Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics, his metatheory, and his transcendental phenomenology have a sophisticated and systematic interrelation that remains relevant for questions of ontology today. It is well established that Husserl anticipated many aspects of model theory. I focus on this aspect of Husserl’s philosophy in order to argue that Thomasson’s recent pleonastic reconstruction of Husserl’s approach to essences is incompatible with Husserl’s philosophy as a whole. According to the pleonastic approach, Husserl can appeal to essences in the absence of a (...) positive metaphysical account of their nature. I show, using central results from recent model theory, that the pleonastic approach undermines Husserl’s approach to formalization and categoricity, an effect that will ripple out from Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics into Husserl’s metatheory and transcendental phenomenology. The result is that Husserl cannot appeal to formal essences without metaphysical commitments. However, the very observations Thomasson makes about the nature of eidetic intuition in Husserl lead to a general strategy for responding to the problem. The article thus illustrates that the pleonastic and the model-theoretic routes for making Husserl relevant to present-day ontology are competing approaches, but I conclude that Husserl scholars seeking to set Husserl’s present-day relevance into sharp relief could do worse than to emphasize the model-theoretic nature of Husserl’s enterprise. (shrink)

Reinach est connu pour défendre une théorie a priori du droit civil. Cette position, qui se dit inspirée de Husserl, est usuellement qualifiée de « platonisme » dans la littérature secondaire. Elle se comprend comme intuition des essences, projet de phénoménologie eidétique que Reinach fait remonter à Platon. Une position qui est rejetée par Reinach en philosophie du droit est le « psychologisme », thèse tendant à expliquer le droit par référence à la psyché. L’hostilité de Reinach à l’égard du (...) psychologisme semble être une hostilité à l’égard de lui-même : en tant qu’élève de Lipps, Reinach avait écrit une thèse sur la notion de causalité en droit pénal, dans laquelle il faisait jouer à la psychologie un rôle fondateur pour le droit. Dans mon exposé, je retracerai l’évolution de Reinach sur ces questions, en repartant de sa thèse et des travaux de Lipps sur lesquels elle se base pour la comparer aux écrits reinachiens plus tardifs et leur rapport tant à Platon qu’à Husserl. (shrink)

Husserl and Frege on the analysis of the concept of number and primitive logical concepts.

Öz: Frege özel adların (ve diğer dilsel simgelerin) anlamları ve gönderimleri arasında ünlü ayrımını yaptığı “Anlam ve Gönderim Üzerine” (1948) adlı makalesinde, bu ayrımın önemi, gerekliliği ve sonuçları üzerine uzun değerlendirmeler yapar ancak özel adın anlamından tam olarak ne anlaşılması gerektiğinden yalnızca bir dipnotta kısaca söz eder. Örneğin “Aristoteles” özel adının anlamının Platon’un öğrencisi ve Büyük İskender’in öğretmeni ya da Stagira’da doğan Büyük İskender’in öğretmeni olarak alınabileceğini söyler. Burada dikkat çeken nokta örnekteki özel adın olası anlamları olarak gösterilen belirli betimlemelerin (...) de özel ad içeriyor olması. Anlamın Frege için bileşimsel olduğu, bir başka deyişle bir dilsel simgenin anlamının (varsa) parçalarının anlamlarınca belirlendiği düşünülürse, örnekteki belirli betimlemelerin anlamlarının saptanabilmesi için içerdikleri özel adların da anlamları saptanıp betimleme içinde geçtikleri yere konmalıdır. Bu işlem hiçbir özel ad kalmayana kadar sürdürülmelidir. Ancak biraz düşünülünce bir özel adın nesnesini tekil olarak betimleyecek ve içinde özel ad geçmeyecek bir betimleme bulmanın kolay olmadığı görülür. Örneğin yukarıdaki betimlemelerde geçen “Platon”, “Büyük İskender” ve “Stagira” gibi özel adların anlamları olabilecek ancak özel ad içermeyen betimlemeler bulmak pek kolay görünmüyor. Ortaya bir sonsuz gerileme sorunu çıkmış gibi duruyor. Frege’nin anlam-gönderim ayrımını için ciddi sonuçları olabilecek bu sorunu Frege çözebilir mi? Bu yazıda bu sorunun yanıtını arayacağım. Sorunu betimledikten sonra Frege’nin önündeki seçenekleri (örneğin bağlama duyarlı terimlerden (gösterme adılları veya belirteçler) yararlanma veya bağlamı sınırlama gibi) değerlendireceğim. -/- Abstract: In his “Sense and Reference” (1948), Frege makes his famous distinction between the sense and the reference of a proper name (and other signs) and discusses at length the significance, necessity and consequences of the distinction, but he explains how the sense of a proper name should be understood very briefly in a footnote. According to him, for example, the sense of the proper name “Aristotle” can be taken as the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great or the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira. What is interesting here is that the definite descriptions given as the possible senses of this proper name do themselves contain proper names too. Since the sense is something compositional for Frege, which means the sense of a linguistic sign is determined by its constituents (if there are any), in order to determine the sense of definite descriptions in question, we should first determine the senses of proper names they contain and substitute these senses with the proper names themselves. This process should continue until no proper name remains. However, it does not seem easy to find a definite description which describes the object of a proper name uniquely but contains no proper name itself. For instance, could we find appropriate senses that contain no proper name for “Plato”, “Alexander the Great” and “Stagira”? It does not seem likely. A problem of infinite regress appears to arise. Can Frege solve this problem, which poses a serious threat for his sensereference distinction? I will explore this problem in this paper. After explaining the problem, I will discuss the options (e.g. turning to indexicals or context restriction) Frege can take to deal with it. (shrink)

Dans les « Prolégomènes à la logique pure » de ses Recherches logiques , Husserl rend hommage aux deux premiers volumes de la Wissenschaftslehre de 1837 de Bernard Bolzano comme un « ouvrage qui […] surpasse de loin tout ce que la littérature mondiale a à offrir en termes de contributions systématiques à la logique ». Cet article porte sur le jeune Husserl comme lecteur du chef-d’oeuvre de Bolzano, visant ainsi à contribuer à une compréhension adéquate de certains aspects des (...) théories de Bolzano et de Husserl et de ce sur quoi portent ces théories. Je me concentrerai sur la question de savoir comment Bolzano en 1837 et Husserl autour de 1900 ont conçu les contenus des actes et états mentaux.Dans les sections 1 et 2, je fais état de la redécouverte de la WL de Bolzano au sein de l’École de Brentano, et en ce qui concerne le problème des représentations sans objets, j’endosse la défense de Bolzano par Husserl contre Twardowski. Dans les sections 3 et 4, je présente un aperçu de la théorie des propositions et des notions , et montre comment Husserl assimile le cadre conceptuel bolzanien dans ses RL. Tandis que Bolzano considère les propositions et les notions comme étant des objets abstraits sui generis, le jeune Husserl développe une conception des notions et des propositions en termes d’espèces. J’explique cette conception dans la section 5 et je la défends contre le dernier Husserl. La discussion la plus extensive et la plus détaillée d’une seule et unique thèse de la philosophie de la logique de Bolzano qu’on puisse trouver dans les livres et les articles publiés par Husserl de son vivant se trouve dans le dernier chapitre de ses RL. Le sujet de discussion, et la dernière section de cet article, est une affirmation courageuse, pour ne pas dire outrageuse de Bolzano qui, du moins pris au pied de la lettre, contredit tout simplement ce que la plupart des philosophes ont tenu pour acquis depuis Aristote. Les questions, soutient Bolzano, sont une espèce particulière de propositions, et donc leur vérité est susceptible d’être évaluée.In the “Prolegomena to Pure Logic” of his Logical Investigations Husserl praised the first two volumes of Bernard Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre of 1837 as “a work which … far surpasses everything that world-literature has to offer in the way of systematic contributions to logic”. This paper is about the early Husserl as a reader of Bolzano’s masterpiece, hoping thereby to contribute to a proper understanding of certain aspects of Bolzano’s and Husserl’s theories and of what those theories are about. I shall concentrate on the question how Bolzano in 1837 and Husserl around 1900 conceive of the contents of mental acts and states.In sections 1-2 I report on the rediscovery of Bolzano’s WL in the school of Brentano, and as regards the issue of objectless presentations, I endorse Husserl’s defence of Bolzano against Twardowski. In sections 3-4 I present an outline of Bolzano’s theory of propositions and notions and go on to show how Husserl assimilates the Bolzanian framework in his LI. While Bolzano takes propositions and notions to be sui generis abstract objects, the early Husserl develops a species conception of notions and proposition. I explain this view in section 5 and defend it against Husserl’s later self. The most extensive and most thorough discussion of a single contention in Bolzano’s philosophy of logic that can be found in any of Husserl’s books and articles published during his lifetime is contained in the last chapter of his LI. The topic of this discussion, and of the final section of this paper, is a courageous if not outrageous Bolzanian contention : questions, he claims, are a special kind of propositions and hence truth-evaluable. (shrink)