished between two kinds
of truths that require justification: those for which the justification must
be supported by facts of experience, and those for which a proof can be
carried out purely by means of logic alone (Frege 1879, pp. 5-6).
Frege tells us that in order to sort arithmetic judgments into one of these
two classes he had to make every effort to keep the chains of inferences
involved in proofs free from gaps. This led him to develop the formal
logic of the Begriffsschrift. Only by developing such a rigorous, formal
'concept notation' would it be possible to eliminate appeals to intuition
from proofs, and hence to finally decide whether arithmetic judgments
were purely logical or were supported by facts of experience.
The ideal motivating Frege's concern for gapless formal proofs is
expounded more fully in the Grundgesetze where Frege cites Euclid's
axiomatic method as a forerunner of his own idea of a strictly scientific
method in mathematics (Frege 1893, pp. 2-3). Frege's idea is to expli-
citly state in his formal language all of the propositions that are to be
used without proof, the basic laws, and to start with the smallest possible
number of these propositions. But Frege goes beyond Euclid in demand-
ing that all of the methods of inference to be employed in the formal
system be specified in advance. It must also be possible to see, once
their meanings are explained, that the basic laws of arithmetic express
truths of pure logic, and that the rules of inference really are rules of
logic and that they are sound. Thus, if the steps of proof are split up into
logically simple steps, if we have started from purely logical proposi-
tions, and if we can actually derive the standard propositions that are
already given in arithmetic from the basic laws using only the rules of
inference specified, we will finally see that the foundations of arithmetic
lie in logic alone, and that we need not rely upon intuition or facts of
experience at any point. Frege also tells us that by eliminating all gaps
in reasoning we will achieve more than an empirical or inductive justifi-
cation for the truths of arithmetic, and that this will be an important
advance in mathematics, for as long as we fail to eliminate the gaps
there is a possibility that we will have overlooked something that might
cast doubt upon the proof of a proposition. Thus, we will finally be able
88 RICHARD TIESZEN
to eliminate the possibility of error in our reasoning, and to establish

arithmetic on a secure foundation.
The formal system from which Frege intended to derive the prin-
ciples of arithmetic includes classical propositional logic, first- and
second-order quantification theory, and a theory of extensions of con-
cepts (or classes) developed inside the second-order quantification
theory. Within this structure Frege wanted to give an explicit definition
of number. The intended interpretation of the system of the Grundge-
setze was by all indications to be extensional. Frege had of course made
the sense/reference distinction in (Frege 1892) and had used it to give an
account of identity, but he was thereby also enabled in the Grundgesetze
to set aside the notion of sense, and to keep intensional aspects of
meaning from obtruding. Numbers were to be defined in terms of the
extensions of concepts but concepts in Frege's philosophy were them-
selves taken to be the references of concept-words. The difference
between a concept and the extension of a concept for Frege does not
coincide with the distinction between sense and reference. Rather, it
amounts to a difference in saturation: concepts are not saturated, and so
are not objects, but extensions of concepts are saturated and are objects.
Frege knew that dealing with oblique contexts would require an inten-
sional logic but oblique contexts were not to occur in the Grundgesetze,
and Frege did not go on to develop an intensional logic. The argument
of the Grundlagen and his exchanges with Husserl also indicate that, on
the whole, he sided with extensionalist approaches to logic.
In any case, the definition of number would be an extensional
definition and because the dejiniens would involve extensions of concepts
it would be reductive in nature, 'reducing' numbers to infinite equiva-
lence classes. Of course Frege thought that this reduction involved no
notions that were not purely logical, that he was appealing only to the
acknowledged 'logical' notion of extensions of concepts in his definition.
Numbers would thus be logical objects. It is interesting, however, that
in the Introduction to the first volume of the Grundgesetze Frege had
expressed some concern that his basic law involving the notion of the
course-of-values of a function (the ill-fated Basic Law V), which in-
cludes the notion of the extension of a concept as a special case, might
not be viewed as a law of logic. Basic Law V is of course the source of
the contradiction in Frege's system, given his other assumptions. In the
Appendix on the Russell Paradox in the second volume of the Grund-

gesetze (Frege 1903) Frege says that he never concealed from himself
the fact that Basic Law V lacked the self-evidence possessed by the other
basic laws.
As we know from the Grundlagen, Frege thought that many old and
fundamental philosophical questions about arithmetic were intimately
linked to his logicist program. The principal dispute the Grundlagen is
meant to settle, he says, is whether the concept of number is definable
or not (Frege 1884, p. 5). He argues that if there are independent
grounds for believing that the fundamental principles of arithmetic are
analytic (as opposed to synthetic) then these would also tell in favor of
the principles being provable and of number being definable. If his
program could be carried out we would also see that true arithmetical
propositions do not have some irreducible mathematical content, that
they are not synthetic a priori and do not depend on (pure) intuition as
Kant had held, that they are not empirical in nature as Mill had held,
that various theories of numbers as aggregates are mistaken, that efforts
to identify numbers with perceivable signs are mistaken, and so on. In
addition, Frege's vehement attacks on psychologism are meant to show
that numbers are not mental entities, that various efforts to understand
numbers by appealing to psychological processes like abstraction are
mistaken, and that true arithmetical propositions cannot be construed as
psychological laws. Frege thought it crucial to the development of the
science of logic to establish the objectivity of logic, and hence of num-
ber, against the subjectivity of our ideas about number.
We should note that while in many of his writings Husser! uses the
term 'logic' in a very wide sense, even going so far as to subsume
mathematics under logic in his general theory of deductive systems, we
do not find in his work anything like the picture that Frege presents.
Husser! often tends to think of logic in the tradition of Bolzano and
others as something like a general theory of science. Although Husser!
speaks of 'logic' in this very wide sense, he could not of course be a
Fregean logicist because he tells us in his later work that a phenomeno-
logical-constitutional foundation of formal logic is needed, and that the
philosophical basis of logic is to be found in transcendental phe-
nomenology (Husserl 1929). Moreover, in his own early work on
number in Philosophie der Arithmetik (PA) he argued that the concept of
90 RICHARD TIESZEN
number cannot be reduced to logical notions in Frege's sense.
THE FREGE-HUSSERL DISPUTE OVER ARITHMETIC
In the Philosophie der Arithmetik, published in 1891, Husserl had

criticized the views on number that Frege expressed in the Grundlagen.
Frege and Husserl had begun a correspondence in 1891, several years
before Frege's well-known 1894 review of PA (Frege 1894). The locus
of their disagreement, from Husserl's perspective, concerned the central
question of the Grundlagen: is the concept of number definable or not?
Frege thought that it was and Husserl thought that it was not. I shall
argue, however, that there is a sense in which each philosopher missed
the other's point. From Frege's perspective, judging from his review of
PA, the locus of the disagreement concerned the intrusion of psychology
into virtually every aspect of logic. Indeed, Frege claims that Husserl is
even confused about the nature of definitions because he fails to keep
psychology distinct from logic. In recalling this claim, however, we need
to keep in mind the vicissitudes of Frege's own views on definition and
the problem of how definition should be understood in his own late
philosophy of arithmetic. I shall claim, in any case, that there is a point
to Husserl's argument on definitions that is quite independent of psychol-
ogism. I shall not recount specific elements of Frege's criticisms here,
for I agree that there is much that is misleading, unclear or even wrong
in PA. In PA Husserl does blur the distinction between the subjective
and the objective to detrimental effect at times, his remarks on I-to-l
correspondences are confused, and a host of difficulties of interpretation
surround his view that numbers are aggregates of featureless units. But
as Husserl himself reminds us in Formale und transzendentale Logik
(FTL), long after he had repudiated psychologism, there is a core of
ideas in PA that he never abandoned (Husserl 1929, pp. 86-87). In a
section entitled "The first constitutional investigations of categorial
objectivities in the Philosophie der Arithmetik" he puts it this way:
I had already acquired the definite direction of regard to the formal

and a first understanding of its sense by my Philosophie der Arith-
metik, which, in spite of its immaturity as a first book, presented an
initial attempt to go back to the spontaneous activities of collecting

and counting, in which collections ("sums", "sets") and cardinal
numbers are given in the manner characteristic of something that is
being generated originally, and thereby to gain clarity respecting the
proper, the authentic, sense of the concepts fundamental to the
theory of sets and the theory of cardinal numbers. It was therefore,
in my later terminology, a phenomenological-constitutional investi-
gation; and at the same time it was the first investigation that sought
to make "categorial objectivities" of the first level and of higher
levels (sets and cardinals of a higher ordinal level) understandable
on the basis of the "constituting" intentional activities ...
Husserl makes it clear in his later writings that his phenomenological-

constitutional investigation is an epistemological, not a psychological,
undertaking. And it is just this kind of investigation, I believe, that
contains important insights that are not found in Frege. I shall come
back to the ideas in this passage in section 4.
In PA Husserl argued that the concept of number was not definable,
that it was a primitive concept, and he criticized Frege's construal of
numbers as (infinite) equivalence classes. Husserl generally thought of
concepts as intensional entities, so what he means when he says that the
concept of number is not definable, in Frege's terms, is that it is not
possible to define the 'content', or the sense (intension) of the concept of
number (Tieszen 1990). The sense of the concept of number is logically
simple or primitive, it cannot be reduced to any other sense, and so we
must investigate it by some other means. In PA Husserl raises, in effect,
an early version of the paradox of analysis for Frege's view (Resnik
1980, Tieszen 1990, Dummett 1991). The problem, simply put, is this:
logic, for Frege, is supposed to consist of analytic propositions, is not
supposed to depend on intuition, and so on. But if we are trying to
define the sense of an expression of number then the sense of the deji-
niens will either be the same as or different from the sense of the
dejiniendum. If the sense is the same the dejiniens simply repeats the
dejiniendum so that the definition is pointless. But if the sense of the
dejiniens is different from that of the dejiniendum the dejiniens adds
something to the dejiniendum, in which case the definition is false. Thus,
we cannot hope to define the concept of number.
92 RICHARD TIESZEN
Husserl argued, on the other hand, that our understanding of the

extension of the concept of number is not problematic since we apply the
concept with no difficulty. Since Frege only characterizes the extension
of the concept of number his work falls short of the goal of a philosophi-
cal analysis of the concept. Frege, however, argues that the concept of
number is definable, that an explicit, extensional definition of the con-
cept can be given. Further, he argues that Husserl's criticisms really
apply to all of the concepts of mathematics, but that these criticisms miss
the point since extensional definitions of concepts suffice for mathemati-
cal purposes.
The disagreement here reflects a more general division between
Frege and Husserl on issues involving intensionality and extensionality
in logic and mathematics, and to some extent on the different methods
and purposes of mathematics and philosophy. Husserl, from the begin-
ning of his career, sided with intensional logicians in taking logic to be
concerned with senses or meanings as such. Frege's view, on the other
hand, is succintly expressed in the following comment (Frege 1892-95,
p. 122):
They [the Umfangs-Iogicians] are right when, because of their

preference for the extension of a concept to its intension, they admit
that they regard the reference of words, and not their meaning, to
be essential for logic. The Inhalts-Iogicians only remain too happily
with the meaning, for what they call "Inhalt" (content), if it is not
quite the same as Vorstellung, is certainly the meaning (Sinn). They
do not consider the fact that in logic it is not a question of how
thoughts come from thoughts without regard to truth-value, that,
more generally speaking, the progress from meanings (Sinne) to
reference (Bedeutung) must be made; that the logical laws are first
laws in the realm of references and only then mediately relate to
meaning (Sinn).
Logic for Frege is, in the first instance, truth-functional. It is not con-
cerned with (Fregean) thoughts or senses as such, but with thoughts
insofar as they are true. As Mohanty has pointed out, Frege agrees with
Husserl that the extension of a concept presupposes the intension of a
concept, but he also takes the concept itself to be the reference of a
concept-word (Mohanty 1982). Concepts and truth-values are both

references for Frege. Husserl, on the other hand, favored the develop-
ment of intensional logic, and he took the intensionalist outlook to be
especially important for philosophy. Indeed, the concept of intention-
ality, which is central to his philosophy, calls for an intensional logic,
for the intentionality of acts of believing, knowing, and so on, creates
oblique contexts. In particular, an analysis of belief or knowledge
involving number is ipso facto an analysis of intensionality. The marks
of intensionality in the failure of substitution salva veritate and existen-
tial generalization to preserve validity of inference are seen throughout
Husserl's later philosophy. Frege, on the other hand, devoted little
attention to the analysis of beliefs or knowledge about number. He
seemed unable, at least in his logicist period, to grasp the possibility of
a non-psychologistic analysis of this type.
Thus, one senses that there were some deeper issues behind the
Frege- Husserl dispute and that, to some extent, each philosopher
missed the other's point. Frege claims that he is not after the intension
of the concept of number anyway, so that Husserl misses the significance
of his project for mathematics. But Husserl is interested, in effect, in a
logic of meanings, or a logic of oblique contexts generated by knowl-
edge and belief about numbers, so that Frege misses the point about how
important the development of such an intensional approach might be for
deeper questions in the philosophy of arithmetic. Since Frege only
characterizes the extension of the concept of number his work falls short
of the goal of a philosophical analysis of arithmetic.
It might be argued on Frege's behalf that we do have definitions of
numbers in various standard set theories, so that something of Frege's
original claim about the possibil ity of providing an extensional, reductive
definition of number remains, even if the reduction is not to 'pure logic'
in Frege's sense. I think this cannot be denied, and that this set-theoretic
reduction constitutes a very important development in the foundations of
mathematics. Even so, something of Husserl's point that the sense of the
concept of number is logically simple or primitive, that it cannot be
reduced to any other sense, also remains. Consider, for example, the
fact that there are infinitely many non-equivalent extensional definitions
of natural numbers in set theory. A view like Frege's is saddled with the
problem that there are many reductions. The existence of non-equivalent
94 RICHARD TIESZEN
extensional definitions in mathematics is of course not confined to

elementary number theory. To take a different example, real numbers
may be defined as Dedekind cuts, as the upper or lower members of
such cuts, as equivalence classes of convergent sequences or rational
numbers, and so on. A real number defined as a Dedekind cut, for
example, is not identical with a real number defined as the lower mem-
ber of a cut since the former is an ordered pair while the latter is a
member of such a pair. Thus, no particular definition of this type
suffices to capture the sense of the concept of a real number. Each such
definition is 'reductive' and fails to include the other definitions that are
supported by the meaning of the concept. So we cannot suppose that we
know what real numbers are or that we have gotten to the essence of real
numbers based on anyone of these definitions, even if some of the
definitions do seem more 'natural' than others.
Looking back on the Frege- Husser! dispute I think we can say that
the upshot of Husser!'s objection is that we must seek to understand the
meaning or intension of the concept of number in some other way, and
that it is philosophically important to do so, even if various kinds of
explicit, reductive definitions can be given. I think that subsequent work
in the foundations of mathematics bears this out. The same point can be
made about other basic concepts of mathematics. This is of special
interest in recent times in the case of set theory since mathematics can be
'reduced' to set theory, but no one understands what it would mean to
have an explicit definition of the concept of set.
Frege was of course not persuaded by Husser! that we must try to
understand arithmetic and the meaning of arithmetic concepts in a
different way. PA was just too clouded with psychologistic confusions to
be persuasive. What eventually did convince Frege was Russell's para-
dox.
FREGE'S LATER PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC
After attempting for a while to repair the damage done to his logicism
by Russell's discovery ofthe paradox in 1902, Frege turned his attention
to other matters. When he returned to the foundations of arithmetic near
the end of his life he came to the conclusion that he had started from
incorrect philosophical assumptions in his earlier work on arithmetic.

Frege had already held in the Grund/agen (§89) that traditional geometry
was synthetic a priori and he now began to assimilate arithmetic to
geometry. In several unpublished papers from 1924-25 Frege now
distinguished three sources of knowledge: sense perception, the geomet-
rical/temporal sources of knowledge, and the logical source of knowl-
edge (Frege 1924-25a and 1924-25c). In these papers he continued to
hold that sense perception cannot be a source of knowledge in arithmetic
or geometry, citing the fact that "sense perception can yield nothing
infinite" (Frege 1924-25c, p. 274). The idea of the infinite is derived
rather from the geometrical/temporal sources of knowledge. Frege
argues that it is absurd that the series of natural numbers might come to
an end, but not that there might be only finitely many physical objects,
and so the mode of cognition involved in the geometicaI/temporal
sources of knowledge must also be a priori (Frege 1924-25b, p. 277).
He now also argues that while logic must be involved in knowledge
whenever inferences are drawn, it appears that logic cannot on its own
yield us any objects. He even gives a brief analysis of how illusions
about objects can arise in logic, just as there are illusions about objects
in sense perception (Frege 1924-25c). In logic we rely heavily on the
use of language and there is a tendency in language, even in strictly
scientific language, to form proper names to which no objects corre-
spond. Frege says that he himself fell under this illusion in trying to
construe numbers as sets. But if an a priori mode of cognition must be
involved in the awareness of number, and logic cannot be the source of
our arithmetical knowledge, then our arithmetical knowledge must have
a geometrical source. It is of some interest to note that Frege does not
pursue the temporal source of knowledge in relation to arithmetic,
perhaps because geometry already exists as a mathematical discipline but
there is nothing similar to it for the concept of time. Thus, he says that
"the more I have thought the matter over, the more convinced I have
become that arithmetic and geometry have developed on the same basis
- a geometrical one in fact - so that mathematics is in its entirety
really geometry." (Frege 1924-25c, p. 277). In this remark we see that
Frege's impulse to reduce arithmetic to something else has not abated,
but has only found a different target.
Frege continues to make it clear in these late papers that he is anti-
96 RICHARD TIESZEN
psychologistic and an anti-formalist (in Hilbert's sense) about mathe-

matics. He still holds that a statement of number contains an assertion
about a concept. He says that whereas he asserted in the Grundgesetze
that arithmetic does not need to appeal to experience in proofs he would
now hold that it does not need to appeal to sense perception in its
proofs. He now says "I have had to abandon the view that arithmetic
does not need to appeal to intuition either in its proofs, understanding by
intuition the geometrical source of knowledge, that is, the source from
which flow the axioms of geometry." (Frege 1924 - 25a, p. 278) Note
that since Frege rejects sense perception but now accepts the role of
intuition as a source of knowledge in arithmetic, he must be committed
to the the view that some form of 'pure' or non-sensory intuition is
required.
Frege's new position raises a host of questions that he never answer-
ed. First, what kind of account could be given of this non-sensory form
of intuition? Now that Frege thinks arithmetic (via geometry) does need
to appeal to non-sensory intuition in its proofs, does it follow that he
must abandon his idea of providing gapless formal proofs? Or does he
think it is still possible to provide such proofs, except that now they will
involve an element that is not purely 'Iogical'? Does Frege believe that
this intuition is somehow fully formalizable or axiomatizable or, as
GOdel later came to believe, that our arithmetical intuition is somehow
inexhaustible and not fully formalizable? In the latter case, Frege would
indeed be making a radical departure from his earlier scientific ideal of
finding gapless formal proofs and it would again appear to follow on his
premisses, for example, that we could have no more than empirical
justification in mathematical proofs. Since this seems to contradict the
idea that the geometrical source of knowledge yields a priori knowledge
we might expect Frege to reject the idea that our geometrical intuition is
not fully formalizable. But it is not clear that this would be Frege's
view. There are many other questions about how the concept of number
should now be understood with respect to the various philosophical
issues Frege had discussed in the Grundlagen. For example, arithmetic
is now presumably synthetic, not analytic, but does this mean that the
concept of number is not definable? Frege presumably now requires an
account of definition that is different from any of his earlier accounts.
And if intuition is necessary how do we avoid psychologism? How will
Frege explain the role of intuition in our knowledge of large numbers,

and of the infinity of numbers? Do we again need an account of arithme-
tic or of geometry which requires the idea of abstraction from sense
experience? And so on. Many of these questions are addressed in Hus-
serl's philosophy and the fact that they are, I shall argue below, repre-
sents an advance over Frege's thinking on the subject.
When we consider what Frege discarded and retained from his
logicism we see that in some respects he has come to a position that is
much closer to Kant's view that the source of arithmetical knowledge
lies in a pure a priori form of intuition. There are of course some
notable differences: Frege separates the geometrical from the temporal
source of knowledge only to set aside the temporal source, whereas for
Kant the temporal source is linked to arithmetic, as distinct from geom-
etry. Also, there might be disagreement between Frege and Kant about
the claim that a statement of number contains an assertion about a
concept, and about whether the concept of number is definable and
statements of number are provable. There is also no trace of realism
about mathematical objects in Kant's philosophy. As we shall see,
Frege's post-logicist position on the foundations of arithmetic is also
closer to Husserl's views in some respects, although here too there will
be some notable differences.
HUSSERL AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC:

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
OF IDEAL OBJECTS?
Husserl's transcendental phenomenology suggests that we should try to

understand arithmetic and the meaning of arithmetic concepts by starting
with the question of how arithmetic knowledge is possible. In particular,
Husserl suggests that a genetic account of the conditions for the possi-
bility of arithmetic knowledge is needed. There are far too many details
of such an account to be considered here and so I will simply give an
overview of some points that I believe are germane to what has hap-
pened in the foundations of mathematics since Husserl's time.
In PA Husserl had already argued that since the concept of number
is a primitive concept all we could hope to do is to indicate the concrete
98 RICHARD TIESZEN
phenomena from which the concept is 'abstracted' and clearly describe

the abstraction process used. Husserl's analyses in PA represent an early
and rather primitive attempt to provide what he later referred to as a
'genetic' analysis of the concept. Husserl has a lot to say about genetic
analysis in various later writings (e.g., Husserl 1929, 1936, 1939). One
of his best-known later essays is entitled "The Origin of Geometry", and
the subtitle of Erfahrung und Urteil is "Investigations in a Genealogy of
Logic". What Husserl points out in these later works is that a genetic
account of the conditions for the possibility of arithmetical knowledge
will have to explain how it is possible to know about 'ideal' objects, that
is, objects that are not located in space-time, but that are immutable and
acausal.
In his analysis of the source of knowledge about number Husserl
agrees with Frege that the intended objects of acts directed toward
numbers are neither objects of sense perception nor mental objects. But
they are also not 'logical objects' in Frege's sense. They are, however,
'ideal' or abstract objects, even though the objects of the underlying,
founding acts in which they have their origin may be objects of sense
perception. But Husserl has a more subtle analysis than Frege of what
abstract objects are, and of how we could be aware of them. In "The
Thought" (Frege 1918) Frege struggles to make sense of how we could
come to know about a particular kind of abstract, eternal, immutable
object - a thought - and his comments leave the matter shrouded in
mystery. Husserl, on the other hand, gives a phenomenological (and also
a transcendental) solution to this problem: abstract objects, and numbers
in particular, are to be understood as invariants in our mathematical
experience, or in mathematical phenomena. Even if we have not clarified
the meaning of the concept of number completely we can still say that
numbers are identities through the many different kinds of acts and
processes carried out at different times and places and by different
mathematicians, and this is analogous to the fact that physical objects are
identities in our experience even though we do not see everything about
them. Now some phenomena simply do not sustain invariance over
different times, places and persons. In the case of logical or sensory
illusions, for example, what we take to be present at one point in our
experience is not sustained in subsequent experience. But parts of our
arithmetic experience are not at all like this and they have in fact become
quite stable across times, places and persons, just as other parts of our
experience have stabilized. So even if we have not brought the meaning
of the concept of number to full clarity we can still say that numbers are
'objects' in the sense that they are identities through the multiplicities of
our own cognitive acts and processes. If this were not so the science of
mathematics as we know it would not be possible.
The sense of the 'abstractness' of numbers is derived from several
facts. Numbers could not be objects (identities) of sensation because
objects of sensation occur and change in space and time. They could not
be mental in nature because what is mental occurs and changes in time.
One could expand on these claims equally well using either Fregean or
Husserlian arguments. Numbers are also identities that 'transcend'
consciousness in the sense that there are indefinitely many things we do
not know about them at a given time, on the analogy with our knowl-
edge of perceptual objects, but at the same time we can extend our
knowledge of them by solving open problems, devising new methods,
and so on. They transcend conciousness in the same way that physical
objects do. And, similarly, we cannot will them to be anything we like,
nor can we will anything to be true of them. They are mind-independent.
On the object side of his analysis Husserl can therefore claim to be a
kind of realist about numbers. Numbers are not our own ideas. At the
same time he is also a kind of idealist on the subjective side of his
analysis because he has a constitutional account of our awareness and
knowledge of numbers and a critical perspective on classical meta-
physical realism.
Let us now focus on what the constitutional account of the aware-
ness and knowledge of numbers looks like. How is knowledge of these
ideal objects possible? To understand how the awareness and knowledge
of any kind of object is possible we must realize, Husserl argues, that
various forms of consciousness, like believing and knowing, are inten-
tional. So numbers, as ideal objects, must be understood as the objects
of acts that are intentional. Intentional acts are directed to objects by way
of their contents or 'noemata'. We can think of the contents associated
with acts as the meanings or senses under which we think of the objects.
So in the parlance of recent work on cognition and meaning, Husserl
wants to provide a theory of content (specific to arithmetic) in which the
origins of arithmetic content are taken to lie in more primitive, percep-
100 RICHARD TIESZEN
tual 'founding' acts and contents, where the idea is to determine the a
priori cognitive structures and processes that make arithmetic content
possible. So it is argued, for example, that 'founded' acts of abstraction
from and reflection on such underlying, founding acts and contents are
an a priori condition for the possibility of arithmetic content, and hence
for the awareness of number. To understand or to clarify the sense of the
concept of number, therefore, is not (or not only) to find an explicit,
reductive definition of number in some other mathematical theory. It is
rather to provide, among other things, a genetic account of the a priori
conditions for the possibility of arithmetic knowledge.
Husserl argues that the sense of the concept of number has its origin
in acts of collecting, counting and comparing (Le., placing objects into
1-to-1 correspondence). Note that these are acts that are appropriate to
number and not, prima Jacie, to geometry. Insofar as we are aware of
numbers in these acts the acts must involve a kind of abstraction from
and reflection on our most primitive perceptual experiences with every-
day objects. They are 'founded' acts in the sense that they presuppose
the existence of more straightforward perceptual acts. The latter kinds of
acts could exist if there were no arithmetic, but the genesis of arithmetic
presupposes such straightforward acts (see Tieszen 1989). This is what
Husserl has in mind when, in the passage quoted above, he speaks of the
"attempt to go back to the spontaneous activites of collecting and count-
ing, in which collections ("sums", "sets") and cardinal numbers are
given in the manner characteristic of something that is being generated
originally, and thereby to gain clarity respecting the proper, the authen-
tic, sense of the concepts fundamental to the theory of sets and the
theory of cardinal numbers", and when he adds that he seeks to make
""categorial objectivities" of the first level and of higher levels (sets and
cardinals of a higher ordinal level) understandable on the basis of the
"constituting" intentional activities ... "
In fact, a condition for the possibility of all of our higher, theoreti-
cal or scientific modes of cognition is that there be a hierarchy of acts,
contents and intended objects. This means that at various levels in the
hierarchy we have acts directed toward objects by way of their contents.
In the growth of knowledge over time these contents may either be
corrected through further experience or not. The constitution of content
in founded and founding acts is a function of the interplay over time
between the existing contents of acts and the experiences provided by

further intuition, and this will be governed to some extent by the a priori
rules or structures of cognition. It is not just arbitrary. The processes by
which layers of content are built up, refined and extended in relation to
intuition or experience is described by Husserl as 'synthetic'. The
analysis of the origin of arithmetic is therefore not the same thing as
empirical historical investigation along either an individual or a social
dimension, but it is also not simply a matter of analytic inference.
Husserl would argue against historicist accounts of arithmetic knowl-
edge, but also against any kind of ahistorical rationalism about arithmetic
knowledge.
In his early work Frege of course always objected to accounts of
number that required a process of abstraction, and in his review of PA
he takes Husserl to task for this too. But if we are careful to always
distinguish mental acts and processes from the objects toward which acts
are directed then we can skirt Frege's objection. We can distinguish
numbers as abstract objects in their own right from the cognitive acts
and processes that make it possible to know about numbers, and argue
that we do not create the numbers themselves by abstraction, but only
our knowledge or awareness of numbers. How else would arithmetical
knowledge, as opposed to more primitive forms of perceptual knowl-
edge, be possible? It is true that Husserl does not give us a detailed
account of abstraction, but he does at least try to establish the claim that
acts of abstraction must be involved in arithmetic knowledge. I think this
point by itself will enable us to set aside Frege's early objection about
confusing the subjective and the objective. And Frege may actually need
a similar epistemological view of abstraction to support his later account
of number.
I also suggest, in response to views like those expressed by Dum-
mett in (Dummett 1991c), that Husserl's remarks about numbers as
aggregates of featureless units in PA must be understood in the context
of the effort to provide a genetic analysis of the concept of number. That
is, in speaking of numbers as aggregates of featureless units Husserl is
describing a stage, perhaps even a fairly early stage, and one that is
closer to sense perception, in the genesis of our consciousness of num-
bers. The general project here bears comparison to Quine's description
of the genesis of set theory in The Roots of Reference. We need not
102 RICHARD TIESZEN
assume that Husserl's description constitutes the final or highest stage in

our consciousness of number, especially in light of the clarification and
development that has taken place in number theory, mereology and set
theory since the time of Husserl and Frege. I agree, however, that there
are difficulties about precisely how numbers are to be understood in PA,
including those due to obscurities surrounding the relationship between
Husserlian 'aggregates' and Fregean 'concepts'.
THE ROLE OF INTUITION IN ARITHMETIC KNOWLEDGE
From this brief sketch we already obtain a very different picture of the
foundations of arithmetic from the one presented in Frege's logicism. To
fill out the picture in relation to Frege we need to keep in mind the role
that intuition plays in Husserl's conception of arithmetical knowledge.
Intuition is understood in terms of the 'fulfillment' of empty act-con-
tents. Our act-contents are fulfilled when we are not merely directed
toward objects in our thinking but when we actually experience the
objects in sequences of acts in time, for it is experience that gives us
evidence for the objects. Some of our act-contents can be fulfilled or
verified in intuition and some cannot. We might say that act-contents
without intuitions are empty, but intuitions without act-contents are
blind.
Husserl's distinction between empty and fulfilled act-contents (or
intentions) is closely related to Frege's distinction between thoughts
(contents) and judgments. As early as the BegrijJsschrift Frege had
drawn a distinction between 'content' and 'jUdgment' strokes in his
formal notation. A proposition set out with the content stroke (as in
- A) is supposed to lack the assertoric force of the same proposition set
out with a judgment stroke ( ~ A). Drawing a parallel with Husserl,
David Bell has argued that the shift from a content to a judgment stroke
also marks a different kind of subject matter (Bell 1990). The content
stroke is to simply indicate what Frege later calls a thought, devoid of
any assertoric force, which parallels Husserl's idea of the content or
sense of an act. The shift from judgment to content can be eludicated by
way of Frege's idea that in intensional contexts a sentence no longer
expresses a judgment or possesses assertoric force, and no longer refers
to any object or property in the natural world, but rather that it refers to
a sense. Its reference is now the sense that it expressed before it was
embedded in an intensional context.
What little Frege has to say about the concept of knowledge is
explicated by way of the distinction between thoughts and judgments. As
late as (Frege 1924-25c) the view is put succinctly:
When someone comes to know something it is by his recognizing a

thought to be true. For that he has to grasp the thought. Yet I do
not count the grasping of the thought as knowledge, but only the
recognition of its truth, the judgment proper. What I regard as a
source of knowledge is what justifies the recognition of truth, the
judgment.
Of course Frege's account of grasping a thought, and the role that such
grasping is supposed to play in securing reference or knowledge, differs
from Husserl's view (see, e.g., Dummett 1991d). On Husserl's view it
is not necessary that the thought itself be an object of an act of con-
sciousness in order for us to refer to either ordinary perceptual objects
or to objects like numbers, although it is possible to reflect on the
thought. The path to an object does not require a detour through a
different object of consciousness.
Now a critical problem for Frege is this: how, and under what
conditions, is it possible to proceed, epistemically, from thought (or
content) to judgment in the case where the thought is about numbers, or
other mathematical objects? Frege says that a source of knowledge is
what justifies the recognition of a truth. But on what grounds can the
recognition of a truth about numbers be justified? Husserl's views on
founding and founded acts and contents, and on the role of intuition in
knowledge, are meant to answer precisely these questions. HusserI
defines the concept of intuition in terms of fulfillment of (empty) act-
contents and argues that a condition for the possibility of knowledge is
that there be intuitions of objects at different levels in the hierarchy of
acts, contents and intended objects. Husserl thus argues that there is
intuition of abstract or 'ideal' objects like numbers, although this intui-
tion will of course be a form of founded intuition (Tieszen 1989). It is
built up from our straightforward perceptual forms of intuition in acts of
104 RICHARD TIESZEN
abstraction and reflection that involve counting, collecting and com-

paring.
In the ideas described above, Husserl is therefore beginning to give
us an analysis of the source of knowledge about number, and what
justifies the recognition of a truth about numbers is a certain form of
founded intuition, a form in which intentions directed to numbers are
fulfilled or are fulfillable. This clearly suggests a Kantian view of
arithmetic that is more like Frege's later view; namely, that arithmetic
is synthetic a priori and that we should not expect to be able to derive
the principles of arithmetic from logic. To say that a number is intuitable
on Husserl's view means that it is possible to carry out a sequence of
acts in time in which the intention to the number would be fulfilled, i.e.,
in which the number itself would be presented. I have argued elsewhere
that this corresponds to and in fact deepens our understanding of the
constructivist requirement that we must be able to find the number
(Tieszen 1989). This is a founded form of intuition which is non-sensory
insofar as sensory qualities play no essential role in making number
determinations in acts of counting, collecting and comparing. So we
could think of ' - A' as designating the proposition, content, or inten-
tion A, and of' ~ A' as meaning that we have a proof, judgment, or
fulfillment regarding A, except that now the proof, judgment or fulfill-
ment is not based on a logical source of knowledge, nor directly on
sense experience, but rather on a founded form of intuition of the sort
embodied in a mathematical construction (see Tieszen 1989, and 1992;
Martin-LOf 1983 -84).
In his late writings Frege also thinks that a non-sensory or founded
form of intuition is the source of mathematical knowledge, but he has no
account of such a form of intuition. Husser!, on the other hand, has an
elaborate theory to explain how it is possible to have knowledge in acts
directed toward numbers, where numbers are nonetheless understood as
'abstract' objects. Unlike the later Frege, however, he does not try to
reduce this to geometric intuition. Although there may be connections
between arithmetic and geometrical intuition, Husserl is not reductionis-
tic from the outset. This is supposed to be an analysis of the sense of the
concept of number and so acts, contents, and intuitions of the appro-
priate type must be involved.
A NEW VIEW OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF ARITHMETIC
Let us now fill in a little more of the detail about the foundations of
arithmetic on Husserl's view. Husserl says that what justifies holding a
proposition about numbers to be true is the evidence provided by (found-
ed) intuition. As we said above, what is given in intuition may be
corrected or refined in subsequent intuition. The evidence provided by
intuition comes in different degrees and types: adequate, apodictic, a
priori, clear and distinct. Husserl would agree with Frege that our
arithmetical knowledge is a priori, and that at least a core of arithmetical
statements must be understood as necessary (or apodictic) truths. Hus-
serl's position implies that our evidence for large numbers and for
general statements about numbers is inadequate, in the sense that we
cannot actually complete the processes of counting, collecting, or com-
paring in these cases. Husserl's position also implies that we have not
yet brought to full clarity and distinctness our understanding of the sense
of the concept of number. In fact, perfect clarity and distinctness, and
perfect adequation, are really ideals that we can only approach in our
knowledge. So while arithmetic has a 'foundation' in intuition for
Husserl it can be argued that this does not commit us to being absolutists
or 'foundationalists' about arithmetic in any objectionable sense.
We have been saying, with Frege, that a source of knowledge is
what justifies recognition of a truth, and we add that a founded form of
intuition is a necessary condition for mathematical knowledge. We have
many arithmetic intentions but not all of these are fulfilled. Husserl's
idea of "recognition of a truth" involves evidence of truth, or what he
calls "truth within its horizons", whereas for Frege there is just an
absolutized or idealized conception of truth, as it were, shorn of any
relationship to a knowing subject. Consider, for example, the judgment
that A v -,A (i.e., I-- A v -,A). How do we recognize the thought to
be true in this case? We do not find a satisfactory answer to this question
in Frege's work. Husserl, on the other hand, points out that this judg-
ment involves a rather substantial idealization (Husserl 1929, pp. 193-
194):
the law of the excluded middle, in its subjective aspect, ...

decrees not only that if a judgment can be brought to an adequation
106 RICHARD TIESZEN
. .. then it can be brought to either a positive or a negative adequa-

tion, but ... that every judgment necessarily admits of being brought
to an adequation - "necessarily" being understood with an ideality
for which, indeed, no responsible evidence has ever been sought.
These remarks have obvious implications for how we should understand

our knowledge of the 'necessity' of certain statements of logic, and they
bear a striking resemblance to some constructivist views of logic. In F1L
and other works Husser! develops a 'critique', in a Kantian sense, of
such idealizations in mathematics and logic. This is, correlatively, a
critique of formalization, in the sense not only of Hilbert but also of
Frege. For Husser! points out in various writings that formal systems
idealize and abstract from our experience, so that some of the data of
experience will always be unaccounted for in a formal system.
Thus, we do not find Husser!, in his phenomenological-constitutional
investigations, insisting on Frege's point about eliminating all informal
or intuitive gaps in our mathematical reasoning in order to have a
foundation for arithmetic. Nor do we find him insisting that such a
foundation can be had only on the basis of formalization, to say nothing
of a formalization in which all rules of inference must be laid out in
advance. For Husser! then the foundations of arithmetic cannot be based
on anything like Frege's ear!y view, but in fact must depend on the
evidence provided by founded intuition. On this view it is not surprising
that Frege could not find his Basic Law V to have the same kind of self-
evidence as the other basic laws, for it involves a degree of abstraction
or idealization from experience that does not allow it to be understood as
expressing knowledge of a necessary truth based on founded intuition. It
allows us to form proper names to which no objects correspond. Hus-
ser!, on the other hand, has at least got a start on a theory of mathemati-
cal evidence, a theory based on the founding/founded structure of our
more theoretical forms of cognition. Husser!'s appeal to such a structure
amounts to conditioning rationalism with empiricism in a way that we do
not find in Frege's logicism, and it gives his view a constructivist slant.
Frege's logicist view, by contrast, appears to embody just the kind of
unbounded rationalism one might expect to issue in antinomy.
Frege's early ideal of gapless formal proofs in which all inference
rules are specified in advance, and in which intuition is completely
eliminable, appears to be attainable, at best, in predicate logic, or in

only those formal systems for which we have soundness and com-
pleteness theorems. Of course Frege's conception of logic did not
include anything like the idea of metamathematical completeness proofs.
But, in any case, we know from G6del's incompleteness theorems that
it will not be possible to finitely specify all of the basic laws and rules of
inference of arithmetic in anyone axiomatic, formal system. So we
cannot exhaust the sense or content of arithmetical statements in such a
system. Contrary to Frege's view, we also cannot make all of our
arithmetical intuitions explicit in a formal system of arithmetic. In the
late twentieth century we have come a long way from Frege's early ideal
of the strictly scientific method in mathematics, but this is a development
that is quite compatible with Husserl's views. In fact, we know that
GOdel himself (GOdel 1961) has positioned Husserl's philosophy at the
very center of recent foundational research for similar reasons.
What does all this mean for the ideal in Frege's logicism of elimi-
nating all error in arithmetical reasoning and securely establishing
arithmetic once and for all? And how are we to justify arithmetic? On
the Husserlian view we have been describing, beliefs about numbers are
justified by a form of intuition appropriate to the fulfillment of our
arithmetical intentions, and we have been arguing that this intuition must
be understood constructively. We nonetheless have gradations of evi-
dence within arithmetic itself, proof itself may come with different
degrees of adequation, and so we cannot rule out the possibility of
corrections of our arithmetical knowledge in the future. At the same time
we appeal to the objects and facts that constitute the invariants in arith-
metic and to the stability over time of parts of our arithmetical experi-
ence. Arithmetic is a priori and a core of its statements must be under-
stood as necessary truths, in the sense that they cannot be assimilated to
truths established by empirical induction, even if we do not have ade-
quate evidence everywhere in arithmetic.
Husserl argues that by analyzing the genesis of our mathematical
concepts in a phenomenological framework we will inevitably deepen
our understanding of their meanings. Such an analysis will bring into a
more explicit and direct awareness the implicit presuppositions under-
lying our concepts. The senses assumed by the concept, along with the
'horizons' of possible experience associated with the concept, will be
108 RICHARD TIESZEN
uncovered so that genetic analysis will lead to the clarification of various

hidden implications present in the concept. In addition, Husserl thinks
we can clarify the contents of our acts through the procedure of free
variation in imagination (Husserl, 1910-11; 1913, pp. 151-160; 1939,
pp. 340-363). This procedure, along with genetic analysis, amounts to
a form of what Kreisel has referred to as 'informal rigor', that is,
informal but rigorous concept analysis (Kreisel 1967). Through the
application of the procedure of free variation to the concept of number
we are supposed to be able to clarify our understanding of the essential
features of number. Using the procedure we would see, for example,
that the Dedekind - Peano axioms pick out essential (not accidental)
features of the concept of number, even if the axioms capture only part
of the meaning of the concept of number. More importantly, we can
expect to extend our knowledge through further clarification of the
meaning of mathematical concepts in such a way as to solve open
problems, develop new methods, and so on. I do not have space here to
consider the role of free variation in the clarification of the meaning of
mathematical concepts.
CONCLUSION
In his logicist period Frege portrayed genetic analysis as fruitless for

mathematics and logic and as actually leading us away from mathemati-
cal work. He repeated this charge in many contexts, applying it to Mill
for example in the Grundlagen and to Husserl in his review of PA. But
from the discussion above we see that what genetic analysis amounts to
in Husserl's later work is quite different from what Mill had in mind,
and also from what Frege took it to be. It is, first of all, not a psycho-
logical investigation. Rather, it is an investigation into the a priori
conditions for the possibility of the consciousness and knowledge of
number. So Frege would have to argue that genetic analysis, as we
described it above, has no place in the philosophy of arithmetic. But on
what grounds could he make such an argument? It is true, in a sense,
that genetic analysis does lead us away from formal work, but this is
because we cannot forget about the intuitive foundations of the concept
of number, and we cannot exhaust the sense of the concept of number in
a particular formal system. But Frege's ideal of a strictly scientific

method in arithmetic must be given up. We cannot have a complete
system of gapless formal proofs for numbers. Husserl's view places
more emphasis on the informal, rigorous concept analysis which is the
source of formal work. Informal rigor and critical analysis on the one
hand, and the mathematician's technical work on the other, are comple-
mentary scientific activities. Thus, technical scientific work is not at all
incompatible with the analysis of the origins of concepts. It is just that
such work is itself now seen to have its origins in informal rigor, so that
we cannot expect to supplant such informal rigor with some formal
system. On this basis technical work can be encouraged, extensionalism
need not be challenged, and so on.
A case can be made for the claim that the elements of Husserl's
philosophy of arithmetic discussed above are compatible with the post-
Fregean, post-Hilbertian, and post-GOdelian situation in the foundations
of mathematics. And they are compatible in a way that still makes a kind
of rationalism (or anti-empiricism) about mathematics possible, thus
preserving something of Frege's own anti-empiricism about number.
Moreover, they also preserve something of the realism or objectivism
about mathematics that Frege championed, but in a way that does not
make the very possibility of arithmetical knowledge a mystery. The view
allows or even encourages formalization, but does not demand an
exclusively formalistic attitude, for there is also a role for informal
rigor. It includes an account of how to understand the primitive terms
and rules of mathematical theories, and an account of mathematical
evidence into which is built a more critical perspective on appeals to
self-evidence. It gives a more balanced picture of arithmetical knowl-
edge, and of the role of formalization and axiomatization in such knowl-
edge. At the same time, however, it is in many ways only a schema for
a philosophy of arithmetic which itself needs to be filled in and im-
proved. 1
San Jose State University

110 RICHARD TIESZEN
NOTE
1 I would like to thank Bill Tait for some helpful critical comments
on my views about Frege and Husser!.
REFERENCES
Bell, D.: 1990, Husserl, Routledge, London.

Dummett, M.: 1981, The Interpretation oJFrege's Philosophy, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Dummett, M.: 1991a, Frege and Other Philosophers, Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
Dummett, M.: 1991b, 'Frege and the Paradox of Analysis', in Dum-
mett, 1991a, pp. 16-52.
Dummett, M.: 1991c, Frege: Philosophy oj Mathematics, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Dummett, M.: 1991d, 'Thought and Perception: the Views of Two
Philosophical Innovators', in Dummett 1991a, pp. 263 -288.
Frege, G.: 1879, BegrifJschriJt, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete
Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, L. Nebert, Halle. Page number
reference is to the translation in Van Heijenoort.
Frege, G.: 1884, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Reprinted and trans-
lated by 1. Austin in The Foundations oj Arithmetic, 1978, North-
western University Press, Evanston, Illinois. References in this
paper are to the translation.
Frege, G.: 1892, 'Uber Sinn und Bedeutung', ZeitschriJt jar Philosophie
und philosophische Kritik 100, 25 -50. Translated in Geach and
Black.
Frege, G.: 1892-95, 'Comments on Sense and Reference', in Hermes
etal., pp. 118-25.
Frege, G.: 1893, Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, Vol. I, H. Pohle, Jena.
Translated in part by R. Furth in The Basic Laws oj Arithmetic,
1964, University of California Press, Berkeley. References in this
paper are to the Furth translation.
Frege, G.: 1894, 'Review of E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik',
ZeitschriJt jar Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 103, 313 - 332.
Translated by E. Kluge, 1972, in Mind 81, 321-37.

Frege, G.: 1903, Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, Vol. II, H. Pohle, Jena.
Translated in part in Geach and Black.
Frege, G.: 1918, 'Der Gedanke: eine logische Untersuchung', Beitrllge
zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1, 58 -77. Translated by
A Quinton and M. Quinton, 1956, in Mind 65, 289-311.
Frege, G.: 1924 - 25a, 'A New Attempt at a Foundation for Arithmetic',
in H. Hermes et al., pp. 278-81.
Frege, G.: 1924-25b, 'Numbers and Arithmetic', in H. Hermes et al.,
pp.275-77.
Frege, G.: 1924-25c, 'Sources of Knowledge of Mathematics and the
Mathematical Natural Sciences', in H. Hermes et al., pp. 267 -274.
Geach, P., and Black, M. (eds.): 1952, Translations from the Philo-
sophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Blackwell, Oxford.
GOdel, K.: 1961, 'The Modern Development of the Foundations of
Mathematics in the Light of Philosophy', unpublished manuscript to
appear in Volume III of Kurt GOdel: Collected Works.
Hermes, H., Kambartel, F., and Kaulbach, F. (eds.): 1979, Gottlob
Frege: Posthumous Writings, translated by P. Long and R. White,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Husser!, E.: 1891, Philosophie der Arithmetik, Pfeffer, Halle. Reprinted
in 1970, Philosophie der Arithmetik, Husserliana Vol. 12, Nijhoff,
The Hague. The latter volume contains additional texts from 1890-
1901.
Husser!, E.: 1900-1901, Logische Untersuchungen, in two volumes,
Niemeyer, Halle. References in this paper are to the translation of
the second edition of this work by J.N. Findlay, 1970, Logical
Investigations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. The second
German edition was published in two parts in 1913 and 1921.
Husser!, E.: 1910-11, 'Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft', Logos 1,
289-341. Translated by Q. Lauer, 1965, in Phenomenology and the
Crisis of Philosophy, Harper & Row, New York, pp. 71-148.
Husser!, E.: 1913, Ideen zu einer reinen Phtinomenologie und phtino-
menologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch, in lahrbuch flir Philoso-
phie und phtinomenologische Forschung 1, 1-323. Translated by F.
Kersten, 1983, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy, Nijhoff, The Hague.
112 RICHARD TIESZEN
Husserl, E.: 1929, Formale und transzendentale Logik, in JahrbuchjUr

Philosophie und philnomenologische Forschung 10, 367 -498.
Translated by D. Cairns, 1969, Formal and Transcendental Logic,
Nijhoff, The Hague. References are to the translation.
Husserl, E.: 1936, Die Krisis der europtJischen Wissenschaften und die
transzendentale Philnomenologie, Philosophia 1, 77 -176. Trans-
lated by D. Carr, 1970, The Crisis of European Sciences and Tran-
scendental Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press, Evans-
ton, Illinois.
Husserl, E.: 1939, Erfahrung und Urteil, edited by L. Landgrebe,
Claassen, Hamburg. Translated by J. Churchill, and K. Ameriks,
1973, Experience and Judgment, Northwestern University Press,
Evanston, Illinois.
Kreisel, G.: 1967, 'Informal Rigour and Completeness Proofs', in I.
Lakatos (ed.), Problems in the Philosophy of Mathematics, North-
Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 138-186.
Martin-USf, P.: 1983-84, 'On the Meanings of the Logical Constants
and the Justifications of the Logical Laws', Atti Degli Incontri di
Logica Matematica, vol. 2, Sienna: Universita di Sienna, pp. 203-
8l.
Mohanty, J.N.: 1982, Husserl and Frege, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington.
Resnik, M.: 1979, 'Frege as Idealist and then Realist', Inquiry 22,
350-57.
Resnik, M.: 1980, Frege and the Philosophy of Mathematics, Cornell
University Press, Ithaca.
Sluga, H.: 1980, Gottlob Frege, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Tieszen, R.: 1989, Mathematical Intuition, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Tieszen, R.: 1990, 'Frege and Husserl on Number', Ratio 3, 150 -164.
Tieszen, R.: 1992, 'What is a Proof?', in Proof, Logic and Formaliza-
tion, M. Detlefsen (ed.), Routledge, London, pp. 57 -76.
Van Heijenoort, J. (ed.): 1967, From Frege to GtJdel, Harvard Univer-
sity Press, Cambridge, Mass.
CLAIRE ORTIZ HILL
HUSSERL AND FREGE ON SUBSTlTUTIVITY
In the critical discussion of Gottlob Frege's logic in Edmund Husserl's

Philosophy of Arithmetic, l Husserl outlines his objections to the use
Frege makes of Leibniz's principle of the substitutivity of identicals in
the Foundations of Arithmetic.2 In the 1903 appendix to Basic Laws II,3
Frege linked these same criticisms with Russell's paradox when, without
mentioning Husserl's name, he traced the source of the paradox to points
Husserl had made in the Philosophy of Arithmetic. For many philosophi-
cal, linguistic and historical reasons4 these two facts have gone virtually
uncommented. In the belief that Husserl's discussion of identity and
substitutivity in Frege's theory of number may actually be able to shed
light on some dark areas surrounding the significance of Russell's
paradox for logic and epistemology, I propose here to examine Husserl's
criticisms and systematically tie his arguments in with observations made
by Bertrand Russell and others who have studied Frege's work.
First, however, I must preface my discussion with a short historical
digression aimed at showing how Husserl fit into Frege's intellectual
world and his competency to deal with Frege's ideas. This is necessary
because Husserl is not generally thought of as having been someone who
could have understood Frege's work in 1891. Louis Couturat,5 Alonzo
Church6 and Dallas Willard 7 are among the very few people who seem
to have noticed that Husserl wrote anything worthwhile or insightful at
all about Frege's logic in the Philosophy of Arithmetic. Husserl is most
often wrongly thought of as having been a kind of intellectual infant
when he wrote it,8 and for a long time it was thought that his intellectual
awakening only began in 1894 with Frege's bitter review 9 of the book. 10
The many people who still underrate Husserl's ability in 1891 to
publish an insightful work concerning the philosophy of arithmetic are
not, however, in possession of the facts for during the years in which his
philosophical ideas were developing, Husserl actually had the unusual
113
114 CLAIRE ORTIZ HILL
privilege of directly participating in the early development of the very

mathematical, logical and philosophical ideas that would go on to deter-
mine the course of philosophical thought in English-speaking countries
in the twentieth century. He was, in fact, directly and intimately in-
volved in the earliest discussions of such pivotal issues in twentieth
century logic, mathematics, and analytic philosophy as number theory,
the continuum problem, set theory, the axiomatic foundations of geome-
try, Russell's paradox, infinity, function theory, intentionality, inten-
sionality, analyticity, identity, sense and reference, and completeness, all
of which are philosophical issues which still, a hundred years later,
present thorny problems for philosophers, filling the pages of the jour-
nals and books they read. Husserl's ideas now need to be knit back into
the intellectual context that produced them.
WEIERSTRASS, BRENTANO, STUMPF AND CANTOR
It was Karl Weierstrass's courses on the theory of functions that, in the

late 1870s and early 1880s, first awakened Edmund Husserl's interest in
seeking radical foundations for mathematics. Husserl was impressed by
his teacher's emphasis on clarity and logical stringency.ll He was
receptive to Weierstrass's efforts to further the work begun by Bernard
Bolzano to instill rigor in mathematical analysis 12 and to transform the
"mixture of reason and irrational instincts" it then was into a purely
rational discipline. Weierstrass exercised a deep influence on Husserl and
in 1883 Husserl became his assistant. It was from Weierstrass, Husserl
once said, that he acquired the ethos of his scientific striving. 13
After serving as Weierstrass's assistant for a year, Husserl travelled
to Austria to study under Franz Brentano. Like Weierstrass, Brentano
was working on Bolzano's ideas,14 and under Brentano, Husserl studied
Bolzano's writings and the Paradoxes of the Infinite in particular. 15
Brentano was then engaged in reforming logic 16 and was vigorously
trying to revise old traditions, paying particular attention to matters of
linguistic expression. 17 He was influenced by British empiricism 18 and
Michael Dummett, for one, considers him to have been, "roughly
comparable to Russell and Moore" in England. 19 Russell himself actually
explicitly acknowledged the kinship between his own ideas and those of
HUSSERL AND FREGE ON SUBSTITUTIVITY 115
Brentano, and there was enough superficial kinship between Russell's

views on reference and those of Brentano's school for Russell to have at
one point confused his ideas and theirs. 20
Brentano sent Husser! to Halle to prepare his Habilitationsschrijt on
number theory under the direction of Carl Stumpf,2! a man to whom
Frege had appealed in 1882 for help in making his Begrijfsschrijt known.
In his reply to Frege's request, Stumpf had mentioned how pleased he
was that Frege was working on logical problems because it was an area
where there was a great need for cooperation between mathematicians
and philosophers. He agreed with Frege that arithmetical and algebraic
judgments were analytic and expressed his own interest in working on
that problem. He also suggested that Frege's ideas might be more
favorably received if he first explained them in ordinary language. Frege
appears to have taken Stumpfs advice by expressing his ideas in prose
in the 1884 Foundations of Arithmetic.22 Husser! began studying Frege's
Foundations as Stumpfs colleague in the late 1880s, and he used it
extensivel y as he worked on the Philosophy of Arithmetic .13
In Halle, Husser! befriended another man who, like him, had been
profoundly influenced by Kar! Weierstrass. This was the creator of the
theory of sets, Georg Cantor.24 Cantor too was carrying on the work
Bolzano had begun,25 and enough kinship is apparent between Husser!'s
and Cantor's work to have prompted scholars to speak of the influence
Husser! may have had on Cantor's work,26 and of Cantor's influence on
Husser!'s workY Enough of a kinship exists between Frege's and
Cantor's work to have prompted Michael Dummett to speak of Georg
Cantor as "the mathematician whose pioneering work was closest to that
of Frege ... ,,28 and as one "who ought, of all philosophers and mathema-
ticians, to have been the most sympathetic" to Frege's work.29
Russell thought his own debt to Cantor was evident. In Russell's
opinion Cantor had "conquered for the intellect a new and vast province
which had been given over to Chaos and Night" .30 "In arithmetic and
theory of series, our whole work is based on that of Georg Cantor", he
wrote in the preface to Principia Mathematica. 3 ! And it was while
studying Cantor's work that Russell found the paradoxes to which
Frege's logic leads.32 In The Principles of Mathematics, Russell pays
homage to Weierstrass for the happy changes he, Dedekind, Cantor and
their followers had wrought in mathematics by adding "quite immeasura-
bly to theoretical correctness" and thereby remedying "a diminution of

logical precision and a loss in subtlety of distinction"?3 "No mathemati-
cal subject", he wrote there, "has made, in recent years, greater ad-
vances than the theory of Arithmetic. The movement in favour of
correctness in deduction, inaugurated by Weierstrass, has been brilliantly
continued by Dedekind, Cantor, Frege and Peano ... "34 Through the
labors of Weierstrass and Cantor, the fundamental problem of infinity
and continuity had undergone a complete transformation, Russell consid-
ered. 35
Husserl had actually rather fortuitously found himself in the right
place at the right time, and by the time he published the Philosophy of
Arithmetic, he had long been involved in philosophical investigations into
the principles of mathematics and in the work to obtain greater precision
in mathematics that ultimately made extensive formalization of mathe-
matics possible and led to comprehensive formal systems like that of
Russell's Principia Mathematica. 36
In contrast, Frege remained aloof and apparently loath to undertake
even the short train journey that would have taken him to G6ttingen,
Leipzig, or Halle and the likes of Cantor, Zermelo or Hilbert, or a bit
farther to Berlin, Paris, Austria or Cambridge where he could have met
with Weierstrass, Brentano, Peano, or RusseJl?7 And he actuaJly de-
voted several sections of the second volume of the Basic Laws of Arith-
metic to refuting Cantor's and Weierstrass's views. 38
Russell didn't learn of Weierstrass's and Cantor's work until the
mid-1890s and he first came into contact with Frege's work several
years later than Husserl, Hilbert, Cantor or Brentano's circle did. Most
of these people already knew Frege's work in the 1880's. Russell was
too young and too faraway actually to interact with the imposing figures
whom Husserl regularly frequented over long periods. 39 So more than
Frege, Russell or Wittgenstein, Husserl was actually present and wit-
nessed the very earliest stages of twentieth century Anglo-American
philosophy, and the Philosophy of Arithmetic was written under the
influence of the same mathematicians and philosophers that ultimately
played such a key role in determining the course of philosophy in
English speaking countries.
HUSSERL'S ENCOUNTER WITH FREGE'S

FOUNDATIONS OF ARlmMETIC
Husserl first obtained a copy of Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic in the

late 1880s. 4O Though, he did not use Frege's book at all in his Habilita-
tionsschrift called On the Concept of Number41 that he defended before
Cantor and Stumpf at the University of Halle in 1887,42 he thoroughly
studied Frege's book in the Philosophy of Arithmetic published four
years later. There he cites Frege more often than any other author. In a
letter Frege himself once acknowledged Husserl's interest in his Founda-
tions, noting that Husserl's study was perhaps the most thorough one
that had been done up to that time. Husserl replied to Frege saying how
much stimulation he had derived from Frege's work and acknowledged
having "derived constant pleasure from the originality of mind, clarity
... and honesty" of Frege's investigations which, he wrote, "nowhere
stretch a point or hold back a doubt, to which all vagueness in thought
and word is alien, and which everywhere try to penetrate to the ultimate
foundations." While writing the Philosophy of Arithmetic, no other book,
Husserl claimed, had provided him with nearly as much enjoyment as
Frege's remarkable work had. 43
Much of what Husserl had written about Frege's ideas in the Phi-
losophy of Arithmetic was, though, critical and in the Logical Investiga-
tions Husserl would make a point of retracting certain of the objections
he had voiced concerning Frege's views on analyticity and his opposition
to psychologism there. A close look at Husserl's statement of retraction,
however, shows that he only retracted three pages of his criticisms of
Frege's logic (not eight as a typographical error in the English edition
suggests), leaving most of his basic criticisms of Frege's logical project
intact. 44 For instance, Husserl never retracted his statements that theories
of number like Frege's are unjustified and scientifically useless, that all
Frege's definitions become true and correct propositions when one
substitutes extensions of concepts for the concepts, but that then they are
absolutely self-evident and without value, and that the results of Frege's
endeavors are such as to make one wonder how anyone could believe
they were true other than temporaril y .45
SUBSTITUTIVITY IN FREGE'S
FOUNDATIONS OF ARlmMETIC
"Now, it is actually the case that in universal substitutability all the laws
of identity are contained", wrote Frege in § 65 of Foundations. And in
the brief summary of his views Frege offers in the last pages of that
book, he repeats this conviction that: " ... a certain condition has to be
satisfied, namely that it must be possible in every judgement to substitute
without loss of truth the right-hand side of our putative identity for the
left side. Now at the outset, and until we bring in further definitions, we
do not know of any other assertion concerning either side of such an
identity except the one, that they are identical. We had only to show,
therefore, that the substitution is possible in an identity." (§ 107) It is
evident from this that substitutivity was destined to play a very central
role in Frege's theories, so it is very important to examine the arguments
of Foundations so as to understand exactly how substitutivity operated in
Frege's philosophy of arithmetic.
Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic is divided into five parts, the first
three of which are largely devoted to the refutation of views of number
which Frege opposes. In part four he outlines his own theory and in part
five he summarizes the results of his work. Frege begins outlining his
own theories by affirming that numbers are independent objects (§ 55)
which figure as such in identity statements like '1 + 1 =2'. Though in
everyday discourse numbers are often used as adjectives rather than as
nouns, in arithmetic, he argues, their independent status is apparent at
every turn and any apparence to the contrary "can always be got
around", for example by rewriting the statement 'Jupiter has four
moons' as 'the number of Jupiter's moons is four'. In the new version,
Frege argues, the word 'is' is not the copula, but the 'is' of identity and
means "is identical with" or "is the same as". "So", he concludes, " ...
what we have is an identity, stating that the expression 'the number of
Jupiter's moons' signifies the same object as the word 'four"'. Using the
same reasoning he concludes that Columbus is identical with the discov-
erer of America for "it is the same man that we call Columbus and the
discoverer of America" (§ 57). (Note that Frege here, as always, quite
perspicuously distinguishes between words and objects. In his identity
statements he is asserting the sameness of one object as given in two

different ways by different linguistic expressions.)
Now that Frege is satisfied that he has established numbers as
independent objects and acquired a set of meaningful statements in which
a number is recognized as the same again, he turns to the question of
establishing a criterion for deciding in all cases whether b is the same as
a. For him this means defining the sense of the statement: 'the number
which belongs to the concept F is the same as that which belongs to the
concept G'. This, he believes, will provide a general criterion for the
identity of numbers (§ 63).
Not wanting to introduce a special definition of identity for this, but
wishing rather "to use the concept of identity, taken as already known,
as a means for arriving at that which is to be regarded as being identi-
cal", Frege explicitly adopts Leibniz's principle that "things are the
same as each other, of which one can be substituted for the other without
loss of truth" (§ 65). However, even as he is writing Leibniz's formula
right into the foundations of his logic, Frege modifies Leibniz's dictum
in a way which, as I hope to show, has presented thorny problems for
those who have tried to further Frege's insights and answer some of the
really hard questions his logic raises. Although, as Husserl would point
out in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, Leibniz's law defines identity,
complete coincidence, Frege, here as elsewhere,46 explicitly maintains
that for him "whether we use 'the same' as Leibniz does, or 'equal' is
not of any importance. 'The same' may indeed be thought to refer to
complete agreement in all respects, 'equal' only to agreement in this
respect or that." (§ 65)47
Frege believed that by rewriting the sentences of ordinary language,
these differences between equality and identity could be made to vanish.
So here he recommends rewriting the sentence 'the segments are equal
in length' as 'the length of the segments are equal or the same' and 'the
surfaces are identical in color' as 'the color of the surfaces is identical'.
Since he believed all the laws of identity were contained in universal
substitutivity, to justify his definition he believed he only needed "to
show that it is possible, if line a is parallel to line b, to substitute 'the
direction of line b' everywhere for 'the direction of line a'. This task is
made simpler", he notes, "by the fact that we are being taken initially to
know of nothing that can be asserted about the direction of a line except
the one thing, that it coincides with the direction of some other line. We
should thus have to show only that substitution was possible in an
identity of this one type, or in judgement-contents containing such
identities as constituent elements." (§ 65)
In these examples he has transformed statements about objects which
are equal under a certain description into statements expressing complete
identity. By erasing the difference between identity and equality he in
fact is arguing that being the same in anyone way is equivalent to being
the same in all ways. While conceivably one could use this principle to
stipulate substitution conditions for symbols, very few objects could
satisfy its conditions and, outside of strictly mathematical contexts where
differences between equality and identity seem not to apply in the same
way as they do elsewhere, many of the inferences that could be made by
appealing to such a principle would lead to evidently false and absurd
conclusions.
Frege himself acknowledged that left unmodified this procedure was
liable to produce nonsensical conclusions, or be sterile and unproductive.
For him, the source of the nonsense lay the fact that, as he himself
points out, his definition provides no way of deciding whether, for
example, England is or is not the same as the direction of the Earth's
axis. Though he is certain that no one would be inclined to confuse
England with the direction of the Earth's axis this, he acknowledges,
would not be owing to his definition which, he notes, "says nothing as
to whether the proposition 'the direction of a is identical with q' should
be affirmed or denied except for the one case where q is given in the
form of 'the direction of b'" (§ 66).
As it stood, the definition was unproductive, according to him,
because were we "to adopt this way out, we should have to be presup-
posing that an object can only be given in one single way ... All identi-
ties would then amount simply to this, that whatever is given to us in the
same way is to be reckoned as the same ... We could not, in fact, draw
from it any conclusion which was not the same as one of our prem-
isses." Surely, he concludes identities play such an important role in so
many fields "because we are able to recognize something as the same
again even although it is given in a different way." (§ 67; also § 107)
Seeing that he could not by these methods alone "obtain any concept
of direction with sharp limits to its application, nor therefore, for the
same reasons, any satisfactory concept of Number either", Frege felt

obliged to introduce extensions to guarantee that "if line a is parallel to
line b, then the extension of the concept 'line parallel to line a' is
identical with the extension the concept 'line parallel to line b'; and
conversely, if the extensions of the two concepts just named are identi-
cal, then a is parallel to b." (§ 67; also § 107)
While Frege maintained in Foundations that he attached "no decisive
importance even to bringing in the extensions of concepts at all" (§ 107),
by the time he wrote Basic Laws he felt obliged to accord them a funda-
mental role. There he would argue that the generality of an identity can
always be transformed into an identity of courses-of-values and con-
versely, an identity of courses-of-values may always be transformed into
the generality of an identity. By this he meant that if it is true that
(x)<I>(x) = 1f;(x), then those two functions have the same extension and
that, vice versa, functions having the same extension are identical (BL
§§ 9 & 21). "This possibility" he wrote then, "must be regarded as a
law of logic, a law that is invariably employed, even if tacitly, whenever
discourse is carried on about extension of concepts. The whole Leibniz-
Boole calculus of logic rests upon it. One might perhaps regard this
transformation as unimportant or even as dispensable. As against this, I
recall the fact that in my Grund/agen der Arithmetik I defined a Number
as the extension of a concept ... " .48
HUSSERL'S CRITICISMS
HusserI had the following remarks to make about Frege's theory of

number as described above. 49 In his first objection to it, he appeals to
common linguistic usage which distinguishes between the equality and
the identity of two objects. Leibniz's definition, he points out, defines
identity, not equality, so that as long as the least difference remains there
will be propositions for which the elements in question will not be
interchangeable salva veritate (p. 104). Here HusserI is appealing to the
ordinary, non-mathematical, use of the words 'equality' and 'identity'.
For example, we commonly say that the United States of America was
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal with respect
to their legal rights, but I believe that no one has ever said, nor would
be so foolish as to say, that all men are created identical. (It should be
noted that HusserI's remarks never concern the identity or equality of
signs, but only the equality or identity of objects and the properties that
might be predicated of them.)
According to dictionaries, two things are identical when they are the
same in every way. They are equal when they are the same under a
specific description, as given in a particular way. The difference between
equality and identity would then be the difference between sharing any
given property or properties, or having all properties in common.
Husserl's point is that if x were to have even one property that y does
not have, then though they may be equal in one or in many respects,
they are not identical and there will be statements in which substitution
will fail, and so affect the truth value of statements made referring to
them, or the outcome of one's inquiries regarding them.
In another argument, Husserl alludes to the problems that arise when
one begins examining the grounds for determining the equality of two
objects (pp. 108 -09). One can declare two simple, unanalyzed objects
equal without much further ado, he notes. But there is a certain ambi-
guity in ordinary language with regard to complex objects. If two objects
are the same, then it follows that they must have all their properties in
common. But the inverse does not seem to hold. Sometimes two objects
have their properties in common and we still do not say that they are the
same.
At first sight, Husserl's point may seem illogical for it seems that he
is saying that x and y could be different without there being any discern-
ible difference between them. Before condemning his analysis outright,
however, it should be noted that, tangling with problems surrounding
extensionality, identity and classes, Bertrand Russell was moved to make
the same observations. Writing in Introduction to Mathematical Phi-
losophy on classes and problems connected with Leibniz's law of the
identity of indiscernibles he argued that it was just "as it were, an
accident, a fact about ... this higgedly-piggedly job-lot of a world in
which chance has imprisoned us" that no two particulars were precisely
the same and he hypothesized that "there might quite well, as a matter
of abstract logical possibility, be two things which had exactly the same
predicates. ,,50 He also wrote in Principia Mathematica that: "It is plain
that if x and yare identical, and ¢x is true, then ¢y is true ... the
statement must hold for any function. But we cannot say conversely: 'If,
with all values of <b, <bx implies <by, then x and yare identical'; ... we
cannot without the help of an axiom be sure that x and y are identical if
they have the same predicates. Leibniz's 'identity of indiscernibles'
supplied this axiom ... 51
We may in fact, Husserl continues his argument, declare the same
objects to be equal in one case and different in another (pp. 108 -09).
He offered the following example to illustrate his point: two straight
lines may in one case be said to be equal because they have the same
length, but might otherwise be deemed unequal because to be equal two
segments of a line must be parallel and have the same direction. Husserl
tries to overcome the ambiguity involved by concluding that two objects
are to be considered equal if they share the specific properties which
constitute the main focus of interest of the investigation and these
properties are the same.
An example will help illustrate Husserl's point. A few years ago a
Jerusalem courtroom found a retired Ohio autoworker named John
Demjanjuk guilty of being Ivan the Terrible, the murderer of hundreds
of thousands of Jews. Throughout his fourteen month trial, Demjanjuk
had insisted that he was a victim of mistaken identity. For the Jerusalem
courtroom that condemned him to death the only thing that mattered
involved determining whether or not he was the same man who had
operated gas chambers at Treblinka during World War II, any of the
innumerably many other things that could be truthfully predicated of him
were beside the point. Their reasoning was of the form: F(x), and ifF(y)
then x == y. Killing hundreds of thousands of Jews was true of Ivan the
Terrible and if the same were true of John Demjanjuk, then he would be
Ivan the Terrible - and liable to hanging.
Numerous other examples can be found to illustrate the differences
between equality and identity. For instance, is a person in an irreversible
coma following an accident who is entirely dependent on machines to
sustain her bodily functions identical to the person she was before the
accident took place? Think of the innumerable things that could be have
been predicated of her before which are no longer true, and the truly
macabre propositions that could result from substitution rules which do
not take sufficient account of the difference between equality and identi-
ty. Certainly her family would never have entertained the thought of
depriving her of the minimum means necessary to support her life before
she was in the coma. And don't differences between equality and identity
figure in many other dilemmas actually faced in medical practice today.
Surely, some of the very real moral issues involved in abortion rights
turn on whether a fetus is in all essential respects the same as the person
that will develop from it if the pregnancy is not terminated. Such con-
texts make it hard to dismiss differences between equality and identity as
being merely linguistic or psychological.
In another argument Husserl sides with those who hold that charac-
teristics, properties, attributes and concepts are not liable to the same
identity conditions as objects are, so that talk of them cannot for him be
reducible to talk of the objects they are about (pp. 134 - 35). He argues
that Leibniz's definition turns the real state of affairs upside down (pp.
104-05). Assuming that, against all odds, one manages to find objects
satisfying the conditions it sets down, then by what right can one replace
one with the other in certain true propositions or all? The only precise
answer, he replies, would be the identity or equality of the referents.
However, here Husserl comes up against the same difficulty that Frege
himself would encounter when confronted with Russell's paradox more
than a decade later (see § 5 of this text). Though characteristics which
are the same form propositions which are the same, Husserl wrote,
having equivalent propositions does not mean that the characteristics
figuring in those propositions are the same. In other words, though two
propositions may be formally equivalent by virtue of the fact that what
is asserted of the reference in them is the same, from the fact that two
propositions have the same reference it cannot be concluded that what
has been asserted of their referent is the same. In Introduction to Mathe-
matical Philosophy, Russell would give a reason for the problem Husserl
perceived: "For many purposes, a class and a defining characteristic of
it are practically interchangeable. The vital difference between the two
consists in the fact that there is only one class having a given set of
members, whereas there are always many different characteristics by
which a given class may be defined. ,,52
Husserl is making several interrelated, but different points which
shed light on Frege's and Russell's difficulties. Quine's proposition that
'all bachelors are unmarried men,53 provides a happy, relatively unprob-
lematic example of equal properties coinciding in extension and so
illustrates Husserl's point that if F = G, then if (x) F(x) then G(x). If

being married to Jackie Kennedy is the same thing as being her husband,
then anyone who is married to Jackie Kennedy is her husband. However,
and this is Husserl's second point, were Jackie Kennedy's husband found
out to be Marilyn Monroe's lover, it would not then follow that being
Jackie Kennedy's husband and being Marilyn Monroe's lover are the
same. The statement 'The husband of Jackie Kennedy was the lover of
Marilyn Monroe' could be determined to be true if both the descriptions
figuring in it were found to be true of the same man, John Kennedy.
However, trivial, self-evident statements resulting from substitution like
'John Kennedy was the husband of Jackie Kennedy' and 'John Kennedy
is John Kennedy', though true, are not its equivalent. Likewise, if it
could be determined that a certain retired Ohio autoworker and a certain
sadistic concentration camp guard were the same person, this would not
then mean that everything that is true of sadistic concentration camp
guards is true of retired Ohio autoworkers. In the latter case it could be
argued that the matter has been complicated by changes that have taken
place over the course of time. That is not, however, the case in the
example preceding it since a person can be married and have an extra-
marital affair at one and the same time.
Husserl's objection lies in the fact that predicates which are true of
the same objects are not always themselves interchangeable salva veri-
tate. Russell made the same point in 1918 to his audience at Gordon
Square. The two propositional functions 'x is a man' and 'x is a feather-
less biped' are formally equivalent, he notes. When one is true, so is the
other, and vice versa. However, he points out that there are a certain
number of things that you can say about a propositional function which
will not be true if you substitute another formally equivalent proposi-
tional function in its place. "For instance," he writes, "the propositional
function 'x is a man' is one which has to do with the concept of hu-
manity. That will not be true of 'x is a featherless biped'. Or if you say
'so-and-so asserts that such and such is a man' the propositional function
'x is a man' comes in there, but 'x is a featherless biped' does not. ,,54 In
an age of organ transplants, the point made by appealing to the old
example of the statements 'creature with a heart' and 'creature with
kidneys' coinciding in extension, but not in intension is less abstract than
it may have been earlier in the century. Although almost anyone would
concede that everyone who has a beating heart has at least one kidney
and vice versa, who would think of undergoing a heart or kidney trans-
plant or operation with a surgeon who believed that having a heart and
having a kidney was the same thing? We cannot conclude from (x) F(x)
= G(x) that F 55 G.
Husser! further notes that arguing that two objects are equal because
they are interchangeable obviously misses the point (p. 104). In a case
like John Demjanjuk's, this requirement would in fact have quite disturb-
ing consequences. For instance, appealing to it one might reason that if
John Demjanjuk could take Ivan the Terrible's place at the gallows, then
John Demjanjuk and Ivan the Terrible were the same man. Obviously if,
as Demjanjuk claimed, he was not Ivan the Terrible, but rather a victim
of mistaken identity, such a conclusion would constitute a very grave
miscarriage of justice. It would also be quite unthinkable to write off the
differences between being the retired Ohio autoworker and the sadistic
concentration camp guard as being merely linguistic or psychological.
There is, in fact, no way of determining whether two things are
interchangeable which does not presume knowledge of their identity,
Husser! concluded (p. 105). If substitutivity is to serve as the criterion
of identity, then establishing the identity of two things implies that one
has already established their interchangeability, but this would imply
undertaking innumerably many acts in which what is predicated of one
object is established as being the same as what is predicated of the other
object and establishing this would require once again establishing that the
same things can be predicated of each one of these pairs and so on.
Michael Dummett makes the same point when he writes that:
... the truth of an identity statement cannot be established by an

appeal to Leibniz's law since, apart from the impossibility of run-
ning through the totality of first level concepts, there will often be
no other way of ascertaining that a particular predicate which is true
of the bearer of one name is also true of the bearer of the other
except by establishing that the two names have the same bearer.
There is, for example, no way of showing that the predicate 'is
visible shortly before sunrise', which is plainly true of the Morning
Star, is also true of the Evening Star, which does not depend upon
showing that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are one and the
same celestial body. 55
Though Husserl provided the above criticisms of Frege's use of

Leibniz's principle of substitutivity of identicals, it was not Husserl, but
rather Frege himself who established the link between some of these
very problems and the significance of Russell's paradox for the logical
theories propounded in Foundations and Basic Laws. This is what I hope
to show now.
SOME OF THE BROADER

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES INVOLVED
Knowing the central role Frege accorded to fixing the sense of an

identity and of the link he made between substitutivity and identity in the
Foundations,56 and knowing that Frege ultimately concluded that Rus-
sell's paradox meant that there were irremediable flaws in the founda-
tions proposed for arithmetic in Foundations and Basic Laws, it is
important to take a close look at the connections between Frege's views
on substitutivity and his reasons for despair regarding the tenability of
his logical theories. The philosophical questions involving substitutivity
and Russell's paradox are surely in this way tied into fundamental
matters of vital concern to many philosophers in this century. In this
section I want to look at what Frege himself thought was the fatal flaw
in his reasoning and at how Russell would tackle the same problems.
In writing the Basic Laws of Arithmetic, Frege set out to actually
demonstrate the theory of number he had advanced in Foundations. 57
Once Russell informed him of the famous paradox, Frege immediately
traced the source of the problem to Basic Law V as promulgated in
Basic LawS. 58 Basic Law V was Frege's axiom of extensionality which
codified, or rather mandated, the views regarding identity and substitu-
tivity Frege believed his system required. Right from the beginning, the
discovery of the paradox indicated to Frege that Basic Law V was false.
Although transforming of the generality of an identity into an identity of
ranges of values was allowable, he concluded, the converse is not always
permissible. 59
Frege initially thought a solution to the problems raised by Russell's

paradox might be found,60 and he finally proposed one which involved
a modification of the problematic law. 61 By mid-1906, however, he had
apparently decided that all efforts to repair his logical edifice were
destined to failure. 62
Frege was also very specific about precisely what it is about Basic
Law V that leads to the paradoxes. In the several texts in which Frege
pinpoints what he believed was the source of the difficulties, he consis-
tently cites Basic Law V's transformation of concepts into objects for
extensional treatment as being at fault. 63 In §§ 146-47 of the 1903
Basic Laws II, he is quite specific about the nature of the procedure he
had come to advocate:
If a (first-level) function (of one argument) and another function are

such as always to have the same graph for the same argument, then
we may say instead that the graph of the first is the same as that of
the second. We are then recognizing something common to the two
functions ... We must regard it as a fundamental law of logic that
we are justified in thus recognizing something common, and that
accordingly we may transform an equality holding generally into an
equation (identity). 64
An article on the logical paradoxes of set theory he was working on

in 1906 gives further insight into his reasoning:
Let the letters 'q,' and 'Vt' stand in for concept-words (nomina
appellativa). Then we designate subordination in sentences of the
form 'If something is a q" then it is a Vt'. In sentences of the form
'If something is a q" then it is a Vt and if something is a Vt then it is
a q,' we designate mutual subordination, a second level relation
which has strong affinities with the first level relation of equality
(identity) ... And this compels us ineluctably to transform a sentence
in which mutual subordination is asserted of concepts into a sentence
expressing an equality. . .. Admittedly, to construe mutual sub-
ordination simply as equality is forbidden ... Only in the case of
objects can there be a question of equality (identity). And so the said
transformation can only occur by concepts being correlated with
objects in such a way that concepts which are mutually subordinate

are correlated with the same object. 65
He gives as an example the sentence: 'Every square root of 1 is a

binomial coefficient of the exponent -1 and every binomial coefficient of
the exponent -1 is a square root of 1.' According to his theory this
sentence is to be rewritten as 'The extension of the concept square root
of 1 is equal to (coincides with) the extension of the concept binomial
coefficient of the exponent -1.' The words 'the extension of the concept
square root of l' are now to be regarded as a proper name as, Frege
claims, is indicated by the definite article. Such a transformation ac-
knowledges that there is one and only one object designated by the
proper name. Frege explains that:
By permitting the transformation, you concede that such proper

names have meanings. But by what right does such a transformation
take place, in which concepts correspond to extensions of concepts,
mutual subordination to equality? An actual proof can scarcely be
furnished. We will have to assume an unprovable law here. Of
course it isn't as self-evident as one would wish for a law of logic.
And if it was possible for there to be doubts previously, these
doubts have been reinforced by the shock the law has sustained from
Russell's paradox. 66
In 1912 he would write of how he had originally silenced his doubts

and, in order to obtain objects out of concepts, had decided to admit the
passage from concepts to their extensions which until he died he main-
tained, leads to Russell's paradox. 67 An article and a letter Frege wrote
just prior to his death eighteen years later both clearly show that for the
rest of his life he remained firm in his conviction that this flaw in his
system was the precise cause of Russell's paradox and so undermined his
whole life's work. He wrote:
One feature of language that threatens to undermine the reliability of

thinking is its tendency to form proper names to which no objects
correspond ... A particularly noteworthy example of this is the
formation of a proper name after the pattern of 'the extension of the
concept a' ... Because of the definite article, this expression appears
to designate an object; but there is no object for which this phrase
could be a linguistically appropriate designation. From this has
arisen the paradoxes of set theory which have dealt the death blow
to set theory itself. 68
This procedure, Frege concluded, leads "into a thicket of contradic-

tions" .... "Confusion is bound to arise if a concept word, as a result of
its transformation into a proper name, comes to be in a place for which
it is unsuited." People should be warned against changing a concept into
an object. 69
Bertrand Russell also eventually established a connection between
certain puzzles involving descriptions containing the definite article and
the contradictions, or paradoxes, connected with set theory.70 So as he
struggled to find solutions to puzzles and paradoxes connected with
Frege's logic Russell was actually faced with resolving the problem
Frege described above. Russell would even go so far as to write in his
1919 Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy that he considered ana-
lyses of the word "the" to be of so very great importance to a correct
understanding of descriptions and classes that that he would give the
doctrine of the word if he were dead from the waist down and not
merely in prison (where he was at the time).7! No account of Frege's
problems with substitutivity is complete, then, without a look at Rus-
sell's attempts to solve them.
"The whole theory of definition, of identity, of classes, of symbol-
ism is wrapped up in the theory of denoting", Russell declared in his
1903 Principles ojMathematics.72 So, it is perhaps not surprising to find
him recounting that during 1903 and 1904 his work was almost entirely
devoted to denoting problems which he thought were probably relevant
to his problems with the contradictions of set theory. His 1905 theory of
denoting proved to him that they were and it represented his first major
breakthrough in finding a solution to the paradoxes. 73
One of the most significant problems associated with descriptions
containing the definite article dealt with by Russell's new theory of
denoting is directly tied in with Leibniz's principle of the substitutivity
of identicals. If identity can only hold between x and y if they are
different symbols for the same object it would not then seem to have
much importance, Russell noted. However, he observed, identity state-

ments containing descriptive phrases of the form 'the so-and-so' consti-
tute an exception and lead to a puzzle he explained in these words:
If a is identical with b, whatever is true of the one is true of the

other, and either may be substituted for the other in any proposition
without altering the truth or falsehood of that proposition. Now
George IV wished to know whether Scott was the author of Waver-
ley; and in fact Scott was the author of Waverley. Hence we may
substitute Scott for the author of 'Waverley', and thereby prove that
George IV wished to know whether Scott was Scott. Yet an interest
in the law of identity can hardly be attributed to the first gentleman
of Europe. 74
In Frege's logic descriptions like 'the discoverer of America' or 'the

extension of the word 'star" were treated as objects. His Basic Law V
would have made such descriptions subject to the same formal rules of
identity as those governing objects, and so amenable to extensional
treatment and substitution. Frege ultimately felt obliged to condemn this
operation as illicit and judged his reliance upon it to be the fatal flaw in
his logic and the source of the paradoxes associated with set theory.
Like Frege, Russell considered statements equating a term standing
for an object with a description to be identities, and identities to be
statements which equated objects. Russell had originally believed that all
expressions denote directly, "that, if a word means something, there
must be something that it means". 75 But his struggle to solve the para-
doxes forced him to come to terms with serious logical problems which
seemed to him to be unavoidable when definite descriptions are regarded
as standing for genuine constituents of the propositions in which they
figure. For instance, if the expression 'the author of Waverley' really
does denote some object c, Russell finally reasoned, the proposition
'Scott is the author of Waverley' would be of the form 'Scott is c'. But
if c denoted anyone other than Scott, this proposition would be false;
while if c denoted Scott, the resulting proposition would be 'Scott is
Scott', which is self-evident and trivial and plainly different from 'Scott
is the author of Waverley' which may be true or false. So, Russell
concluded, c does not stand simply for Scott, nor for anything else76
because
No one outside a logic-book ever wishes to say that 'x is x', and yet
assertions of identity are often made in such forms as 'Scott was the
author of Waverley' ... The meaning of such propositions cannot be
stated without the notion of identity, although they are not simply
statements that Scott is identical with another term, the author of
Waverley ... The shortest statement of 'Scott is the author of Waver-
ley' seems to be 'Scott wrote Waverley; and it is always true of y
that if y wrote Waverley, y is identical with Scott'.n
Analyzed in this way, the description may be substituted for y in any

propositional function'/y and a significant proposition will be the result.
These reflections on substitutivity and definite descriptions led Russell to
the conclusion that all phrases (other than propositions) containing the
word the (in the singular) are incomplete symbols which have a meaning
in use but when taken out of context do not actually denote anything at
al I. 78
Russell also came to consider classes to be incomplete symbols in
the same sense descriptions are, and so this new way of analyzing away
incomplete symbols represented for him a major breakthrough in resolv-
ing the contradictions apt to result when descriptive phrases are wrongly
assumed to stand for an entity. In 1918 he told his listeners at Gordon
Square:
... you find that all the formal properties that you desire of classes,
all their formal uses in mathematics, can be obtained without sup-
posing for a moment that there are such things as classes, without
supposing, that is to say, that a proposition in which symbolically a
class occurs, does in fact contain a constituent corresponding to that
symbol, and when rightly analysed that symbol will disappear, in
the same sort of way as descriptions disappear when the propositions
are rightly analysed in which they occur. 79
Russell considered this theory of definite descriptions to have been

his most valuable contribution to philosophy and frequently spoke in
enthusiastic terms of its role in resolving his logical problems, and the
paradoxes in particular. so He once claimed that his success in his 1905
article 'On Denoting' was the source of all his subsequent progress. As
a consequence of his new theory of denoting, he said, he found at last
that substitution would work, and all went swimmingly.81 This new
theory, he claimed, afforded a "clean shaven picture of reality" and
"swept away a host of otherwise insoluble problems". It did not, how-
ever, sweep away all the problems and in spite of Russell's enthusiastic
appraisals and the acclaim it has received, even Russell recognized that
additional measures were needed82 to guarantee that the unwanted
whiskers wouldn't come back. So Russell marshalled the theory of types
and the axiom of reducibility into his barbershop to try to finish the job.
However, even as he expounded the theory of types, Russell rea-
lized that it only solved some of "the paradoxes for the sake of which"
it was "invented" and something more would be necessary to solve the
other contradictions. 83 In 1917 he would go so far as to concede that" ...
the theory of types emphatically does not belong to the finished and
certain part of our subject: much of the theory is still inchoate, confused
and obscure. "84
From the axiom of reducibility all the usual properties of identity
and classes would follow. Two formally equivalent functions would
determine the same class and, conversely, two functions which determine
the same class would be formally equivalent. Without it or some equiva-
lent axiom "many of the proofs of Principia become fallacious" Russell
believed and "we should be compelled to regard identity as indefi-
nable. "85
Frege had introduced classes into his logical system to uphold the
theory of substitutivity and identity his work on the foundations of
arithmetic called for. Russell's paradox finally convinced him that this
was an ill-fated move and he gave up. Russell devised a way of analyz-
ing away classes and descriptions and proposed the very problematic
axiom of reducibility to mandate the properties of identity, classes and
substitutivity the logic of Principia seemed to need. Neither he nor Frege
ever felt they had ever solved the substitutivity problem.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The chief objective of this paper has been to show Husserl's ability to
evaluate Frege's logical work and pinpoint genuine problems in his
reasoning. I have also tried to show that, independently of whether or
not one is persuaded of the gravity of the problems with extensionality
discussed here, Frege himself ultimately concluded that such problems
were serious enough to sink his logic, and that in trying to free Frege's
work from paradox, Russell felt obliged to come to terms with these
same problems. A closer look at the Husserl- Frege relationship, in fact,
reveals that the two men clashed swords on many more matters than
have yet been discussed in the literature and that their ideas overlapped
on many issues which still figure importantly in philosophical discussions
today. Of course, the arguments of this paper but raise deeper questions
regarding Russell's theory of definite descriptions and how Husserl's
philosophy might deal with the questions raised. Naturally these are
matters calling for in depth study extending well beyond the limits of
this paper and I have tried to begin to answer them elsewhere. 86 I WOUld,
however, like to make one more remark concerning them.
In his now classic article on Russell's mathematical logic87 Kurt
GOdel complained about Principia Mathematica's lack of formal preci-
sion in the foundations and the fact that in it Russell omits certain
syntactical considerations even in cases where they are necessary for the
cogency of the proofs. In particular, he cites Russell's treatment of
incomplete symbols, which he complains are introduced, not by explicit
definitions, but by rules describing how to translate sentences containing
them into sentences not containing them. The matter is especially doubt-
ful, he notes, for the rule of substitution and it is chiefly this rule which
would have to be proved. 88
As an example of Russell's analysis of basic logical concepts, GOdel
examines Russell's treatment of the definite article 'the' in connection
with problems about what descriptive phrases signify (in deference to
Frege, Godel uses signify and signification in the place of Russell's
denote and denotation). Godel agrees with Russell that the apparently
obvious answer that the description 'the author of Waverley' signifies
Walter Scott leads to unexpected difficulties. For, GOdel reasons, if one
admits an axiom of extensionality according to which the signification of
a composite expression containing constituents which have themselves a

signification depends only on the signification of these constituents, and
not on the way in which this signification is expressed, then it follows
that the statements 'Scott is the author of Waverley' and 'Scott is Scott'
have the same signification. Of Russell's technique for solving this
puzzle, GOdel writes that he could not help but feel that the problem
raised by Frege's puzzling conclusion had only been evaded by Russell's
theory of descriptions and that there was something behind it which is
not yet completely understood. 89
In a later paper GOdel wrote of the significance of Russell's paradox
for set theory that "it might seem at first that the set-theoretical para-
doxes would doom to failure such an undertaking, but closer examina-
tion shows that they cause no trouble at all. They are a very serious
problem, not for mathematics, however, but rather for logic and epis-
temology.,,90 Because of the connection both Frege and Russell saw
between the paradoxes of set theory and the fact that descriptions are not
as immediately translatable into the extensional language their theories
required, I am inclined to think that GOdel's intriguing statements
regarding Russell's theory of definite descriptions and epistemological
and logical questions raised by Russell's paradox might be linked, and
that with the theory of definite descriptions Russell artfully swept under
the carpet a whole host of deep logical and epistemological problems the
set-theoretical paradoxes raise for philosophy. I also believe that further
work on Husserl's logic will show that he quite lucidly addressed these
very issues.
Paris, FRANCE
NOTES
1 Edmund Husser!: 1891, Philosophieder Arithmetik, Pfeffer, Halle.

2 Gottlob Frege: 1986, Foundations of Arithmetic, Blackwell,
Oxford.
3 Gottlob Frege: 1964, The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, University of
California Press, Berkeley, pp. 127 -143.
4 I go into these in detail in Claire Hill: 1991, Word and Object in

Husseri, Frege and Russell, Ohio University Press, Athens.
5 Gottlob Frege: 1980, Philosophical and Mathematical Correspon-
dence, Blackwell, p. 7, Couturat's July 1, 1899 letter to Frege.
6 Alonzo Church: 1944, 'Review of M. Farber, The Foundations of
Phenomenology', Journal of Symbolic Logic, 9, pp. 63 -65.
7 Dallas Willard: 1984, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge,
University of Ohio Press. Two comments on Husserl's psychological
objections (as opposed to his logical objections) to Frege's views on
identity appear in Hide Ishiguro: 1990, Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic
and Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 209 note 43;
and in David Wiggins: 1980, Sameness and Substance, Blackwell,
Oxford, pp. 20-21 note 7.
8 Willard: 1984, pp. xii -xiv comments.
9 Gottlob Frege: 1972: 'Review of Dr. E. Husserl's Philosophy of
Arithmetic', Mind LXXXI no. 323, July, pp. 321-337. Translation of
'Rezension von Dr E. G. Husserl: Philosophie der Arithmetik', Zeit-
schrift fUr Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 103, 313 - 32.
to Michael Dummett: 1981a, Frege: Philosophy of Language,
Duckworth, London, p. xlii. Michael Dummett: 1981b, The Interpreta-
tion of Frege's Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA,
p. 56. Frege: 1980, pp. 60-61; Comments Willard: 1984, pp. xii-xiii,
118.
11 Karl Schuhmann: 1977, Husserl-Chronik, M. Nijhoff, The Hague,
pp. 6-11 on Weierstrass and Husserl.
12 Morris Kline: 1972, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to
Modern Times, Oxford University Press, New York, vol. 3, pp. 950-
56, 960-66, 972 on Weierstrass and Bolzano.
13 Schuhmann: 1977, pp. 7, 11; Willard: 1984, pp. 3-4,21-22;
Andrew Osborn: 1934, The Philosophy of E. Husserl in its Development
to his First Conception of Phenomenology in the Logical Investigations,
International Press, New York, p. 12.
14 McAlister, Linda: 1976, The Philosophy of Franz Brentano,
Duckworth, London, p. 49.
15 Osborn: 1934, p. 18.
16 McAlister: 1976, pp. 45, 53.
17 Osborn: 1934, p. 21.
18 Ibid., p. 17.
19Dummett: 1981b, pp. 72-73,496-97; Dummett: 1981a, p. 683.
20 Bertrand Russell: 1975, My Philosophical Development, Allen and
Unwin, p. 100. See my discussions of this in chapters 5 (§ 1) and 7 in
Hill: 1991.
21 Osborn: 1934, p. 29; Willard: 1984, pp. 32-34.
22 Frege: 1980, pp. 171-72; Frege's letter to Marty pp. 99-102
may have actually been addressed to Stumpf; see p. 99.
23 Schuhmann: 1977, p. 18; Frege: 1980, p. 64.
24 Adolf Fraenkel: 1930, 'Georg Cantor', lahresbericht der deut-
schen Mathematiker Vereinigung, 39, pp. 221, 253n., 257.
25 Edmund Husserl: 1975, Introduction to the Logical Investigations:
A draft of a Preface to the Logical Investigations (1913), M. Nijhoff,
The Hague, p. 37 and notes. Comparing the English edition with other
editions one discovers the typographical error.
26 Jean Cavailles: 1962, Philosophie Mathematique, Hermann, Paris,
p. 182 in reference to the Fraenkel biography cited in note 24.
27 Roger Schmit: 1981, Husserls Philosophie der Mathematik,
Bouvier, Bonn, pp. 40-48; 58-62; Lothar Eley: 1970, 'Einleitung des
Herausgebers', Philosophie der Arithmetik, M. Nijhoff, The Hague, pp.
XXIII-XXV.
28Dummett: 1981a, p. 630.
29 Dummett: 1981b, p. 21.
30 Bertrand Russell: 1963, Mysticism and Logic, Allen & Unwin, p.
52; and Bertrand Russell: 1903, Principles of Mathematics , Norton, New
York, p. xviii.
31 Bertrand Russell: 1964, Principia Mathematica, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, p. viii.
32 Russell: 1903, §§ 100, 344, 500; Frege: 1980, pp. 133, 147.
33 Russell: 1903, § 149.
34 Ibid., § 107.
35 Ibid., § 249.
36 Schuhmann: 1977, p. 13.
37 Frege: 1980, pp. 6-7, 52, 170; Gottlob Frege: 1989, 'Gottlob
Frege: Briefe an Ludwig Wittgenstein', Grazer philosophische Studien,
33/34, pp. 11, 14.
38 Frege: 1966, Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, alms: Hildesheim, §§

68 - 85 of the second volume for Cantor and 148 - 155 for Weierstrass.
Basic Laws II is not available in English. Sections 56-67, 86-137,
139 -44 are translated in Gottlob Frege: 1980b, Translations from the
Philosophical Writings, Blackwell, Oxford, thus omitting Frege's criti-
cisms of Cantor and Weierstrass.
39 Russell, Bertrand: 1946, 'My Mental Development', in Schilpp
(ed.), The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, p. 11; C. W. Kilmister: 1984, Russell, The Harvester Press,
Brighton, pp. 5-6, 54-66; Ivor Grattan-Guinness: 1977, Dear Rus-
sell-Dear Jourdain, Duckworth, London, pp. 132, 143-44.
40 Schuhmann: 1977, p. 18.
41 Edmund Husserl: 1887, Uber den BegrifJ der Zahl: Psychologi-
sche Analyse, Heynemansche Buchdruckerei. In English in McCormick
and Elliston (eds.): 1981, Husserl Shorter Works, Notre Dame Univer-
sity Press, Notre Dame, pp. 92 - 119.
42 Schuhmann, 1977, p. 19.
43 Frege: 1980, pp. 63 -65.
44 Edmund Husserl: 1970, The Logical Investigations, Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London, p. 179 n.
45 Husserl: 1891, pp. 104-05, 134.
46 For example Gottlob Frege: 1980b, pp. 22-23, 56, 120-21,
141n., 146n., 159-61,210; Frege: 1980, p. 141; Gottlob Frege: 1979:
Posthumous Writings, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 120-21, 182; Frege:
1972, pp. 327, 331.
47 I have had to alter Austin's translation of § 65 to make it agree
with other Frege texts and common usage according to which 'equal'
means 'agreement in this respect or that' and 'identical', or 'the same'
refer to complete agreement in all respects.
48 Frege: 1964, § 9, see also p. 6 and Frege: 1980b, pp. 159-61,
214; Frege: 1980, pp. 140-41, 191.
49 I cite the page numbers to Husserl: 1891 within the text.
50 Bertrand Russell: 1919, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy,
Allen and Unwin, London, p. 192.
51 Russell: 1964, p. 57.
52 Russell: 1919, p. 13.
53 W.V.O. Quine: 1961, From a Logical Point a/View, Harper and

Row, New York, pp. 27-32.
54 Bertrand Russell: 1956, Logic and Knowledge, Allen and Unwin,
London, pp. 265 -66.
55 Dummett: 1981a, pp. 544-45.
56 Frege: 1986, p. x, §§ 62, 65, 107.
57 Frege: 1964, pp. 5, 7, 129, and §§ 38-47.
58 Ibid., p. 127; Frege: 1980, pp. 130-32.
59 Frege: 1964, p. 132; Frege: 1980, pp. 73, 132.
60 Ibid.
61 Frege: 1964, pp. 139-43.
62 Dummett: 1981b, pp. 21-27. Frege: 1979, p. 176.
63 Frege: 1980, pp. 54-56, 191; Frege: 1979, pp. 181-82,269-
70.
64 Frege: 1980b, pp. 159-60.
65 Frege: 1979, pp. 181-82.
66 Ibid.
67 Frege: 1980, p. 191.
68 Frege: 1979, p. 269.
69 Frege: 1980, p. 55.
70 Russell makes this connection in Russell: 1975, p. 60; Russell:
1956, pp. 262-66; Russell: 1946, pp. 13-14; Russell: 1973, Essays in
Analysis, Allen & Unwin, London, p. 165.
71 Russell: 1919, p. 167.
72 Russell: 1903, p. 56.
73 Grattan-Guinness: 1977, pp. 79-80,94; Russell: 1975, p. 60.
74 Russell: 1956, pp. 47 -48.
75 Russell: 1975, pp. 62-63.
76 Russell: 1964, p. 67; Russell: 1956, pp. 245 - 48.
77 Russell: 1956, p. 55.
78 Russell: 1964, pp. 67 -68.
79 Russell: 1956, p. 266. Also Russell: 1964, chapter III and the
texts cited in note 70.
80 Kilmister: 1984, pp. 102, 108, 123, 138; Grattan-Guinness: 1977,
pp. 70, 94 and the texts cited in note 70.
81 Grattan-Guinness: 1977, pp. 78-79.
82 Russell: 1975, pp. 60-65.
RusseIl: 1956, pp. 79-82.

83
RusseIl: 1919, p. 13.
84
85 RusseIl: 1964, pp. 55-59,75-77, 166-72.
86 Hill: 1991.
87 Kurt GOdel: 1990, 'RusseIl's Mathematical Logic', in Collected
Works, vol. 2, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 119-141.
88 Godel: 1990, p. 120.
89 GOdel: 1990, pp. 121-23.
90 GOdel: 1990, p. 258.
J.N. MOHANTY
HUSSERL'S 'WGIC OF TRUTH'
I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
Husserl's distinction between three strata of formal logic - pure logical

grammar, logic of consequence and logic of truth - has been well
recognized and much discussed in the secondary literature, 1 and may
well have exercised some influence on the actual development of modern
logic. But very little has been done to explain what he could have meant
by 'logic of truth' - much less to further develop that idea. I want this
paper to be a contribution to that theme.
It would be best to begin with some well-known features of the
distinction between 'logic of consequence' and 'logic of truth'. The first
of these is that the logic of consequence (or what may also be called,
logic of non-contradiction) investigates into the essential laws of deter-
mining analytic inclusion and exclusion of propositions, the analytic
consistency of propositions i.e. with their mutual compatibility or lack of
it. The basic concepts of this part of formal logic are 'analytic conse-
quence' and 'contradiction'. 'Truth' and 'falsity', along with their
modalities, do not belong to its fundamental concepts. The logic of truth,
as contrasted with the logic of consequence, precisely deals with the
concepts of truth and falsity (and their modal derivatives) and the general
laws pertaining to them. With regard to the fundamental logical prin-
ciples, Husserl shows how their formulations change from one stratum
of logic to another. The principle of non-contradiction and the principle
of excluded middle, for example, have to be formulated in the logic of
consequence without making use of the concepts of truth and falsity, and
in logic of truth by making use of them? I will return to this last claim
at a later point in this essay.
Secondly, the very concept of 'judgment' is different in one case
and in the other. In logic of consequence, a judgment belongs to its
141
142 J.N. MOHANTY
domain in case it satisfies the laws of pure logical grammar, i.e., is

syntactically well-formed. In logic of truth, a judgment must also satisfy
the requirements of semantic appropriateness and semantic compatibility.
Husserl assigns to each a different concept of evidence. To the judgment
as it is taken up in logic of consequence, he assigns the evidence of
distinctness (Deutlichkeit), to the judgment as it is taken up in logic of
truth, he assigns the evidence of clarity.3
Thirdly, logic of truth takes into account, while the logic of conse-
quence does not, the natural striving of one's intentional, cognitive life
to reach truth. Thus the logic of consequence regards judgments as ideal
propositions and enquires into the relations of compatibility, incompati-
bility and implication amongst them, without taking into account their
actual truth or falsity in any given cognitive situation. Traditional formal
logic, Husserl insists, has not been a pure logic of non-contradiction, it
did not clearly recognize the distinction of logic of non-contradiction
from the logic of truth4 - a distinction which Husserl claims to be his
original discovery. 5
Of these three features of Husserl's distinction, the second, i.e. the
idea of different sorts of evidence has been discussed and elaborated at
length by G. Heffernan. 6 The third, i.e. locating a stratum of formal
logic within the overall context of epistemic striving after truth, has been
the focus of Sokolowski's work.7 In spite of these and other researchers,
the idea of logic of truth remains in the dark and open to various inter-
pretations.
II. AN EXCURSUS INTO KANT
Kant's distinction between formal logic and transcendental logic appears

to anticipate Husserl's distinction between consequence logic and truth
logic, especially since Kant also calls the Analytic part of his transcen-
dental logic 'logic of truth.'8 Husserl's characterization of his distinction
is also not entirely dissimilar to Kant's. Formal logic - or general logic
as Kant also calls it - abstracts from all contents of thought and deals
with the mere form apart from "all relation of knowledge to the object."
It considers "only the logical form in the relation of any knowledge to
other knowledge ...9 In this last phrase, replace 'knowledge' by 'judg-
HUSSERL'S 'LOGIC OF TRUTH' 143
ment,' and we get part of Husserl's characterization. Transcendental

logic, however, on Kant's account, abstracts only from all empirical
contents, but "would treat of the origin of the modes in which we know
objects, in so far as that origin cannot be attributed to objects" (Le. is a
priori). 10 Transcendental logic, then, would be a theory of our a priori
knowledge of objects. It is epistemic logic. Thus the table of the catego-
ries belongs to transcendental logic, as also the question of their a priori
objective reality. This is not quite the same as Husserl's logic of truth.
Nevertheless, Husserl's logic of truth is also, in some sense, epistemic
logic, although Husserl still wants it to be a formal logic of truth. In
other words, whereas Kant contrasts transcendental logic with formal
logic, for Husserl the logic of truth is a stratum within formal logic. We
still need to look into the question, how Husserl's transcendental logic
relates to his logic of truth on the one hand and to Kant's transcendental
logic on the other.
Kant in the very same introductory paragraphs of the chapter on
"Transcendental Logic", goes on to raise a fundamental objection against
the possibility of a logic of truth understood in a certain manner. He
says that a general criterion of truth, if any such is advanced, cannot,
just because it is general, take into account "the (varying) content of
knowledge (relation to its specific object)". "But since truth concerns
just this very content, it is quite impossible, and indeed absurd, to ask
for a general test of truth of such content" - for a criterion which is
both sufficient and at the same time general is not possible. If sufficient,
the criterion must be specific to each content; if general, it must hold
good for all knowledge. Such a criterion, Kant concludes, would be self-
contradictory. 11 How can there be, in that case, a logic of truth, and in
what sense?
Kant goes on to assert that the purely logical criterion of truth (Le.
the agreement of knowledge with the formal laws of understanding) is
the negative condition of all truth. No knowledge is true if it is not in
agreement with these formal laws, e.g. if it is self-contradictory. But
"further than this logic cannot gO."12 Logic teaches us nothing what-
soever, he writes a little later,13 regarding the content of knowledge.
Kant's thesis at this point may be taken to mean that logic, whether
formal or transcendental, cannot advance a theory of truth and that he
himself does not give any. What he gives, in transcendental Analytic, is
144 J.N. MOHANTY
a theory of objective validity. An objectively valid judgement brought

about by application of the categories under appropriate conditions of
sensory perception, may be either true or false. Transcendental Analytic
does not guarantee the truth of a judgment, it assures its objectivity, i.e.
the property of being either true or false. We have, for example, no
theory of truth of our contingent, empirical judgments.
Or, one may regard Kant's point to be that while transcendental
logic is a logic of truth (as he explicitly says with regard to the Analytic
part of Transcendental Logic), formal logic has nothing to do with truth.
This seems to be the interpretation proposed by G. Prauss in a paper
which first drew attention to the entire issue. 14
Alternately, and this is the interpretation suggested by Hans Wagner
in his criticism of Prauss's paper,15 one may take Kant to mean that
while formal logic gives a general but not sufficient criterion of truth,
transcendental logic supplies what formal logic fails to deliver i.e. the
content or the matter of knowledge. Transcendental logic is logic of
truth, according to Wagner, in the sense that without the transcendental-
logical there would be no valid relatedness to object, and therefore, no
possibility of truth of any specific empirical cognition. But transcenden-
tal logic cannot of course give a sufficient criterion of truth.
This discussion of the possibility of a logic of truth within the
context of Kantian transcendental philosophy lies very close to the
problem Husserl confronts. Husserl will have a logic of truth within the
scope of formal logic, and then go on to develop a transcendental logical
account of the possibility of formal logic. Is a purely formal logic of
truth at all possible? And if it is, what would it look like?
III
Generally speaking, Husserl's logic of truth may mean any of several

things: (i) in the first place, it may mean a theory of evidence (since
Husserl does indeed regard the true and the evident to be in some sense
identical); (ii) or it may have to include, even if it may not be the same
as, a theory about the material or contentual (inhaltlich) conditions of a
proposition's being true (the purely formal conditions having been given
by the logic of consequence); (iii) or, a formal logic of truth may be
none other than, and cannot be more than, a model of the pure logic of
non-contradiction, in which the variables of the system are assigned
objects (individuals and properties) in the world, so that to each model
there corresponds one possible world. In this case, the logic of truth
would be none other than a possible world semantics. Finally, (iv)
Husserl's logic of truth is, and should be, none other than a phenomeno-
logical theory of cognition in its striving after truth, and therefore,
identical with a phenomenological theory of knowledge.
A preliminary look at these alternatives shows that (ii) and (iv)
cannot yield a formal theory of some sort, and yet Husserl does regard
his logic of truth to be a stratum within formal (apophantic) logic. A
general (if not formal) theory of material conditions of truth is open to
the Kantian sort of skepticism. If these material conditions, in Kant's
sense, are the a priori intuitions of space and time and belong to tran-
scendental aesthetics, Kant keeps them apart from, and outside of the
purview of transcendental logic. Husser!, it would seem, would include
something he calls "transcendental aesthetic" within his transcendental
logic. 16 A theory of the material conditions of truth would fall within
Husserl's transcendental logic. But such a material truth logic cannot be
a mere extension or deepening of formal truth logic. It has to be a
critique and foundation of the latter. 17
If (iv) were what Husserl intended by his logic of truth, then the
Sixth Logical Investigation would be as close an approximation to it as
anything he has ever given. But the Sixth Investigation cannot be said to
be a formal theory in any case.
So only the alternatives (i) and (iii) remain open. Husser! has not
worked out (i), but there are indications in the Logical Investigations of
what it may look like. It would have to contain such theorems as:
(1) 'p is evident to S at time t' implies 'p is true'.

but (2) 'p is true' does not imply 'p is evident to S at any time t'.
(3) 'p is not true' implies 'p cannot be evident to S at any time 1'.
(4) 'Both p and -p cannot be evident to any S at any time t' .18
More recently, following Brentano, Chisholm has developed such a

formal theory of evidence. 19
The other remaining alternative i.e. (iii) model theory, is much more
146 J. N. MOHANTY
promising, and has been as such worked out with far greater success
than (i). Commenting on the role of truth in contemporary logic, Kripke
writes:
Once a formal language has been defined syntactically, the main

semantic demand is that an explicit definition (characterization) be
given (in understood language) of which sentences are true. (If
relevant, other concepts such as satisfaction, truth-in-a-model, etc.,
may be defined also.)2o
Following this remark, one could surmise that even if Husserl did not
explicitly make the distinction between syntax and semantics, his distinc-
tion between logic of consequence and logic of truth may be construed
as capturing part of that distinction. Within a system of formal logic,
validity may be defined syntactically as derivability (from the axioms of
the systems and in accordance with the rules of inference of the system)
and semantically as true in all interpretations of the uninterpreted sys-
tem. The former would yield the notion of theoremhood, the latter the
notion of logical truth. 21 The idea of 'logical truth', explicated as 'being
true in all possible worlds or models', entails the idea of 'truth' (empiri-
cal truths being propositions which are true in some models, false in
others). Tarski correctly points out that 'provability in a formalized
deductive system' cannot be the same as 'being true' in the ordinary
sense of that expression, because in its ordinary usage a true sentence
must conform to the principle of excluded middle, which is not valid in
the domain of provable sentences. 22
Now, in order to be able to decide whether Husserl's concept of
truth logic is indeed any of these two (Le. a formal theory of evidence
or a model theory), we need to take into account only three things
Husserl says at some length in connection with truth logic. These con-
cern, first, the concept of evidence pertaining to this stratum of logic;
secondly, the precise formulation of the fundamental principles in this
stratum; and, finally, a distinction between syntax and semantics that
Husserl draws (a distinction which may indeed be very different from
that to be found in more recent logic).
IV
First, as to 'evidence': although this essay is not meant for going into
the details regarding the three different sorts of evidence that Husserl
distinguishes corresponding to the three strata of formal logic, it will
perhaps help us to interpret his concept of truth logic if we can under-
stand this theory of evidence. Put succinctly, the theory consists in the
following correlations:
(a) the pure theory of forms of judgment ... judging confusedly

(b) the formal logic of non-contradiction . . . . . judging distinctly
(c) the formal logic of truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . judging clearly
At level (a), any well-formed sentence expresses a proposition. Sentences

which at level (b) are inadmissable as involving contradiction are admis-
sible at level (a). The domain of (a) consists of all well-formed sen-
tences, no matter if they are formally inconsistent (in which case they
would not belong to (b» or if they, though formally consistent are
materially non-sensical (in which case they would belong to (b) but
would be ruled out of (c». In this broadest sense, to entertain a proposi-
tion (by "following" what the other says or by oneself uttering the
sentence which expresses it) is to have it "vaguely" as an intended unity
of sense. But since one "explicitly" performs the act of judging by
positing the subject and then predicating the predicate of it (step by step,
depending upon the complexity of either term), the earlier judgment, if
it shows internal contradiction, is cancelled, it is not any longer a
genuine unity of meaning. Those unities of meaning which survive this
process are explicitly distinct ones. It is these that form the domain of
formal logic of non-contradiction. But it is quite possible that one has
'explicitly' performed an act of judging and thereby the unity of meaning
has been made distinct, but one may still not be 'seeing' or 'intuiting' or
'seizing upon' the intended state of affairs. In other words, although the
unity of meaning has been distinctly grasped, the intended objective state
of affairs has not been either intuitively grasped or intuitively antici-
pated. When this last is achieved, the judging has become 'clear'. Such
clear judgments alone can be established to be either true or false. A
judgment such as 'Virtue is green' is consistent as a unity of meaning,
148 J.N. MOHANTY
but cannot achieve intuitive clarity, so it cannot be either true or false.

For our present purpose, it is relevant to ask: what does Husserl exactly
mean by 'clarity' and 'distinctness'? In what sense of 'clarity' is a clear
judgment, and not merely a distinct one, a possible subject of predication
of either truth or falsity?
A compound judgment is distinct, in Husserl's sense, if it can be
explicitly performed. By 'explicit performance' he means actually po-
siting the subject term, and then predicating the predicate of that subject.
If an originally received belief (Le. a judgment) was entertained but not
explicitly performed by me, then it is for me a vague judgment. For
most non-mathematicians the propositions 'There are transfinite num-
bers' or 'All prime numbers other than 2 are odd' are entertained as
vague judgments, passively received from others. Only the mathemati-
cians, esp. the number-theoreticians, can transform them to explicitly
performed judgments. To be able to do so, one must understand what is
meant by 'prime numbers' or by 'transfinite numbers', so that one can
then explicitly affirm what is to be predicated of them. What was in that
case a vague judgment in the first place, becomes a distinct one. Note
that it is not necessary that the movement shall always be in this direc-
tion: from vagueness to distinctness. One may arrive at any of the above
judgements by spontaneous thinking, i.e. by explicit performance of
thinking. Others may hear from him and assert it without fully thinking
it through. In that case, they have only a vague judgment.
Now for our present purpose, what is relevant is that in course of
explicitly performing a judgment, one may discover a contradiction in
what was vaguely entertained. In such a case, one rejects the judgment,
even if the explicitly inconsistent judgment is identical with the one
which had been earlier vaguely entertained.
It is this distinct judgment in whose texture the presence or absence
of contradictions is explicitly noticed, that according to Husserl is the
focus of the logic of non-contradiction. In other words, in order to
determine if two judgments p and q are consistent, incompatible or
related by the relation of implication ('q follows from p'), it is first
necessary to explicitly perform the two Le. to constitute, produce, each
in actual thinking. Such a performance may show that the two are
mutually contradictory - the one predicating B of A and the other
predicating non-B of A.
For the purpose of the first stratum of formal logic, i.e. for what
Husserl calls the theory of pure forms, the p's and q's remain unana-
lyzed. In this sense, they are vague judgments. The theory develops the
laws determining possible operations on them. The theory of syllogism
as a theory of judgment-complexes belongs also to this theory of pure
forms.2 3 Theory of syllogism, however, is first-order predicate logic,
and so analyzes the p's and q's to such forms as (x)Fx, Fa, (3x)Fx. Now
Husserl might say, even these explicated judgments are still vague
unities of meaning. What more is needed in order to detect a contradic-
tion in p.-p or a consistency between (3x)Fx and (3x)-Fx?
The question I am raising may be reformulated thus: why does
Husserl claim that a logic of non-contradiction requires more than such
explication? The very point of formal logic, one may argue, is that by
inspecting the sheer form of a judgement i.e. without explicitly perform-
ing the judgment in Husserl's sense, one can decide whether the judg-
ment under consideration is consistent or not. To determine "whether
judgment-members included in a whole judgment ... are compatible with
one another, or contradict one another" ,24 or "to seek out systematically
the eidetic laws that govern just the analytic included ness and excluded-
ness"25, requires some way of perspicuously analyzing the form of a
given 'material' judgment. Such analysis requires 'understanding' the
meaning of the judgment. If this is what is meant by 'explicit perform-
ance', then Husserl's thesis is likely to be uncontroversial. But if Husserl
is asserting the thesis that in order to determine the abovementioned
analytic features one must posit the subject term, then affirm or deny the
predicate term of it (in steps, depending upon the complexity of the
subject and/or of the predicate terms), one is certainly requiring too
much of the formal logician. Perhaps one is requiring precisely that
psychological process to be undertaken, which the formal logician's tools
of formalism are meant to succeed in making avoidable. Husserl perhaps
wants to say that for this level of formal logic, a judgment which was in
the first level an unanalyzed whole be subjected to step-by-step analysis,
which would make its internal structure distinct. To this rather uncontro-
versial thesis, he would add that such step-by-step analysis (which the
formal logician in any case carries out purely symbolically) it must, in
principle, be possible to correlate a step-by-step actual thought process
of 'constituting', 'bringing into being', or 'bringing into originary
150 J.N. MOHANTY
evidence' the structured unity of thought expressed in the judgment.

This, I think, is a perfectly defensible claim.
Let us now consider what Husserl means by 'evidence of clarity'
which is said to belong to judgments in truth logic. Clarity, we are told,
concerns not the components of a judgment, but the state of affairs
which is sought to be cognized by means of the judgment.26 A clear
judgment, in this sense, is evident judgment. In order to understand
Husserl's thesis in this connection I will ask two questions. First, if a
clear judgment is an evident judgment, and if an evident judgment on
Husserl's theory is a true judgment, then a clear judgment must be true.
This however seems to be too strong a consequence for his purpose. He
needs a conception of judgment narrower than the merely distinct unity
of meaning, and wider than the true judgment. He needs to make room
for the possibility of either truth or falsity (which is what Kant had in
mind when he spoke of the 'objective validity' of a judgment.) Second,
it should be the case that some judgments that are permitted within the
logic of non-contradiction, i.e. which are distinct unities of meaning, are
not permitted within the logic of truth. What are these, and on what
grounds are these excluded? What do these grounds have to do with
'clarity of evidence'?
To the second question, it seems Husserl's answer is that such
materially non-sensical propositions as 'Virtue is green' are not excluded
by a logic of non-contradiction. Since such judgments cannot be made
clear or evident, they are excluded only by a logic of truth. (In the first
stratum of pure logical grammar, even such materially non-sensical
judgments are allowed as vague unities of meaning.) Now, this account
can be questioned in the following manner. If a judgment in the logic of
non-contradiction is a judgment which can be, or is actually and explicit-
ly performed, then it is questionable whether one can explicitly perform,
i.e., think step-by-step the judgment 'Virtue is green'. If Husserl's thesis
is that it can be, i.e. if the proposition expressed is a distinct unity of
sense, that must be because he is understanding 'explicit performance' in
a purely verbal sense. As a matter of fact, Husserl seem to be saying so
in the Erste Philosophie where the distinction between the two logics is
stated in a much sharper manner than in the Formal and Transcendental
Logic. He says that the analytical distinct-making yields a merely sym-
bolic and verbal judging?7 Certainly in a strict sense, I cannot, in
thought, constitute a unitary meaning out of the sentence 'Virtue is

green'. I think HusserI's claim on this matter is due to his belief that no
purely formal-logical account can be given of the sort of contentual
incompatibility this alleged proposition exemplifies. While that is indeed
true, it does not help any more to assign that very task to another
stratum of formal logic, namely, the formal logic of truth.
In view of these difficulties, I would suggest that a better organiza-
tion of the structure of formal logic would be to divide the first stratum
i.e. the pure logical grammar into two sub-strata: first, a purely syntactic
level of distinguishing well-formed sentences from those that are not
well-formed; and then a semantic level which lays down the semantic
categories and rules determining their compatibility and incompatibility
in order to avoid materially non-sensical sentences. Given this ground
work, we have excluded both sentences that are not well-formed and
those that are well-formed but semantically non-sensical. Now the logic
of non-contradiction may be regarded as dealing with the analytic
relations amongst the consistent unities of meaning expressed by such
syntactically and semantically permissible sentences. The logic of truth
then would be dealing with the same unities of meaning but now from
the perspective of their possible truth and falsity.
To the first question, namely, how is clarity of evidence to be
distinguished from actual truth, I will reply by insisting that HusserI is
concerned with both possibilities: the possibility of clarity of evidence
that p and the possibility of clarity of evidence that non-po
What I am suggesting then is that the logic of non-contradiction and
the logic of truth differ not in this that some judgments permitted into
the former are barred from the latter, but in the totally different perspec-
tives from which they consider the same body of propositions. A logic
of non-contradiction treats them as propositions, as mere unities of
meaning, as ideal, abstract entities. A logic of truth considers them as
contents of cognitions, as judgments (affirmations or denials) with claims
to truth, but with the possibility of turning out to be false. I should add,
the domain of pure logical grammar, in that case, should be taken to be
the domain of sentences which are syntactically as well as semantically
well-formed. Thus, on the account I am proposing, the three strata
would be:
152 J. N. MOHANTY
a pure grammar of logical language,

a logic of non-contradiction of propositions, and
a logic of truth of cognitions.
v
Husserl held that the same logical principles - such as the principle of
non-contradiction - receive quite different formulations in the upper two
strata of logic. 28 In the logic of non-contradiction, they are to be formu-
lated without using the concepts of truth and falsity. Thus, the principle
of non-contradiction may be formulated thus:
Of two contradictory propositions p and non-p, not both can be
given in distinct evidence; or, both cannot have ideal 'mathematical
existence' .
Since it is not at once clear why both the propositions 'There are
transfinite numbers' and 'There are no transfinite numbers' cannot be
said to express distinct unities of meaning, one may restate the principle
thus:
A proposition in which two contradictory propositions are conjoined
is not possible as a distinct unity of meaning, i.e. as a proposition
proper. 29
In the logic of truth, the principle receives the familiar formulation:
not both p and non-p can be true. If one is true, the other is false. Not
both can be brought to the evidence of clarity.
The two formulations are said by Husserl of be analogues. 30
In the above formulation of the principle in the logic of non-contra-
diction, the idea of 'mathematical existence' is left unclear. The idea of
existence is connected, in Husserl's mind, with the idea of 'properly
effectible' Y That unity of sense exists, which can be properly consti-
tuted in step-by-step thinking.
The account I have proposed regarding the proper domains of the
three strata of logic removes one possible objection against the two
formulations given above of the logical principles. The objection may be
raised that in both formulations we should still be talking of the same p
and the same q. In the one case, we are assured that they are unities of
sense, in the other that they are true or false. In that case, their domains
would coincide. (This objection is particularly serious if, as I have also

suggested, the semantic considerations of compatibility and incompati-
bility be transferred to pure logical grammar.) If the two domains
coincide, the talk of 'ideal existence' or its absence can easily be trans-
lated into that of true or false. If, that is to say, in logic of non-contra-
diction only p has ideal existence, and not non-p, then in logic of truth
only p is true and not non-po If there is this nice correlation between
ideal existence and truth, then the idea of a logic of truth becomes
vacuous. Two answers are possible to this objection. In the first place,
what does not have ideal existence is neither p nor non-p, but p.-p. This
leaves it open that p may be true and non-p false, or vice versa. 32 In the
second place, while ideal existence or its absence is asserted of proposi-
tions (so that p and q are to be construed as propositional variables), in
truth logic they stand for cognitive claims (whose contents are proposi-
tions). Thus, there is a non-coincidence of the two domains.
VI
One of the reasons for the unsatisfactoriness of Husserl's conception of

a logic of truth is that he for one thing characterizes it as formal logic,
but also assigns to it tasks which are proper only for a transcendental
logic. His accounts of a strictly formal logic of truth are sparse, and do
not go beyond formulations of a few logical principles. His account of
what a logic of truth could be, as a part of his transcendental logic, are
more interesting. Let us briefly attend to these latter.
Transcendental logic examines the presuppositions of formal logic.
As far as truth and falsity are concerned, these presuppositions are: (i)
that a judgement is identifiable and re-identifiable as the same judgment;
and (ii) that a judgment is decidable as true or false. 33 With regard to (i),
Husserl writes:
Logic relates, not to what is given only in active evidence, but to

the abiding formulations that have been primarily instituted in active
evidence and can be reactivated and identified again and again; it
relates to them as objectivities which are henceforth at hand, with
which, taking hold of them again, one can operate in thinking, and
154 J.N. MOHANTY
which, as the same, one can further shape categorically into more
and more new formulations. At each level they have their manner of
evident identifiability; ... (FutL, p. 185)
Further:
What 1 have said, 1 have said; I can at any time become certain of
the identity of my judicial meanings or opinions, my convictions,
after a pause in my thinking activity, and become certain of them, in
insight, as an abiding and always available possession. (FutL, p.
186)
The formal logician does not worry about this problem, for he deals with
variables such as p's and q's, and even when he posits constants such as
A and B, F and G, they are other letters. The assumption is that the
identifiability of these letters by their shapes is all that matters. But what
replace these letters (if they are variables) and what the letters (if they
are constants) name, are 'material' judgments, 'material' objects, 'mate-
rial' predicates, and the identifiability of these is the presupposition
Husserl has in mind. There may be a voluntaristic decision "This is what
1 mean, from now on this is what 1 shall mean". But one takes for
granted that when you return to it in course of a chain of thinking (or
proof, derivation, etc.) it must actually be the same. (Compare the
question of identifiability and re-identifiability of perceptual objects.)
Connected with these is the further presupposition that "I can always
return to it, do it again and again", that a proof can always be reiterated,
that certain infinite processes can always be gone through (by adding
'and so forth'), e.g., "Given a cardinal number a, one can always form
a+ 1". Furthermore, when one says, as when the so-called principle of
identity holds, that if A is true, it is true once and for all; or when one
should be able to say, when 1 hold that a certain proposition is true, that
is not my possession but everyone can entertain it - one makes claims
to validity for all times ('once for all') of for all possible subjects ('for
everyone'), presupposing thereby that "everyone is in perfect harmony
with everyone else". Husserl calls all these 'idealizing presuppositions',
for as a matter of fact, one just cannot carry out these processes always
and endlessly.
When Husserl speaks of idealizing presuppositions, he should not be

misunderstood as suggesting that the validity-claims of formal logic are
just not to be trusted. What he really means to bring to light are rather
the presuppositions of those validity-claims. By bringing these to light,
formal logic is made secure and well-founded. We discover what sorts
of idealizing acts of consciousness make formal logic possible.
As regards 'decidability', it is also a presupposition of formal logic
of truth that every judgment is decidable, Le. can be decided as being
either true or false. In the subjective locution which Husserl employs, it
is capable of being brought to either positive or negative evidence. On
this matter, he writes:
We all know very well how few judgments anyone can in fact
legitimate intuitively, even with the best efforts; and yet it is sup-
posed to be a matter of a priori insight that there can be no non-
evident judgments that do not "in themselves" admit of being made
evident in either a positive or negative evidence. 34
Did Husserl himself accept the law of excluded middle? There is no

evidence that he did, nor is there clear evidence that he did not. He
discusses it as a presupposition of the standard formal logic of truth. He
perhaps held it as belonging to the very sense of a formal apophantic
logic. He saw his own task as a transcendental logician to question it
(not with regard to its validity, but with regard to its sense), and this he
did - first, by showing, in the text just quoted, what the claim to
unconditional validity presupposes, and secondly, I should add, by
limiting that claim. Not every judgmental unity of sense (which is
syntactically permissible) is either true or false (,Virtue is green' is not).
A judgment which violates the laws determining the compatibility/
incompatibility of contents (Le. the semantic laws of permissible com-
binations of sense) is in violation of the law of excluded middle. 35 If that
is so, then the applicability of the law of excluded middle presupposes
that there are such compatibility/incompatibility, semantic, relations
amongst content-senses, but such relations are grounded not in formal
logic but in the way the experienced world is, as "an antecedent unques-
tioned matter-of-fact". What this critique reveals is that logic, without
ceasing to be a priori, is still world-related - even if logic, as formal
156 J.N. MOHANTY
ontology, "must not assert facts of any sort, nor any de facto world, in
its theories. "36
Various remarks of Husserl as well as his thesis regarding "definite
manifold" (which is defined in terms of 'decidability') suggest, when
taken out of the context of his overall project, that Husserl - in clear
conflict with the GtJdelsatz of which he even in the late thirties does not
evince any awareness - accepted the validity of the principle of ex-
cluded middle and of the decidability claim as well as of a purely
axiomatic understanding of mathematics. However, this is not quite so.
I would here venture the suggestion that Husserl's philosophy of logic
and mathematics clearly passed through three stages, the first two of
which, but not the third, are clearly noted in the literature. Husserl
began (i) with an operational, computational, conception of mathematics,
(ii) then rejected it in favor of an axiomatic understanding of both
mathematics and logic in the middle nineties, but (iii) subsequently -
while retaining that axiomatic interpretation with regard to formal logic,
developed an intuitionist-constructionist theory of transcendental logic.
What he did not do was to make his concept offormallogic intuitionist-
constructivist, but critiqued formal logic (as he understood it) from the
stance of a constructivist transcendental logic.
VII
Husserl's logic of truth (which is explicitly intended to be a formal logic

of truth) should not be construed as but another name for his formal
ontology.37 This confusion is ready at hand. It is only natural to suppose
that a discipline which lays down the structure of objects in general must
have something to do with truth in its formal aspects. But that impres-
sion is deceptive. Formal ontology, as Husserl understood it, is a corre-
late of formal apophantic logic, both of logical grammar and of the logic
of non-contradiction. It is a correlate in the sense that you need only a
change of attitude to transform the apophantic logic to a formal ontolo-
gy. The relation may be schematically represented thus:
apophantic logic --. formal ontology

1. logical grammar --. formal objective categories
2. logic of non-contradiction - - . theory of objective manifolds
or
science of theory-forms
Truth/falsity are not themes of formal ontology. The relation of

formal logic (including truth logic) to transcendental logic may be
represented thus:
} ...--.
1. pure logical grammar
Analytic { 2. logic of non-contradiction
Formal
Formal Logic Ontology
3. logic of truth
.,I
4. synthetic 'material' logic
.,I
5. transcendental aesthetics (a
part of transcendental logic,
contrary to Kant's plan)
In order to understand how truth logic, in the long run, leads to a

transcendental aesthetics i.e. a theory of the pre-predicative perceptual
experience of the world, Husserl's argument may be briefly stated here.
(i) First, he proposes38 a transitional link between the logic of non-
contradiction and the logic of truth. The link consists in showing that
every judgment is about something, and that this object-about-which (the
replacements for'S' and 'P' in'S is P') is either itself a syntactically
formed entity (e.g., 'The present President of the U.S.A.') or a core
stuff free from any syntactic form (e.g. simply 'red', although that too
may be taken to have a syntactic (nominal or adjectival) form). The
ultimate core entities are what Husserl calls individuals. All truth, in the
long run, relates to them. Although formal mathematics has no interest
158 J. N. MOHANTY
in individuals (in the above sense), formal-logical theory of truth cannot

but be interested in those individuals qua individuals. To make these
individuals intuitively evident, one needs to take recourse to material
evidence (and not merely analytical evidence which makes unities of
sense distinct) which is none other than experience in the strict sense.
(ii) One accordingly reduces truths of higher levels (of predicative
judgments) to truths that relate directly to individuals?9 (Compare
Russell's principle of reducibility to acquaintance.) But the sense of this
reduction must be precisely understood so that one does not violate what
Husserl elsewhere calls the Principle of all Principles.40
(iii) Thus ultimately formal logic must be applicable to the domain
of individuals. Such applicability belongs to the very sense of formal
logic. In this sense, formal logic is world-related.
(iv) Prior to all judgment, there is the "universal experiential basis",
'a harmonious unity of possible experience' ,41 in which "everything has
to do materially with everything else". It is this unity of experience
which provides the ground of why some contents (content-senses) are
compatible, some not. Thus concludes Husserl:
Formal-logical considerations and theory, with their focusing on

what is Objective, have nothing to say about that; but everyone of
their logical forms, with their S's and P's, with all the literal sym-
bols occurring in the unity of a formal nexus, tacitly presuppose
that, in this nexus, S, P, and so forth, have "something to do with
each other" materially. (FutL, p. 219).
Thus truth logic rests upon a transcendental aesthetic. This is

Husserl's response to the Kantian problem about whether a logic of truth
is possible.
Temple University
NOTES
I For review of literature, See G. Heffernan, 1989.

2 Husserl, 1929, § 20.
3 Husserl, 1929, § 16.

4 Husserl, 1929, § 14.
5 Husserl, 1929, § 22.
6 Heffernan, 1989.
7 Sokolowski, 1974, Chs. 8-9.
8 Kant, 1787, B87 = A62.
9 Kant, 1787, B79 = A55.
10 Kant, 1787, A55/6 = B80.
11 Kant, 1787, A58/9 = B83.
12 Kant, 1787, A59/60 = B84.
13 Kant, 1787, A61 = B86.
14 Prauss, 1973, 73-89 (Kant-Studien, 60, 1969, 166-182).
15 Wagner, H., 1977.
16 Husserl, 1929, 291-2.
17 Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 1989, 49.
18 Husserl, 1900-1 (1970), Vol. I, ch. 8, § 51.
19 Chisholm, 1966, Chs. 2 & 3.
20 Evans & McDowell, 1976,609.
21 Haack, 1978, 13 -14.
22 Tarski, 1956, 186.
23 Husserl, 1929, § 13a.
24 Husserl, 1929, § 14.
25 Husserl, 1929, § 14.
26 Husserl, 1929, § 16b.
27 Husserl, 1956,25.
28 Husserl, 1929, § 20.
29 Husserl, 1929, § 20, fn.
30 Husserl, 1929, § 20.
31 Husserl, 1929, Appendix III, § 2.
32 Husserl, 1929, § 48.
33 Husserl, 1929, § 78; Sokolowski, 1974, 22lf.
34 Husserl, 1929, § 77.
35 Husserl, 1929, § 90.
36 Husserl, 1929, § 92a.
37 Contrast R. Bernet, 1981, esp. 57.
38 Husserl, 1929, § 82.
39 Husserl, 1929, § 83.
160 J.N. MOHANTY
40 Husserl, 1913, § 24.

41 Husserl, 1929, § 89b.
REFERENCES
Bernet, R.: 1981, 'Logik und Phanomenologie in Husserls Lehre von

der W ahrheit', Tljdschrijt voor Filosofie 43, 35 - 89.
Bernet, R., I. Kern and E. Marbach: 1989. Edmund Husserl. Darstel-
lung seines Denkens, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg.
Chisholm, R.: 1966, Theory of Knowledge, Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.
Haack, S.: 1978, Philosophy of Logics, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Heffernan, G.: 1989, Isagoge in die phtinomenologische Apophantik,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
Husserl, E.: 1900-1, Logical Investigations, e. tr. J.N. Findlay, Hu-
manities Press, New York, 1970.
Husserl, E.: 1913, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology,
Book I, e. tr. Boyce Gibson, Collier Books, New York, 1962.
Husserl, E.: 1929, Formal and Transcendental Logic, e. tr. D. Cairns,
Nijhoff, The Hague, 1969.
Husserl, E.: 1956, Erste Philosophie, Erster Teil, Husserliana VII, ed.
R. Boeh, Nijhoff, The Hague.
Evans, G. and J. McDowell (eds.): 1976, Truth and Meaning, Essays in
Semantics, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Kant, I.: 1787, Critique of Pure Reason, e. tr. N.K. Smith.
Prauss, G. (ed.): 1973, Kant, Zur Deutung seiner Theorie von Erkennen
und Handeln, OJ., K61n.
Sokolowski, R.: 1974, Husserlian Meditations, Northwestern University
Press, Evanston.
Tarski, A.: 1956, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Clarendon Press,
Oxford.
Wagner, H.: 1977, 'Zur Kants Auffassung beziiglich des Verhaltnisses
zwischen Formal- und Transzendentallogik', Kant Studien 68, 71-
76.
PARTm
BARRY SMITH
HUSSERL'S THEORY OF MEANING AND REFERENCE!
Analytic philosophers have until recently been reluctant to investigate the

complex historical roots of their own philosophical tradition. Slowly, but
surely, however, the necessary work is being done, and it is interesting
in this respect that not only the Anglo-Saxon but also the Continental
roots of analytic philosophy are being usefully illuminated? For as
Michael Dummett points out in his Origins of Analytic Philosophy, the
habit of referring to analytic philosophy as 'Anglo-American' represents
a grave historical distortion: such philosophy "could at least as well be
called 'Anglo-Austrian",.3 As Dummett notes, many tendencies in
Central European thought contributed to the early development of
analytic philosophy. Dummett himself concentrates on just one aspect of
this historical complex, namely on the relationship between the theories
of meaning and reference developed by Frege and by Husserl in the
years around the turn of the century. It is to this specific issue, too, that
the present essay is devoted, though we shall here attempt a more
sympathetic reading of Husserl's views on these matters than is to be
found in Dummett's work.
PSYCHOLOGISM
Let us examine, first of all, Frege's and Husserl's competing strategies

in relation to the problem of psychologism. For our present purposes we
can regard psychologism as a view which assumes that logic takes its
subject-matter from the psychology of thinking. A doctrine of this sort
has a number of advantages. If thoughts or propositions are (as the
proponent of psychologism presupposes) internal to the mind, then it is
very easy to see how they playa role in our cognitive activities and how
we come to 'grasp' them. The psychologist has an easy time also in
163
164 BARRY SMITH
explaining how logic should be applicable to our activities of thinking

and reasoning as they actually occur. Notoriously, however, these
advantages are outweighed by the relativistic consequences which psy-
chologism brings in its wake. Moreover, if thoughts are internal to the
mind, then it becomes difficult to see how they could be communicated
and how they could be bound together to form scientific theories and
similar higher-order objective structures. For these and other reasons
Frege and Husser!, like Bolzano before them, were led to the 'platonis-
tic' view that thoughts, in contrast to images and dreams, cannot be
immanent to the mind of the cognising subject.
The platonistic doctrines formulated by Bolzano, Frege, and Husser!
(as also by Meinong and other heirs of Brentano) initiated a new,
ontological mode of doing philosophy which did much to make possible
the birth in Central Europe of both analytic philosophy and modern
logic. This can be seen most clearly in the work of the Lemberg-Warsaw
school in Poland, where students of Twardowski evolved new techniques
for manipulating propositions and other logical objects in systematic
ways, techniques which would have been inconceivable so long as
propositions and their contents were seen as immanent to the mind. 4
The rejection of psychologism did however bring problems in its
wake. For when thoughts are banished from the psyche, then the prob-
lems which psychologism had found it so easy to resolve must be
squarely faced. How, if thoughts or senses are external to the mind, do
they relate to our empirical activities of thinking and reasoning? How, in
Fregean terminology, does it come about that we are able to grasp them?
And how does logic come to be applicable to our actual thinkings and
inferrings? Frege seeks to solve these problems, in effect, by assigning
to language the job of mediating between cognitive events on the one
hand and thoughts and their constituent meanings on the other. Unfor-
tunately however he does not specify how this mediation is effected.
That is, he does not tell us how, in using language, we should be related
to meanings:
For Frege an expression simply has a sense; one who uses it does
not need to bear its sense in mind throughout the process of employ-
ing it. (Dummett 1988, p. 18)
HUSSERL'S THEORY OF MEANING AND REFERENCE 165
Moreover, Frege does not tell us how thoughts or propositions them-

selves should be related to the corresponding bits of language. For the
platonist, thoughts and their constituents look after themselves, as it
were, so that the fact that there is any link at all between thoughts and
the sentences which express them may corne to seem like some sort of
magic. Indeed Frege defends the view (shared also by Bolzano) that it
does not belong to the essence of thoughts or senses to be brought to
expression in language at all. Frege sees no contradiction in the assump-
tion of a being who could grasp thoughts directly, without linguistic
clothing, even if for us humans it is necessary that a thought of which
we are conscious enters into our consciousness always with some sen-
tence or other.
All of this means, however, that we cannot derive from Frege's own
writings a clear account of what it is to grasp a sense, nor of how it is
determined which sense is bound up with which expression. The precise
mental processes that consciously take place in one who uses the expres-
sion are for Frege irrelevant.
For understandable reasons Frege's successors therefore sought new
ways of understanding the precise manner in which access to meanings
is secured via the medium of language. Thus Wittgenstein might be said
to have conceived both mental acts and objective meanings as dependent
upon or as secondary to language use as social phenomenon: they are
different sides or aspects of that complex social and institutional whole
which is language in employment. Dummett, too, seems to embrace a
dependence of this sort. 5 From the perspective of the Husserlian tradi-
tion, however, the link to meanings is seen as being effected not by
language but by our mental acts themselves, and it is this tradition,
above all as represented by Husserl, that we shall examine in what
follows. Above all, we shall have to establish whether Husserl succeeded
in developing an act-based theory of meaning that was able to avoid the
pitfalls of psychologism.
BRENTANO AND INTENTIONALITY
An acceptable account of thought and language must tell us how we gain

access not only to meanings (to thoughts or propositions) but also to
166 BARRY SMITH
objects of different sorts. It must address, in other words, the problem

of objective reference or intentionality, a problem which, as Dummett
points out in his chapter on 'Brentano's Legacy' in Origins of Analytic
Philosophy, was bequeathed by Brentano to his successors. Unfortunate-
ly, however, Dummett, like many others, misunderstands Brentano here,
imputing to him a more commonsensical view than his writings would
properly permit. Brentano's 'most familiar positive thesis', Dummett
tells us - the thesis that acts of consciousness are characterised by their
intentionality - consists in the claim that all such acts are 'directed
towards external objects'. The object of a mental act is, on Dummett's
reading of Brentano, 'external in the full sense of being part of the
objective world independent of the subject, rather than a constituent of
his consciousness. ,6
Certainly in the famous 'intentionality passage' in Psychology from
an Empirical Standpoint (p. 88) Brentano's views in this connection are
not unambiguously expressed. Yet Brentano himself appends a footnote
to this passage in which he makes clear that for him the intentionality
relation holds between an act and an object immanent to the mind. Thus
he points out that 'Aristotle himself had spoken of this mental in-exist-
ence' and he goes on to elaborate Aristotle's theory according to which
'the object which is thought is in the thinking intellect. ,7 This same
thesis is to be found as part of Brentano's more detailed formulations in
the Descriptive Psychology, where Brentano explicitly contrasts 'parts of
the soul' in the strict or literal and in the modifying sense, and assigns
what he calls 'immanent objects' to the former class. s And even in his
later, reistic phase, when Brentano no longer conceived objects of
thought as immanent to the mind, he still goes out of his way to empha-
sise that 'things' or 'ens reale' as he understands them are not at all to
be identified with the sorts of external objects which are normally
supposed to people the world and to be the targets of our acts (objects in
relation to which Brentano maintained a consistently sceptical stance).
OBJECTIVE REFERENCE
It cannot be denied, however, that Brentano's ontology of mind inspired

his students to develop a range of alternative accounts of how it is that
acts and objects, including putative external objects, are embrangled

together. The problem of intentionality to which Meinong, Husserl,
Twardowski, et al. can be seen to have addressed themselves, a problem
that is still very much alive today, may be formulated as follows: how
are we to understand the directedness of our acts, their capacity to point
beyond themselves to objects, given that (pre-theoretically considered, at
least) not all our acts are veridical (that they are not all such as to have
an object in the strict sense)?
For Frege all directedness to objects is held to be achieved via
thoughts or senses, i.e. via entities in the realm of meanings. 9 (The
grasping-problem outlined above is hereby in a sense doubled, for the
Fregean now has to explain not only how we grasp thoughts or senses,
but also how thoughts or senses in their turn are able to grasp or fix onto
objects. 10)
The realm of thoughts and senses is, as Frege conceives it, the
realm of modes of being given of entities of different sorts, and because
thoughts and senses are accessible to us only via language, it follows that
such modes of being given are for us always also modes of determining
the object-relatedness of some corresponding expression. The sense of an
ordinary singular term in a non-oblique context is, unsurprisingly, the
way of determining its ordinary referent. But what of the senses of other
sorts of expressions? Here Frege, familiarly, awards a special role to the
sentence, and affirms his 'context principle', a principle to the effect that
the senses of sub-sentential expressions are determined by the role they
play in the context of the sentence as a whole. Because the referent of a
sentence is now held by Frege to be its truth-value, it follows that the
sense of a sub-sentential expression is identifiable as the contribution this
expression makes to determining the truth-value of the sentence in which
it occurs. But the sense of such an expression does not hereby cease to
be a way of referring to some entity. In Dummett's own words, a sense
is for Frege "a step in the determination of a thought as true or false,
representable as a particular means of determining a referent of the
appropriate logical type." (1988, p. 96) Frege, therefore, extends the
notion of reference or object-directedness from singular terms to all
significant expressions. While singular terms keep the referents they had
from the start, Frege is led to embrace as referents for expressions in
other categories a whole menagerie of hitherto unencountered brands of
168 BARRY SMITH
'saturated' and 'unsaturated' entities, entities which - in some passages

at least - he seems to conceive as the result of a sort of mereological
subtraction of the referents of singular terms from truth-value-wholes. lI
HUSSERL'S FIRST THEORY OF MEANING
For Frege, then, the problem of the intentionality of acts does not arise:
directedness is achieved not by acts directly but only via language (sense
or meaning), and every use of language simply has its sense. The
problem of intentionality is replaced by the problem of grasping senses,
a problem which Frege noticed in passing but in the solution of which he
was hardly interested. For the author of Psychology from an Empirical
Standpoint, too, the problem of intentionality does not arise, since every
act simply has its immanent object, and Brentano is not concerned with
the question as to what these immanent objects might correspond to in
the world. In the thought of Meinong, similarly, the problem of inten-
tional directedness is trivialised, since Meinong denies that there are
non-veridical acts in the strict sense of acts lacking objects tout court.
Every act is simply and automatically guaranteed an object of appro-
priate type, though of course the problem still arises of establishing
which objects exist and which do not.
It seems that it was Husserl who first tackled the problem of inten-
tional directedness in a non-trivial way, employing to this end the theory
of part, whole and unity that is set forth in his third Logical Investiga-
tion, together with the theory of 'empty' and 'fulfilled' intentions sketch-
ed in Investigation I. Husserl's theory is interesting above all because,
unlike standard mereologies, it concerns itself not simply with relations
between parts and their circumcluding wholes, but also with the different
sorts of relations which can obtain among the parts within a whole. The
most important such relation, for our present purposes, is that of depen-
dence, which holds between one part and another when the former
cannot as a matter of necessity exist except in a whole in which it is
bound up with the latter .12 Such dependence, illustrated for example in
the relation between a colour and its extension, or between the consti-
tuent pitch, timbre and loudness of a tone, may be either reciprocal or
one-sided. The same entity may in addition stand in dependence-relations
to more than one relatively independent entity; relational entities such as

kissings or promisings provide examples of dependence-structures of this
sort.
Mental acts are complex events. And like all complex entities they
can be sliced into dependent parts in different ways, according, as it
were, to the axis along which one chooses to slice. There are, first of
all, certain sorts of constituent parts of mental acts which, though not
experienced as acts in their own right, are nevertheless such as to point
beyond themselves in the strong sense that they are guaranteed sensa as
objectual correlates. This holds above all of those act parts (called by
HusserI 'Empfindungsmomente') through which sensory content is
channelled in perception. Act parts of this sort are responsible for what
we might call low-grade intentional directedness. In the normal course of
mental experience, however, such act parts exist only as knitted together
with other sorts of constituents (HusserI calls them 'AufJassungsmomen-
te') through which higher grades of directedness may come about. It is,
crudely speaking, because the acts which result from such knitting
together may fail to map any corresponding knitting together among the
objectual correlates of the constituent act parts, that there arises the
possibility of a non-veridicality of our acts.13
To this distinction of levels HusserI now adds the distinction be-
tween 'empty' and 'fulfilled' intentions. HusserI saw that our acts are
typically organised in different sorts of chains unfolding in time. Even
when we move back and forth in our experience from ('fulfilled') acts
which are supported by appropriate sensory experiences to acts ('empty
signitive intentions') in which such support is lacking, the moment of
higher-level intentional directedness may nonetheless be preserved on the
level of the act as a whole (as when I see a person and then continue to
think of this same person as he walks out of the room). There is in
general a wide range of variance between the two extremes of empty
intendings and what we might call total fulfilment, through all of which
the object-directedness of our acts may nonetheless be preserved as
something invariant.
A spectrum of possible cases can now be distinguished:
1. acts which have objects both at the level of act parts and at the
level of act whole (veridical fulfilled intentions), for example
170 BARRY SMITH
normal perceptions;
2. acts which have objects only on the first level (non-veridical
fulfilled intentions), for example hallucinations;
3. acts which have objects only on the second level (veridical
empty intentions), for example a case of thinking abstractedly
about the tallest Finnish spy;
4. acts which have no objects at all (non-veridical empty inten-
tions), for example a case of thinking abstractedly about the
golden mountain.
These four kinds of cases are all such as to be experienced by the

respective subject as having objects of their own. 14 Moreover, we can
recognise acts involving object-directedness at still higher levels. This is
above all because acts and act parts may be knitted together into those
special kinds of objectifying acts we call judgments, which are experi-
enced as being directed towards special objects called Sachverhalte or
states of affairs. Sachverhalte can in turn become the objects of nominal
acts on successively higher levels (the redness of the rose; the existence
of the redness of the rose, the value of the existence of the redness of
the rose, and so on). HusserI argues, however, that the cognitive capaci-
ties presupposed by such higher-level acts can be acquired only via
lower-level experiences, and above all via experiences of sensation. 15
THE GEOMETRY OF MEANINGS
Acts may stand, now, in a range of different sorts of similarity relations

in virtue of the different sorts of parts distinguishable within them.
Above all acts may manifest a similarity in object-directedness in virtue
of sharing what HusserI calls a similar 'content' .16 Such similarity
relations between act components as individuals are taken by HusserI to
imply the existence of ideal species which these components instantiate
(species which are thereby instantiated also, in a derivative sense, by the
corresponding acts). Hence we can talk of acts having similar contents;
but we can also talk of acts sharing identical contents in the sense that
they have parts which instantiate the same ideal species.
HusserI's theory of linguistic meaning in the Logical Investigations
is now built up on this basis. Certainly in the "Prolegomena" to the

Investigations, Husserl had been so concerned to distance himself from
psychologism that he had disdained, like Frege, to give an explanation
of how it comes about that a certain expression comes to have a certain
sense. Senses were seen by him there as constituting a realm of special
objects ('ideal meanings') which can look after themselves. In the later
parts of the Investigations, however, Husserl filled out his conception of
meaning in a way which draws in an almost shockingly economical way
on the just-mentioned ontology of species and instantiating individuals.
Husserl takes seriously not merely that the world of external substances
is divided in (what we can now recognise as) Aristotelian fashion into
hierarchies of 'ideal species' of different orders of generality; he holds
further that the parts and moments of our mental acts, too, are divided
into species in the same way, in virtue of the similarity relations which
obtain between them. In a bold conceptual move, Husserl then simply
identifies linguistic meanings with certain species of this sort. And it is
in this sense that we are to understand his talk of 'ideal meanings'.
To make sense of this identification we must recall, again, that acts
can be sliced into parts in a variety of different ways (compare the ways
in which sentences, for Frege, can be sliced in different - though not
arbitrary - ways into saturated and unsaturated components). The
results of such slicing will, in many cases, be such as to share with the
act as a whole its character of being an event unfolding in time. The
corresponding species will therefore be species of mental activity.
Linguistic meanings can clearly in no way be identified with species of
this sort. Some partitions of the act, however, yield constituents -
above all those constituents referred to above as the 'contents' of our
acts - which are shorn of the event-character of the act as a whole.
An apple, too, may be sliced into parts in different ways. Some such
slicings will yield parts which will preserve, for example, the quality of
edibility. We can conceive, however, in a Scotistic vein, of other sorts
of slicing; for example we may conceive that the apple is divided into its
individual matter and its individual form or shape. The latter is a purely
geometrical entity, an individual instance of a certain geometrical ideal
species. It is in virtue of its form that the apple is subject to certain
necessary geometrical laws. Such laws apply first of all to the form
itself, but they apply also, in a derivative sense, to the apple as a whole
172 BARRY SMITH
and indeed to any and every entity which instantiates the form in ques-
tion.
We might summarise Husser!'s view of meaning as follows: certain
mental acts (above all acts of language use) are amenable to (abstract)
divisions which yield parts - called 'contents' - which, in virtue of the
ideal species which they instantiate, are subject to necessary laws (analo-
gous to the geometrical laws which hold of shapes). These include the
laws of logic, which are necessary laws which govern real events of
thinking and inferring, just as geometrical laws govern real spatial
forms. (Husser! is by this means able to avoid one central pitfall of
psychologism.l7) And they include also laws amounting to the equivalent
of logical well-formedness rules applicable to (corresponding) parts of
mental acts.
Because it is certain content-species which are identified by Husser!
as the meanings of our linguistic expressions, it comes as no surprise
that it is through reflections on language that we can most easily come
to an understanding of what contents in general are. This epistemologi-
cal-heuristic fact should not, however, sanction the conclusion that
contents are such as to depend for their existence on language use. On
the contrary, Husser! holds that language is possible only because of the
brute fact that our acts and their contents (a) rest on secured access to
sensible differences in reality (via the low-grade intentionality mentioned
above), and (b) manifest a range of different sorts of similarity relations,
both as between one occasion and another and also as between one
subject and another.
Meanings are as it were ranged 'above' the acts which instantiate
them. This instantiation comes about willy nilly, in reflection of what-
ever the relevant individual contents of the acts themselves might be.
The meanings are for their part entirely inert: it is not the meaning
(something ideal, a mere universal, a practical nothing), but the act itself
that is responsible for its object-directedness. For Husser!, therefore (to
coin a phrase), an expression simply has a meaning; one who uses it
does not need to bear this meaning in mind throughout the process of
employing it. Meanings do nonetheless play an important role in the
theory. Thus they serve to provide an objective subject-matter for the
science of logic, and they allow us to explain the possibility of using
language for interpersonal communication as consisting in the fact that
the acts involved in language use on the parts of different subjects can
share identical (meaning) species. From Husserl's perspective the
existence of a qualitative and structural similarity of acts of different
subjects was indeed a necessary presupposition of the fact that language
originated at all. In addition however the phenomenon of language
creates new possibilities of qualitative and structural similarity by
providing a common architecture of complex act- or content-wholes that
is exploited equally by all those who have mastered the language in
question. In this respect it is important to bear in mind again the fact that
content (which is to say object-directedness) can remain invariant even
across wide differences e.g. in the sensory fulfilment of our acts.
EXPRESSION AND MEANING
An act instantiating a meaning species is in each case, Husserl tells us,

a certain complex whole, a 'concrete phenomenon which is an expres-
sion animated by sense'. Such a complex whole
divides into, on the one hand, the physical phenomenon, in which

the expression constitutes itself according to its physical aspect, and,
on the other hand, the acts which give it meaning and possibly also
intuitive fulfilment and in which its relation to an expressed objec-
tivity is constituted. (1970, I, p. 280, translation amended and
emphases removed)
Dummett accuses Husserl of maintaining here what he calls 'a Humpty-

Dumpty view of this matter: the view, namely, that an utterance assumes
the meaning that it bears by an interior act of investing it with that
meaning.'18 He complains, in other words, about an air of arbitrariness
he claims to detect in Husserl's account, as if the relation between an
utterance and the act which lends it meaning were a matter of a more or
less arbitrary association.
Dummett quite correctly criticises those act-based conceptions of
meaning which conceive act and utterance as separate phenomena which
have to be joined together by associative relations of one or other sort. 19
The theory defended by Husserl is safe against such criticisms, however,
174 BARRY SMITH
for the expression and the sense which animates it are not conceived by
Husserl as separate and distinct, but as one 'concrete phenomenon'
within which different sides (dependent parts or moments) can be distin-
guished at best only abstractly (like North and South poles of a magnet).
The expression animated by sense is an entity of a special sort, a hybrid
of sui generis linguistic and psychological constituents, neither of which
can exist except as bound up with the other in a whole of just this sort.2°
What Husserl actually means in the passage quoted can now more
properly be elucidated as follows. The 'physical phenomenon' is an
utterance, a certain concrete phenomenon which we can conceive,
abstractly, as a complex of articulated sound. To say that this utterance
is 'animated by sense' is to affirm however that it is a merely dependent
moment of a larger whole in which it is bound up with certain other
moments which can be conceived abstractly as having the nature of acts
or act parts. A concrete phenomenon of language use is not a mere heap
or sum of separate parts. Rather, the utterance as animated and the
animating act components are each such as to exist only as bound up
with the other in the framework of a single whole: the dependence in
question is reciprocal. Hence there can be no question of a chunk of
language as it were sitting around waiting to be animated by acts in this
way or that, along the lines which Dummett fears. Act moments and
language moments are rather such as to constitute a single entity; they
are triggered by the same external events, they rest on identical under-
lying dispositions, and a similar developmental story is to be told in
relation to each (we learn meanings as we learn to speak). The act
moments do however at least in this sense have the upper hand, that it is
through them that consciousness is channelled, and therefore also, in
Husserl's eyes, connection to our other acts and to external reality.
Recall that the immanent content of an act is that dependent part of
the act in virtue of which it is directed towards this or that object. The
meaning of 'white', for example, is that species to which belong acts
which are directed toward the quality white (as this is given in experi-
ence). Not every act directed to this quality belongs to the species which
is the relevant meaning however. The acts instantiating this species are
rather only those which are structured by a corresponding and comple-
mentary language-component in the way just indicated. Each linguistic
meaning is accordingly a special sort of dependent species (a species of
dependent part), in the sense that any instantiating act must stand in the
correct sort of reciprocal dependence relation with the language which
articulates it. If, for present purposes, we can be allowed to take Frege's
theory of unsaturatedness purely in its mereological aspect, then it is as
if Husserl has generalised and refined this theory in such a way as to
allow not merely one-sided but also mutual unsaturatedness, and in such
a way as to allow unsaturatedness relations to embrace termini drawn
from a much wider range. Above all, Husserl goes beyond Frege in
allowing entities of one sort to be saturated by entities of other, some-
times quite different sorts, as for example when animating acts are
saturated by the linguistic components which articulate them (so that we
might refer here to something like a transcategorial saturation). More-
over, just as acts and act parts can be divided into dependent and inde-
pendent (the former being able to exist only in a context which includes
the latter), so the corresponding meanings (species) are divided into
syncategorematic and categorematic (and the various possible com-
binations thereof which arise through concatenation).21 And because acts
and language here constitute one single concrete phenomenon, the part-
whole and dependence relations on the side of the acts will be mirrored
in similar relations among the corresponding units of language. It is this
which makes it possible for us to express complex meanings by means of
sentences.
INDEXICALITY
One problem in relation to which the species theory of meaning might

seem to face insuperable difficulties is the problem of indexical expres-
sions. Certainly Husserl's theory cannot cope straightforwardly with the
meanings of such expressions by characterising them as the ideal species
of the relevant animating acts. For if meaning is always a matter of
certain sorts of universal species, then it is in this sense also always
general, where the meanings associated with indexical uses of language
must surely in some sense participate in the individuality of the corre-
sponding referents. 22
In the account of perceptual judgment sketched in the sixth Investi-
gation, Husserl does however suggest a way round this problem. 23
176 BARRY SMITH
Suppose I look up into the sky and say, 'That blackbird is flying high.'
What is the mental act which gives meaning to this utterance? Not the
perceptual act, for this may vary constantly in such a way as to exhibit
continuous qualitative differences which are irrelevant to the meaning of
the given statement. The perceptual act has the wrong kind of articula-
tion for the purposes in hand. It can even vanish altogether and my
statement will still be meaningful. Husserl argues, therefore, that the act
involved here must be of a different kind, an act which is not affected by
changes of these sorts. This act is similar in form to an act of judgment.
But it manifests an important difference when compared to judgments of
the more usual (non-indexical) sort. For where the latter are, when taken
in specie, sufficient of themselves to supply a full meaning for the
corresponding sentence, the act under consideration here is in this
respect incomplete. It has, as it were, the mere torso of a meaning and
depends upon the (past or present) perceptual act to supply, as Husserl
puts it in his customary Aristotelian language, 'determinateness of
objective reference, and thereby its lowest difference.' (1970, II, p. 683)
Once again, Husserl is working with a theory of wholes and parts and of
what we might call 'integrity of structure' whose range of application is
wider than that of Frege's theory of unsaturatedness: thus he allows that
the linguistic act that is here incomplete as far as meaning is concerned
- as if someone were to utter 'This rose is white' in a completely
flowerless room - may come to be saturated or made complete by acts
of other sorts, in this case by acts of perception.
STRUCTURES OF THE SACHVERHALT
What, now, is to be said about the part-whole structures in the field of

reference? Consider an act of judgment or assertion. The objectual
correlate of such an act is a Sachverhalt or state of affairs, which on
Husserl's view is something that is external to the mind yet reflects the
structure of the sentence-using act in the sense that it is put together out
of parts in a way which reflects the structure of the act and thereby also
of the corresponding sentence. It is in this context that Husserl comes
closest to providing an equivalent of Frege's account of the way in
which the reference of a sentence-whole is related systematically to the
reference of the sentence-parts. As the reference of a sentence-consti-

tuent is for Frege determined by the contribution made by this consti-
tuent to determining the truth-value of the sentence as a whole, so for
Husserl this reference is determined by the contribution made by the
given constituent to determining the integrity of what would be the
corresponding Sachverhalt. Consider, for example, prepositions such as
'in', 'on', 'above', 'beside'. Expressions of these sorts have as their
objectual correlates certain sorts of relations. The preposition on, for
example, has as its objectual correlate a certain real relation, which is to
sayan entity standing in a pair of one-sided dependence relations to real
objects falling within material categories of certain restricted sorts. The
logical particle 'and' has as its objectual correlate a relation obtaining
not between objects but between Sachverhalte. Its objectual correlate is,
if you like, a doubly unsaturated Sachverhalt, i.e. an entity standing in
need of completion by a pair of further Sachverhalte. 24
A Sachverhalt is a certain sort of complex whole which is grasped
through a veridical sentence-using act and which is such as to manifest
an integrity of its own while at the same time embracing inter alia the
objectual-correlates of the part-acts corresponding to the components of
the relevant sentence. For this reason, too, therefore, a complete account
of the object-directedness of acts in general and of acts of assertion in
particular must recognise that they may enjoy objectual directedness on
a plurality of different levels.
HUSSERL'S SECOND THEORY OF MEANING
It is above all as a result of concentrating his attentions rather narrowly

on the interpretation of Husserl's thinking that derives from Dagfinn
F01lesdal's work that Dummett has failed to appreciate the force of the
arguments set forward by Husserl in his earlier theory. For F01lesdal's
interpretation, which has been elaborated by David Woodruff Smith and
others, concentrates overwhelmingly on the later doctrine of the 'noema'
outlined by Husserl in the first book of the Ideas.
Husserl was responsible, with Frege, for banishing thoughts from
the mind. We can now recognise however that, in contrast to Frege, he
was in his earlier theory able to arrive at a non-psychologistic conception
178 BARRY SMITH
of thoughts which yet preserves a natural tie (instantiation - a relation

tighter than which one cannot hope to find) between ideal meaning-
entities and cognitive activities. But what of Husserl's later theory, the
theory of noemata? On the interpretation of Husserl defended by Felles-
dal, the noema is best understood as something like the Fregean sense
'generalised to the sphere of all acts,? 5 The Fregean sense consists, as
we have seen, in the way the reference of the expression is determined,
and this is for Frege in every case a step in the determination of the
truth-value of a sentence in which this expression occurs. A sense
thereby stands in the most intimate relation to truth. Dummett himself
accordingly sees reason to object to the Husserlian noema theory,
because to acknowledge noemata (senses, meanings) across the whole
space of acts would be to break the connection between meaning and the
sentence and this would bring the conclusion, anathema to Dummett, that
the concept of meaning would have to be elucidated independently of the
concept of truth. 26 A more serious objection to the theory, however, is
that, with the conception of intentionality in terms of noemata, the (two-
fold) linkage problem once more presents itself. For now meanings (Le.
noemata) are seen as intermediaries, falling (somehow) between the act
and its (putative) object. The noema theory seems thereby also (like
Brentano's immanentism and all forms of representationalism) to threaten
us with a slide into idealism. For if it is the noema that is responsible for
the intentionality of the act, and if, as Husserl supposes, it is possible
that every act should have its noema even in the absence of any external
object, then the sceptical question must arise as to what justice we have
in supposing that there are external objects at all. 27
CONCLUSION
Husserl's first theory of meaning sees meanings as ranged above the act-
parts which are their instances. A Frege-type theory, sees meaning-
entities as falling between the act (or some equivalent) and the object (if
any) to which the act is referred. It is in this way that it gives rise to the
linkage problem and so also to the metaphor of 'grasping'. Of course
this is not to argue that Frege held that we generally grasp thoughts as
objects,2s Thoughts serve rather as the means by which we come to be
directed towards objects proper. What is crucial is that these means

constitute an objective realm that is interposed between our acts and the
world of referents.
Husserl's earlier theory is not subject to the linkage problem (and
thus not subject either to the associated threat of idealism). This is
because linguistic acts are conceived on this theory as being built up in
every case on the basis of the low-grade intentionality of sensory acts,
and the latter are guaranteed objectual correlates from the very start. The
linkage to reality is thereby established before meaning and language
come into play. This notion is surely more commonsensical than any
theory to the effect that directedness to reality is secured only via sense
or meaning, and it is above all for this reason, I would argue, that
Husserl's account of these matters is of more than merely antiquarian
interest.
S. U. N. Y., Buffalo
NOTES
1 My thanks go to Michael Gorman for helpful comments.

2 See e.g. Bell and Cooper 1990, Coffa 1991, Willard 1984.
3 See Dummett 1988, p. 7. What follows is based in part on my
review of this work (see Smith 1989b).
4 See my 1989a and also Wolenski 1989 and Simons 1992.
5 See his 1988, p. 132ff.
6 See 1988, p. 39. The passage quoted by Dummett on p. 40 to
support his reading of Brentano is dated 1909 and is thus irrelevant to
the interpretation of the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.
Dummett partially rectifies this error in the revised English version of
his book (p. 32). Cf. Brentano 1973, p. 385 and Fellesdal 1982.
7 See Brentano 1973, pp. 88f. Aristotle's view appears more sensi-
ble when we recall that for him the object of knowledge is a form,
something which can exist both in the object known and in the mind of
the knowing subject. See e.g. De anima, 424 a 18, 432 a 4.
8 See Brentano 1982, esp. pp. 10-27, and compare my 1988 and
also Runggaldier 1989.
180 BARRY SMITH
9 This holds even for that sort of directedness to objects which is

involved in perception, since on Frege's view the way in which an object
is given to us is always a sense. See Dummett 1988, ch. 9.
10 See my 1987, which contains a criticism of the views of Wood-
ruff Smith and Mcintyre 1982 in this respect.
11 Note, however, that as Dummett points out (1981, p. 482), Frege
quickly saw that it had been wrong for him ever to have maintained any
sort of parallelism between the mereological structures of referring
expressions and those of the corresponding referents.
12 See, on this, the papers collected in Smith (ed.), 1982.
13 See Husserl 1970, vol. I, 309ff.
14 Husserl introduces the term 'objectifying act' to cover acts which
have this property, and it is to such acts that our attentions will be
confined in what follows. Objectifying acts are to be contrasted with,
say, emotions, whose object-directedness is according to Husserl taken
over from other acts, as when I am angry at what I see. See 1970, II,
636ff.
15 See Smith 1989, Rosado Haddock 1987.
16 There is an air of the 'dormitive properties' gambit in Husserl's
account of matters here (a usefully generalized treatment of which is to
be found in Johnston 1991). Husserl's defence against this charge might
run as follows: the dormitive effects of for example morphium are to be
explained by appeal to one sort of mereological analysis, namely an
analysis into chemical parts. Morphium simply has chemical parts; they
are not invented for the purposes of providing the (appearance ot) an
explanation of how it puts people to sleep. The workings of acts, too,
are to be explained by appeal to a certain sort of mereological analysis,
though not in this case via an analysis into chemical parts. And here
again, Husserl would claim, acts as complex entities simply have the
parts (quality, content, etc.) which he distinguishes. The latter are not
invented for the purposes of explanation.
17 The question arises in regard to Dummett's own Wittgensteinian
account of meaning as dependent upon the social institution of language
use (see 1988, ch. 13) as to how he avoids the parallel pitfall of socio-
logism in his account of logical necessity.
18 Dummett 1988, pp. 45f. In the revised English version of this
work, Dummett moderates his imputation to Husserl of a view of this
sort (pp. 44ff.).

19 Dummett 1988, pp. 115ff.
20 Husserl himself was less than fully clear as to the consequences
of admitting hybrid dependence-structures of this and related types. It
was left to his student Adolf Reinach to draw these consequences in the
theory of speech acts he expounded in his "The A Priori Foundations of
Civil Law" of 1913 (see Reinach 1989 and also my 1987).
21 The power of Husserl's analysis of the different possibilities here
is shown in the fact that it inspired LeSniewski (and following him
Ajdukiewicz) to work out that formal approach to the analysis of lan-
guage which we now call 'categorial grammar'.
22 See Kiinne 1983, Philipse 1982, and Mulligan and Smith 1986.
23 See §§ 4-5 and compare also Dummett's discussion on p. 94f.
24 See my 1987a, for an account of the details of the view of Sach-
verhalte along these lines developed by Husserl's student Adolf Reinach.
25 Husserl himself occasionally employs a phraseology of this sort,
and I shall for present purposes assume, with Dummett, that the Felles-
dal interpretation of Husserl's later doctrine is correct. See however
Mohanty 1984 and also my 1987.
26 'Truth and meaning can only be explained together, as part of a
single theory.' (Dummett 1988, p. 24) So convinced is Dummett of the
rightness of this view, that he does less than justice to the thinking of
those like Husserl - as also Twardowski, LeSniewski, Tarski, and the
early Wittgenstein - who in different ways deny it.
27 Cf. Dummett, pp. 55ff.
28 On the contrary, both Frege and Husserl developed sophisticated
theories of the way in which senses or noemata have a different ontologi-
cal role from that of objects of the usual sort. For there is a sense in
which they cannot serve as the targets of our acts. See, on this, my
1978.
REFERENCES
Bell, D.A. and N. Cooper (eds.): 1990, The Analytic Tradition. Mean-
ing, Thought and Knowledge, Blackwell, Oxford.
Brentano, F.: 1973, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Rout-
182 BARRY SMITH
ledge and Kegan Paul, London.

Brentano, F.: 1982, Deskriptive Psychologie, ed. by R.M. Chisholm and
W. Baumgartner, Meiner, Hamburg.
Coffa, J.A.: 1991, The Semantic Traditionfrom Kant to Carnap. To the
Vienna Station, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Dummett, M.: 1981, Frege. Philosophy of Language, Duckworth,
London.
Dummett, M.: 1988, UrsprUnge der analytischen Philosophie, translated
by Joachim Schulte, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., original English
version in Lingua e stile 23,3-49 and 171-210. Revised English
version as Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Duckworth, London,
1993.
Fellesdal, D.: 1982, 'Brentano and Husser! on Intentional Objects and
Perception', in H.L. Dreyfus (ed.), Husserl, Intentionality and
Cognitive Science, M.LT. Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 31-41.
Husserl, E.: 1970, Logical Investigations, trans. by J.N. Findlay,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Husser!, E.: 1976, Ideen zu einer reinen Phllnomenologie und phlino-
menologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einfii,hrung in
die reine Phlinomenologie, K. Schuhmann (ed.), Nijhoff, The
Hague.
Johnston, M.: 1991, 'Explanation, Response-Dependence and Judge-
ment-Dependence', in P. Menzies (ed.), Reception-Dependent
Concepts, Canberra, Research School of Social Sciences, pp. 122-
83.
Kunne, W.: 1983, 'Indexikalitat, Sinn und propositionaler Gestalt',
Grazer Philosophische Studien 18,41-74.
Mohanty, J.N.: 1982, Husserl and Frege, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington.
Mulligan, K. and B. Smith: 1986, 'A Husserlian Theory of Indexical-
ity', Grazer Philosophische Studien 28, 133-63.
Philipse, H.: 1982, 'The Problem of Occasional Expressions in Edmund
Husser! 's Logical Investigations', Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology 13, 168-85.
Reinach, A.: 1989, Sllmtliche Werke. Kritische Ausgabe mit Kommentar,
Band I: Die Werke, Teil I: Kritische Neuausgabe (1905-1914), Teil
II: Nachgelassene Texte (1906-1917); Band II: Kommentar und
Textkritik, K. Schuhmann and B. Smith (eds.), Philosophia, Munichl

HamdenIVienna.
Rosado Haddock, G.E.: 1987, 'Husserl's Epistemology of Mathematics
and the Foundation of Platonism in Mathematics', in Husserl Studies
4,81-102.
Runggaldier, E.: 1989, 'On the Scholastic or Aristotelian Roots of
"Intentionality" in Brentano', Topoi 8, 97 -103.
Simons, P.: 1992, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bol-
zano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Kluwer, Dordrecht/Boston/London.
Smith, B.: 1978, 'Frege and Husserl: The Ontology of Reference',
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 9, 111-25.
Smith, B.: 1987, 'Husserl, Language and the Ontology of the Act', in
D. Buzzetti and M. Ferriani (eds.), Speculative Grammar, Universal
Grammar, and Philosophical Analysis of Language, John Ben-
jamins, Amsterdam, pp. 205-227.
Smith, B.: 1987a, 'On the Cognition of States of Affairs', in K. Mulli-
gan (ed.), Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the Foundations
ofRealist Phenomenology, Nijhoff, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster, pp.
189-225.
Smith, B.: 1988, 'The Soul and Its Parts. A Study in Aristotle and
Brentano', Brentano-Studien 1, 75 -88.
Smith, B.: 1989, 'Logic and Formal Ontology', in J.N. Mohanty and
W. McKenna (eds.), Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, Univer-
sity Press of America, Lanham, pp. 29-67.
Smith, B.: 1989a, 'Logic and the Sachverhalt', The Monist 72/1,52-
69.
Smith, B.: 1989b, 'On the Origins of Analytic Philosophy', Grazer
Philosophische Studien 35, 153 - 173.
Smith, B. (ed.): 1982, Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and Formal
Ontology, Philosophia, Munich.
Smith, D.W. and R. McIntyre: 1982, Husserl and Intentionality. A
Study of Mind, Meaning and Language, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Willard, D.: 1984, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge. A Study in
Husserl's Early Philosophy, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio.
Wolenski, J.: 1989, Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School,
Reidel, Dordrecht.
DAVID BELL
REFERENCE, EXPERIENCE, AND INTENTIONALITY
The insight, due originally to Dagfinn Fellesdal, that some of Husserl's

most characteristic problems, concepts, and doctrines could be elucidated
by comparing them with those of Frege was in many ways a liberation. 1
Amongst other things, it provided an initial point of access to Husserl's
thoughts and texts, in the absence of which Husserl might well have
continued to seem, to those of a generally 'analytic' orientation, either
too impenetrable or too irrelevant to warrant investigation. It provided
a touchstone against which certain Husserlian doctrines could be evalu-
ated. Likewise - though this aspect has so far been little emphasized -
it provided a perspective within which a balanced and critical judgement
of Frege's achievements could be formulated. 2 And finally, Fellesdal's
insight has provoked and fostered a healthy curiosity about European
intellectual history, and especially about the nature and origin of the so-
called 'analytic-continental' divide that characterizes so much contem-
porary European thought. The invitation to compare the ideas of Husserl
and Frege has clearly proved immensely valuable.
Comparison, however, is one thing, assimilation is quite another.
Unfortunately, in certain circles Fellesdal's original, provocative insight
has become something of an orthodoxy - to the effect that Husserl and
Frege are in certain key respects so doctrinally similar that only termi-
nological differences set them apart. The attitude is typically expressed
in ways like the following:
Husserl's terminology is different from Frege's. What Frege calls

'Sinn', [Husserl] calls 'Bedeutung'; for Frege's 'Bedeutung' he uses
'Gegenstand' .3
Husserl's Bedeutung is equivalent to Frege's Sinn; Frege's Bedeut-

ung is equivalent to Husserl's Gegenstand. 4
185
186 DAVID BELL
Husserl's view of the role of meanings in mediating the reference of

expressions is basically Fregean. . .. Husserl shares with Frege
several key theses about the relation between an expression's mean-
ing and referent .... And these theses exactly parallel key theses in
Husserl's theory of intentionality.5
Husserl's analysis of linguistic expressions ... exactly parallels the

distinctions of idea, sense, and reference in Frege's article "On
Sense and Reference". . .. Husserl simply accepted and applied
Frege's distinctions .... The only change Husserl made in Frege's
analysis were terminological. 6
The present paper is an attempt to subvert this growing orthodoxy,

and it is motivated by a conviction that such a view encourages a funda-
mental misinterpretation of Husserl 's early philosophy. 7 Husserl's notion
of an object and Frege's notion of reference are, I shall argue, quite
distinct, as also are their respective notions of meaning, of content, and
of objectivity. We can begin with the last notion.
TWO MEANINGS OF THE TERM 'OBJECTIVITY'
It is surprising how recently the terms 'objective' and 'subjective' have

come to acquire their present meaning. Understood in that way, the
terms only entered the English language in the nineteenth century, as
translations of Kant's 'objektiv' and 'subjektiv'. 8 The earlier, pre-Kantian
distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, to be found in the
writings of the scholastics, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley and
others, has a quite different sense - and one that is, confusingly, more
or less the converse of the modern one. In the pre-Kantian sense, that is,
for something to be objective, for it to 'exist as an object', was for it to
comprise an idea, a mental representation, or a content of consciousness.
The adjective 'subjective', on the other hand, was reserved 'for the
reality philosophers call actual or formal. ,9 So in this sense for some-
thing to exist subjectively was for it to exist independently of any idea or
representation there might be of it; and to exist objectively was to be the
object of (or, equivalently, the content oj) some mental act or state. In
REFERENCE, EXPERIENCE, AND INTENTIONALITY 187
spite of the rearguard action mounted by certain philosophers whose aim

was to preserve the original sense of these terms,1O the Kantian use
nevertheless became established throughout Europe with remarkable
speed. By the middle of the nineteenth century things were called
'objective' (objektiv, gegenstllndlich, objectif, etc.) to the extent that they
were independent of the acts and states of conscious, thinking subjects.
There was, however, at least one major exception to this rule: Franz
Brentano continued to use the terms 'gegenstllndlich', 'objektiv' and the
like in ways that owed a great deal to the scholastics, and almost nothing
to Kant. In Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, for example, he
wrote:
Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the mediaeval

Scholastics called the intentional (or mental)* in-existence of an
object, and what we might call ... relation to a content, direction
towards an object (which is not to be understood as a reality), or
immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something
as object within itself ....
* They also used the expression 'to exist as an object (objectively)

in something'. If we wanted to use this expression today, it would
be understood in quite the opposite sense, as designating something
actually existing outside the mind. The expression 'to be an imma-
nent object', however, is at times used in the same sense, and here
the word 'immanent' should clearly rule out misunderstand-
• 11
lOgS ....
In 1911 Brentano added the following elucidation to a later edition of

Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint:
Instead of the term 'intentional' the Scholastics very frequently used

the expression 'objective'. This has to do with the fact that some-
thing is an object for the mentally active subject, and, as such, is
present in some manner in his consciousness .... I preferred the
expression 'intentional' because I thought there would be an even
greater danger of being misunderstood if I had described the object
of thought as 'objectively existing'; for modern-day thinkers use this
188 DAVID BELL
expression to refer to what actually exists, as opposed to 'mere

subjective appearances'. 12
As these passages make clear, Brentano did in a sense wish to

endorse the claim that the object of a mental act exists 'objectively'.
They also, however, make abundantly clear just what this claim means
in his hands - and what he means is utterly different from what
'modern-day thinkers' would mean by it. For Brentano, the object of a
mental act is never 'something actually existing outside the mind', it is
'not to be understood as a reality', but is rather something 'in-existing',
'immanent', 'inherent' or 'contained' within a mental act. The object or
content of a mental act is, in the strictest sense, a phenomenon, a 'mere
subjective appearance'. It would be a catastrophic misreading of Bren-
tano to construe his use of the term 'gegensUindlich' as involving any
sort of objectivity - as we use that term. And for the same reason, the
phrase 'Richtung aUf ein Objekt' must not be construed as meaning
anything like reference to an object - again, as we understand that
notion. 'Richtung aUf ein Objekt', 'gegensUindliche Beziehung' and the
like require merely the presence of a content within a mental act, and
can be exhaustively analysed without leaving the confines of the mind.
So-called 'direction towards an object' is not a relation between a mental
act and something external to that act. For Brentano, on the contrary,
the relation is one that holds between a mental act and one of its proper
parts. And this is true not merely for things we imagine or hallucinate,
but also for the objects of external perception:
We have no right, therefore, to believe that the objects of so-called

external perception really exist as they appear to us. Indeed, they
demonstrably do not exist outside of us. In contrast to that which
really and truly exists, they are mere phenomena. 13
'Objectivity' is, accordingly, an intrinsic property possessed by all

mental phenomena - including sensations, dreams, acts of imagination,
delusions, hallucinations, mistaken beliefs, instances of self-deception or
wishful thinking, and so on. This property can and must be explicable
independently of all issues concerning truth, intersubjective accessibility,
or reference to external reality. 'Objectivity' in this sense is clearly a
kind of subjectivity.
Husserl inherited notions like GegensUindlichkeit, gegensttlndliche
Beziehung, and Richtung auf ein Objekt from Brentano. And like Bren-
tano, he used them as essential elements in a phenomenological analysis
of intentional mental acts and states. In the Logical Investigations,
moreover, Husserl sets out clearly the methodological constraints within
which such a phenomenological analysis must take place. Negatively, the
investigation must be free of all "metaphysical, scientific, and psycho-
logical presuppositions." (And here, as we shall see, it is important to
note that "the question as to the existence and nature of 'the external
world' is a metaphysical question" (LV p. 26; Up. 264».14 More posi-
tively, a phenomenological investigation must be based exclusively on
"experiences that are intuitively seizable and analysable." In other
words, "Proceeding in a purely intuitive fashion, it analyses and de-
scribes in their essential generality ... the experiences of presentation,
judgement and knowledge." (LV p. 7; Up. 249, my italics).
At this point, then, we are entitled to conclude: given the broad
methodological constraints within which he was working, and given the
provenance of the notions he employed, it is an open question whether
Husserl did, or could, mean by 'Gegenstand', 'Gegensttlndlichkeit', and
'Richtung aUf ein Objekt' anything resembling what is meant by the
terms 'object', 'objectivity' or 'reference' within the Fregean tradition.
TWO KINDS OF ANTI-PSYCHOLOGISM
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Frege and Husserl were both committed to

anti-psychologistic programmes in the foundations of logic and the
theory of meaning: both denied that the truths of logic are contingent
generalizations about mental phenomena; and both denied that (in
Putnam's phrase) meanings are in the head. Both, indeed, substituted
timeless abstract entities for the concrete mental acts that were the stock-
in-trade of psychoiogistically orientated philosophers. 15
This way of characterizing certain doctrines that Husserl and Frege
held in common has, however, been taken to be more significant than it
actually is. The coincidence, I want to suggest, is merely superficial, and
has a tendency to mask the profound differences that exist between the
190 DAVID BELL
two philosophers in this connection.

Frege's anti-psychologism is straightforward, and unqualified.
Philosophers, he insisted, must 'separate sharply the psychological from
the logical, the subjective from the objective', and having done so, they
must then eschew all appeal to whatever is psychological or subjective.
In logic, the foundations of mathematics, and the theory of meaning, that
is, there is simply no role whatsoever either for ideas, mental acts,
subjective states, presentations, intuitions and the like, or for the findings
of psychology. From Frege's point of view, moreover, it is a matter of
complete indifference whether mental phenomena are invoked via
introspection, via the findings of experimental psychology, or via appeal
to empiricist, phenomenological, or idealist philosophical principles.
Frege saw subjectivity as a threat: to introduce any reference to, or
reliance on mental phenomena was quite simply to contaminate a scien-
tific investigation: "the mingling of the subjective and the objective ...
spreads such an impenetrable fog that the attempt to get clear ... is
doomed to failure. »16
That Husserl's anti-psychologism is of an altogether more elusive
kind is shown vividly by those passages in which he claims that pure
logic requires a psychological foundation, and that only the discipline
called 'phenomenology' or 'descriptive psychology' is able to supply
such a foundation:
Phenomenology is descriptive psychology. Epistemological criticism

is therefore in essence psychology, or at least only capable of being
built on a psychological basis. . .. The necessity of this sort of
psychological foundation of pure logic, i.e. a strictly descriptive
one, ... [requires] the purely descriptive examination of the [rele-
vant] knowledge-experiences. (LV p. 24; LI p. 262)
Pure logic ... must in the end likewise rest upon psychology. (LV p.
23; LI p. 261)
Phenomenology underlies all clarifications in pure logic. (LV p. 24;

LI p. 262)
Moreover, Husserl clearly had in mind 'formal' logicians like Frege

when he wrote, in Ideas:
The worker in pure logic, 'dogmatically' treated, grasps through

abstraction the apophantic forms ... and establishes for them axioms
of formal truth. He knows nothing of analytic synthesis, of essential
relations, noetic and noematic, of the incorporation within the
essence-systems of pure consciousness of the essences he has ex-
tracted and conceptually determined .... It is phenomenology which,
by reverting to the sources of intuition in transcendentally purified
consciousness, makes it clear to us precisely what is involved in the
fact that we sometimes speak of formal conditions of truth .... [It is
phenomenology which] enables us to understand that the a priori
truths of Logic concern essential connexions between the possibility
of the intuitive fulfilment of the posited meaning ... and the possibili-
ty of the pure synthetic form of the posited meaning ... and that that
possibility is at the same time the condition of possible validity. 17
Husserl believed that an appeal to mental acts was an essential

ingredient, not only in the foundations of pure logic, but also in connec-
tion with the philosophical analysis of meaning. For Husserl, indeed, it
is in virtue of the existence of certain kinds of mental act that linguistic
expressions are meaningful at all. "What makes an expression an expres-
sion, we know, are the acts attaching to it." (LV p. 421; Up. 583). "It
is in this sense-giving act-character ... that meaning consists." (LV p.
72; U p. 303). For an expression to be meaningful it is necessary,
according to Husserl, that "a peculiar act-experience relating to the
expression is present, that it shines through the expression, that it lends
it meaning and thereby gegenstl1ndliche Beziehung." (LV p. 71; LI p.
302).
In short, although both Husserl and Frege can be described as anti-
psychologistic, that term must be understood to be ambiguous. On the
one hand it can be given a weak reading, namely: (i) a theory is anti-
psychologistic to the extent that it denies that the content of a given
discipline presupposes any empirical facts belonging to psychology -
contingent facts, in other words, concerning mental properties, acts,
contents, or dispositions. Both Husserl and Frege were anti-psychologis-
tic in this sense about logic and meaning theory. On the other hand, the
192 DAVID BELL
notion can be given a stronger reading, namely: (ii) a theory is anti-

psychologistic to the extent that it denies that a given discipline presup-
poses any facts concerning mental properties, acts, contents, or disposi-
tions. Frege was, but Husserl emphatically was not anti-psychologistic in
this second sense. Frege, that is, required the excision of all reference to
intuitions, perceptions, presentations, ideas, and mental acts from
philosophical analyses of the foundations of logic and semantics. Hus-
serl's anti-psychologism, in stark contrast, was compatible with a pro-
gramme in phenomenology which precisely located the foundations of
logic and semantics in such acts as presentation, meaning-intention, and
intuitive-fulfilment. Husserl agreed with Frege that empirical psychology
was irrelevant to logic; but he took this to be entirely compatible with
the claim that the validity and objectivity of logic was founded on
descriptive psychology.
The fact that Husserl and Frege were both anti-psychologistic
provides, it seems, no warrant for the conclusion that they subscribed to
similar views about the eliminability of all reference to mind, expe-
rience, and subjectivity in the philosophical investigation of logic,
meaning, and truth. On the contrary, unlike Frege, Husserl believed that
it was only in an appeal to minds, experience and subjectivity that such
an investigation could terminate.
FREGE'S NOTION OF REFERENCE
The uncontroversial ingredients of Frege's doctrines concerning refer-

ence are, I shall assume, widely known. Amongst the most salient are
the following.
(A) It is an extensional relation. The relation in which the sense of a
sign stands to the entity that is its reference is a genuine relation: if it is
to obtain, both terms must exist, and exist, moreover, independently of
the relation's holding between them.
(B) It is defined by appeal to objective truth. The reference of a sign is
that entity, if there is one, whose identity warrants intersubstitutability
salva veritate. Importantly, as we shall see, the notion of truth that is
employed here is a strongly realist notion: truth is epistemically quite
unconstrained .
(C) A meaningful expression can lack a reference. To be significant at

all, an expression must possess a sense, "but this is not to say that to the
sense there also corresponds a reference. "18 In typical cases, whether or
not an expression in fact possesses a reference will depend on how
things are in the extra-linguistic, mind-independent world.
(D) Reference is epistemically unconstrained. As an extensional relation
between an ontologically autonomous sense and an ontologically auton-
omous, extra-linguistic entity, reference obtains or fails to obtain regard-
less of our intentions, beliefs, concepts or language. The referent assign-
ed to an expression by Fregean semantics is, so to speak, a Ding an
sich.
At one point in "Uber Sinn und Bedeutung", Frege asks why it is
that we need the notion of reference at all. If the senses of expressions,
including the Thoughts expressed by sentences, are what we grasp when
we understand language, and what we communicate to each other by our
utterances, then "why do we want every [sign] to have not only a sense,
but also a reference?"19 His answer is that "it is the striving for truth
that drives us always to advance from the sense to the reference." We
need to assign references "because, and to the extent that we are con-
cerned with truth value". In the last analysis, for Frege, reference is that
which an expression (or sense) must have if it is to be capable of partici-
pating in classically valid deductive inference, in virtue of its possessing
(or of its contributing to sentences (Thoughts) that themselves possess)
a determinate truth value.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON
'RICHTUNG AUF EINEN GEGENSTAND'
Husserl's terminology is less elegant than Frege's. He uses a number of

phrases, including 'gegensttlndliche Beziehung', 'Richtung aUf einen
Gegenstand', 'Richtung aUf eine Gegenstllndlichkeit', 'Beziehung aUf ein
Objekt', more or less interchangeably; and he uses the term 'Gegen-
stllndlichkeit' as short for any and all of them. The notion that these
phrases are intended to express has been identified with, or assimilated
closely to, Frege's notion of reference - indeed 'reference' is widely
used as their English translation. Is this assimilation justifiable?
194 DAVID BELL
Husserl is clear and explicit on at least one point: an expression or

act cannot be meaningful and yet at the same time lack Gegenstlindlich-
kelt; it cannot have a determinate sense but lack an object:
Wherever a word has one meaning, it also names one object. (LU p.
53; Up. 288)
Each act has intentionally its own appropriate objective correlate

(eine ihm zugehOrige Gegenstlindlichkelt). (LU p. 415; Up. 579)
Relational talk of ... 'meaning' and 'object' belongs essentially to

every expression. Every expression ... means something and names
or otherwise designates something. (LU p. 56; Up. 290)
To use an expression significantly and to refer expressively to an

object ... are one and the same. (LU p. 59; Up. 293)
Each expression not merely says something, but says it of some-

thing: it not only has a meaning, but refers to certain objects. (LU
p. 52; U p. 287)
Husserl is also clear and explicit on another issue. An expression or

act can have 'Richtung aUf einen Gegenstand' even if its 'Gegenstand'
does not in fact exist: "The object named need not exist at all" (LU p.
65; U p. 297) .
... intentional relation to an object [can be] achieved ... even though
the object does not exist at all, and is perhaps incapable of exist-
ence. (LU p. 386; U p. 558)
... the intentional object is only in question as an intentional, not as

an external reality. (LU p. 405; Up. 572)
It makes no difference what sort of being we give to our object ...

whether this being is real or ideal, genuine, possible, or impossible,
the act remains 'directed upon' its object. (LU p. 427; Up. 587)
What sort of 'reference' could it be, we need to ask, that every

intelligible expression possesses necessarily, and, moreover, possess
independently of there being something that is referred to? The answer
seems obvious: it isn't any kind of reference at all. It is, rather, an
intrinsic property of an act's sense. Husserl's 'Richtung aUf ein Objekt'
is not a genuinely relational phenomenon, but is, in his phrase, 'an inner
determination' of all significant acts; it is not extensional, but is pre-
cisely the defining characteristic of intentional phenomena; it is not the
point at which language and thought hook onto the external world - on
the contrary, as we will see, it is a notion specifically tailored ab initio
to be such that the nature and the existence of the external world are
irrelevant to it. Guido Kiing is therefore right, I believe, in his judge-
ment that "while Husserl took a strong interest in the Fregean notion of
sense, his phenomenological inclination prevented him from truly
appreciating the importance of the notion of reference." Kiing adds:
"instead of introducing the Fregean notion of referent, Husserl elabo-
rated the phenomenological notion of the identical-X-meant, namely the
notion of a noematic pole. This noematic pole exists even in the cases
where there is no referent, and thus, clearly, it still belongs on the level
of the Fregean sense. "20
PHENOMENOLOGY
The previous section provided some grounds for denying that reference
and gegensttlndliche Beziehung are identical, or even similar, notions.
This as yet tells us little, however, about the nature of the latter concept,
or about Husserl's philosophical motivation in preferring it to the more
straightforward Fregean alternative. Accordingly the aim of the present
section is to sketch the overall philosophical constraints within which
alone Husserl's key concepts can function as tools of phenomenological
analysis. We need at this point an account of the methodological and
doctrinal commitments constitutive of the discipline that in the Logical
Investigations he calls 'descriptive psychology' or 'phenomenology'.
When these commitments are made explicit, I shall suggest, it becomes
clear not merely that Husserl did not share Frege's notions of reference,
truth, existence, sense, or objectivity, but that he could not possibly have
196 DAVID BELL
done so.
The philosophical programme that Husserl attempted to implement
in the Logical Investigations has as its final goal the explanation of how
logical knowledge and understanding are possible. Accordingly, he
investigates the various conditions that must be fulfilled if this possibility
is indeed to be rendered intelligible. Amongst the conditions whose
nature he analyses are the following: that we can entertain meaningful
thoughts and make meaningful judgements; that language is capable of
expressing our thoughts and judgements; that our thoughts and judge-
ments can be rational; that we can have objective knowledge that is a
priori and universal, as well as objective knowledge that is a posteriori
and particular, and so on.
In this series of investigations Husserl imposes upon himself a set of
methodological restrictions, the purpose of which is twofold: (i) to
prevent the very questions he is addressing from being begged at the
outset, by the importation of assumptions that would vitiate the explana-
tory power of his results, and (ii) to secure the grounded ness of those
results, that is, to avoid merely dogmatic, unwarranted assertions. Goal
(i) is to be achieved by making the investigations 'presuppositionless':
implementation of the programme, in other words, requires that no
appeal be made either to empirical, scientific truths (whether of physics,
psychology, or mere common sense), or to metaphysical principles and
assumptions. 21 In this connection Husserl believes, rightly, that to
assume that there exists an external, independent world containing
objects such that we can refer to them, perceive them, or have objective
knowledge of them, would immediately render the entire investigation
worthless. (Cf. LV p. 401; Ll p. 569.) In an analysis of the very possi-
bility of objective knowledge and rational thought, such an assumption
must be, as Husserl would later say, 'bracketed'. Goal (ii) is to be
realized by allowing only claims for which we are in possession of good
evidence. Given the methodological restrictions concerning 'presupposi-
tionlessness', however, the very notion of 'good evidence' itself becomes
problematic; for the requirement of presuppositionlessness ultimately
outlaws any reliance on irreducibly transitive evidential structures -
structures, that is, in which one thing is evidence for something else. At
any particular point within such a transitive evidential structure, that
which is invoked as evidence must be 'presupposed'. Of course it can
itself, at some other point in the structure, be provided with substan-

tiating evidence, but at that point the latter will itself, in turn, be merely
an ungrounded presupposition. If this regress is to terminate, and if
presuppositionless yet warranted assertions are to be possible, then we
must have access to warrants, or grounds, or items of evidence that are
intransitive. Husserl follows Brentano by introducing the notion of
Evidenz to perform precisely this function: something is evident just in
case the assumption of it is warranted, and that warrant is not itself
ungrounded. The notion which satisfies these formal constraints, by
comprising the notion of a presuppositionless, intransitive warrant, is the
reflexive notion of self-evidence. That the Husserlian programme must
ultimately have its foundation in claims that are self-evident is thus a
formal condition on its viability.
The foregoing remarks concern the formal properties which, accord-
ing to Husserl, the notion of self-evidence must possess if it is to fulfil
the philosophical role he ascribes to it. But the appeal to self-evidence
also has substantive implications. For Brentano and Husserl, roughly
speaking, in order for something to be self-evident it must be presented
directly and immediately in experience, and presented, moreover, exactly
as it is. Now if something is intrinsically exactly as it is presented in
consciousness as being, then for that thing appearance and reality coin-
cide. The semi-technical term for such things is 'phenomena'; and the
discipline that studies them, and which bases all its claims on them, is
'phenomenology' :
The real premisses of our putative results must lie in propositions

satisfying the requirement that what they assert permits of an ade-
quate phenomenological justification, a fulfilment through Evidenz
in the strictest sense. (LV p. 29; LI p. 266)
We must exclude all empirical interpretations and existential affir-

mations, we must take what is inwardly experienced or otherwise
inwardly intuited ... as pure experiences. (LV p. 456; LI p. 607)
If this is right, then in pursuing his phenomenological investigations

Husserl cannot mean by such terms as 'truth', 'existence', 'Gegenstlind-
lichkeit', or 'Richtung aUf ein Objekt' anything that requires (as we
198 DAVID BELL
would say) commitment to the existence of external objects, the objec-

tivity of our beliefs, or the possibility of genuine reference. The very
methodological constraints that are constitutive of Husserlian phe-
nomenology make necessary a radically anti-realist reinterpretation of
each one of our objectivity concepts?2
INTENTIONALITY AND INTENTIONAL OBJECTS
In the Logical Investigations, and even more explicitly in his lectures on

the theory of meaning,23 Husser! set out a series of distinctions to which
we must adhere if phenomenological clarity is to be achieved with
respect to acts, their contents, and their objects. For present purposes we
can concentrate on two of the most important of these distinctions. The
first is between the content and the object of an act; the second is
between various different senses in which we can talk of 'the object' of
an intentional act.
First, a terminological point. It will help if we restrict the notion of
'content' to one of its literal meanings: to belong to the content of x is
to be contained within x, or to be an actual constituent or part of x. In
this sense a person can be contained in a crowd, for example, or an
atom can be contained in a molecule. The content of an intentional act
will accordingly comprise the elements that occur within it, the consti-
tuents that make it up. The analysis of contents, according to Husser!, is
whole/part analysis.
In this connection it is worth noting that Husser! apparently sub-
scribes to what we might call the principle of ontological homogeneity,
namely, that the parts of a complex whole must belong to the same
ultimate ontological category as the whole itself. In particular, this
implies that a real whole can only have real constituents, while an irreal
whole must exclusively comprise irreal elements. (See LV pp. 129,680;
Ll pp. 351, 791.) Now all entities, according to Husser!, are either real
or irreal; and the defining characteristics of real entities is their singu-
larity and temporality. Irrealia, conversely, are said to be universal and
timeless. Intentional acts are individual mental acts that have temporal
properties; so their constituents must likewise be real entities. Husser!
calls the analysis of such contents real analysis.
Amongst the most important contents of an individual act, Husserl

believes, is its matter. The matter of an act is that real component within
an act which is responsible for the act's having an object which is,
precisely, not a real component of it. In virtue of its matter, the act has
'direction towards' an object, it has an 'objective correlation'; but its
object or correlate is never a proper part of the act. As a singular entity,
the matter of a given act is unshareable: no other act can have that
matter. A number of different acts may, however, possess individual
matters that belong to a common kind; and the shareable, common kind
to which they belong is called a Meaning. On this usage, Meanings as
such are neither intentional objects, nor real contents of an act.
I turn now from issues concerning the contents, to those concerning
the objects of our acts. In this connection we will need to bear in mind
the distinction Husserl draws between (A) an intentional object as such,
(B) an intentional object simpliciter, (C) things themselves, (D) an object
in itself (or Ding an sich), and (E) a transcendent object.
(A) The intentional object as such.24 In Husserl's hands this phrase is not
intended to designate an ontological category: there are no such things as
'meant-objects-as-meant'or'objects-in-the-way-in-which-they-are-intend-
ed'. As Michael Dummett has suggested, phrases such as these belong
to an irreducibly intensional mode of speaking which is used to charac-
terize the nature of our thoughts, perceptions, and other mental acts. 25
The intentional object as it is intended in a given act is not itself an act,
neither is it a real content or moment of an act; it is not an irreal or
abstract Meaning or universal; and it is not a mind-independent entity in
the external world. As Husserl says, there is simply no such thing, 'it
does not exist at all':
The object is 'meant', i.e. to 'mean' it is an experience, but it is

then merely entertained in thought, and is nothing in reality. (LU p.
386; LI p. 558. My italics)
The 'immanent', 'mental object' is not therefore part of the descrip-

tive or real make up of the experience, it is in truth not really
immanent or mental. But it does not exist extra-mentally. It does not
exist at all. (LU p. 387; LI p 559. My italics)
200 DAVID BELL
Talk of 'objects as intended' is thus a mere fa~on de parler, an abbre-

viation, which can always be translated into phenomenologically accepta-
ble language in which no reference is made to objects of any kind, but
only to experiences as they are immediately present to consciousness:
... being-an-object consists phenomenologically in certain acts in

which something appears or is thought of as our object. (LV p. 375;
LI p. 550)
An object is 'meant' or 'aimed at' in [experience]. This means no

more than that certain experiences are present, intentional in charac-
ter. ... Only one thing is present, the intentional experience whose
essential descriptive character is the intention in question. (LV p.
386; LI p. 558)
According to Busserl employment of this fa~on de parler is never-

theless justified within phenomenology. Talk of 'the object as it is
meant' is a useful shorthand because it picks out two essential features
of every intentional act. Each isolated act, that is, necessarily possesses
two intrinsic features: firstly, as an act, it is by definition intentional,
and so has direction towards an object; secondly, it is a necessary
condition of object-directedness that the intentional object be presented
or meant in some way or other. One cannot imagine, mean, think of, or
perceive something without one's object being given somehow, as thus-
and-so determined, as possessing such-and-such properties, as presenting
this or that aspect.
It follows trivially from these considerations that if two acts employ
different modes of presentation, then they have distinct 'intentional
objects as such'. The intentional object as such which is expressed by the
phrase 'the victor of Jena' has thus nothing in common with that ex-
pressed by 'the vanquished at Waterloo'.
(B) The intentional object simpliciter.26 As long as we restrict our phe-

nomenological analyses to the object as it is intended in a particular act,
we will of course be unable to account for the fact that a number of
quite different experiences can possess one and the same intentional
object. I can and do mean one and the same person when, for example,
I use the expressions 'the victor of Jena' and 'the vanquished at Water-
loo'. We therefore need a phenomenologically acceptable analysis of the
notion of an intentional object tout court, an intentional object, that is,
considered in isolation from any particular mode of presentation that
might be used to characterize it on a given occasion.
Now Frege's thoroughly realist solution to this problem is familiar:,
he invokes the (extensional) identity of the (real) object to which both
expressions refer in virtue of the (objectively) different (mind-indepen-
dent) senses they respectively employ. Not one of these notions is
available within a genuinely phenomenological framework. Husserl
must, therefore, furnish a radically different account of what is meant by
an intentional object simpliciter, and of how it is that two acts with
distinct 'objects-as-intended' may nevertheless have one and the same
'object-intended' .
Husserl provides what is, in effect, the only solution open to him.
Phenomenologically, for the intentional object of two acts with different
matters to be the same intentional object is for it to be intended as the
same: the only notion of identity to which Husserl can appeal is that of
intentional (Le. intensional) identityP For two differently presented
objects to be one and the same intentional object, according to Husserl,
it is necessary that there be performed what he calls 'a synthesis of
identification' :
Talk of that which is identical [in two different acts] does not refer
to any entity beyond presentation and judgement, but rather to a
synthesis of identification, in which the presentations participate in
virtue of their [intrinsic] nature. 28
[Talk of identity] refers, I say, to certain connections between

judgements, to certain judgements of identity.29
We experience a 'consciousness of identity' , Le. a claim to appre-

hend identity. On what does this consciousness depend? Must we
not reply that different sensational contents are given, but that we
apperceive or 'take' them 'in the same sense', and that to take them
in this sense is an experienced character through which the 'being of
the object for me' is first constituted. (LU p. 397, cf. p. 414; LI p.
202 DAVID BELL
566, cf. p. 578)
The intentional object simpliciter, we can say, is not a non-intentional

object, it is not a Ding an sich whose existence and nature are indepen-
dent of our awareness of it. On the contrary, it is a merely intentional
object - but one conceived in such a way as to be independent of any
particular mode of presentation. Thus it is essential to the intentional
object as such which is expressed by the phrase 'the victor of Jena' that
it be presented precisely as the victor of Jena. But it is not essential to
that intentional object tout court that it be presented in this way; for it
can also and equally well be presented as 'the vanquished at Waterloo',
and in countless other ways too. What links these different modes of
presentation, according to Husserl, is not their common reference to
Napoleon himself, but the various syntheses of identity we perform on
them.
(C) Things themselves. I use this phrase to translate Husserl's well

known admonition that in phenomenology we should eschew inferences
and hypotheses, and return instead to things themselves: Zu den Sachen
selbst! This notion need not detain us long; for within Husserlian phe-
nomenology things themselves are identified with entities for which
appearance and reality coincide, that is, with phenomena, or things as
they are given immediately to consciousness?O They are emphatically not
mind-independent entities as they are in and of themselves.
(D) The thing in itself. The notion of a Ding an sich, a mind-independent

entity all of whose properties and attributes are possess autonomously, is
a notion that can have no place within Husserlian phenomenology.
Husserl says so explicitly:
We must have absolutely no truck with the dangerous, naive, yet

seductive thought that runs: the object is what it is in and of itself. 31
This is as true of the descriptive psychology practised in the first edition

of the Logical Investigations as it is of the post-reduction, transcendental
phenomenology practiced in Ideas and elsewhere. The contrast with
Frege could hardly be sharper: Frege's realist notions of reference and
sense both require precisely the notion of a Ding an sich that must
remain illegitimate within a phenomenological enquiry.
(E) Transcendent objects. At the foundation of Husserl's account of

intentionality is his basic premise that, pace Brentano, the intentional
object of a mental act is not a component part or real constituent of that
act. If we use the term 'immanent' in its proper, literal sense, Husserl
says, then the immanent content of an act will comprise just such real
components and constituents. So the immanent content of an act is not
intended, and the intentional object is not immanent:
[Wrongly] so-called immanent contents are therefore merely intend-

ed or intentional, while truly immanent contents, which belong to
the real make up of the intentional experience, are not intentional:
they constitute the act ... but are not themselves intended, not
objects presented in the act. (LV p. 387; LI p. 559)
When used in its proper, literal sense, the term 'transcendent' means
simply: not immanent. It therefore follows trivially from Husserl's basic
premise that an intentional object is a transcendent object. In the Logical
Investigations, 'transcendent' just means 'intentional,;32 and Husserl is
very clear that all metaphysical contamination of the notion of a tran-
scendent object - for instance, by incorporation of reference to 'extra-
conscious self-existence' - must be rigourously excluded. 33 For an
experience to have a transcendent object is merely for it to have an
intentional object, that is, for it to have the intrinsic property of Gegen-
stl1ndlichkeit. And this notion of a transcendent object comes without any
existential, metaphysical, or naturalistic commitments - as indeed it
must if it is to be phenomenologically permissible.
POSSIBLE COUNTER-EVIDENCE
The conclusion warranted, I believe, by the various considerations we

have examined so far is this: many of Husserl's most basic methodologi-
cal and doctrinal commitments make impossible any identification of the
concepts he employs with those employed within Frege's realist phi-
204 DAVID BELL
losophy concepts designated respectively by such terms as 'objec-

tivity', 'object', 'identity', 'existence', 'transcendence', 'actuality',
'meaning', 'content' or 'truth'. In particular, I have suggested, these
considerations imply that Husserl could not mean by Richtung aUf einen
Gegenstand what Frege means by the reference of a singular term.
To the best of my knowledge there is only one passage which might
seem to contradict this claim; and it has, indeed, been widely cited as
conclusive proof of the compatibility of Husserl's and Frege's doctrines
about meaning and reference. The passage in question, runs as follows:
It is a serious error to draw a real distinction between 'merely

immanent' or 'intentional' objects, on the one hand, and 'transcen-
dent', 'actual' objects which may correspond to them on the other .
... It need only be said to be acknowledged that the intentional
object of a presentation is THE SAME as its actual object, and on
occasion as its external object, and that it is SELF-CONTRADICTORY
[Widersinnigj to distinguish between them. The transcendent object
would not be the object of THIS presentation, if it were not ITS inten-
tionalobject. (LV pp. 438 -9; U pp. 595 -6. The over-emphasis is
Husserl's).
This passage may seem to provide endorsement of the view that an

intentional object and a mind-independent object in the external world
can be one and the same. But it can only seem to do this if one reads
into it a radically non-Husserlian notion of transcendence, if one forgets
the general constraints within which alone phenomenological analysis can
proceed, and if one entirely ignores the context and overall purpose of
the passage as a whole.
Husserl's concern here is not to assert that there are two different
concepts - those of an intentional object and a transcendent object -
which may nevertheless be co-extensive, so that the intentional object of
an act may be (as we would say) a real object existing independently of
us. On the contrary, his point is precisely that there are not two concepts
here, but only one. The terms 'intentional object' and 'transcendent
object' mean the same; to distinguish them would be logically absurd
(widersinnig); their identity is 'a mere analytic proposition' (ein blojJer
analytischer Satz); claims that they are indistinguishable are self-evident
(Selbstverstl1ndlichkeiten) and trivially true (Truismen) - they 'need only

be said to be acknowledged'. If this is right, then a Fregean, realist
reading of Husserl's remarks is impossible. Far from claiming that, as
a contingent matter of fact, the object intended in a given act might be
(or might fail to be) an autonomous object in the external world, Husserl
claims that a transcendent object and an intentional object are essentially
the same. But an intentional object, as we have seen, is not a kind of
entity; there is no such kind of thing; an intentional object "is not
actually immanent or mental. But it does not exist extra-mentally either.
It does not exist at all." (LV p. 387; Up. 559). Talk of intentional or
transcendent objects is a mereja(:on de parler whose literal, phenomeno-
logically justifiable content is restricted to acts, their parts and their
intrinsic properties, as these are presented directly to consciousness.
When the passage, quoted above, is returned to its context, it
becomes clear that it is part of an attempt by Husserl to diagnose two
common errors in the philosophy of mind.34 One error, he believes, is
the representationalism of the so-called 'image theory', according to
which the mind is only ever presented with images, signs, or shadows of
its objects:
We must realize that a transcendent object is not present to con-

sciousness merely because a content rather similar to it simply
somehow is in consciousness - a supposition which, fully thought
out, reduces to utter nonsense. (LV p. 437; Up. 594)
The other, equal but opposite error is to construe intentional objects as

immanent, real parts of conscious experiences:
'The object is merely intentional.' This does not, of course, mean

that it exists, but only in an intention, of which it is a real part. (LV
p. 439; Up. 596)
These two errors have the same origin. They both stem from an illegiti-
mate, indeed unintelligible distinction between, on the one hand, an
intentional, immanent object, and on the other hand, a transcendent,
mind-independent object. Husserl believes, with some justification, that
this distinction is phenomenologically impermissible. His alternative
206 DAVID BELL
conception requires him to deny not only that intentional objects are
immanent, but also that transcendent objects are mind-independent. I
leave the last word to Husserl, whose profound anti-realism led him to
say (ironically, in the very passage so often quoted as evidence of his
Fregean realism), that as a result of his analyses:
We must come to see ... the general need for a constitution of the
objects of presentation for and in consciousness, within conscious-
ness's own inner being ... [and] that all relation to an object is
contained within the phenomenological essence of consciousness in
itself, and can in principle be contained in nothing else, even when
such a relation points to some 'transcendent' matter. (LU pp. 438-
9; U pp. 594-5, my italics).
Sheffield University
NOTES
1 See Fellesdal, D.: 1958, Husserl und Frege, Aschehoug, Oslo;

1969, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema', Journal of Philosophy, 66, pp.
680-687; 1972, 'An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Phi-
losophers', in R.E. Olsen and A.M. Paul (eds.), Contemporary Phi-
losophy in Scandinavia, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp.
417-429; and 1984, 'Brentano and Husserl on Intentional Objects and
Perception', in H.L. Dreyfus (ed.), Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive
Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 31-41.
2 Two exceptions to this generalization are Dummett, M.A.E.:
1990, 'Thought and Perception: The Views of Two Philosophical
innovators', in D. Bell and N. Cooper (eds.), The Analytic Tradition:
Meaning, Thought and Knowledge, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 83 -103; and
also Bell, D.: 1990, Husserl, Routledge, London, especially pp. 59-84.
3 Mohanty, J.N.: 1982, Husserl and Frege, Indiana University
Press, Bloomington, p. 43.
4 Harney, MJ.: Intentionality, Sense and the Mind, Nijhoff, The
Hague, p. 164n.
5 Smith, D.W. and McIntyre, R.: 1982, Husserl and Intentionality.
A Study of Mind, Meaning and Language, Reidel, Dordrecht, p. 176.

6 Dreyfus, H.L.: 1984, 'Husserl's Perceptual Noema', in (ed.) H.L.
Dreyfus, Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science, pp. 99-100.
7 Given its commitment to transcendental idealism, and its reliance
on the phenomenological reduction, Husserl's philosophy after about
1910 seems less prone to misinterpretation along Fregean lines. My
focus in the present paper is thus on Husserl's early thought, and espe-
cially on the Logical Investigations.
8 The Oxford English Dictionary dates this usage as 'chiefly after
1817', and asserts that 'its current use appears to derive from Kant'. See
also entries under 'Gegenstand' and 'Objekt' in (ed.) J. Ritter: 1974,
Historisches WOrterbuch der Philosophie, Schwabe Verlag, Basel and
Stuttgart.
9 Descartes R.: 1984, Meditations on First Philosophy, 'Third
Meditation', in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by J.
Cottingham, R. Stoothhoff, and Dugald Murdoch, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, volume II, p. 28.
10 Especially Charles Renouvier. See Renouvier, C.B.: 1897, Essais
de critique general, Paris, Vol I, Logique, p. 19.
11 Brentano's text is as follows:
Jedes psychische Phanomen ist durch das charakterisiert, was

die Scholastiker des Mittelalters die intentionale (auch wohl
mentale)* Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes gennant haben, und
was wir ... die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein
Objekt (worunter hier nicht eine Realitat zu verstehen ist), oder
die immanente Gegenstandlichkeit nennen wiirden. Jedes enthaIt
etwas als Objekt in sich ....
* Sie gebrauchen auch den Ausdruck 'gegenstandlich (objektive)

in etwas sein', der, wenn man sich jetzt seiner bedienen wollte,
umgekehrt als Bezeichnung einer wirklichen Existenz au6erhalb
des Geistes genommen werden diirfte. Doch erinnert daran der
Ausdruck 'immanent gegenstandlich sein', den man zuweilen in
lihnlichem Sinne gebraucht, und bei welchem offenbar das
'immanent' das zu fiirchtende Mi6verstandnis ausschlie6en solI.
208 DAVID BELL
Brentano, F.: 1874, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Duncker

und Humblot, Leipzig, Vol I, Book 2, ch. 1, §5.
12 Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol II, Book 2, ch. 5,
§2n.
13 Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol I, Book 1, ch. 1,
§2.
14 Quotations from Husserl's Logical Investigations are cited as
follows: LU refers to the pagination in Husser!, E.: 1984, Logische
Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, U. Panzer (ed.), Nijhoff, The Hague. LI
refers to the pagination in Husser!, E.: 1970, Logical Investigations,
translated by J.N. Findlay, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
15 See Frege, G.: 1964, The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, translated by
M. Furth, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp.
10-25; and 1984, 'Thoughts' in Collected Papers on Mathematics,
Logic, and Philosophy, B. McGuinness (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, pp.
351-372. See also Husser!, LU pp. 110, 130; LI pp. 333, 353.
16 Frege, G.: 1984, 'Review of E. G. Husser!, Philosophie der Arith-
metik r, in Collected Papers, p. 207.
17 Husser!, E.: 1931, Ideas. General Introduction to Phenomenolo-
gy, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson, George Allen & Unwin, London,
pp.407-8.
18 Frege, G.: 1984, 'On Sense and Meaning', in Collected Papers,
p. 159.
19 Frege, G.: 1984, 'On Sense and Meaning', Collected Papers, p.
163.
20 Kiing, G.: 1977, 'The Phenomenological Reduction as Epoche
and Explication', in F.A. Elliston and P. McCormick (eds.), Husserl:
Expositions and Appraisals, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre
Dame, p. 341.
21 See, for example, LU pp. 6, 14, 23, 26, 381, and 765; LI pp.
249, 255, 261, 264, 556, and 862.
22 The greater part of Investigations I, II, V, and VI are in fact
explicitly devoted to the provision of phenomenological analyses of such
objectivity concepts as knowledge, evidence, truth, existence, object,
Meaning, Species, state of affairs, and the like.
23 Husser!, E.: 1987, Vorlesungen aber Bedeutungslehre. Sommer-
semester 1908, U. Panzer (ed.), Nijhoff, The Hague.
24 Intentionaler Gegenstand als solcher. In fact I use the English

phrase to capture the whole family of notions that Husserl employs in
this connection: the intentional object as intended; the meant objectivity
as meant; the object in the How of its determinations, and so forth.
25 Dummett, M.A.E.: 1991, 'Critical Notice of D. Bell, HusserI',
Philosophical Quarterly, 41, pp. 485-488.
26 Der vermeinte (oder intentionale) Gegenstand schlechthin. Husserl
sometimes talks in this connection of "der Gegenstand-worUber" or "der
Gegenstand, welcher intendiert ist" (see, e.g., LV p. 414, and Bedeut-
ungslehre pp. 41, 66f, 166).
27 For elucidation of the notion of intentional identity, see Geach,
P.T.: 1972, 'Intentional Identity' and 'The Perils of Pauline', in Logic
Matters, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 146-165.
28 Husserl, E.: 1987, Bedeutungslehre, p. 51.
29 Husserl, E.: 1987, Bedeutungs[ehre, p. 40.
30 See, for example, LV pp. to, 29, and 535; LI pp. 252, 266, and
663.
31 Husserl, E.: 1987, Bedeutungslehre, p. 46; also p. 36.
32 See LV pp. 26, 427, and 439; LI pp. 264, 587, and 596.
33 See references cited above, footnote 21.
34 These two errors are summarized very clearly at LV p. 385; LI p.
557.
LEILA HAAPARANT A
INTENTIONALITY, INTUITION AND

THE COMPUTATIONAL THEORY OF MIND·
INTRODUCTION: FODOR, DREYFUS AND McINTYRE
Hubert Dreyfus (1982) has argued that Husserl was an anticipator of

cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, and that there are great
affinities between Husserl's phenomenological attitude and Jerry Fodor's
methodological solipsism. Dreyfus points out that Husserl was the first
thinker to put special emphasis on the directedness of mental representa-
tions (Dreyfus, 1982, p. 2). He divides Husserl's theory of intentionality
into two stages of development. In his view, the first phase corresponds
to what Fodor calls the representational theory of mind, and the second
doctrine is linked to the Fodorian computational theory of mind, which
is a strong version of the representational theory (ibid., p. 3). The early
and less sophisticated theory consisted in the idea that the act of con-
sciousness does the work of representing an object and its relation to the
subject. Instead, he argues, the later theory, which was formulated
around 1908 and developed in detail in the first volume of the Ideen
(1913), maintained that the noetic act is intentional only because a noema
is correlated with it (ibid., p. 7). On Dreyfus's construal of Husserl,
there must be something in the mind which takes care of three tasks. It
guarantees that an object outside the mind is picked out, that the object
is described under some aspect and that such descriptions are added
which the object could have while being the same object. Dreyfus argues
that in the Logische Untersuchungen (1900, 1901) the representational
content takes care of all the three tasks, whereas in the Ideen Husserl
seeks to give a more detailed account of how these tasks are performed,
by introducing the concept of noema (ibid., p. 7).
This paper is an attempt to discuss the comparison between Husserl
and Fodor in more detail. It seeks to show that the apparent success of
211
212 LEILA HAAPARANTA
the comparison depends on a certain interpretation of Husserl's concept

of noema which Dreyfus relies on. If we give up that interpretation, the
comparison loses a great deal of its strength. A notable portion of this
paper focusses on presenting and discussing an interpretation of Husserl
which I have labelled as the geometrical model and developed in other
connections.! In the present paper, I shall try to show that the model of
geometrical problem-solving played an important role in Husserl's
thought and that it serves to illuminate both his theory of intentionality
and the various ways in which Husserl uses the concept of intuition.
Dreyfus's view of Fodor's theory is mainly based on Fodor's article
"Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cogni-
tive Psychology" (1980). In what follows, I shall rely on the very same
source and exclude Fodor's later theories? The theory of mind which
Fodor endorses is a strong computational version of the representational
theory and essential to his version of methodological solipsism (Dreyfus,
1982, p. 283). I shall not discuss his various attitudes towards the
possibility of naturalistic semantics in this connection. Fodor argues that,
according to Descartes, "there is an important sense in which how the
world is makes no difference to one's mental states" (ibid., p. 280). This
is also what Fodor's methodological solipsism amounts to. The point is
not to affirm solipsism but to proceed as if it were true. In order to be
computational, a theory of mind must satisfy two conditions. First,
mental states, such as beliefs, thoughts, desires etc., must be considered
to be relations to mental representations, which are like symbols, and
mental processes must be defined over those representations. Second,
there is the formality condition which requires that mental operations or
processes are regarded as formal; that is, they apply to mental represen-
tations in virtue of the syntax, hence, not in virtue of the semantic
properties, of those representations (ibid., p. 279). The concept of
formality is somewhat unspecified in Fodor's treatment and I shall not
try to specify it here, either. As the contents of representations which the
representations are assumed to express are excluded by the formality
condition of the computational theory of mind, that theory amounts to an
approach which can properly be labelled as methodological solipsism.
This is because it is the 'world' which is assumed to 'give' the contents
and it is the mind which is assumed to provide the forms. Fodor relies
on the idea that a computer, although a more sophisticated one than we
INTENTIONALITY AND THE THEORY OF MIND 213
have at present, is a model of the human mind. This is precisely because

he thinks that the processes of the human mind are manipulations of
representations, that is, of certain kinds of symbols, in virtue of the
formal properties of those representations.
Ronald McIntyre (1986) has raised critical points against Dreyfus's
comparison between Husserl and Fodor. He has approved of the alleged
similarity between phenomenological reductions and methodological
solipsism. Hence, in his view the common methodological starting-point
both for Husserl and for Fodor seems to be the exclusion of the external
world. Husserl's methodology resembles that of Fodor in that he starts
with his phenomenological reductions. Both theories can thus be charac-
terized as ontologically neutral. McIntyre argues that, according to both
Husserl and Fodor, "mental states have an intrinsic character of their
own that can be explicated without reference to extra-mental things, and
what is essentially mental in this intrinsic character is properly explicated
at an ontologically neutral level of abstraction" (Smith, 1986, 217).
However, even if McIntyre accepts this comparison, he has attacked the
two points which ensue from the two conditions of the computational
theory. He argues that as Husserl's noemas are not symbols, Husserl's
theory would not satisfy the first condition in Fodor's sense, and as
Husserl's noemas are not merely formal, the theory would not meet the
formality condition. Hence, Husserl's exclusions, that is, phenomeno-
logical reductions, do not mean the exclusion of contents. Therefore,
McIntyre is not willing to ascribe a strong computationalist view to
Husserl. At the end of his article he also points out: "Nonetheless,
phenomenology remained for Husserl a descriptive discipline, descriptive
of intrinsically intentional experiences, as they are experienced" (ibid.,
p. 231). Thereby McIntyre suggests that Fodor is certainly not proposing
a descriptive discipline, nor is he interested in intrinsically intentional
experiences.
ON INTERPRETING HUSSERL
In spite of their debate, Dreyfus and McIntyre share one view of Husserl
which cannot be taken for granted. What I am going to do in this paper
is to present and to challenge their common assumption. Before intro-
214 LEILA HAAP ARANT A
ducing my interpretational model and commenting on Dreyfus's and

McIntyre's approach, I shall make a survey of the main competing
models proposed in Husserl exegesis. The theory represented by Ff2llles-
dal (1969) and Smith and McIntyre (1982), for example, is called a
Fregean theory or a mediator-theory by Drummond (1990). This theory
sees Husserl's noemata as mediators between intentional acts and the
objects of those acts. Moreover, it is committed to the idea that noemata
are intensional entities like Frege's Sinne and that they are ontologically
different from intended objects. Unlike the mediator-theory, the object-
theory, which Gurwitsch (1964, 1966) ascribes to Husserl, assumes that
noemata are objects as they are intended or meant, hence, proper ob-
jects, which do not serve as mediators to the intended objects. Gurwitsch
also thinks that the object itself is the totality of noemata, hence, that the
relation between noemas and objects is like the relation between parts to
wholes.
It seems that two important points of view have not been sufficiently
acknowledged in these theories. One of them is that there are pressing
interpretational problems also in Frege's doctrine of senses and refer-
ences. The other fact worthy of more careful consideration is that when
Husserl changes his attitude from the natural to the phenomenological,
something crucially important happens in his project that must be taken
into account when interpretation is suggested for his concept of noema.
Drummond claims that the noema is abstract in the sense that it is the
object abstractly considered, that is, considered apart from the positing
of the natural attitude (ibid., p. 113). My view comes close to that of
Drummond, for in what follows, I shall argue that the chosen conceptual
framework determines what objects we are talking about. In the frame-
work offered by the natural attitude, we have the objects of the natural
world, primarily material objects. In the framework of the phenomeno-
logical attitude, we have phenomenological objects, which are precisely
noemata. However, it is true Husserl himself is interested in compa-
risons between noemas and external objects, even if this could not be
allowed for a true transcendentalist.
The supporters of the mediator-theory assume that there is an
analogy between act, noema and object, on the one hand, and expres-
sion, sense and reference, on the other. According to the object-theory,
no such analogy can be seen; on the contrary, Husserl's noemas are full-
fledged objects, whereas Frege's senses are mediators. I shall try to

argue that if we adopt the geometrical model, we find some support for
the object-theory. Moreover, it may also turn out that Frege's senses are
more than mediators to references. However, this is something that I am
not going to discuss in the present paper. 3
ON HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY
In what follows, I keep the interpretation of Fodor's text fixed, and

consider the interpretational problems related to Husserl in more detail.
That is, I shall assume that we know what the computational theory of
mind is but we try to find out what transcendental phenomenology
amounts to. In 1904 Charles Peirce writes: "Phaneroscopy is the de-
scription of the phaneron; and by the phaneron I mean the collective
total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite
regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not. If you ask
present when, and to whose mind, I reply that I leave these questions
unanswered, never having entertained a doubt that those features of the
phaneron that I have found in my mind are present at all times and to all
minds." (CP, 1.234.) This quotation is extremely revealing if we want
to understand phenomenology. Like Husserl, Peirce parenthesizes the
real world. He neither denies nor doubts the existence of the transcen-
dent world; the question concerning its existence does not even arise in
his phenomenology. Besides the outer world, Peirce also excludes the
empirical self. Moreover, like Husserl's phenomenology, phaneroscopy
is a science which studies the world as it is given to us.
In the following, I shall concentrate on the theory which Husserl
presents in the Ideen I (1913). It helps us to understand Husserl's project
in that work if we pay attention to the fact that phenomenology is meant
to be a science and thus to have its field of study and its own method.
What Husserl does in the beginning of the Ideen is to specify the object
of study of phenomenology and to define a proper method for the new
science.
In order to specify the object of phenomenological research, Husserl
takes the step from the natural to the phenomenological attitude. This
step is characterized by the expression 'Aufhebung der Thesis', which
216 LEILA HAAPARANTA
has been translated by 'the suspension of the thesis' in the earlier transla-
tion, and by 'the annulment of positing' in the new translation. Other
expressions by means of which Husserl characterizes the change of an
attitude include Einklammerung of objects, that is, the parenthesizing of
objects, and Urteilsenthaltung, that is, refraining from spatio-temporal
judgements, which speak about the existence of objects (Husserl, 1950,
pp.64-66).
It is not easy to grasp the full meaning of Husserl's Aujhebung. The
natural attitude, which is our attitude to the world in everyday life and
in natural and social sciences and in the humanities, posits concrete
objects and values as present to us and as being on hand (vorhanden).
This positing is precisely the thesis of the natural attitude. Even if
Husserl turns away from the natural attitude, he does not put forward the
antithesis. That would amount to denying or genuinely doubting what the
natural attitude posits. Husserl's Aujhebung shows affinity with Hegel's
Aujhebung, as it neither preserves the thesis nor denies it like the antith-
esis. It is a step into a different framework or into a new point of view,
from which the earlier problem, which requires a yes- or no-answer to
the question concerning the existence of objects and values, seems to
disappear. In Husserl's view, the new framework is the phenomenologi-
cal attitude. Husserl thus seems to think that the radically transcendental
attitude itself which the phenomenological attitude is meant to be is an
overcoming of an apparent contradiction. However, the true problem for
us is that we so easily slip back to the natural attitude, precisely because
it is natural. The only fairly easy way of understanding what the phe-
nomenological attitude is is to describe what is is not.
The change of an attitude presupposes what Husserl calls phe-
nomenological reductions or Ausschaltungen (ibid., pp. 136-149).
Natural and social sciences and the humanities as sciences of matters of
fact (Tatsachenwissenschaften) are excluded, because they presuppose the
natural attitude, and such material eidetic doctrines as geometry and
cultural sciences are also left out. What are also excluded are the tran-
scendence of God and the forms of calculus, because, as a purely
descriptive science, phenomenology dispenses with the tools of proof and
deduction. But phenomenology, like all sciences, needs the concepts and
the basic laws of logic, which are thus not excluded. What is primarily
preserved is pure consciousness (reines Bewusstsein), which is the stream
of experiences (Erlebnisstrom) and which is carried by the pure Ego

(ibid., pp. 74 -75 and p. 207). It is the task of the new science to reveal
the essential features of pure consciousness and thus to give the complete
real definition of consciousness. In order to carry out this task, HusserI
must give a method for the new science. This method will be analysis,
which HusserI also labels as the method of intuition (ibid., pp. 40-44
and p. 153).
The very first result of HusserI's phenomenological studies is that
consciousness is characterized by intentionality, that is, to be conscious
is to be conscious of something (ibid., p. 18 and p. 203). The other
feature which HusserI ascribes to consciousness is temporality. Tempo-
rality is the necessary form which connects experiences with each other
(ibid., pp. 196-199). The present now is the stable form for new
material, whereas the horizon of before (Horizont des Vorhin) is a form
which is filled with experience. The third form, which is the horizon of
after (Horizont des Nachher), is also filled by acts of our consciousness.
In the Ideen HusserI's main interest lies in the concept of intentiona-
Iity, which he tries to analyze further following what he had argued in
the second volume of his Logische Untersuchungen (1901). He tries to
clarify the feature of intentionality by distinguishing between the act, the
noema and the object of the act. As I pointed out above, Dagfinn Felles-
dal (1969) gave a much debated interpretation of Husserl's distinction
between noema and object by comparing it with Frege's distinction
between Sinn and Bedeutung. Fellesdal's interpretation contains the
important observation that both Husserl and Frege construe our relation
to the world as being mediated by a conceptual component. However, I
have proposed another interpretation of Husserl's distinction between
noema and object, which I have called the geometrical model. 4 I have
chosen this name because my interpretation relies on an analogy between
geometry and phenomenology which HusserI himself discusses in the
Ideen (ibid., pp. 160-168). Husserllabels both geometry and pheno-
menology as material eidetic sciences. They are material, because they
are not formal like formal logic, and they are eidetic, because they are
sciences of essences and not sciences of matters of fact. They both
exclude material ontologies which presuppose the natural attitude. They
also carry out Selbstausschaltung, which means the exclusion of the
empirical self.
218 LEILA HAAPARANT A
However, there is more to be said here, as far as Husserl's phi-

losophy and the tradition of geometry are concerned. Therefore, I would
like to call attention to certain features of geometrical problem-solving.
In Euclid's geometry, solving geometrical problems had to do with
making certain constructions, which were described in the given prob-
lem. As the general method for finding solutions, the Greeks used
analysis. In geometrical analysis, one takes that which is sought as if it
were admitted and moves from it via its consequences to something that
is admitted. s The methods of analysis and synthesis were used in both
proving theorems and solving problems. However, Thomas Heath,
commenting on the Elements, tells us that the ancient analysis had the
greatest significance in relation to problems (Heath, 'Introduction', p.
140). Knorr, in his work on ancient geometry, also stresses that the
method of analysis was basically meant to offer heuristic power to the
ancients in their search for solutions to geometrical problems (Knorr,
1986, p. 356). He calls attention to the fact that the activity of investi-
gating problems of construction was prominent in ancient geometry and
that the questions of construction primarily concerned problems; what
was primarily applicable to problems was then transferred to theorems
(ibid., p. 360 and p. 368).
One of the important features which unite geometry and the science
of phenomenology is that they both proceed by studying imaginary
examples. This is what Husserl explicitly tells us in the Ideen (Husserl,
1950, p. 162). For example, in geometry we may start with the defini-
tion of a parallelogram. We may then use our imagination and take one
particular figure, which exemplifies the concept of parallelogram. We
may even draw a parallelogram on a paper. Then we may analyze our
figure and find new essential features in the parallelogram. Phe-
nomenology proceeds in a closely similar way. For example, given that
we have the definition of consciousness that to be conscious is to be
conscious of something, hence that intentionality is the characteristic
feature of consciousness, we may imagine an example, that is, an act
which realizes the condition expressed in the definition, that is to say,
which is intentional. We may then analyze our example and find new
essential features in it. Both in geometrical and in phenomenological
studies all examples are equally good, and our studies do not become
better or more reliable, even if we add to the number of our examples.
Hence, even if it is difficult to grasp what pure consciousness and its

acts are like without slipping back to thinking of psychological acts and
overt bodily acts, it is no easier to think of ideal geometrical figures
without resorting to mental imagery or figures drawn on a piece of
paper. Although geometry and phenomenology are alike, Husser! also
mentions one important difference. This lies in that geometry uses both
intuition and deduction, whereas phenomenology merely needs the
method of intuition, since it is a purely descriptive science.
On the basis of the comparisons between geometry and phe-
nomenology I suggest the following interpretation for the concepts of
noesis and noema. 6 In order to make the geometrical model work, let us
first have a look at Husser!'s own terminology. For Husser!, intentional
experience (intentionales Erlebnis) consists of morfe or the noetic
component, and hyle, which Husser! also calls Data, Empjindungsdata,
Empjindungsinhalt, hyletische Data, stojJliche Data, and Stoffe. He tells
us that when the noetic component or morfe of intentional experience is
stressed, we may speak about noesis (ibid., pp. 207-212). Noesis is an
act. It may be any act, for example, perceptual, volitional or emotional
(ibid., p. 209, pp. 237 - 239 and p. 290). Besides being an act, noesis is
a form or a structure, because Husser! also calls the two components of
intentional experience stojJlose Formen and formlose Stoffe (ibid., p.
209). The task of noesis is thus to shape the hyletic material. Husser!'s
formulation resembles that of Kant's, who argues that intuition without
concept is blind and concept without intuition is empty (A 51/B 75). The
hyletic material may be a visual or an auditory sensation, but it may also
be an emotional or a volitional impulse. What is essential is that it is
matter without form given by noesis. These wordings suggest that we
could consider it as if it were detached from logical concepts and acts of
our consciousness, hence, from our ways of considering it. The phe-
nomenological project is meant to show that this apparently paradoxical
task can be performed by a phenomenologist, who carries out the
phenomenological analysis of what is given to consciousness.
Husser! argues that the task of noesis is Auffassung and Sinngebung
(ibid., p. 208). From the point of view of my interpretation, it is espe-
cially important to take account of the concept of AUffassung. It can be
translated as 'formal shaping', 'synthesis', 'apprehending', 'construing',
or 'constructing'. It goes without saying that in Husser!'s view the act of
consciousness refers to the object which is parenthesized. However,

within the limits drawn by the phenomenological attitude, each act has a
noema as the only object correlated with it. It is precisely the role of
noemas which is the most intricate part of Husserl's theory. Husserl
gives us examples of noemas such as the perceived object as perceived
(das Wahrgenommene als solches), the perceived tree as perceived (das
Baumwahrgenommene als solches), the remembered object as remem-
bered (das Erinnerte als solches), and the loved object as loved (das
Geliebte als solches) (ibid., pp. 218-222). He points out: "Analogous
statements hold, then, as one can easily see, for the emotional and voli-
tional spheres, for mental processes of liking and disliking, of valuing in
any sense, of wishing, deciding, acting. All these are mental processes
which contain many and often heterogeneous intentive strata, the noetic
and, correspondingly, also the noematic ones." (ibid., p. 237; Kersten,
p. 231.) I want to suggest that the model of geometry helps us to grasp
the true role of those curious entities called noemas.
Husserl points out that the noema belongs to the intentional expe-
rience but in a way different from noesis and hyle. He further argues
that there cannot be any noetic moment without noematic moment and
that infimae species on the noematic side refers backwards to the infimae
species on the noetic side (ibid., pp. 244-245 and p. 314). He states
that what is true for the noetic sphere is transferred to the noematic
sphere (ibid., p. 299). He also gives us the components of the noema,
which are quality (QualiUit) and matter (Materie). The noema receives
its quality from the act and its matter from the object, which is paren-
thesized (ibid., pp. 316-317 and p. 324). In addition to these pieces of
information, we know that noesis is an act which constructs and that hyle
can have no other origin than the object which is parenthesized, that is,
hyle has the very same origin as the material component of the noema.
But a true transcendentalist cannot say that an object causes the hyletic
data, because statements of this kind are not within the limits of phe-
nomenological researches. Husserl thinks that each noema has a 'content'
or 'sense', through which it is related to its object (ibid., p. 316). He
repeatedly points out that we can show noematic parallels to the concepts
pertaining to noesis. The judgment-qual ity, the wish-quality and so on
are nothing but 'posited' characteristics in the noematic sphere. The
'matter', that is, the 'what' which receives the posited characteristic
corresponds to the 'noematic core', in Husserl's terminology (ibid., p.

317).
Relying on these clues, I suggest that noesis is a kind of mental
work or mental constructing, which has hyle as its material, and the
noema is the finished work or the construction. This interpretation is
based on the similarities between geometry and phenomenology. If we
have a geometrical problem, for example, if we have to draw a triangle
the sides of which are known, our situation is the following. We have
three segments of a line, which is our material, and we also have our
geometrical knowledge or capacity. By means of these two we draw the
figure. When we have the triangle, we can analyze it and find in it the
material and the traces of our own work, that is, the traces of the
process of constructing. We can thus find in the construction both the
formless matter and the form which is our own contribution to the
construction.
It is in many ways useful to think that in phenomenology noesis is
the process of constructing and the noema is the finished work or the
construction. First, this interpretation preserves the true innovation of
Husserl's thought, which is the dynamic character of consciousness. The
geometrical model takes care of different kinds of acts which contribute
to the making up of our world. Our phenomenological objects, that is,
noemata, are not merely organized by means of concepts in sense-
perception but they are loved, hated, wished for and desired. The crucial
point in Husserl's critical thought is that even if our world seems to be
given to us as it is in itself, it turns out to be our own construction. We
can then go backwards both to our material, that is, to sensations and to
emotional and volitional impulses, and to the cognitive perceptual,
emotional, and volitional acts by means of which we have constructed
our phenomenological world. The given objects which we have are like
the model-figures for one who tries to solve geometrical problems. They
can be analyzed, which is precisely what a phenomenologist does. By
means of the method of analysis, he finds the constituents of the given
objects, that is, noemas which are the results of constructing-activities.
There is one more merit in the geometrical model. That is, it helps
us to clarify what Husserl thinks about judgements. That is because
among Husserl's noeses and noemas there is the noesis called judging
(urtei/en) and the noema called the judged as judged or the judgement
(das Geurteilte als solches or das Urteil). On the geometrical model, we

may say that judging is constructing, which requires the very act of
judging, the logical concepts or forms, and hyle, which is the empirical
material. Moreover, this model tells us that the judgement is a construc-
tion, which has both the component from the cognitive act and the
component from the object which is parenthesized, that is, the material
component. From judgements the phenomenologist can go backwards to
the process of constructing, in which empirical material is manipulated
by means of logical forms and by means of the very act of judging. This
kind of analysis shows him the true structure and the origin of judge-
ments.
But what does it mean that such acts as believing, being afraid of
and judging construct a world? This is a metaphor which we understand
as far as we understand metaphorical language. When the acts of con-
sciousness and the acts of saying construct, they do something similar to
what a carpenter does when he makes a table or to what one who solves
a geometrical problem does when drawing an equilateral triangle. If we
understand what concrete building or constructing is, we may have some
kind of idea of what the constructing activities of consciousness might
be.
THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY

AND INTUITION
In his book entitled The Semantic Tradition From Kant To Carnap, J.

Alberto Coffa argues that the semantic tradition represented by Bolzano,
Frege and Carnap, among others, sought to get rid of every resort to
intuition, which was taken to be one of Kant's troubles. Coffa states:
"The semantic tradition may be defined by its problem, its enemy, its
goal, and its strategy. Its problem was the a priori; its enemy, Kant's
pure intuition; its purpose, to develop a conception of the a priori in
which pure intuition played no role; its strategy, to base the theory on a
development of semantics." (Coffa, 1991, p. 22). Coffa points out that
those who reacted against Kant helped to determine that concepts without
intuition are not empty (ibid., p. 140).
However, besides the tradition which tried to get rid of references
to intuition, there were lines of thought which preserved them and even
tried to clarify the various meanings of the word 'intuition'. Those were
the traditions which emphasized the iconic nature of all thinking and rea-
soning. Peirce was a representative of this line of thought, but Frege
must also have relied on the same view, as his conceptual notation so
much appeals to our visual intuition. This is quite compatible with the
fact that he wished to get rid of references to intuition in logical and
hence also mathematical reasoning. No doubt, clarifications of the very
concept of intuition were badly needed. In his early thought, Charles
Peirce paid attention to the ambiguity of the word 'intuition' and
remarked that "it is plainly one thing to have an intuition and another to
know intuitively that it is an intuition" (W 2, pp. 193 -194). When
Frege tried to fix the meaning of the word, he started with Kant's usage,
according to which intuitions are individual representations (Kant, 1923,
pp. 92-93; Frege, GLA, § 12). However, this is not to say that Frege
approved of Kant's way of using that term. Nor is it to say that Kant did
not give other meanings for the word 'intuition'. Frege's explicit state-
ments witness that Frege did not think highly of intuitions. Unlike him,
Charles Peirce in his later thought praised Kant for realizing the fact that
in drawing consequences the mathematician uses constructions or dia-
grams (CP, 3.560). He even claimed that the whole of inference consists
in the observation of icons which are mental creations (CP, 7.557).
Peirce paid special attention to Euclid's Elements, which he saw as a
model of reasoning. In his Monist article (1908), he distinguished
between corollarial and theorematic reasoning and stressed the use of
figures in both types (CP, 4.616). In his view, theorematic reasoning
was characterized by the use of auxiliary constructions, but constructions
are needed in the ekthesis of both kinds of reasoning.
As we saw above, the geometrical model plays an important role in
Husserl's phenomenological studies in the Ideen. However, some fea-
tures in Husserl's doctrine of noesis and noema can be traced back to his
distinction between meaning-intention and meaning-fulfilment, which is
introduced in the Logische Untersuchungen. It is interesting to see how
the concept of intuition adopts various roles in Husserl's early theory
and how these different roles pave the way for the comparison between
geometry and phenomenology which is emphasized in the Ideen. In the
Logische Untersuchungen and in the Ideen Husserl has at least three
ways of using the word 'intuition', which are intuition as an act, intui-
tion as an individual and intuition as a method. What follows is not the
whole story of Husserl's concept of intuition. It merely seeks to illu-
minate the aspect of that concept which connects the role of the geomet-
rical model in the Logische Untersuchungen with its role in the Ideen.
In the first investigation of the second volume of the Logische
Untersuchungen, Husserl states that it is essential for an expression to
mean something, hence, to be related to what is objective; however, if
an expression functions significantly but lacks an intuition which gives
its object, its relation to an object is unrealized (LU II, A 37 -38/Bl
37 -38). Husserl distinguishes between meaning-intentions, or meaning-
conferring acts, and meaning-fulfilling acts which serve to realize the
relation of an expression to something objective. Meaning-fulfilling acts
do not seem to be essential to the expression, but they merely serve to
fulfil, confirm or illustrate the expression, hence, to actualize its relation
to its object.
It is already in the Logische Untersuchungen that Husserl compares
his own phenomenological studies with geometry. On the basis of what
Husserl tells us it seems that geometrical concepts correspond to the
meaning-intentions of expressions and that geometrical illustrations
correspond to meaning-fulfilments in intuition (LU II, A 65/Bl 65).
Husserl does not appear to lay much stress on the role of illustrations in
geometry. However, he admits that sensuous pictures function in a
phenomenologically graspable and describable manner; they are aids of
understanding (ibid.). Husserl thinks that both expressions and geometri-
cal concepts can function without illustrative intuition (LU II, A 66/Bl
66). Still, he asks why we employ corresponding intuitions at all in
order to know conceptual truths, which are truths known through an
analysis of meanings (LU II, A 711Bl 71). He answers that we construct
corresponding intuitions in order to see what the expressions really mean
(ibid.). He even states that all self-evidence of judgement presupposes
meanings that are intuitively fulfilled (LU II, A 72/Bl 72). Hence, what
Husserl comes to suggest is that an analysis of the meanings of words
is not merely analysis of meaning-intentions. What is also needed are
meaning-fulfilments which serve to realize the intentions. He concludes
that "analysis is not ... concerned with empty thought-intentions, but
with the objects and forms by which they are fulfilled" (ibid.).
Interesting conclusions can be drawn from what we know about

HusserI's view of intuitions. First, in the Logische Untersuchungen,
HusserI states that intuitions are representatives of concepts. Second, he
assumes that intuitions are needed in order that we are able to proceed
with the method of analysis. Hence, in HusserI's view, we are not able
to analyze meanings if they are not objectified. Third, in the Ideen
Husserl writes that the method of the science called phenomenology is
analysis, which is the same as the method of intuition (HusserI, 1950,
pp. 40-44 and p. 153). All this suggests that both HusserI's concept of
intuition and his concept of noema have something to do with the
concept of geometrical construction. For HusserI, the essential feature of
intuitiveness is individuality. If we construct an individual which corre-
sponds to a given conceptual form, we also know what the individual is
made of, that is, we can give an analysis of the individual. It thus seems
that in the textual contexts to which I referred above, the noemas of the
Ideen play the same role as the meaning-fulfilments of the Logische
Untersuchungen. This construal of HusserI's doctrine contradicts the
standard view, which, admittedly, can also be supported by HusserI's
texts. On that view, the objects of the real worId are meaning-fulfil-
ments.
INTUITIONS AS CONSTRUCTIONS
The work of intuitionistic or constructivistic mathematicians and logi-

cians, who have developed various theories of constructions, has close
affinity with HusserI's doctrine of meaning-intention and meaning-
fulfilment. Here I shall summarize the main points of the discussion
which has been going on in recent decades. I shall mainly rely on Sund-
holm (1983) and Tieszen (1989), who have referred to the views pre-
sented by Heyting (1931, 1956), Kolmogoroff (1932), Kreisel (1962),
and Martin-LOf (1970, 1975). Moreover, I shall try to make explicit at
which point my use of the geometrical model differs from these theories.
As we saw above, Knorr points out that the activity of investigating
problems of construction was prominent in ancient geometry and that
what was primarily applicable to problems was then transferred to
theorems. The primacy of problems was emphasized by writers who
were close to the actual work of geometers. Knorr notes that Plato's
philosophy gave rise to an opposite view, according to which theorems
were the proper objects of geometry, as they were taken to be eternal
and unchanging verities (Knorr, 1986, p. 351). Theorems had being
absolutely, they were not constructed. Constructing geometrical figures
seemed to be a lower activity typical of human beings, who are close to
what can be perceived through the senses.
In contemporary theories of constructions, including constructive
semantics, the key idea has been that problems are taken to be concep-
tually primary, and the proofs of logical and mathematical theorems are
considered via the model given by geometrical problems. Tieszen (1989)
has tied this kind of approach to Husserl's distinction between the
meaning-intentions and the meaning-fulfilments of expressions, that is,
between meaning-intentions and intuitions. He has developed a theory of
mathematical intuition on the basis of Husserl's distinction. Even if
Tieszen is committed to a version of mediator-theory in his interpretation
of Husserl, his approach is related to the geometrical model, particularly
to geometrical problem-solving. He supports the view ascribed by Sund-
holm to Heyting, according to which "the meaning of a proposition is
explained in terms of what constructions have to be carried out in order
to prove the proposition" (Sundholm, 1983, p. 160).
It is easy to understand that problems are tasks of a certain kind. In
the contemporary theories of constructions propositions are also consid-
ered to be tasks, namely, tasks of carrying out proofs. As Sundholm puts
it, the proposition itself is not a theorem, but every theorem is of the
form: "A proposition has been proved" (ibid., p. 161). Hence, to carry
out a proof is to construct a theorem. A given logical or mathematical
proposition expresses a meaning-intention, that is, it expresses an inten-
tion towards a proof construction (ibid., p. 152). Sundholm points out
that Heyting already noticed the connection between propositions and
problems; propositions pose problems which are solved by carrying out
constructions (ibid., pp. 157 -159). Hence, in Husserl's terms, if logical
or mathematical propositions express meaning-intentions, to fulfil them
is to produce intuitions, which mean constructions or proofs for those
propositions.
This very idea comes up in constructive semantics for logical
constants, in which logical constants are defined in terms of construc-
tions. The construction conditions give the meanings for the logical
vocabulary of propositional and predicate calculus. For example, a
construction for S & T consists of a construction for S and a construc-
tion for T (fieszen, 1989, pp. 84-85). As Sundholm points out, the
word 'construction' is ambiguous. It can mean at least (a) the process of
construction, (b) the object obtained as the result of a process of con-
struction, and (c) the construction-process as an object rather than as
something 'dynamic' (Sundholm, 1983, p. 164).
Where does the difference between my interpretational model and
the described model lie? No doubt there are important similarities.
However, as Husserl does not propose a theory of inference, that is, as
he is interested in making worlds and in describing them phenomenologi-
cally, his theory is directly connected with geometrical problems rather
than with geometrical theorems. We might say that Tieszen's view of
mathematical intuition is a development or an extension of Husserl's
phenomenology considered via the geometrical model. What Tieszen as
well as intuitionistic logicians and mathematicians add to the discussion
is their interest in proofs and theorems, hence, the problem of the
justification of inferential steps and the justification of the end-states of
the processes of construction.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH DREYFUS'S COMPARISON?
It is now time to return to where we started, namely, to the comparisons

between transcendental phenomenology and the computational theory of
mind.
The difference between the two interpretational models discussed
above, which were the mediator-theory and the object-theory, can be
illuminated by taking into account what Pavel Tichy (1988) tells us about
the history of the concept of function. Tichy distinguishes between two
ways of thinking about arithmetic. There was the 'naive' view in the
history of mathematics until the late nineteenth century, according to
which arithmetical expressions name certain constructions or calcula-
tions. Unlike this early position, the modern view regards numbers and
numerical functions as the proper subject matter of arithmetic and
construes functions as mappings from arguments to the values of func-
tions (Tichy, 1988, pp. 4-5 and p. 11). Tichy argues that Frege wavers
between these two views in his logic and that this hesitation explains a
great deal of the inconsistencies that can be found in his logical theory
(ibid.).
Tichfs view concerns all expressions which have function-names as
their parts. Hence, for example, the expression 'the author of Waverley'
contains the function-name 'the author of x', which remains in the value
of the function 'the author of Waverley' together with the argument
'Waverley'. Tichy remarks that Frege's confusion consists in that he
does not realize the difference between two operations; it is one thing to
apply a mapping to an argument and another thing to form the composi-
tion of the two (Tichy, 1988, p. 99). As Tichy points out, when we
apply a mapping to an argument, we get an object in which the mapping
and the argument are lost. However, this is not what happens in Frege's
logic. Therefore, Tichy concludes that Frege's examples are examples of
forming compositions of functions and their arguments. What we get
when we form compositions are constructions in which both the mapping
and the argument are preserved. Tichy argues that Frege's notion of
functional saturation is problematic, since in that concept the two views
are conflated; Frege regards the saturation as the value of a function at
an argument, but simultaneously he wants that the result contains both
the function and the argument (ibid.). However, rather than worrying
about the possible inconsistences in Frege's thought, we may pay atten-
tion to certain interesting features which come up in his concept of
function. It is interesting in itself that the expressions of Frege's concep-
tual notation both name what is produced by construction and preserve
the traces of the process of constructing.
The mediator-theory, already described above, relies on the idea that
both Frege's Sinne and Husserl's noemas are like rules or functions in
the modern sense, that is, given a linguistic expression or a mental act,
they pick out a reference or an object which does not contain traces of
any construction process. The rules simply serve to pick out an object in
the world. On the contrary, the geometrical model takes it to be the case
that Husserl's noemas are the very objects which a phenomenologist is
interested in, and these phenomenological objects are not formal rules or
mappings but they are more like values of functions, which preserve the
traces of the process of construction. Hence, according to the mediator-
theory, the noemas are like mappings, whereas according to the geomet-
rical model, noemas are like values of functions in the old sense describ-
ed by Tichy, as they preserve the traces of the construction process.
What, then, could make Husserl's theory in the Ideen a computa-
tional theory of representations? The claim that Husserl anticipates Fodor
and the classical AI presupposes the kind of interpretation of the concept
of noema which Dreyfus outlines. According to Dreyfus, the noema is
a hierarchy of rules. First, reference is provided by predicate-senses
which are claimed to correspond to Fregean Sinne. Second, predicate-
senses are determined by a rule, and thus a description of the object
picked out is provided. Third, there are higher-order rules which deter-
mine what the other predicates are that can be applied to the object so
that it still remains the same object (Dreyfus, 1982, pp. 7 - 8). What
makes Husserl a proponent of the computational theory of mind under
Dreyfus's construal is the fact that noemas are taken to be purely formal
structures and that the predicate-senses are assumed to pick out and
describe the object on the basis of their shapes alone (ibid., p. 10).
I do not want to claim that Dreyfus's interpretation does not fit in
with important parts of Husserl's texts. What I want to claim, however,
is that there are equally significant parts of the textual material which
come to sound quite odd if we translate them into Dreyfus's terminolo-
gy. However, there is a way of presenting Dreyfus's theory which shows
where the difference between his and McIntyre's, on the one hand, and
my construal, on the other, lies. If we assume, as I have done, that
Husserl regards noemas as finished constructions which refer backwards
to the process of constructing by showing traces of that process, then we
may say that noemas show how they are constructed because both the
function and the argument, meaning both the character of the act and
logical forms together with hyletic material, are preserved in the finished
construction. Dreyfus assumes that noemas are like mappings or func-
tions in the sense which Tichy would regard as modern. On my con-
strual, noemas are like results of geometrical constructing activities and
these constructings are like computations or functions in the old sense of
the term 'function' as described by Tichy. It seems that the difference
between Dreyfus's and my approach comes from the fact that Dreyfus is
committed to the mediator-theory of noemas also represented by
McIntyre. If the case is as I have argued, that noemas are full-fledged
230 LEILA HAAP ARANTA
objects, they cannot be mere structures, rules or instructions for making

objects.
Furthermore, what can we say about Dreyfus's claim that Husserl's
theory is a syntactic theory of the mind (Dreyfus, 1982, p. 11)? It is
worth noting that we have not get rid of forms, even if we interpret
Husserl's doctrine via the geometrical model; the forms or structures still
reside in pure consciousness. Both Dreyfus (1982) and McIntyre (1986)
argue that Husserl's methodological standpoint, meaning the use of
phenomenological reductions or bracketings, and Fodor's methodological
solipsism are on a par. Indeed, this seems to be the case, as Fodor votes
for the view that "there is an important sense in which how the world is
makes no difference to one's mental states" (Fodor, 1982, p. 280). Both
Husserl and Fodor proceed as if the mind could be without the natural
world, even if they do not deny the existence of the world independently
of the mind. Husserl's step from the natural to the phenomenological
attitude, which presupposes the Aujhebung of the thesis of the natural
attitude, results in a position which can be characterized as methodolog-
ical solipsism. In this specific sense we may say, as Dreyfus does, that
Fodor has rediscovered the phenomenological theory of cognition.
None the less, there is a crucial difference in spirit between Hus-
serl's and Fodor's views of the mind. For Husserl, noemas, including
judgements, are drawings of the mind, which contain the material given
by senses, logical concepts and the traces of the characters of acts, such
as perceivings, wishings for, lovings and so on. It is overt action that
serves as the model of the mind for Husser!. On the contrary, for Fodor
the model is the computer which calculates. Fodor's computer does not
make constructions like geometers. For Fodor, humans are more like
rule-followers, while for Husserl, they use their creative power to con-
struct something that has its being only in virtue of human activity.
University of Helsinki
NOTES
• I have used extracts from my article 'What Was the Method of

Modern Logic?', published in L. Haaparanta, M. Kusch, and I. Niini-
luoto (eds.), Language, Knowledge, and Intentionality: Perspectives on

the Philosophy ofJaakko Hintikka, Acta Philosophica Fennica 49, 1990,
pp. 97 -109, by permission of the Philosophical Society of Finland.
I wish to thank Ms. Helja Mantyranta, who has kindly revised my
English.
1 See Haaparanta (1990). Also see Haaparanta, forthcoming. The
work is an attempt to show that Husserl, Frege and Peirce considered
judgements via the model of geometrical problem-solving, that is, they
took them to be like geometrical figures whose constitution can be
shown by means of the method of analysis.
2 In my presentation of Fodor, I have benefited from discussions
with Ms. Sara Heinamaa.
3 See Haaparanta, forthcoming.
4 See Haaparanta (1990) and Haaparanta, forthcoming.
5 See Euclid, Book XIII, Prop. 1, and Pappus (1965), Vol. II, pp.
634-635.
6 See Haaparanta (1990).
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Mathematische Zeitschrift 35, 58-65.
Kreisel, G.: 1962, 'Foundations ofIntuitionistic Logic', in E. Nagel, P.
Suppes and A. Tarski (eds.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of
Science, Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp. 198-210.
Martin-LOf, P.: 1970, Notes on Constructive Mathematics, Almqvist and
Wiksell, Stockholm.
Martin-LOf, P.: 1975, 'An Intuitionistic Theory of Types: Predicative
Part', in H.E. Rose and J.C. Shepherdson (eds.), Logic Colloquium
'73, North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 73 -118.
McIntyre, R.: 1986, 'Husserl and the Representational Theory of Mind',
Topoi 5, 101-13; repr. in J.-C. Smith (ed.), Historical Foundations
of Cognitive Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/
Boston/London, 1990, pp. 211-33.
Pappus: 1965, Collectionis quae supersunt, 3 Vols., Weidmann, Berlin,
1876-78; Adolf M. Hakkert.
Peirce, C.S.: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. I-VI,
ed. by C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, 1931-1935, and Vols Vll- Vlll, ed. by A. Burks,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1958. (Referred to as CP.)
Peirce, C.S.: Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition,
Vols 2, 3 and 4, Indiana University Press, Indiana, Vol. 2, ed. by
E. Moore et aI., 1984, Vol. 3, ed. by J.W. Kloesel et aI., 1986,
Vol. 4, ed. by J.W. Kloesel et aI., 1986. (Referred to as W.)
Smith, D.W. and R. McIntyre: 1982, Husserl and Intentionality: A
Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Sundholm, G.: 1983, 'Constructions, Proofs and the Meaning of Logical
Constants', Journal of Philosophical Logic 12, 151-72.
Tichy, P.: 1988, The Foundations ofFrege's Logic, Walter de Gruyter,
Berlin and New York.
Tieszen, R.: 1989, Mathematical Intuition: Phenomenology and Mathe-
matical Knowledge, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
DALLAS WILLARD
mE INTEGRITY OF mE MENTAL ACT:

HUSSERLIAN REFLECTIONS ON A FREGIAN PROBLEM
There is a general structure present in the event of something standing

before us as the object of our consciousness. Obviously, for not just any
event is an event of this sort. Such an event must be one with charac-
teristic parts, interrelated in a definite manner, for it is a whole of a
certain specific type. No one denies this, and it is hard to see what might
be meant by a denial of it. But to give a plausible account of exactly
what those parts are and of how they interrelate has good claim to being
the problem of philosophy - and certainly so if we restrict ourselves to
the modern and contemporary periods of Western philosophy. Of those
who have focussed on this problem in the last one hundred years or so,
none are of greater historical significance than Gottlob Frege and Ed-
mund Husserl. The similarities and contrasts in how they approach the
problem of the mind/object nexus, and in the results they achieve,
suggests that a comparative study of them might be especially illumi-
nating of 'the fact itself.'
Frege's discussions of 'sense' and 'reference' are generally conceded
to be milestones in recent philosophy. Strangely enough, however,
almost no one working currently would accept his explicitly stated
interpretations of what Sinn and Bedeutung are or of how they fulfill the
role assigned to them in an account of representation, judgment and
linguistic meaning. The most sympathetic of commentators often go to
considerable lengths in spelling out how badly wrong Frege went -
especially in his interpretation of the 'sense,' and, more specifically still,
in his views on the 'Thought,' the propositional subclass of senses. With
very few exceptions they eventually replace what he called 'sense,' and
possibly even his 'reference,' with something essentially 'linguistic' -
in some liberal or even vague sense of the term, no doubt, but almost
certainly contrary to his own intent.
235
236 DALLAS WILLARD
In part, this curious combination of admiration and rejection (in the

form of 'interpretation') is due to the fact that Frege was certainly one
of the greatest logicians who ever lived, while at the same time being an
emphatic ontological dualist, an epistemological realist, a Platonist (a
realist 'in the Medieval sense'), and an anti-empiricist. Moreover, he
spoke with venomous contempt of "that mighty academic positivistic
scepticism which now < in the 1890's> prevails in Germany" (CP, p.
181)1 - a perspective which can fairly be said to remain, with super-
ficial modifications, the dominant ideational force in Anglo-American
('Analytic') philosophy yet today. Thus Joan Weiner correctly points out
that "He turns out to be positively hostile to some of the most prominent
views attributed to him, and widely held by our philosophical peers.,,2
His theory of sense and reference naturally takes its substance from his
general philosophical outlook, and one cannot consistently reject the
latter and retain the former. So sense and reference must be re-inter-
preted by many of his contemporary admirers. Still, this is a only a part
of the problem for a contemporary understanding of Frege. For, as we
shall see, there are objections to his analyses which are not traceable to
his general position and thus might be raised even by those who share it.
The outlines of Frege's analysis are widely known. Because of the
special problems about meaning and knowledge that concern him, he
attempts to interpret the act/object nexus in terms of a three-fold distinc-
tion between reference (Bedeutung), sense (Sinn) and 'idea' (Vorstel-
lung). Intuitively, our consciousness must be dealing with a specific
subject matter in any given case, there must be a way it is available to
us, and our experience must consist in something in its own right. Now
the 'reference' falls, according to him, on the object side of the nexus.
The moon is one of his favorite illustrations. Thus in a familiar passage
he says that "The reference of a proper name is the object itself which
we designate by using it. The 'idea' which we have in designating the
object is wholly subjective. Between object and 'idea' lies the sense,
which certainly is no longer subjective, like the 'idea', but is yet not the
object itself." (CP, p. 160) For any representation the corresponding
'reference' is the object that 'falls under' the concept or sense involved
in the representation. On the other hand, the sense is or contains the
'way' in which that object is given to the act (of judgment or represen-
tation) - e.g. a certain number as the successor to five. It is also called
THE INTEGRITY OF THE MENTAL ACT 237
the 'mode of presentation' of the reference to the mind. (CP, p. 158P

Where the sense concerned is not a mere concept, but is a Thought, as
with the question or judgment, it is regarded by Frege as what is
thought, e. g. that the successor to five is divisible by three.
'Vorstellung,' finally, usually translated by 'idea,' is Frege's word
for what seems to be the most obvious part of the stuff that literally
makes up the event or activity - the 'mental act' - of judgment or
representation. The exact nature of this 'stuff' is of course one of the
most contested questions in all of philosophy and psychology. But when
Frege speaks of 'ideas' he nearly always has in mind subjective, private
images, and his arguments often hinge on this usage. However, an
important footnote to his 'Uber Sinn und Bedeutung' indicates his
awareness that sense impressions and mental 'activities' take the place of
'ideas' in our sense perceptions - although such impressions and activi-
ties are supplemented by memories, a special type of 'idea,' to complete
the intuitive image that perception always involves. (CP 160n and 161)
'Ideas' are described in this note as 'traces' left in the soul by sense
impressions plus mental activities.
Thus we have what may be called 'the focal triad' in Frege's
analysis. But he is very much aware that the task is not just to under-
stand the sense and reference of judgments or of associated linguistic
expressions. Rather, we have to account for our consciousness and
possibly our knowledge of objects. This is indicated by many passages
in his writings. We do not in reality have complexes of sense/referencel
Vorstellungen floating about doing interesting semantic or epistemic
things. We have persons representing, inquiring and making judgments
about objects, and occasionally coming to knowledge of them. The
sense/referencelVorsteliungen structure is introduced to help us under-
stand our consciousness of objects. The central paper, 'Uber Sinn und
Bedeutung,' makes this clear. Its aim is not to provide an analysis of
sense and reference, but to explain our knowledge of non-trivial identi-
ties, some of which are, as Frege indicates, among the most important
discoveries in the history of science. 4 So what we have to understand is
not the union of sense with reference, carefully avoiding confusion of
sense or reference with Vorstellungen. Rather, we want to understand
how the person - or 'soul', as Frege sometimes says - comes into that
peculiar union with objects which we describe by saying that the person
238 DALLAS WILLARD
is aware of or conscious of the object, inquires and makes judgments

concerning it, and perhaps even has knowledge of it. The total picture
here involves five interrelated terms, not three as in the focal triad:
1. The person ('soul').

2. The act of thought or judgment (with all its parts, qualities and
relations - including 'ideas').
3. The sense (concepts or combinations thereof, including Thoughts).
4. The characteristics of the object (qualities, relations).
5. The object or reference (Bedeutung).
Now the basic problem is to understand what it is for 1 to be

conscious of 5. We see immediately that the structure from 1 to 5
manifests a progressive dependence, not to be interpreted tempo rail y.
The person cognizes the object only in virtue of the act, the act is
directed upon the object only in virtue of the sense, the sense applies to
the object only in virtue of the characteristics which belong to the object,
and - in some fashion that is obvious but hard to spell out - the
characteristics belong to the object because of what it is. Although the
overwhelmingly anti-realist bent of recent philosophy may balk at
accepting such a neat scheme of things, I doubt that this - still largely
indeterminate - interpretation of the overall structure joining 1 to 5 in
cognition can be much improved upon except in specificity, and I am
sure that Frege, as well as Husserl, basically accepted it. How they
made out the details of it is the point of our concern here, which lead us
to examine some of the more important problems posed for this overall
structure by Frege's use of his 'focal triad.' These problems nest mainly
around two points of articulation in the structure: the connection between
the mental or linguistic act and the sense or Thought, and that between
the act (or expression) and the object. The connection between the act
and the other acts which make up the cognitive life of the person also
raises important issues for Frege, but we will only mention these occa-
sionally as we deal with other matters.
1. We begin our critique with the first point. Since for Frege the
primary unit of cognition and meaning is the judgment and its corre-
sponding sense, the Thought, we shall concentrate on the Thought and
leave the other types of senses aside for the most part. What, according
to Frege, is the relationship between the mental act and the Thought? In
answering this question the first thing to say is that the Sinn (concept,
Thought) is somehow before the mind, that the mind is aware of it,
'grasps' it. It stands over against and is present to (gegenUbersteht; CP
377) the mind. The 'grasping' ifassen) of a Thought-sense is what Frege
calls 'thinking' (das Denken). It presupposes 'a special mental capacity,
the power of thinking' (CP 368), and is what occurs, for example, in the
posing of a question. (CP 355 - 356) It is the first level of aboutness,
ofness or 'intentionality' - though he does not use this term - found in
the act/object complex according to Frege, and upon which any further
extension of consciousness or referring depends. He says that "The
metaphors that underlie the expressions we use when we speak of
grasping a thought, of conceiving, laying hold of, seizing, understanding
... put the matter in essentially the right perspective." (PW 1375 , cf. CP
368-369) But it is here no matter of judgment, for "We can think
without making a judgment. " (PW 34) "Inwardly to recognize something
as true is to make a judgement. " (PW 2)
'Thinking' is, as Bertrand Russell and others around the turn of the
century used to say, merely a matter of 'entertaining' a proposition.
"The thought does not belong with the contents of the thinker's con-
sciousness," Frege holds, but "there must be something in his conscious-
ness that is aimed at the thought." (" etwas aUf den Gedanken hinzieien, "
CP 369) However, the thought-sense is not private, for "everyone who
grasps it encounters it in the same way, as the same thought." (PW 133)
The 'aiming at' is the thinking, the 'grasp.' "The grasp of a thought
presupposes someone who grasps it, who thinks. He is the owner of the
thinking, not of the thought." (CP 369; cf 383) Every thought, true or
false, "is eternal and independent of being thought by anyone and of the
psychological makeup of anyone thinking it." (PW 174;cf. CP 377-
378) And if it is true, it" ... is true independently of our recognizing it as
such .... " (PW 2)
Now Frege confesses, in some of his notes published posthumously,
that the nature of this 'aiming' at the sense involved in an act of cogni-
tion is mysterious. Discussing the law of gravitation as a case of a
thought-sense, he is making the point that we do not create the law by
thinking it, since it holds true indifferently of whatever comes and goes
in human minds. Then he introduces the objection: "But still the grasp-
240 DALLAS WILLARD
ing of this law is a mental process!" To which he replies:
Yes, indeed, but it is a process which takes place on the very

confines of the mental and which for that reason cannot be com-
pletely understood from a purely psychological standpoint. For in
grasping the law something comes into view whose nature is no
longer mental in the proper sense, namely the thought; and this
process is perhaps the most mysterious of all. But just because it is
mental in character we do not need to concern ourselves with it in
logic. It is enough for us that we can grasp thoughts and recognize
them to be true; how this takes place is a question in its own right.
(pW 145)
In a footnote he then adds that the difficulties of this question are

usually overlooked by treating thinking as a matter of having images, or
what he calls 'ideas'. As is well-known, Frege, like Kant, believed that
"everyone would remain shut up in his inner world" but for a non-
imagable or 'non-sensible something' that somehow combined with
private contents of our minds. (CP 369) For Kant, of course, this
'something' consisted of 'actions' performed by the transcendental ego
upon contents. For Frege the 'something' is the Sinne which are 'aimed
at.' Here is a striking difference between the two thinkers, and one often
overlooked by those who like to read Frege as Kantian.
Now this 'aiming at' or 'grasping' which is present in the stuff of
our consciousness, bringing the thought or sense together with the
mental act and hence with the mind or person, looks very much like an
act/object nexus in its own right. Gregory Currie interprets Frege as
holding that "it is exactly Thoughts which are the direct objects of our
knowledge. "6 This seems on the whole a plausible interpretation, and it
is one shared by others. However, the grasping of the thought cannot be
the act/object nexus simply, for that 'grasping' is supposed to explain the
nexus, and hence must significantly differ therefrom. Unlike the inten-
tionality of the 'ordinary' act/object nexus, the 'object' here, the
Thought, must exist if the act does. The famous 'intentional inexistence
of the object' is ruled out. Frege does not allow that we might 'aim at'
a thought in thinking it and it not exist. True, the Thought is not for him
an element of the act of consciousness. It "does not belong with the
contents of the thinker's consciousness" (CP 369), and also does not
depend upon consciousness, as we have seen. But on the other hand the
act of consciousness certainly does depend on the Thought as one of its
necessary conditions. No Thought, no act - or, for that matter, no
sentence as a meaningful linguistic unit.
It is this fact that leads Frege - in the last paragraphs of his paper,
'Der Gedanke,' and following an established usage in German philoso-
phy in his times - to treat the Thought as capable of being a real factor
in the course of the natural world, and hence as 'actual' (wirklich). Now
this is a view which can easily be misunderstood today. Currie points
out: For Frege "the mind grasps a Thought; on this view the state of
mind is altered by its contact with a thought, and this is supposed to
show that the thought acts upon the mind." He interprets this as saying
that the Thought itself played a "role in bringing about that mental
event," and, strangely, holds it to derive from Frege's concern to show
that "thinking is not just a psychological process.,,7 But the Wirklichkeit
of an object in Frege's historical context does not require that it act upon
or bring about things or events in the manner of the efficient cause. It is
enough that it be a condition of them.
The Thought clearly is, for Frege, a condition, though not a cause
of the act of thought - which then in turn may be a cause of events and
things in the world of actuality. The airplanes and skyscrapers we have
depend for their existence upon certain persons having had certain
Thoughts. Yet, while "Thoughts are not wholly unactual...their actuality
is quite different from the actuality of things. And their action is brought
about by a performance of the thinker; without this they would be
inactive .... and they are not wholly unactual even then, at least if they
could be grasped and so brought into action." (CP 371-372) Here we
see Frege, driven by the intuitions of genius, assigning comparative
degrees (more or less 'actual') in a progression the possibility and nature
of which remains in the dark. Similarly above, where he wants to locate
the 'grasping' of the thought at the 'very confines' of the mental. - As
opposed to what? And precisely how opposed? He introduces certain
factors into the act/object nexus to solve problems that obsess him, but
he has no general ontology in terms of which those very factors can be
made sense of.
What, unlike Currie's concerns with causation, remains genuinely
242 DALLAS WILLARD
puzzling on Frege's view is the role of the Thought as necessary condi-

tion, when its only relation to the act or mind is supposed to be that of
'object.' Frege wanted to keep the Thought objective in its existence and
nature and literally shareable among many thinkers, and he tries to do
this by locating the grasping on 'the very confines' of the mental. But,
as just noted, he never provides the expositions which would allow us to
understand what that means. Something is either mental or not, we might
well think. What is it for the 'grasping' to be at the outer limits and
impossible "to be completely understood from a purely psychological
standpoint." What is the impurely psychological standpoint from which
it might be completely understood. Logic deals with psychologically
indifferent relationships between Sinne. Frege's problematic of saving
the objectivity of logic drove him to make Sinne so anti-psychological
that the role they play as necessary conditions in the psychological
sphere becomes unintelligible. Yet he cannot deny that role. The noetic
or rational structure of the act and mind fall between the stools of
psychology and logic, being unable to sit on either.
We have been looking at the bearing of the Thought on the act and
mind, but the same lack of intelligible connection found there presents
itself in another guise when we look at the bearing of the act upon the
thought. Passages quoted above clearly show that Sinne are in object
position with reference to the act in which they function as 'mode of
presentation.' In the act they are 'aimed at.'
Criticisms of this aspect of Frege's views are widely known. The
role of the sense for Frege is to enable us to bring objects other than
senses before the mind. "Although what we think about," Baker and
Hacker comment, "may be perceptible, concrete, mental, or abstract,
what we think is, in Frege's view, never anything other than abstract,,,8
namely the sense, and especially the Thought-sense. David Bell, among
others, points out that this leads to an infinite regress. If we need a sense
to grasp an object, and the sense grasped is itself an object, then we
shall need a sense to grasp a sense to grasp an object, and so ad infi-
nitum. 9 Elsewhere Bell laments that, since Frege holds Thoughts to
"exist prior to and independently of their being grasped or expressed by
any person, he is forced to represent the relation between a person and
a Thought, and also between a Thought and the language which ex-
presses it, as arbitrary and non-complex." (p. 110)
But is the prior and independent existence attributed to Thoughts by

Frege really the culprit here? I think not. It is conceivable that the
Thoughts should be prior and independent and their connection to the
thinker nevertheless not 'arbitrary and non-complex.' The real problem
here is that we are used to thinking that there must be something within
the makeup of the mental or linguistic act that is responsible for its
picking out whatever it does in fact pick out as object. Frege certainly
concedes this with reference to objects generally, but then suddenly
presents us with an exception when it comes to the 'grasping' of a
Thought-sense. Of all the infinite Sinne there are, the mind in a given
act just 'arbitrarily' seizes or lands on this one? It could equally well
have been any other?
The objection is not just that the grasping of a sense is something
'odd' or 'mysterious.' Perhaps that alone should never be regarded as
objectionable in philosophical work, since ultimately everything is pretty
strange. It is that we have here an obvious special case of mental selec-
tivityor 'intentionality' which raises serious questions within the frame-
work of Frege's analysis. If we can 'pick out' an objective Thought-
sense that is not mental, not a part of the mental act, without a sense
through which it presents itself, why can we not pick out any other thing
- abstract, mental, or even something in the 'external' world - without
an intervening sense? If acts generally require a sense to determine their
objects, why is this changed when the object is a sense? Frege intends to
explain intentionality generally in terms of Sinne, but then it turns out
that the 'having' of senses which founds intentionality presupposes
intentional ity.
We cannot helpfully reply that the senses are in the mind, and that
that is what makes it possible to 'grasp' them without utilizing a further
sense. For that is precisely what Frege denies. But even if he did not
deny it - even if he allowed or held them to be 'mental', in the manner
of John Locke's 'ideas', for example - how and why, exactly, would
that help? Why should 'being in the mind,' whatever that means, make
it possible to grasp something without a sense? Unless being in the mind
just means or presupposes that it is grasped. And then we have only
presupposed what we set out to explain. If being mentally directed upon
something requires 'having' a sense relevant to it, then we cannot
interpret 'having a sense' in terms of 'being mentally directed upon' the
244 DALLAS WILLARD
sense that is had. Yet is is very difficult to see how Frege can avoid
doing just that.
2. Now we turn to an aspect of the 'focal triad' which unfortunately
has received far less critical attention than the foregoing matters, but
around which an equal or even greater obscurity nonetheless reigns.
Because of the obscurity that prevails here we shall place a critical thesis
at the front of our remarks and then see how it might be sustained. The
thesis is that Frege has no account at all of the relation between an act
(or sign) and its object, object as that which is referred to or denoted.
'Bedeutung' (or 'reference') of course receives a lot of attention both
from Frege and his commentators. But it, like 'father,' is a relative
term. That is, whatever is a Bedeutung is so because it stands in a
certain relationship to something else: an act for which it is the object,
a designation for which it is the designated. Its nature and function as
Bedeutung cannot illuminate the relationship from which that very nature
and function derive. The verb 'bedeuten' is Frege's usual term for the
relationship which qualifies its relatum for the status of Bedeutung. It is
this relationship, I hold, for which Frege has no account at all and about
which, I suspect, he remains rather fundamentally confused.
The struggle over the translation of 'Bedeutung' is itself suggestive
of the problem that lies in Frege's presentations. Joan Weiner mentions
'denotation,' 'reference,' 'meaning,' and 'significance' as translations of
it, and dismisses the first three as carrying "a great deal of late twen-
tieth-century philosophical baggage" which, she holds, forms no part of
Frege's views. (p. 102; cf. 127 -129) Her choice is to revert to speaking
of 'content' ('Inhalt') - which Frege began with, as she recognizes, but
which he himself deserted in favor of Sinn and Bedeutung precisely
because in late nineteenth-century German (and British) philosophy it
had become unusable through manifold equivocations. She also decides
just to use 'Bedeutung' itself as if it were an English word, hoping to
develop its meaning from her interpretation of what Frege is attempting
to do in his analyses of arithmetic and logic. She, like Bell, back-pedals
furiously from the obviously ontological weight of the term in Frege,
intending to provide an epistemic interpretation of it. (pp. 128-129)
More on this later. But for now we note that the problem with terms like
'reference,' 'meaning,' and 'denotation,' is not - at least not just - the
alien philosophical baggage they import into Frege's thought, but that
they are fundamentally ambiguous on precisely the point in greatest need

of clarification. They all have uses in which they refer to the relation of
act or term to its 'object,' right along side of uses in which they refer to
'objects' in the status of relatum to that relation. The only term, it seems
to me, which has avoided this fundamental ambiguity between relation
and relatum - or perhaps process and product - is the one chosen by
Herbert Feigl, and possibly borrowed from Carnap, the term 'nomina-
tum.'10
That some confusion over this ambiguity persists today is shown by
Bell's discussion of 'Bedeutung.' He says (p. 14) that "The relation in
which a complete name stands to the object which bears it Frege calls
Bedeutung, a term which is variously translated as 'nominatum', 'deno-
tation', 'reference', 'standing for', and 'meaning'." He chooses to drop
the first and the last of these and use the others interchangeably. But
surely 'nominatum,' at least, could not serve to designate the relation he
describes, just as 'standing for' cannot designate the relatum in that
relation. Just as surely, Frege does take the Bedeutung to be the object
and not the relation, and it is probably under the very weight of Frege's
actual usage, that Bell himself, in nearly every case where he is treating
of Bedeutung, in fact treats of objects, whether truth-values, senses
(functions) or individual entities. (see his pp. 16, 23, 25, 42, 48-49
etc.)
Now I certainly do not want to suggest that Frege was oblivious to
the distinction between the relation of referring, as we might best call it,
and the relatum of that relation, his reference. Rather, it seems that he
saw serious problems with determining what the references were in
various cases of thought and discourse - with clarifying what we are
actually dealing with in such cases, what we are inquiring into or have
knowledge about. He then devoted his attention to solving these prob-
lems in various ways that seemed appropriate. From time to time in the
course of his work he mentions referring (bedeuten), as well as naming,
designating, etc., but not to analyze them. And this, it seems to me, is
only because he takes referring to be something fairly obvious in the
light of his doctrine of sense. The sense, as he repeatedly says, deter-
mines the reference (Bedeutung), and if you grasp a sense you thereby
have referred to (bedeutet) whatever reference it determines.
He sees a rigorous structure governing the relationships of sign,
246 DALLAS WILLARD
sense and Bedeutung:
The regular (regelml1ssige) connection between a sign, its sense, and

what it means (dessen Bedeutung) is of such a kind that to the sign
there corresponds a definite sense and to that in turn a definite thing
meant (Bedeutung), while to a given thing meant (an object) there
does not belong only a single sign .... To every expression belonging
to a complete totality of signs, there should certainly correspond a
definite sense .... Every grammatically well-formed expression figur-
ing as a proper name always has a sense. But this is not to say that
to the sense there also corresponds a thing meant .... In grasping a
sense, one is not certainly assured of meaning anything. (CP 159)
The grounds of what seems Frege's rather easy disregard of refer-

ring as a subject in need of careful of analysis seem to me to lie in two
further assumptions he makes. These are: the identity of concept-sense
and objective property (or relation), and the 'unsaturatedness' of con-
cept-senses (properties). If we can presuppose these two points, as Frege
certainly does, then we might be able to imagine a bridge leadingfrom
the act through the grasped sense, across its identity with the property,
and to the object ('argument'). Thus the transition from 1 to 5, above,
would be completed, and the integrity of the mental (or linguistic) act
secured. We might be able to think that once we have 'got' the sense we
have got the object - if one exists. We might, and I believe that this is
precisely what Frege does.
One of the most basic ideas in Frege's philosophy is that of 'a whole
complete in itself (CP 140-141: "ein in sich abgeschlossenes Ganze,"
or "ein vollstl1ndiges Ganze") He never provides an elucidation of what
this means - in the manner of Spinoza on substance, for example, or
otherwise. Instead, whatever operative meaning this language has in his
work derives from a contrast with other types of entities called "func-
tions," which by themselves alone ("jar sich aUein") are "incomplete,"
"in need of supplementation," or "unsaturated." (CP 140) Frege does
not seem to mean that 'functions' cannot exist or have being 'by them-
selves alone.' His point is simply that without further mediation they are
(somehow!) capable of 'coming together' with entities (,arguments') that
are not 'incomplete,' or are 'saturated,' to yield a further entity (the
'value') which is also complete or saturated. No further entity is needed

to connect them up, and so what is sometimes referred to as 'Bradley's
regress,1I is avoided. His favored illustrations fall within the domain of
mathematics, of course. "Thus, e.g., 3 is the value of the function 2.x3
+ x for the argument 1, since we have: 2.13 + 1 = 3." (CP 141) By
'object' Frege means " ... anything that is not a function, so that an
expression for it does not contain any empty place." (CP 147)
As for a concept, a sense that is not a Thought, it " .. .is a function
whose value is a truth value." (CP 146) All that is true of a function is
true, therefore, of a concept. The concept too has an inherent tendency
to seize upon relevant objects. (PW 193) Further, we are told that "A
concept is the reference (Bedeutung) of a predicate." (CP 187) While a
predicate expression does not name the corresponding concept - since
only objects have names (CP 186n) - it nevertheless refers to it and
confers the status of reference upon it. And finally: "I call the concepts
under which an object falls its properties." (CP 190; cf 146) The distinc-
tion between 3 and 4 in the 5-point person to object structure indicated
above just disappears.
With this in mind we can perhaps understand why Frege might
regard the relation of referring as something obvious, given his doctrine
of sense. But can we possibly concur? The relation of referring depends
upon the grasp of the Thought or sense, and possibly even contains it as
a part. There would be no referring and hence no references (Bedeutun-
gen) if senses were not grasped. Hence, every problem that is found
with the 'grasping' will carryover to referring, and we have seen that
these are pretty serious.
But a further problem arises. Senses do not themselves refer.
Referring is not a relationship between the sense and the referent, but
between an act or term in use and its object. The act or term has the
object as its Bedeutung provided that both it and the object have the
requisite relations to the appropriate sense. Certainly there is a rela-
tionship between the sense of any given act or term and the relevant
object. If we are correct it is the relationship the concept/function has
with the 'argument' to which it clings to fill out its 'incompleteness.' It
is predication (exemplification) in the ontological sense, or also the
relation of 'falling under' the concept. (CP 146) But this relation is not
itself the relation of referring. Properties do not refer to their subjects,
248 DALLAS WILLARD
are not about or directed upon them. And if they did 'refer', that would
still leave us the task of analyzing the relation of acts and signs to the
objects which they intend or denote, for the act or term certainly is not,
on Frege's view, a property of the object which is its reference.
This leaves us in the following situation. 'Grasping' a sense does not
itself constitute referring to an object. We might, as frequently is the
case in theoretical work, have no interest beyond the concepts or
thoughts concerned. What we do more than 'grasp' a sense in order to
refer to an object - how we deal with or use the sense to arrive at the
Bedeutung - remains completely unclarified (really, I think, undealt
with) in Frege's account of the act/object nexus.
We should note also, from the quotation above (CP 159) and else-
where in Frege's writings, that the grasping of a sense does not guaran-
tee a reference. That is, it does not guarantee that one exists. This is
standard fare, for we often wish to be able to work with concepts with
empty extensions, or without regard to whatever extension they mayor
may not have. But Black's translation quoted - "In grasping a sense,
one is not certainly assured of meaning anything" - once again catches
us up in the play of relation/relatum ambiguity. The Germans reads,
"Dadurch also, dass man einen Sinn auffasst, hat man noch nicht mit
Sicherheit eine Bedeutung," which says that the grasping of a sense does
not guarantee a reference. That is, it does not guarantee the existence of
an object falling under the concept-sense. But Black translates the
sentence in terms of 'meaning something,' which clearly suggests the
verb 'bedeuten' and the relation or process of referring instead of
'Bedeutung.' I suspect he correctly takes Frege's view to be that if there
is no object there is no referring, just as, certainly, if there is no refer-
ring there is no reference. In short, the possibility of 'intentional inexist-
ence' is lacking here as well as with the mere grasping of a sense, noted
above. Perhaps the deeper indication is that Frege was never able to
capture the authentic phenomenon of intentionality, which permits
consciousness of what does not exist, as it displays itself in the ordinary
bearing of the mind upon its 'objects'. This lack may lie at the root of
his problems with the act/object nexus.
Summarizing, then, I am suggesting that Frege's interpretation of
the relation between a sense and the act (mind) which grasps it is inco-
herent, for the reasons cited, and that in his assumed relation of refer-
ring, which alone qualifies entities for the status of Bedeutungen, there
are further obscurities in how the sense is functioning, or in how the
mental grasp is 'using' it to refer to an object. These matters require
clearing up in any satisfactory account of what the structure is that
brings mind and object together in the peculiar way characteristic of
consciousness. I do not think this is the sum total of his problems in
adapting his focal triad to the act/object nexus. Indeed, the entire issue
of how specific acts emerge from and fit into the flow of a conscious and
significantly rational existence - the 'noetic' structure required in actual
knowing by actual persons - remains totally untouched by his analyses.
Thus the transition from 1 to 5 is definitively interrupted at its very first
move, from the person to the particular act of consciousness. But enough
has been said to establish that his focal triad may be as much an imposi-
tion upon objective consciousness as an illumination of it.
Now why would Frege fall into such difficulties? I think it is a
result his way of working on the projects dearest to him. It just is no
part of his project to understand the mental act and how it comprehends
its objects on the one hand and is comprehended in the life of the
working mind on the other. Rather, he is concerned with certain specific
issues that arise out of his technical interests as a mathematician: the
nature of number, the method, epistemic status and ontological commit-
ments of logic and mathematics, and the analysis of identity statements,
being chief among them. He deals with his three basic units of knowl-
edge and language only insofar as deemed necessary to solve his special
problems. Then he lets them drop without concern for whether and how
they might fit into a systematic account of what knowing amounts to.
But consciousness or knowledge after all has a substance of its own.
It is a specific type of 'thing', differing from all that is not knowledge.
The focal triad is not a theory of knowledge, and Frege never intended
it to be. But it nevertheless must be capable of fitting into an adequate
account of knowledge. He surely assumed that this was possible, but for
reasons given above I think it is not - at least as it stands in his writ-
ings. Ironically, it was precisely his failure or inability to take subjec-
tivity seriously that undermined his aim of securing the objectivity of
knowledge. He was so focussed upon the independence of 'cognitive
content' that he failed to develop any account of how such content comes
together with or 'in' a mental act to form consciousness or cognition of
250 DALLAS WILLARD
the relevant objects. Yet it is essential to any successful account of how

cognitive content can be public to provide, precisely, an understanding
of how it can be 'private', can belong to one person, can be integrated
into one act. For if it cannot be integrated into one act, it cannot be
integrated into many, and its accessibility to many is lost with even
greater force than if it could belong or be given to only one.
But readers who have stayed with me thus far will have been very
impatient on one particular point. At best they must have slightly cringed
each time I have spoken of the 'mental act' or 'act of consciousness,'
and have wished to enter into the record that Sinn and Bedeutung really
are matters of language or communication, and that of course all this
stuff about 'grasping' senses and 'meaning' objects is hopeless. So lowe
them a brief explanation of why I have stayed with the mentalistic
language in discussing Frege, and have refrained from offering a linguis-
tic reconstruction of his remarks which would purport to lift him out of
the difficulties stated. (Certainly there are plenty of such reconstructions
available!)
Two things are to be said. First of all, the explication of Sinn and
Bedeutung in terms of the functioning of language just is not Frege. For
him, the function of language in thought and communication is under-
standable only in terms of Sinn and Bedeutung, and these in turn are to
be understood in terms of judgment - judgment 'in the logical sense,'
i.e. the Thought, made up of senses that, when appropriately 'grasped',
determine objects as Bedeutungen. We may, and often do, 'use' the
sense in making judgments about objects without using language in any
way. The judgment 'in the logical sense' has nothing of the linguistic
about it except the capacity - though not the necessity - to be ex-
pressed in language. Thoughts can be without being grasped (in think-
ing), acknowledged as true (in judging), or expressed (in language).
Even judging (acknowledging a Thought as true) can and does occur
without expression in language. (PW 133, 137, 185-186, 251; CP
355-356,374-375,381-382) Frege regards judging and questioning
as essentially inward acts of mind (PW 3, 7), whatever the causal
conditions of such acts may be and whatever external behavior mayor
may not accompany them.
This goes down very hard with post-Wittgensteinian interpreters of
Frege, for it boldly holds, as Bell recognizes, that Thoughts, concepts,
etc. can "be identified independently of the language with which they are
associated." (p. 111) Frege took that to be obvious, but Wittgenstein is
now supposed to have shown that identification of entities in an 'inward'
realm, apart from the language in which they might be named, described
or expressed, would have to work without standards of correctness and
hence could never be wrong. Hence could never be right, which seems
absurd. The very heart of Frege's theory is accordingly dismissed as
"his crude associationism and faculty psychology" (Bell p. 112), and for
his theory is substituted a theory about language and language func-
tioning that, regardless of all good intentions, simply contradicts it.
In both Bell and Weiner this opens the way for a theory of Bedeut-
ung in which, as Bell says, it becomes "a property which an expression
must possess if that expression is to be truth-valuable .... " (p. 42) Or, as
Weiner says, Bedeutung amounts to nothing more than "a requirement
that our linguistic terms be precise." (p. 130, but see 128 -130) Now of
course everyone is free to develop their own theory of linguistic mean-
ing, and Frege certainly had his, which was a very important part of his
philosophy. But not every theory of it is his theory, and his Sinn and
Bedeutung distinction covers much more than linguistic 'meaning'.
The second thing to be said can and must be said more briefly. The
jury is still out, to say the least, on whether or not any philosophically
significant degree of objectivity or realism can be salvaged within the
relativization of identity and existence to language in the manner of a
Wittgenstein, Quine or others. Of course I understand the general
assumption today that nothing else could be possible. But to be consis-
tent, this approach to identity and existence must also be applied to the
elements of language themselves - the terms and expressions of various
types that make it up, the rules, etc. - to which all identities and
entities were supposed to be relativized. A regress obviously threatens,
for the view is that what is (treated as) the same depends in general upon
samenesses - of criteria, rules, expressions - in the domain of lan-
guage. But these too must depend upon our ways of talking about them,
unless identities and entities in language are to be arbitrarily exempted
from requirements imposed on everything else. However this problem is
seldom even recognized, much less resolved. I have elsewhere discussed
such issues in more detail,12 and will only mention them here. They are
serious enough, however, to prevent me from thinking that we do Frege
252 DALLAS WILLARD
a favor by treating his Sinn or Bedeutung as essentially features of

linguistic expressions. So with this said we turn to a thinker who accepts
the general framework of Frege's analysis, but modifies the details in
such a way as to eliminate, one might hope, the lack of intelligible
connection discovered in Frege's interpretation of objective conscious-
ness in terms of his 'focal triad.'
Indeed, when we turn to Husserl's analysis of the act/object nexus,
of the transition from 1 to 5, we are first struck with the very high-
degree of agreement between him and Frege on very fundamental
matters. To start from the point of the last few paragraphs, they agree in
regarding consciousness as fundamentally non-linguistic and in taking
'mental' meaning, the 'intentionalities' of consciousness, as basic to any
understanding of the functioning and meaning of language - though of
course they also hold language to have a significant influence upon the
mind. Among more recent thinkers, then, they both would agree on this
point with Roderick Chisholm, but not with Wilfrid Sellars, Quine,
Wittgenstein or Derrida. They also agree in their emphatic ontological
dualism, their epistemological realism, their Platonism, and their anti-
Empiricism. The building blocks of the world and consciousness are
remarkably similar in their views. But upon closer examination highly
significant differences in how the parts of the act/object nexus fit to-
gether begin to emerge. Before looking at these differences, however, it
is necessary to say something about how Husserl's way of working on
philosophical problems differs from Frege's.
From his earliest days Husserl explicitly understood himself to be
engaged in conceptual analysis. This he took to be discernment, through
painstaking research, of the precise properties and structures which
objects must have in order to 'match up' with the intentional moments or
meanings in the concepts that apply to them - simultaneously clarifying
the essence of the object and the structure of the concept. He thus
investigates conceptual objects as such, i.e., the object as falling under
the concept. This, one might think, was little different from many
others. But in the details of the process Husserl becomes distinctive. For
he thought it both possible and necessary literally to observe the concept
in its union with the conceptual object - or else in its failure, in some
degree, to 'fit' onto the object - and to do so repeatedly, possibly
involving other investigators as well as oneself.
This is possible because the concept was for him a repeatable,

shareable thought: the thought of a specific shade of blue, for example,
or of number ('numericality'), the abstract structure in groups which
mediates the union of the concept number with those groups, or of
logical law, mental act, intentionality, ideal object (universal), etc. etc.
Thoughts in this sense are repeatable and shareable in strict identity.
They are true universals. I can have literally the same thought (as
concept) on many occasions, and many people can have exactly the same
thought as I do. On this point there is of course no difference at all
between Husserl and Frege.
The concepts of interest in philosophy are then, for Husserl, to be
clarified by observing their union with objects intuitively given as
objects falling under the concept in question. Since such 'observation' is
intersubjectively verifiable, Husserl took it to provide a basis for the
objectivity of the method and results of philosophical work. To bring
out, to establish, what the meaning contents or partial intendings are in
a concept - thus, to 'analyze' it - I simply take cases from its exten-
sion and, through a process that may quite well involve a good bit of
abstract argument (mainly reductio critiques of erroneous analyses), I get
a fix on the precise qualities which the intending elements in the concept
seize in holding the object under the concept. The analytical process is
partly dependent upon comparison of the cases in the concept's extension
with cases from the extensions of other concepts, and partly upon
variation of the cases within the concept's extension to determine which
of their features are independent of the concept. Others can check my
findings by following the same procedure. Those familiar with Husserl's
later works will easily recognize how much of his later named and
highly touted 'phenomenological method' is already present in these
homely research techniques. Hopefully, too, one can see how little
substance there is to the idea that the phenomenologist - or at least
Husserl - is one who simply stares at essences.
This method of 'concept analysis' is clearly exemplified in Husserl's
first publication, his Uber den BegrijJ der Zahl, of 1887.13 Here the
extension of the concept number is first determined. Then concrete
groups - concrete 'totalities' (InbegrijJen) - which fall within that
extension, thus constituting 'a number of things,' are studied to deter-
mine which of their characteristics are the basis for the application of the
254 DALLAS WILLARD
concept number. This turns out to be the 'collective' unification of the

elements in the group.14 Erroneous interpretations of the 'collective
combination' are refuted (pp. 302-327), and its precise nature is then
specified by descriptions of some of its features together with a compa-
rison of the Inbegrijf with wholes unified by other types of relations
among their parts. (pp. 327 - 338) Anyone interested can find an exten-
sive discussion of these matters in Chapter II of my book, Logic and the
Objectivity of Knowledge.
After the breakdown of his initial program for providing epistemic
foundations for general arithmetic, Husserl was driven to analyze the
basic concepts of epistemology, and eventually, of course, the act/object
nexus itself. In the crucial 1894 paper, 'Psychologische Studien zur
elementaren Logik,' 15 he undertook analysis of the concepts intuition and
representation. Misunderstanding of the representation is what led him
into the impasse represented by Part II of his Philosophie der Arithmetik
of 1891. To prepare the way for its clarification he does preliminary
analyses of the independent and non-independent, as well as concrete and
abstract, contents of the mind - only some years later recognizing that
the distinctions drawn here with reference to 'mental contents' are true
of entities in general and have nothing to do with the specifically mental.
He describes, varies and compares 'contents' and their relations, analy-
zing the concepts under which they fall according to their character, and
so makes major steps toward his mature analyses of the act/object nexus.
According to his own statement, the Logical Investigations (1900-1901)
were developed from this article, which grew into the 3rd and 6th
'Logical Investigations.'16 The same type of 'conceptual analysis' is
practised to yield results of greater fame, e.g. his refutation of psycholo-
gism by showing that logical laws are not psychological laws, and the
elucidation of what he came to call the 'noema. ,17
The main point of difference which we find in Husserl's way of
working as contrasted with Frege's is his practice of working to and
from detailed descriptions of the concrete wholes of the type relevant to
the concepts to be analyzed. He intends to avoid arguing from abstract
considerations of what must or must not be the case, and from positing
entities to solve problems generated from abstract considerations. He
takes the concept to its instances and observes the instances in their
internal variation and external combinations over against the discernible
'ofnesses' or 'aboutnesses' - 'connotations,' they used to be called -

present in the concepts. The power of his method lies, not in certain
special 'attitudes' one may adopt, but in its drive toward painstaking
elaboration of the details present in concrete cases. No one has ever been
a stronger advocate of the Wittgensteinian rule, "Don't think, look!"
than Husserl. Of course that rule alone does not settle the question of
what can be seen.
He even carries this attitude so far as to hold that epistemological
clarification of the type which concerns him is not a theory at all. "On
our view, theory of knowledge properly described is no theory. It is not
science in the pointed sense of an explanatorily unified theoretical
whole .... The theory of knowledge ... neither constructs deductive theories
nor falls under any ... .Its aim is not to explain (erklllren) knowledge ... but
to illuminate (aujklllren) the Idea of knowledge in terms of the elements
and laws that make it up ... .It intends to elevate the pure forms and laws
of knowledge to forceful clarity by returning to an adequately filled out
intuition of them. "18 This, in his view, is the true 'Critique' of knowl-
edge, and the only way to discover the conditions of its possibility. You
learn what makes knowledge possible by observing it in its actuality and
by noting how it becomes actual. Small wonder that he thought Kant's
Critique "drops from the outset into the channel of a metaphysical
epistemology. ,,19 Kant did not subject knowledge and the acts in which
it consists to "a clarifying critique and analysis of essence" before
'saving' it. The same would be true of Frege, who in this respect is a
true Kantian. Needless to say, of course, history has certainly sided with
Kant and Frege, decisively rejecting the idea that essences can be dis-
covered by conceptual analysis in Husserl's sense.
What, then, are Husserl's 'findings' about the act/object nexus, and
have they any implications for Frege's problems in interpreting the nexus
in an intelligible fashion? In what we select for attention here we will
limit ourselves to points relevant to Fregian difficulties noted, and so we
first and foremost look at that in Husserl's account which corresponds to
Fregian Sinne. These are concepts and propositions (i.e. Frege's
'Thoughts,' or judgments 'as logicians speak of them.') They serve as
the Bedeutungen of linguistic expressions, but precisely in the sense of
the relational or 'referring' side of the ambiguity noted in Frege. Just as
in Frege, however, they are much more than significations for linguistic
256 DALLAS WILLARD
expressions, and have no essential dependence upon language for their

existence or nature. Many never will become significations in the sense
of there being an actual word in some actual language of which they are
the meaning. As numbers do not arise and pass away with acts of
enumeration, "so it is with the ideal < read: universal> unities of pure
logic, with its concepts, propositions, truths, or in other words, with its
meanings (Bedeutungen). They are an ideally closed set of general
objects, to which being thought or being expressed are alike contin-
gent. ..20
But there is a major difference from Frege on the position of the
signification in the mental or linguistic act. For Husser!, the signification
is never the object in the act for which it is the signification. Rather, it
is the intentional character or property of the act or expression. It is its
'aboutness', a property which is literally identical, in the manner of
universals, in all acts that are about the same objectivity, however much
the psychological content of these acts may vary in other respects. Thus
"The Bedeutung is related to varied acts of signifying (Bedeutens) - the
logical representation to acts of representing, the logical judgment to acts
of judging, the logical deduction to acts of deducing - just as redness in
specie is to the slips of paper which lie here and all 'have' the same
redness ...21 The signification enters into my experience of thinking, for
example, that is 11' a transcendental number, as any property enters its
instance. It is thus both immanent in my experience, determining what
that experience is - specifically, what it is of - and transcendent to my
experience, because undetermined in its own existence and nature by that
experience. Transcendence and "objectivity" for the Bedeutung is not
achieved by being an object, as in Frege, but by being a property, and
moreover a property bearing upon a specific object which is also shared
insofar as that property itself is shared.
Accordingly, when I judge or understand that 11' is a transcendental
number, my object - what my mental state or assertion is about or
directed upon - is the number 11', and that number as having the charac-
ter of a transcendental number. "If we perform the act and, as it were,
live through it, then naturally we mind (meinen) its object and not its
Bedeutung. If we for example make an assertion, then we judge concern-
ing the relevant fact and not concerning the Bedeutung of the indicative
sentence, the judgment in the logical sense. This latter first becomes our
object in a reflective act of thought, in which we look back not merely

on the assertion made, but rather carry out the requisite abstraction (or
better: ideation) as well. This logical reflection .. .is a normal component
of logical thinking ... characteristic ... of the context of theory. ,,22
Also unlike Frege, the significations 'in' which I think are not
properties of the corresponding objects and states of affairs. The concept
green is not the same as the property green. The property is a color,
while the concept is not. So while all significations are universals
(properties, 'species'), not all universals are significations - though to
every universal there corresponds a concept in which precisely it is
grasped. "Each species, if we wish to speak of it, presupposes a signifi-
cation, in which it is presented, and this signification is itself a species.
But the signification in which an object is thought, and its object, are not
one and the same. ,,23
The final and most important of HusserI's 'findings' about Bedeut-
ungen and the act/object nexus - so far as we can go into them here -
is that the 'referring' (bedeutend) relation can be fully present in cases
where the corresponding relatum or object does not exist. Here is that
mental or intentional 'inexistence' which, we have suggested, is in the
last analysis simply lacking in Frege's discussions. The 'referring'
involved in signifying can therefore only be a relation in some qualified
sense, since familiar principles in the logic of relations do not apply to
it. Most notably, 'aSc' ('a signifies b') does not imply '(Ex)(aSx),' nor
does it imply 'cSa,' where 'S' would be the converse relation of'S.' I
do not by merely being conscious of something or engaging in discourse
about it confer any property or relation upon it. Elsewhere I have
recommended that we treat the 'referring relation' as a one-place predi-
cate of a special sort, a 'referential quality'.24 Here we will continute to
speak of it as a relation, with the qualifications noted.
Because of his association with Brentano, the 'psychical relation'
and the peculiar manner in which it incorporates its terms loomed large
on HusserI's intellectual horizons from the very beginning. In fact, it
provided the key to his interpretation of the 'collective combination' and
to his analysis of the concept of number in his first published work.25
His struggles toward a satisfactory understanding of the 'inexistence'
associated with the 'psychical relation' produced the set of papers now
published in his 'Gessammelte Werke' under the title 'Intentionale
258 DALLAS WILLARD
Gegenstande (1894),' as well as a letter to Marty dated July 2, 1901. 26

But the results of his efforts are most clearly presented in the passages
of Logical Investigations where, in the course of his analyses of the 'act'
of consciousness, he is dealing with confusions about so-called 'inten-
tional objects.' He repeatedly stresses that the intentional object of any
form of consciousness is the same as its actual object, and as its external
or 'transcendent' object if that is the sort of object it is of.
The transcendent object would not be the object of this presentation,

if it was not its intentional object ... .If I represent to myself God or
an angel, an intelligible being-in-itself or a physical thing or a round
square etc., then the transcendent object mentioned is precisely what
is minded (gemeint) and thus is, in other words, the 'intentional
object'. It is irrelevant whether this object exists or is imaginary or
absurd. 'The object is merely intentional' does not, of course, mean
that it exists, but only 'in' the intentio, of which it is an actual
(reelles) part, or that some shadow of it exists somewhere. It means
rather that the intention exists - 'meaning' an object of such and
such a character - but the object does not. On the other hand, if
the intentional object does exist, then it is not merely the intention,
the meaning, that exists, but also what is meant (das Gemeinte).27
In an earlier passage he comments that you can dismember my

representation of the god Jupiter as you will in 'descriptive analysis,'
and nothing like him will be found. "The 'immanent', 'mental object'
therefore is not part of the descriptive stuff of the experience, it is in
truth not really immanent or mental. But it also does not [in this case]
exist extramentally. It does not exist at all." Of course our idea-of-
Jupiter exists, but it remains totally the same whether Jupiter exists or
not. 28 Signifying, meaning, aboutness simply shows up in the realm of
what is. Like color and sound, it is a descriptive ultimate and cannot be
defined?9 But, also like them, it can be observed, and the laws of its
'behavior' can be established. 'Intentional inexistence' is a part of that
behavior.
Now let us, in conclusion, see where Husserl's 'findings' leave us
with the problems that emerged from the application of Frege's 'focal
triad' to the act/object nexus:
1. The concern about the role of concepts and propositions (or

'Thoughts') as causal grounds is resolved by positioning them as,
fundamentally, the properties of mental and linguistic acts. These acts
are events in the world, and their powers are a function of their proper-
ties, as is the case with every type of event or entity. But the properties
do not exercise their influence on actuality across a mere intentional
nexus.
2. The concern about how the act 'picks out' its sense is at least
firmly redirected. For the act does not pick out it sense at all, but
exemplifies it. There is nothing in the act that is directed upon its sense,
though there is much in it that involves the sense in other ways - to be
descriptively analyzed of course. Any question about why this act has
this sense (exemplifies this concept or proposition) will be answered by
reference to the internal structure of the act, or possibly in terms of the
position of the act in its context of life and thought. Often our ex-
planations will turn to why and how this act emerged here, instead of
why it has the Sinn it does. Husserl, following his method, has volumes
to say on such matters.
3. The concern about bedeuten, the referring relation, which alone
can give something the status of reference (Bedeutung) in Frege's
account, was a complex one.
First, referring involved the 'grasping' of the sense, and inherited all
of its problems. These problems are now set aside by the repositioning
of the sense.
Second, the use of the sense (given its 'grasp') to refer to an object
was something totally undealt with by Frege, we held, though he seems
to have assumed that it was covered by his view of the 'unsaturated'
nature of the concept. Now as Husserl lays out the act/object nexus,
nothing at all is done with the concept in the act of which it is the sense
- though a long story is to be told about how the various parts of the
act function. We walk in steps, not with them. Stepping is walking. And,
fundamentally, we think, perceive, etc., in senses (concepts, proposi-
tions), not with them, though at the more complicated and reflective
stages of consciousness we do corne to reflect on them and even use
them in certain ways. The Bedeutung in Husserl just is the quasi-rela-
tional bearing of the given act upon its object. Though obviously depen-
dent on various factors, especially upon the other characteristics of the
260 DALLAS WILLARD
act as well as those in the object, it is not indirect, not a compound of

other relations. Especially it is not a compound of consciousness of a
'special' sort of object and a blind relation of that object to the signified.
It is the signified that is the object of consciousness. Surely Husserl is
right in holding this to be something we can find by attending to cases
of consciousness. While not definable, the Bedeutung has a nature that
can be discriminated in the process of intuitive comparison and variation
outlined above.
And third, Husserl's 'signification' selects objects indifferently of
whether they exist or not. Frege seems to lose his 'referring' when this
loses his 'reference.' This may be seen as an advantage, and certainly
there are many philosophers who have followed him in this, especially
so far as acts of perception and names are concerned. But the phenom-
enon of 'intentional inexistence' is salvaged by Husserl's account,
according to which we do not lose our specific 'aboutness' when there
in fact exists no object such as we are dealing with in our thoughts.
What a difference this makes is seen from its loss, requiring as it does
the wholesale redescription of the intentionalities of acts of conscious-
ness, or else the finding of special types of 'objects', so often seen in
philosophical writings. For Husserl, questions of meaning (what the act
is of or about) are not questions of existence, though of course they lay
the essential foundations for dealing with issues of existence.
Do we then mean to suggest that Husserl's structuring of the act/ob-
ject nexus is superior to Frege's? By no means. Things are hardly that
simple. Clearly Husserl's account meets, in an interesting way, a number
of problems that afflict Frege's analysis - some of which are quite well
known. But clearly also, in the contemporary setting, Husserl's views
face tough opposition - even from many who identify themselves as in
the 'phenomenological' camp. Perhaps the single greatest objection is
provoked by his claim to be able to observe that the various factors in
our consciousness of objects stand as presented by him. And it will gain
little ground for him to point out that Frege is really quite mute before
the question of how he knows what he claims to know about the rela-
tions of Sinne and Bedeutungen to mental and linguistic acts. But perhaps
these remarks on how Husserl could bring his resources to bear upon
certain difficulties in Frege's theory of meaning may provide a better
understanding of the two philosophers and at the same time liberalize our
sense of what might be done with important problems that are far from
solution still.
University of Southern California
NOTES
1 'CP' refers to Gottlob Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics,

Logic, and Philosophy, ed. by Brian McGuinness, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford and New York, 1984.
2 Joan Weiner, Frege in Perspective, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca and London, 1990, p. 11.
3 It is important in understanding this terminology to keep in mind
Frege's earlier use of 'Inhalt,' as described by Leila Haaparanta, p. 59
of her Frege's Doctrine of Being, Acta Philosophica Fennica 39, 1985.
See also Weiner, pp. 113 -114.
4 Cf. Weiner, pp. 99-101, with reference to the epistemology of
arithmetic and the point of Frege's enterprise.
5 'PW' refers to Gottlob Frege, Posthumous Writings, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979.
6 Gregory Currie, 'Frege on Thoughts,' Mind 89, 1980, p. 242.
7 Currie, p. 238.
8 G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Frege: Logical Excavations,
Oxford University Press, New York, 1984, p. 37
9 David Bell, Frege's Theory ofJudgment, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1979, p. 122.
10 See Feigl's translation of 'Uber Sinn und Bedeutung,' in Readings
in Philosophical Analysis, ed. by Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars,
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., New York, 1949, pp. 85-102.
11 See F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, The Clarendon
Press, Oxford, 1930, Chapter II.
12 In my 'Why Semantic Ascent Fails,' Metaphilosophy 14, nos. 3-
4, July/October, 1983, pp. 276-290. Also in my Logic and the Objec-
tivity of Knowledge, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio, 1984, see
especially pp. 18 & 208-209, 215, 254, 268.
13 See the second edition, in Edmund Husserl, Philosophie Der
262 DALLAS WILLARD
Arithmetik: Mit Ergl1nzenden Texten (1890-1901), Husserliana XII, ed.

by Lothar Eley, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1970, pp. 289-338.
14 Husserliana XII, p. 301.
15 Second edition, in Edmund Husserl, Aujslltze und Rezensionen
(1890-1910), Husserliana XXII, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1979,
pp.92-123.
16 Husserliana XXIV, p. 443
17 See my 'Finding the Noema,' in The Phenomenology oj the
Noema, edited by John Drummond and Lester Embree, Kleuwer,
Boston, 1993, pp. 29-48.
18 Subsection 7 of the general 'Introduction' to the six 'Logical
Investigations,' pp. 264-265 of Edmund Husserl, Logical Investiga-
tions, trans. by J. N. Findlay, Humanities Press, New York, 1970.
19 Subsection 66 of the IVth 'Logical Investigation,' p. 833 of the
English edition; cf. the 'Introduction' to the IVth Investigation, especial-
ly p. 672 of the English edition.
20 Subsection 35 of the 1st 'Logical Investigation,' p. 333 of the
English edition. On the actual cases of thought without language see
subsection 15 of the VIth Investigation.
21 Subsection 32 of the 1st Investigation, p. 303 of the English
edition.
edition.
edition.
24 See my 'A Crucial Error in Epistemology,' Mind LXXVI, Octo-
ber 1967, pp. 513-523.
25 See subsection 3 of Uber den Begrijf der Zahl, Husserliana XII,
pp.327-333.
26 In Husserliana XXII, pp. 303-348 and 419-426.
27 Appendix to subsection 21 of the Vth Investigation, p. 596 of the
English edition.
28 Subsection 11 of the Vth Investigation, pp. 558-559 of the
English edition.
29 Subsection 31 of the lInd Investigation, English edition p. 400; cf.
subsection 19 of the Vth Investigation on the descriptive unity of name
with object.
INDEX OF NAMES
Ajdukiewicz, K. 181
Aristotle 44, 166, 179
Aschkenasy, H. 63,64, 79
Austin, J.L. 232
Baker, G.P. 242, 261

Bell, D.A. 102, 110, 179, 181, 206, 242, 245, 250, 251, 261
Berkeley, G. 186
Bernet, R. 159, 160
Beth, E.W. 7, 22, 40, 41, 43
Biemel, W. 232
Black, M. 248
Bolzano, B. 7,8,67,68,89,114,115,136,164,165,222
Boyce Gibson, W.R. 208
Bradley, F.H. 247, 261
Brentano, F. 8, 65, 75, 79, 114-116, 136, 145, 164, 166, 168, 178,
179,181,182,187-189,197,203,207,208,257
Burks, A. 233
Busse, L. 75, 76, 79
Cantor, G. 46,114-117,137,138
Carnap, R. 222, 245
Cavailles, J. 137
Chisholm, R. 145, 159, 160, 252
Church, A. 43, 113, 136
Coffa, J.A. 179, 182, 222, 231
Cooper, N. 179, 206
Cornelius, H. 59,74-76,79
Cottingham, J. 207
Couturat, L. 113
Currie, G. 240, 241, 261
263
264 INDEX OF NAMES
Dahl, O. 44
Dedekind, R. 94, 108, 115, 116
Derrida, J. 252
Descartes, R. 46,186,207,212
Dreyfus, H.L. 206,207, 211-214,227, 229, 230
Drummond, J.1. 214,231, 262
Dubs, A. 79
Dummett, M. 91,101,103,110,114,115,126,136,137,139,163-
167, 173, 174, 177-182,199,206,209
Diirr, E. 59, 79
Eisler, R. 60, 75, 79

Eley, L. 137, 262
Elliston, F .A. 208
Elsas, A. 42
Elsenhans, T. 72, 79
Embree, L. 262
Erdmann, B. 5,42,68,69, 74, 75, 79
Euclid 87, 218, 223, 231
Evans, G. 159, 160
Farber, M. 7, 8, 39, 43, 46, 47, 136

Feigl, H. 245, 261
Findlay, J.N. 7,208,262
Fodor, 1. 211-213,215, 229-231
Fraenkel, A. 137
Frischeisen-Kohler, M. 70, 79
Furth, M. 208
F011esdal, D. 177-179,181,182,185,206,214,217,232
Geach, P.T. 209

Geyser, J. 60, 79
Gomperz, H. 65, 79
Gorman, M. 179
Grattan-Guinness, I. 138, 139
Gurwitsch, A. 214, 232
Godel, K. 85,96, 107, 111, 134, 135, 140
INDEX OF NAMES 265
Haack, S. 159
Haaparanta, L. 230-232,261
Hacker, P.M.S. 242,261
Hall, H. 231
Harney, M.J. 206
Hartshorne, C. 233
Heath, T.L. 218, 231
Heffernan, G. 142, 158, 160
Hegel, G.W.F. 216
Heidegger, M. 79, 80
Heim, K. 57, 68, 71, 75, 76, 80
Heinrich, W. 42
Heinze, M. 75, 82
Heinlimaa, S. 231
Heymans, G. 57, 58, 62, 80
Heyting, A. 225, 226, 232
Hilbert, D. 86, 96, 106, 116
Hildebrand, F. 42
Hill, C.O. 3, 42, 136, 137, 140
Hofler, A. 74, 75, 80
Honingswald, R. 70, 80
Horbiger 8
Illemann, W. 42, 46
Ishiguro, H. 136
Jerusalem, W. 58,67,72, 73, 75-77, 80

Johnston, M. 180, 182
Kant, I. 24, 89, 97, 142-145, 150, 157, 159, 160, 186, 187, 207,
219, 222, 223, 232, 240, 255
Kemp Smith, N. 232
Kern, I. 159
Kersten, F. 220, 232
Kilmister, C.W. 138, 139
Klein, J. 46
Kleinpeter, H. 63, 71, 73, 75, 76, 80
266 INDEX OF NAMES
Kline, M. 136
Kloesel,1.W. 233
Knorr, W.R. 218,225, 226, 233
Kolmogoroff, A. 225,233
Koppelmann, W. 70, 80
Kreisel, G. 108, 112, 225, 233
Kripke, S. 146
Kroner, R. 53-55, 75, 76, 80
Kusch, M. 230, 232
Kiilpe, W. 8
Kung, G. 195, 208
Kunne, W. 181, 182
Kynast, R. 38, 39, 40, 47
Lapp, A. 57,67,72, 75, 76, 80

Leibniz, G.W. 32, 113, 119, 121-124, 126, 127, 130, 136, 186
Lesniewski, S. 7, 181
Levinas, E. 8, 38, 43
Lipps, T. 74, 75, 80
Locke, J. 243
Lotze, H. 7
Lucasiewicz, J. 7
Mach, R. 73-75,81
Maier, H. 55, 66, 75, 76, 81
Mantyranta, H. 231
Marbach, E. 159
Martin-LOf, P. 104, 112, 225, 233
Marty, A. 75, 137, 258
Mc Alister, L. 136
McCormick, P. 208
McDowell, J. 159, 160
McGuinness, B. 208, 261
McIntyre, R. 180, 183, 206, 211, 213, 214, 229, 230, 233
Meinong, A. 74-76,81, 164, 167, 168
Michaltschew, D. 57,67, 68, 75, 76, 81
MilI,1.S. 19, 89, 108
INDEX OF NAMES 267
Mohanty,1.N. 92,93, 112, 181, 182, 206

Moog, W. 57, 58, 71, 75, 76, 81
Moore, E. 233
Moore, G.E. 114
Mulligan, K. 181, 182
Murdoch, D. 207
Nagel, R. 233
Nress, A. 3, 38, 39, 40, 46
Natorp, P. 6,57,63, 70, 75, 76, 81
Nelson, L. 59, 75, 76, 81
Neumann, 1. von 46
Newton, I. 66
Niiniluoto, I. 230-232
Olsen, R.E. 206

Osborn, A. 8, 43, 136, 137
Pahigyi, M. 60, 67, 75, 76, 81

Panzer, U. 208, 232
Pappus 231, 233
Papst, W. 46
Patocka, J. 43
Paul, A.M. 206
Peano, G. 108, 112, 116
Peirce, C.S. 14, 215, 223, 233
Philipse, H. 181, 182
Plato 226
Prauss, G. 144, 159, 160
Putnam, H. 189
Quine, W.V. 101, 124, 139, 251, 252
Reimer, W. 47
Reinach, A. 181, 182
Renner, H. 63, 81
Renouvier, C. 207
268 INDEX OF NAMES
Resnik, M. 91, 112

Rickert, H. 53-55,63, 75, 76, 81, 82
Rosado Haddock, G .E. 180, 183
Rose, H.E. 233
Runggaldier, E. 179, 183
Russell, B. 6, 43, 89, 94, 112 -115, 122, 124, 125, 127 -135, 137-
140, 158, 239
Salagoff, L. 82
Schelling, F. 71
Schlick, M. 57,59, 61, 66, 72, 82
Schmit, R. 137
SchrOder, E. 6, 14, 43
Schuhmann, K. 136 -138
Schultz,1. 55, 56, 58, 62, 63, 65, 66, 71, 72, 76, 82
Schuppe, W. 55, 59, 82
Sellars, W. 252,261
Shepherdson, J.c. 233
Sigwart, C. 59, 65, 66, 68, 75, 76, 82
Simons, P. 179, 183
Smith, B. 179, 182
Smith, D.W. 177, 180, 183, 206, 213, 214, 233
Smith, J .-C. 233
Sokolowski, R. 142, 159, 160
Spencer, H. 61, 62
Spinoza, B. 186, 246
Stoothhoff, R. 207
Stumpf, C. 75, 76, 82, 114, 115, 117, 137
Sundholm, G. 225 - 227, 233
Suppes, P. 233
Tait, B. 110
Tarski, A. 146, 159, 160, 181, 233
Tichy, P. 227 - 229, 233
Tieszen, R. 91, 100, 103, 104, 112,225-227,233
Twardowski, K. 164, 167, 181
INDEX OF NAMES 269
Ueberweg, F. 41,47, 75, 82

Uphues, G. 76, 82
Voigt, A. 14, 15, 45

Volkelt, J. 55, 72, 82
Wagner, H. 144, 159, 160

Weierstrass, K. 114-116, 136, 138
Weiner, J. 236,244, 251, 261, 263
Weiss, P. 233
Wessels, L. 231
Whitehead, A.N. 6,43
Wiggins, D. 136
Wild, J. 7, 38,43
Willard, D. 113, 136, 137, 179, 183
Windelband, W. 53, 82
Wittgenstein, L. 116, 137, 165, 181, 251, 252
Wolenski, J. 179, 183
Wright, G.H. von 44
Wundt, W. 71, 75, 76, 82
Zermelo, E. 116
Ziehen, T. 70, 76, 83
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
abstraction 17, 18, 60, 67, 89,97, 98, 101, 106, 142, 143, 191, 213;
see act.
act 17, 23, 98, 100, 166, 167, 171, 172, 174, 175, 178, 179, 195, 198,
217, 219, 221, 230, 236, 238-242, 244, 248, 249, 252, 254, 255,
257, 259, 260; bodily 219; -content distinction 67; 'founded' 100;
founding 93,98, 100, 103; higher-level 170; idealizing 155; linguis-
tic 176,259; mental 20,31, 101, 165, 169, 176, 189, 190-192,
199, 228, 235, 237 -239, 243, 246, 250, 253, 256, 259; objecti-
fying 170, 180; of abstraction 101, 104; of assertion 176, 177; of
collecting, counting and comparing 100, 104; of consciousness 166,
211,217,219,241,249,250,260; of judgement 60,67,176,238;
of judging 61, 66, 67, 147, 256; of presentation 31; of reflection
104; of representing 256; of thinking 67, 164; perceptual 100, 176;
sequences of 102, 104.
actuality, actual 21, 68, 204, 241.
agnosticism 68.
analysis 149, 191, 224; conceptual 252, 254; geometrical 218; mathe-
matical 114; method of 9,217, 218, 221, 225, 231; paradox of 91.
analyticity, analytic 5, 8, 9, 89, 91, 95, 96, 101, 114, 117, 141, 149,
157; analytic tradition of philosophy 86, 114, 163, 164.
anthropologism 25, 69.
a priori 58, 59, 74, 95, 100, 101, 108, 105, 143, 155,222; see knowl-
edge.
arithmetic, arithmetical 5, 19,20,21,25, 85, 86-89,94-97,99, 100,
104, 105, 107, 115, 116, 118, 127, 227, 228, 244; formal arith-
metic 45; philosophical analysis of arithmetic 93; philosophy of
arithmetic 85, 100, 93, 94, 97, 109, 113, 118; transcendental view
of arithmetic 86; see foundations, fulfillment, genesis, intuition,
knowledge, reasoning.
artificial intelligence 211, 229.
assertoric force 102.
270
attitude (Einstellung) 255; natural 214, 216, 217, 230; phenomenological

211, 214-216, 220, 230; transcendental 216.
awareness 99, 100.
axiomatization 109.
Basic Law V 88, 106, 127, 128, 131.

bracketing 196, 230; see phenomenology.
categorial grammar 181.

class 16, 91, 94, 122, 124, 130, 132, 133.
cognition, cognitive 99, 151, 163, 164, 170, 178,211, 222, 238, 250.
completeness 107, 114.
concept 15-17,19-23,29-31,34,36,86,88,91,93,96,102,117,
124, 128, 129, 193, 255, 256.
concept-word 128, 130.
consciousness 19, 22, 61, 64, 65, 69, 99, 108, 166, 186, 191,202,206,
216, 217 -219, 221, 230, 235, 237, 239, 249, 250, 252, 260; see
act.
construction 104, 218, 221 - 223, 225 - 230.
content 22, 67, 91, 92, 100, 101, 104, 155, 170, 180, 186, 198, 204,
213,220,244,261; see act, judgement.
content stroke 102.
context principle 167.
conventionalism 86.
course-of-values (Wertverlauj) 88.
decidabiIity 155, 156.

Dedekind cut 94.
definite description 132, 134, 135.
definition 19, 30-32, 34, 36, 43, 90, 92-94, 97; HusserI's views on
29; of number 88, 93; reductive 94, 100.
Ding an sich 193, 199.
directedness, directed 99, 102, 166-170, 172-174, 177, 180, 188,
195, 199,200, 211, 259.
dualism 236, 252.
272 INDEX OF SUBJECTS
ekthesis 223.
emotion, emotional 180, 219.
empiricism, empirical 25, 56, 58, 69, 101, 106, 114, 143, 144, 146,
164, 191,215,217,222; anti-empiricism 109,236,252; see induc-
tion, justification, law.
epistemology, epistemological 51, 58, 64, 68, 72, 77, 91, 113, 135,
172, 190, 254, 261.
equality, equal 16, 29-32, 119-123, 126, 128, 129, 138.
evidence, evident 106, 142, 144-147, 150, 152, 197; clarity of evi-
dence 150, 151; gradations of evidence 107; sorts of evidence 142;
theory of evidence 145, 146; see judgement.
existential generalization 93.
extension 16, 30, 31, 88,92, 117, 121, 125, 129,253; of the concept of
number 92,93, 253.
extensionality, extensional 88, 92, 122, 127, 134, 135, 201.
extensional ism 109.
fact 27, 37, 59, 83.

falling under a concept 16, 236.
formal system 87, 88, 106, 107, 109.
formalism 76, 86; anti-formalism 96.
formalization 106, 109.
foundations, foundational 86, 87, 119, 134; foundational studies in logic
76, 189, 191, 192; foundations of arithmetic 86, 87, 95, 97, 102,
105, 106, 133, 254; foundations of geometry 114; foundations of
mathematical logic 5; foundations of mathematics 85, 93, 94, 109,
114, 190; intuitive foundations 109; psychological foundations 4.
fulfillment, fulfilled 67,102-105,107,168-170,192,223,225,226.
function 228,229, 246, 247.
function-name 228.
genesis, genetic: genesis of arithmetic 100; genesis of our consciousness

of numbers 102; genesis of our mathematical concepts lOS; genesis
of set theory 102; genetic analysis 9S, 101, lOS.
geometry, geometrical 59, 95-97, 100,212,216-221,223-227,231;
see analysis, intuition, knowledge, law.
Godelsatz 156.
history, historical 8, 9, 43.

hyle 219-222,229.
ideal ism 179.

ideality, ideal 18, 22, 25, 27, 30, 34, 54, 60, 70, 73, 76, 77, 98, 106,
142, 151-153, 179-172, 175, 178, 195,253; see knowledge.
idealization 106; see act.
identity 25, 32, 88, 98,113,114,118-123,124,126-128,130,131,
133, 154, 192, 201, 204, 209, 251.
incompleteness 85, 107.
indefinability 71.
induction 107.
inexistence 166, 240, 248, 259, 260.
inference, inferring 62,87,95, 106, 164, 172,227; inference rules 107,
146; methods of inference 87.
infinity, infinite 88,95, 97, 114, 116.
intension 31, 92, 125; of the concept of number 93.
intensionality, intensional 88, 92, 93, 103, 114, 201.
intention 102, 104, 169, 170, 193.
intentionality, intentional 22,23,91,93,99, 100, 114, 142, 165, 166-
168,172,178,179,185-187,192,194,195,198-201,203,211,
212,214,217,218,223-226,239,240,243,248,252,253,256,
257; see object.
intuition 15, 18, 71, 87, 91, 96, 97, 101-107, 190-192, 211, 212,
219, 222-226, 254; arithmetical 96, 107; forms of 104; geometri-
cal 96, 104; mathematical 226, 227; method of 217, 219, 225; of
space and time 145; pure 89, 96-97, 124.
invariance, invariant 98, 107.
is/ought distinction 53.
judgement, judging 15, 21, 25, 27, 31, 37, 60, 65, 66, 70, 85, 102-
104, 106, 120, 142, 147 -151, 170, 176, 189,220-222,230,231,
235, 237, 238, 250, 256; compound judgement 148; content of a
judgement 67; evident judgement 70, 72, 150; theory of judgement
15; see act.
judgement stroke 102.
justification 59, 71, 87, 103 -105, 107; empirical 87, 96; see logic.
knowledge 17, 58, 59, 71, 93, 97, 99, 103, 104, 106, 108, 142-144,
180, 189, 190, 236-238, 249, 255; a priori 56-59, 96; apodictic
37,39; arithmetic 97,98, 101, 102, 105, 107, 109, 143; concept of
103; critique of 86; general theory of 9; human 66, 67, 73; induc-
tive 59; logical 196; mathematical 105; objective 196; of ideal
objects 97; of logical laws 58; of psychological laws 58; perceptual
101; source of 95 -97, 103, 104.
language 85, 87,95, 146, 164, 165, 172, 181, 193, 243.
law 35, 76, 86; biological 58, 93; causal 8, 10-13, 35, 39, 43, 44;
empirical 68; geometrical 172; logical/of logic 24,33,34,54,56-
60, 62, 64, 68, 69, 73, 76, 88, 92, 128, 129, 172, 216, 253, 254;
of gravity 66; of nature 33, 57, 58; of psychology 21; of syllogistics
62; of the excluded middle 106, 155; of thought 62; of truth 33; of
understanding 143; physical 57, 58; psychological 56, 57, 59, 62,
68, 89, 254; semantic 155; see knowledge.
Leibniz's law/principle 113, 119, 122, 123, 126, 127, 130.
logic, logics, logical 4, 5, 14, 15, 21-26, 28, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39,
43, 51-53, 55-61, 64, 65, 67 -70, 72, 73, 77, 85, 87 -93, 95,
99,104,107,108,113-117,127,128,130,133,135,141-144,
146,147,149-153,155-158,163,164,172,173,181,190-192,
217, 219, 222, 227, 228, 230, 242; apophantic logic 145, 155-
157; consequence logic 141, 142, 144, 146; constructivist views of
logic 106; epistemic logic 143; formal logic of non-contradiction
141, 145, 147 -153, 156, 157; formal logic of truth 141-147, 151,
153, 155 -158; history of logic 85; justifications of logic 73; logic
of oblique contexts 93; logical necessity 59; mathematical logic 35,
85, 134; normative character of logic 33 - 35; philosophical basis of
logic 89; philosophical foundations of logic 36; philosophical logic
85; philosophy of logic 156; psychological logic 21, 24, 30, 34;
pure logic 17, 22, 31, 34, 56, 74, 76, 93, 190, 191, 256; transcen-
dental logic 142-145, 153, 156, 157; truth logic 142, 145, 146,
147, 150, 157; see law, object, knowledge.
logicism, logicist 6, 71, 76, 85, 86, 89, 93, 94, 97, 102, 107, 108.
magnitude 20.
mathematics, mathematical 6, 11, 12, 33, 77, 85-87, 89, 92-94,96,
98, 100, 106, 108, 109, 114-116, 156; formal mathematics 157;
history of mathematics 227; philosophy of mathematics 86, 156; see

genesis, knowledge, logic, realism.
mereology, mereological 102, 168, 175, 180.
mind 64, 164, 192, 213, 215, 230, 235, 239-241, 243; computational
theory of 211, 212, 215, 227, 229; philosophy of 205; representa-
tional theory of 211; syntactic theory of 230.
morfe 219.
model theory 146.
multiplicity 15 - 20, 23, 36.
naturalism, naturalistic 7, 86.

Neokantianism, Neokantian 53-55,75.
noema 99, 178, 181, 211-214, 217, 219-221, 223, 225, 229, 230,
254.
noesis, noetic 191, 211, 219, 220, 242.
non-contradiction: principle of 58, 61.
normativity, normative 22, 34, 36, 53 - 56.
number 15-19,21,22, 30, 36, 85, 88-90,96,98,99, 101, 102, 104,
105,107,108,113-115,117-119,121,127,249,253,254,256,
258; accounts of 101; cardinal 23, 45, 91, 100; concept of 16, 29,
89-91, 92, 97, 98, 100, 105, 108; formal logical view of 19;
natural 95; number theory 94, 102; ordinal 20; ordinary complex
20; real 20, 94; theory of 89, 91, 100; see definition, extension,
genesis, intension, knowledge.
object 17,22,23,30,31,67,88,101-103,122,128,129,145,166,
167, 186, 189, 194, 198, 204, 211, 214, 222, 242, 263; abstract
98, 104; everyday 100; external 166, 167, 178, 214; concrete 216;
general 22; immanent 166, 168; intended 100; intentional 198, 199,
201, 203-206, 209, 258; logical 98; material 154; mental 98; of
ideas 66; of logic 59; of possible sensory perception 17; of sensation
99; of sense perception 98; particular 31; perceptual 103, 154;
physical 95, 98, 99; real 17; see knowledge.
objectivity, objective 4, 11, 12, 17, 20, 21-25, 30, 36, 89, 90, 101,
144, 186, 188, 189, 196, 204, 242, 249, 251, 256.
oblique context 88, 93.
ontology, ontological 7, 28, 164, 166, 171, 213; formal 155-157;

general 241; material 217.
paradox 130, 133, 134.

perception 59, 71, 95, 96, 102, 144, 170, 180, 237.
phaneroscopy 215.
phenomenology, phenomenological 4, 9-12, 14, 15, 17, 22, 23, 35,
37,38,41, 76, 89, 91, 97, 98, 106, 108, 145, 189, 190-192, 195,
197, 198, 200-206, 209, 213-225, 227, 228, 230, 260; phe-
nomenological method 4, 39, 253; phenomenological reductions
207,213,216.
philosophy 77, 92.
Platonism, Platonist 7, 76, 85, 164, 165, 236, 252.
positing (Thesis), posited 216, 220.
possibility: notion of 68.
possible world 145, 146.
pragmatism 86.
pred icating 147, 148.
probability 8, 57, 70.
proper name 95, 106, 130.
propositional function 125.
provability, provable 89, 97, 146.
psychologism vs. antipsychologism 3, 5 -8, 12-15,20,22,24,25,29,
32-38,40,41,45,51-53,55,56,60,63,65,68-72,74-77,
86, 89-91,93,94,96,97, 117, 163-165, 171, 172, 178, 189,
190, 192, 254.
psychology, psychological 5, 6, 14, 15, 17, 21, 22, 24, 32, 34, 53,
57-61,69,71,72,74,75,77,89,90,108,149,163,189-191,
196, 219, 237, 239-242; descriptive psychology/descriptive-psy-
chological 14, 36, 38, 76, 190, 192, 196, 203; experimental 190;
faculty 251; see foundations, knowledge, law.
quantification theory 88.
rationalism 106, 109.

realism 109, 251; anti- 198, 206, 238; classical metaphysical 99; con-
ceptual 31; epistemological 236, 252; Fregean 206; mathematical
86,97;
reality, real 18, 25, 27, 31, 34, 56, 57, 60, 66, 143, 174, 179, 195,
198, 202.
reasoning 28, 88, 164, 223; arithmetical 107; corollarial 223; theo-
rematic 223.
reference, referent (Bedeutung) 85, 88, 92, 93, 103, 114, 163, 166,
167,177-179,185,186,189,192-196,198,203,204,214,228,
229,235-238,244,247,248,250-252,256,257,259,260.
referring 180, 245, 248, 256, 257.
reflection 59, 100.
relativism 25-29,37,40,63-65,67,68, 70, 76.
Russell's paradox 94, 113 -115, 124, 127 -129, 133, 135.
saturation 88, 175, 228; unsaturated ness 168, 246, 259.

scepticism 63, 68, 69, 72, 76, 145, 236.
science(s) 8, 11, 12, 59; branches of 43; critique of 59; cultural 216;
eidetic 17,217; general theory of 89; natural 8, 43, 216; normative
36; of essences 217; of matters of fact 216, 217; physical 57; real
34; social 216; special 77; theoretical 36, 54, 55.
scholasticism, scholastics 65, 76, 187.
self-evidence 25-28, 36, 37, 39, 70, 72, 73, 89, 106, 109, 197,224;
apodictic 56, 69, 71; definition of 71; feeling of 71, 72; Husserl's
concept of 37; natural history of 72; notion of 76; theory of 73, 77.
semantics 145, 146, 212, 226.
set 16, 19,23,30,45,91, 100; concept of 94; concrete 17; elements of
29, 30; theory 91, 93, 94, 100, 102, 114, 115, 130, 131, 135.
solipsism 212; methodological 211-213, 230.
soul 69, 166, 237, 238.
soundness 107.
subjectivism 26.
subjectivity, subjective 4, 20, 23, 24, 34, 36, 89, 90, 101, 186, 189,
190, 192, 236.
subordination 16, 128, 129.
substitution salva veritate: see Leibniz's law.
synthetic: see analytic.
temporality 198, 217; concept of 95.

thought 20, 33, 53, 70, 92, 98, 102, 103, 163, 164, 165, 167, 178,
179, 187, 193, 199,235,237-243,245,250,253,256,259,262;
Fregean 92; grasping a/the 103, 239, 241, 247; rules of 54; scien-
tific 74; see law.
thought-economy 73; principle of 74.
transcendence, transcendent 66, 199, 203 -206, 215, 216, 258.
transcendental: aesthetic(s) 145, 157, 158; Analytic 143, 144; Ego 240;
idealism 207; object 64; philosophy 142; see arithmetic, logic.
truth, true 8,22-27,33,39,40,59,64-66,70,72,92, 103-105,
141,142,145,148,151-153,156,157,178,181,191,192,196,
198,204,247,256; absolute truth 27,29,40, 72, 105; being taken
as true 23 -25, 36, 37, 39; conception of true 27; criterion of truth
70,143, 144; evidence of truth 105; formal truth 191; hypothetical
truth 65; independence theory of truth 65-67,73,77; logical truth
146; material conditions of truth 145; necessary (or apodictic) truth
105, 107; notion of truth 65, 192; scientific truth 196; theory of
truth 70, 143, 144, 158.
truth-value 92,93, 167, 168, 177, 178, 245.
validity, valid 26, 28, 31, 37, 57, 69, 71, 73, 74, 93.
value 54, 55, 216; concept of 55.
whole and part 14, 168, 176, 198.

SYNTHESE LIBRARY
106. K. Kosik, Dialectics of the Concrete. A Study on Problems of Man and World.
[Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. LII] 1976
ISBN 90-277-0761-8; Pb 90-277-0764-2
107. N. Goodman, The Structure of Appearance. 3rd ed. with an Introduction by G.
Hellman. [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. LIII] 1977
ISBN 90-277-0773-1; Pb 90-277-0774-X
108. K. Ajdukiewicz, The Scientific World-Perspective and Other Essays, 1931-1963.
Translated from Polish. Edited and with an Introduction by J. Giedymin. 1978
ISBN 90-277-0527-5
109. R. L. Causey, Unity of Science. 1977 ISBN 90-277-0779-0
110. R. E. Grandy, Advanced Logic for Applications. 1977 ISBN 90-277-0781-2
Ill. R. P. McArthur, Tense Logic. 1976 ISBN 90-277-0697-2
112. L. Lindahl, Position and Change. A Study in Law and Logic. Translated from
Swedish by P. Needham. 1977 ISBN 90-277-0787-1
113. R. Tuomela, Dispositions. 1978 ISBN 90-277-081O-X
114. H. A. Simon, Models of Discovery and Other Topics in the Methods of Science.
[Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. LIV] 1977
ISBN 90-277-0812-6; Pb 90-277-0858-4
115. R. D. Rosenkrantz, Inference, Method and Decision. Towards a Bayesian
Philosophy of Science. 1977 ISBN 90-277-0817-7; Pb 90-277-0818-5
116. R. Tuomela, Human Action and Its Explanation. A Study on the Philosophical
Foundations of Psychology. 1977 ISBN 90-277-0824-X
117. M. Lazerowitz, The Language of Philosophy. Freud and Wittgenstein. [Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. LV] 1977
ISBN 90-277-0826-6; Pb 90-277-0862-2
118. Not published
119. J. Pelc (ed.), Semiotics in Poland, 1894-1969. Translated from Polish. 1979
ISBN 90-277-0811-8
120. I. Porn, Action Theory and Social Science. Some Formal Models. 1977
ISBN 90-277-0846-0
121. J. Margolis, Persons and Mind. The Prospects of Nonreductive Materialism. [Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. LVII] 1977
ISBN 90-277-0854-1; Pb 90-277-0863-0
122. J. Hintikka, I. Niiniluoto, and E. Saarinen (eds.), Essays on Mathematical and
Philosophical Logic. 1979 ISBN 90-277-0879-7
123. T. A. F. Kuipers, Studies in Inductive Probability and Rational Expectation. 1978
ISBN 90-277-0882-7
124. E. Saarinen, R. Hilpinen, I. Niiniluoto and M. P. Hintikka (eds.), Essays in Honour
of laakko Hintikka on the Occasion of His 50th Birthday. 1979
ISBN 90-277-0916-5
125. G. Radnitzky and G. Andersson (eds.), Progress and Rationality in Science. [Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. LVIII] 1978
ISBN 90-277-0921-1; Pb 90-277-0922-X
126. P. Mittelstaedt, Quantum Logic. 1978 ISBN 90-277-0925-4
127. K. A. Bowen, Model Theory for Modal Logic. Kripke Models for Modal Predicate
Calculi. 1979 ISBN 90-277-0929-7
128. H. A. Bursen, Dismantling the Memory Machine. A Philosophical Investigation of
Machine Theories of Memory. 1978 ISBN 90-277-0933-5
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129. M. W. Wartofsky, Models. Representation and the Scientific Understanding.

[Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XL VIII] 1979
ISBN 90-277-0736-7; Pb 90-277-0947-5
130. D. Ihde, Technics and Praxis. A Philosophy of Technology. [Boston Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, Vol. XXIV] 1979 ISBN 90-277-0953-X; Pb 90-277-0954-8
131. J. J. Wiatr (ed.), Polish Essays in the Methodology of the Social Sciences. [Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XXIX] 1979
ISBN 90-277-0723-5; Pb 90-277-0956-4
132. W. C. Salmon (ed.), Hans Reichenbach: Logical Empiricist. 1979
ISBN 90-277-0958-0
133. P. Bieri, R.-P. Horstmann and L. Kruger (eds.), Transcendental Arguments in
Science. Essays in Epistemology. 1979 ISBN 90-277-0963-7; Pb 90-277-0964-5
134. M. Markovic and G. Petrovic (eds.), Praxis. Yugoslav Essays in the Philosophy and
Methodology of the Social Sciences. [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science,
Vol. XXXVI] 1979 ISBN 90-277-0727-8; Pb 90-277-0968-8
135. R. W6jcicki, Topics in the Formal Methodology of Empirical Sciences. Translated
from Polish. 1979 ISBN 90-277-I004-X
136. G. Radnitzky and G. Andersson (eds.), The Structure and Development of Science.
[Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. LIX] 1979
ISBN 90-277-0994-7; Pb 90-277-0995-5
137. J. C. Webb, Mechanism, Mentalism and Metamathematics. An Essay on Finitism.
1980 ISBN 90-277-1046-5
138. D. F. Gustafson and B. L. Tapscott (eds.), Body, Mind and Method. Essays in Honor
of Virgil C. Aldrich. 1979 ISBN 90-277-1013-9
139. L. Nowak, The Structure of Idealization. Towards a Systematic Interpretation of the
Marxian Idea of Science. 1980 ISBN 90-277-1014-7
140. C. Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities. Essays on Rhetoric and Its
Applications. Translated from French and German. With an Introduction by H.
Zyskind.1979 ISBN 90-277-1018-X; Pb 90-277-1019-8
141. W. Rabinowicz, Universalizability. A Study in Morals and Metaphysics. 1979
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142. C. Perelman, Justice, Law and Argument. Essays on Moral and Legal Reasoning.
Translated from French and German. With an Introduction by H.I. Berman. 1980
ISBN 90-277-1089-9; Pb 90-277-1090-2
143. S. Kanger and S. Ohman (eds.), Philosophy and Grammar. Papers on the Occasion
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144. T. Pawlowski, Concept Formation in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. 1980
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145. I. Hintikka, D. Gruender and E. Agazzi (eds.), Theory Change, Ancient Axiomatics
and Galileo' s Methodology. Proceedings of the 1978 Pisa Conference on the History
and Philosophy of Science, Volume I. 1981 ISBN 90-277-1126-7
146. J. Hintikka, D. Gruender and E. Agazzi (eds.), Probabilistic Thinking, Ther-
modynamics, and the Interaction of the History and Philosophy of Science.
Proceedings of the 1978 Pisa Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science,
Volume 11.1981 ISBN 90-277-1127-5
147. U. Monnich (ed.), Aspects of Philosophical Logic. Some Logical Forays into Central
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148. D. M. Gabbay, Semanticallnvestigations in Heyting' s Intuitionistic Logic. 1981
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149. E. Agazzi (ed.), Modern Logic -A Survey. Historical, Philosophical, and Mathemati-
cal Aspects of Modem Logic and Its Applications. 1981 ISBN 90-277-1137-2
150. A. F. Parker-Rhodes, The Theory of Indistinguishables. A Search for Explanatory
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151. J. C. Pitt, Pictures, Images, and Conceptual Change. An Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars'
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152. R. Hilpinen (ed.), New Studies in Deontic Logic. Norms, Actions, and the Founda-
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153. C. Dilworth, Scientific Progress. A Study Concerning the Nature of the Relation
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ed.,1994
ISBN 0-7923-2487-0; Pallas Pb 0-7923-2488-9
154. D. Woodruff Smith and R. McIntyre, Husserl and Intentionality. A Study of Mind,
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155. R. 1. Nelson, The Logic of Mind. 2nd. ed., 1989
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156. J. F. A. K. van Benthem, The Logic of Time. A Model-Theoretic Investigation into
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157. R. Swinburne (ed.), Space, Time and Causality. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1437-1
158. E. T. Jaynes, Papers on Probability, Statistics and Statistical Physics. Ed. by R. D.
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159. T. Chapman, Time: A Philosophical Analysis. 1982 ISBN 90-277-1465-7
160. E. N. Zalta, Abstract Objects. An Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics. 1983
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161. S. Harding and M. B. Hintikka (eds.), Discovering Reality. Feminist Perspectives on
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162. M. A. Stewart (ed.), Law, Morality and Rights. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1519-X
163. D. Mayr and G. Siissmann (eds.), Space, Time, and Mechanics. Basic Structures of a
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164. D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Vol. I:
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165. D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Vol. II:
Extensions of Classical Logic. 1984 ISBN 90-277-1604-8
166. D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Vol. III:
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167. D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Vol. IV:
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168. A. 1. I. Jones, Communication and Meaning. An Essay in Applied Modal Logic.
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169. M. Fitting, ProofMethodsfor Modal and Intuitionistic Logics. 1983
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170. J. Margolis, Culture and Cultural Entities. Toward a New Unity of Science. 1984
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171. R. Tuomela, A Theory of Social Action. 1984 ISBN 90-277-1703-6
172. J. J. E. Gracia, E. Rabossi, E. Villanueva and M. Dascal (eds.), Philosophical
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173. P. Ziff, Epistemic Analysis. A Coherence Theory of Knowledge. 1984
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176. A. Peczenik, L. Lindahl and B. van Roermund (eds.), Theory of Legal Science.
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177. I. Niiniluoto, Is Science Progressive? 1984 ISBN 90-277-1835-0
178. B. K. Matilal and J. L. Shaw (eds.), Analytical Philosophy in Comparative
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179. P. Kroes, Time: Its Structure and Role in Physical Theories. 1985
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180. J. H. Fetzer, Sociobiology and Epistemology. 1985
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181. L. Haaparanta and J. Hintikka (eds.), Frege Synthesized. Essays on the Philosophical
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182. M. Detlefsen, Hilbert's Program. An Essay on Mathematical Instrumentalism. 1986
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183. J. L. Golden and 1. 1. Pilotta (eds.), Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs. Studies
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184. H. Zandvoort, Models of Scientific Development and the Case of Nuclear Magnetic
Resonance. 1986 ISBN 90-277-2351-6
185. I. Niiniluoto, Truthlikeness. 1987 ISBN 90-277-2354-0
186. W. Balzer, C. U. Moulines and J. D. Sneed, An Architectonic for Science. The
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187. D. Pearce, Roads to Commensurability. 1987 ISBN 90-277-2414-8
188. L. M. Vaina (ed.), Matters of Intelligence. Conceptual Structures in Cognitive Neuro-
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189. H. Siegel, Relativism Refuted. A Critique of Contemporary Epistemological
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190. W. Callebaut and R. Pinxten, Evolutionary Epistemology. A Multiparadigm
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ISBN 90-277-2582-9
191. 1. Kmita, Problems in Historical Epistemology. 1988 ISBN 90-277-2199-8
192. J. H. Fetzer (ed.), Probability and Causality. Essays in Honor of Wesley C. Salmon,
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193. A. Donovan, L. Laudan and R. Laudan (eds.), Scrutinizing Science. Empirical
Studies of Scientific Change. 1988 ISBN 90-277-2608-6
194. H.R. Otto and J.A. Tuedio (eds.), Perspectives on Mind. 1988
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195. D. Batens and J.P. van Bendegem (eds.), Theory and Experiment. Recent Insights
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196. J. Osterberg, Self and Others. A Study of Ethical Egoism. 1988
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197. D.H. Helman (ed.), Analogical Reasoning. Perspectives of Artificial Intelligence,
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198. l Wolenski, Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School. 1989

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199. R Wojcicki, Theory of Logical Calculi. Basic Theory of Consequence Operations.
1988 ISBN 90-277-2785-6
200. J. Hintikka and M.B. Hintikka, The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of
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201. E. Agazzi (ed.), Probability in the Sciences. 1988 ISBN 90-277-2808-9
202. M. Meyer (ed.), From Metaphysics to Rhetoric. 1989 ISBN 90-277-2814-3
203. RL. Tieszen, Mathematical Intuition. Phenomenology and Mathematical
Knowledge. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0131-5
204. A. Melnick, Space, Time, and Thought in Kant. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0135-8
205. D.W. Smith, The Circle of Acquaintance. Perception, Consciousness, and Empathy.
1989 ISBN 0-7923-0252-4
206. M.H. Salmon (ed.), The Philosophy of Logical Mechanism. Essays in Honor of
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1990 ISBN 0-7923-0325-3
207. M. Kusch, Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium. A Study in
Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0333-4
208. T.C. Meyering, Historical Roots of Cognitive Science. The Rise of a Cognitive
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209. P. Kosso, Observability and Observation in Physical Science. 1989
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210. l Kmita, Essays on the Theory of Scientific Cognition. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0441-1
211. W. Sieg (ed.), Acting and Reflecting. The Interdisciplinary Turn in Philosophy. 1990
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212. l Karpinski, Causality in Sociological Research. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0546-9
213. H.A. Lewis (ed.), Peter Geach: Philosophical Encounters. 1991
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214. M. Ter Hark, Beyond the Inner and the Outer. Wittgenstein's Philosophy of
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215. M. Gosselin, Nominalism and Contemporary Nominalism. Ontological and
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1990 ISBN 0-7923-0904-9
216. J.H. Fetzer, D. Shatz and G. Schlesinger (eds.), Definitions and Definability.
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217. E. Agazzi and A. Cordero (eds.), Philosophy and the Origin and Evolution of the
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218. M. Kusch, Foucault's Strata and Fields. An Investigation into Archaeological and
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219. C.J. Posy, Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics. Modern Essays. 1992
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220. G. Van de Vijver, New Perspectives on Cybernetics. Self-Organization, Autonomy
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221. lC. Nyfri, Tradition and Individuality. Essays. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1566-9
222. R Howell, Kant's Transcendental Deduction. An Analysis of Main Themes in His
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223. A. Garda de la Sienra, The Logical Foundations of the Marxian Theory of Value.
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224. D.S. Shwayder, Statement and Referent. An Inquiry into the Foundations of our
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225. M. Rosen, Problems of the Hegelian Dialectic. Dialectic Reconstructed as a Logic
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226. P. Suppes, Models and Methods in the Philosophy of Science: Selected Essays. 1993
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227. R. M. Dancy (ed.), Kant and Critique: New Essays in Honor ofW. H. Werkmeister.
1993 ISBN 0-7923-2244-4
228. J. Wolenski (ed.), Philosophical Logic in Poland. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2293-2
229. M. De Rijke (ed.), Diamonds and Defaults. Studies in Pure and Applied Intensional
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230. B.K. Matilal and A. Chakrabarti (eds.), Knowing from Words. Western and Indian
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231. S.A. Kleiner, The Logic of Discovery. A Theory of the Rationality of Scientific
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232. R. Festa, Optimum Inductive Methods. A Study in Inductive Probability, Bayesian
Statistics, and Verisimilitude. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2460-9
233. P. Humphreys (ed.), Patrick Suppes: Scientific Philosopher. Volume 1. Probability,
Probabilistic Causality, Learning and Action Theory. 1994 (forthcoming)
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234. P. Humphreys (ed.), Patrick Suppes: Scientific Philosopher. Volume 2. Philosophy
of Physics, Theory Structure, Measurement Theory, Philosophy of Language and
Logic. 1994 (forthcoming) ISBN 0-7923-2553-2; Set 0-7923-2554-0
235. P. Ehrlich (ed.), Real Numbers, Generalizations of the Reals, and Theories of
Continua. 1994 (forthcoming) ISBN 0-7923-2689-X
236. D. Prawitz and D. Westerstahl (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala.
Papers from the 9th International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy
of Science. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2702-0
237. L. Haaparanta (ed.), Mind, Meaning and Mathematics. Essays on the Philosophical
Views of Husser! and Frege. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2703-9
Previous volumes are still available.
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MIND, MEANING AND MATHEMATICS

LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University

DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

Springer-Science+Business Media, B.Y.

ISBN 978-90-481-4366-5 ISBN 978-94-015-8334-3 (eBook)

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

DAGFINN F0LLESDAL I Husserl and Frege: A Contribution to

MARTIN KUSCH I The Criticism of Husserl's Arguments against

RICHARD TIESZEN I The Philosophy of Arithmetic: Frege and

CLAIRE ORTIZ HILL I Husserl and Frege on Substitutivity 113

J.N. MOHANTY I Husserl's 'Logic of Truth' 141

BARRY SMITH I Husserl's Theory of Meaning and Reference 163

DAVID BELL I Reference, Experience, and Intentionality 185

LEILA HAAPARANT A I Intentionality, Intuition and the Computa-

DALLAS WILLARD I The Integrity of the Mental Act: Husserlian

INDEX OF NAMES 263

The idea of editing a volume on Husserl's and Frege's philosophical views

David Bell's article 'Reference, Experience, and Intentionality' continues

HUSSERL AND FREGE:

AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

This essay was written when I was studying mathematics in G6t-

One volume of Husserl's first major philosophical work, the Philosophy

The course of my development has led to my drawing apart as

The Logical Investigations opens with a classically conducted attack

1. In "mathematicizing logic" he had come to know an "unerring

2. Psychological foundations for a philosophical clarification of logic

... the objectivity of mathematics, and of all science in general, could

Both these reasons bring to mind one of Husserl's greatest critics,

of mathematical logic and did so in such a brilliant far-sighted way that

See in addition the fine statement of Natorp 'Uber objektive und

Prolegomena, to refer to the Preface of Frege's later work Die

Scholars who have taken up the problem have come to widely

Furthermore, although Frege has been credited with the demolition

The Dutch logician E. W. Beth seems to disagree with this when he

It is possible to assign Frege a well determined place in the panthe-

Husserl's effort to build up a "reine Logik" independent of ontolo-

Levinas had countered that contention ten years earlier:

Quite the contrary, it was a new ontology of the consciousness that

POSING THE PROBLEM

This work is a causal-historical study of the relationship between Husserl

The same holds for the probability of such statements.28

This work brings such a comparative logico-doctrinal investigation

I no longer accept my criticism on principle of Frege's antipsycholo-

In the conclusion we will discuss how much credence HusserI's

Two Preliminary Questions

Which of Frege's writings did Husserl know?

and the subsequent polemical exchange with Voigt,39 however, display

For all of psychology, and for psychology of knowledge and logic

It can therefore be concluded that the turning point in Husserl's

FREGE'S REVIEW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC

Frege formulates his objection in this way:

The words 'the concept of number comprises the same concrete

Frege had himself carried out a similar investigation in the Founda-

the number which belongs to the concept F is the extension of the

To this definition Frege adds the comment:

I believe that for "extension of the concept" we could simply write