In his Logical Investigations Edmund Husserl criticizes John Stuart Mill’s account of meaning as connotation, especially Mill’s failure to separate the distinction between connotative and non-connotative names from the distinction between the meaningful and the meaningless. According to Husserl, both connotative and non-connotative names have meaning or “signification”, that is, what Gottlob Frege calls the sense (“Sinn”) of an expression. The distinction between connotative and non-connotative names is a distinction between two kinds of meaning (or sense), attributive and non-attributive meaning (...) (“attributive und nicht-attributive Bedeutung”). Attributive (connotative) names denote (refer to) objects through their attributes, whereas a non-attributive name means a thing directly (“direkt”). In this paper I examine the concepts of attributive and non-attributive meaning by means of the semiotic theory of Charles S. Peirce, and compare Peirce’s account with the views of Frege, Husserl, Alexius Meinong, and David Kaplan and Gareth Evans. (shrink)

This essay reshapes our understanding of the origin and trajectory of the phenomenology of feelings. In contrast to accepted interpretations, I show that Husserl’s 1896 manuscript “Approval, Value, and Evidence”—and not his 1901 Logical Investigations—is the foundation of his subsequent phenomenology of feelings as it is found in Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory, Ideas I, and other manuscripts. This is for two reasons. First, in the 1896 manuscript—published in Studies Concerning the Structures of Consciousness—Husserl introduces the core problem, which (...) continues to motivate his philosophy of feelings. He sees that feelings are not just affective, but also surprisingly rational. Second, Husserl addresses this enigmatic duality, by pioneering the method of analogizing, which he would employ for the next twenty years. In sum, I show that the 1896 manuscript introduces the problems and methods, in the absence of which Husserl’s later phenomenology of feelings appears inconceivable. (shrink)

This study purports a unifying view of the ontology of mathematics and fiction presented in Husserl’s 1894 manuscript “Intentional Objects” [Intentionale Gegenstände] in relation to his theory of manifolds. In particular, I clarify that Husserl’s argument supposes deductive systems of mathematical theories and fictional work as well as their “correlates,” which are mathematical manifolds in the former cases. This unifying view concretizes the concept of manifolds as an ontological concept that is not bound to mathematics. Although mathematical and fictional objects (...) differ in whether they are purely formal or materially filled, the concept of manifolds can be extended to admit materially filled objects, thus encompassing the two into the unitary theory of manifolds. By contrast, reviewing the subsequent developments of Husserl’s theory of manifolds naturally leads to restricting its concept to be strictly formal. This notion is consistent with the view that describes manifolds as forms of worlds and states of affairs; however, I suggest that the concept of the manifold is more fundamental than the concept of the world and state of affairs. (shrink)

This essay accomplishes two goals. First, I explore Husserl’s study of “tension” from his 1893 manuscript, “Notes Towards a Theory of Attention and Interest,” to reveal that it comprises his de facto first analysis of instinct. Husserl there describes tension as the innate pull to execute ever new objectifications. He clarifies this pull of objectification by contrasting it to affective and volitional experiences. This analysis surprisingly prefigures a theory of drive-feelings and anticipates the idea that consciousness is both teleological and (...) autotelic. Second, I show how Husserl’s de facto account of instincts from 1893 inspires his robust philosophy of instincts from Studies concerning the Structures of Consciousness and other late manuscripts. While Husserl maintains many 1893 insights, he now claims that the instinct towards objectification comprises affective and volitional moments. Finally, I demonstrate that Husserl’s analyses of instincts throughout his life are united by the idea that consciousness possesses an essential structural lack. (shrink)

The young Edmund Husserl stressed that the success of his philosophy hinged upon his ability to determine the subject and the predicate of impersonal propositions and their expressions, such as ‘It is raining’. This essay accordingly investigates the tenability of Husserl’s early thought, by executing the first study of his analysis of impersonal propositions from the late 1890s. This examination reshapes our understanding of the inception of phenomenology in two ways. First, Husserl pinpoints the subject by outlining why impersonal expressions (...) are employed during communication. This contravenes interpretations of the early Husserl as uninterested in intersubjectivity. Second, by studying how Husserl determines the predicate by investigating existential propositions, I show that Husserl, in the late 1890s, came to his final view on the concept of being. (shrink)

Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation. Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. It (...) is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intra-mathematical explanation, and scientific unification. (shrink)

This compelling reevaluation of the relationship between logic and knowledge affirms the key role that the notion of judgement must play in such a review. The commentary repatriates the concept of judgement in the discussion, banished in recent times by the logical positivism of Wittgenstein, Hilbert and Schlick, and the Platonism of Bolzano. The volume commences with the insights of Swedish philosopher Per Martin-Löf, the father of constructive type theory, for whom logic is a demonstrative science in which judgement is (...) a settled feature of the landscape. His paper opens the first of four sections that examine, in turn, historical philosophical assessments of judgement and reason; their place in early modern philosophy; the notion of judgement and logical theory in Wolff, Kant and Neo-Kantians like Windelband; their development in the Husserlian phenomenological paradigm; and the work of Bolzano, Russell and Frege. The papers, whose authors include Per Martin-Löf, Göran Sundholm, Michael Della Rocca and Robin Rollinger, represent a finely judged editorial selection highlighting work on philosophers exercised by the question of whether or not an epistemic notion of judgement has a role to play in logic. The volume will be of profound interest to students and academicians for its application of historical developments in philosophy to the solution of vexatious contemporary issues in the foundation of logic. ​. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to re-think the question of the world of persons with schizophrenia from the perspective of the German phenomenologist Max Scheler and that of the Japanese psychiatrist Bin Kimura. So far, no comparison between these two authors has been made, even though there are several convergences and evidence of Scheler’s indirect influence on Bin Kimura through Viktor von Weizsäcker. In recent years, Dan Zahavi, Louis Sass, and Josef Parnas have interpreted the modus vivendi of schizophrenic patients (...) in relation to a disturbance on the level of the “minimal self”. Subsequently, the discussion has highlighted the importance of disorders on the level of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity (Thomas Fuchs) and on the level of “existential feelings” (Matthew Ratcliffe). This paper argues that Max Scheler and Bin Kimura allow us to focus on an aspect which has been neglected so far: that of a “relational self” that relates to the very foundation of intersubjectivity and intercorporeality and that can thus be reborn in the encounter with the other and may position itself differently in the world. In Scheler’s perspective, the world of persons with schizophrenia is the result of an axiological disorder (valueception) that impairs contact with the primordial life impulse (Lebensdrang). As a consequence, they are incapable of attuning emotionally and socially with others: this prevents the singularity from being reborn in the encounter with the other and forces them to position themselves in their own solipsistic universe. Moving in a similar direction, Bin Kimura interprets the world of persons with schizophrenia as the result of a disorder of aida (one of the central concepts of Japanese culture that indicates the space of being in between). The disorder of aida compromises the basic relationship (Grundverhältnis in the sense of Viktor von Weizsäcker) and hinders what Bin Kimura calls festum, i.e. the birth of subjectivity, so that it is experienced by persons with schizophrenia only as ante festum. Starting from these two perspectives, I argue the existence of an axiological and anthropogenetic dimension of psychopathology. I begin with a discussion of Zahavi’s concept of minimal self and the thesis that reveals the disorders on this level of subjectivity as the origin of the world of persons with schizophrenia. I, then, analyze Max Scheler’s position and its historic importance for the emergence of phenomenological psychopathology. Thereafter, I introduce the concepts of “disorder of aida” (Bin Kimura) and “disorder of ordo amoris” (Max Scheler). Finally, I develop the concept of a “psychopathology of ordo amoris” by also comparing it with Ratcliffe’s thesis of “existential feelings”. (shrink)

This essay examines how Husserl stretches the bounds of his philosophy of meaning, according to which all propositions are categorical, to account for existential propositions, which seem to lack predicates. I examine Husserl’s counterintuitive conclusion that an existential proposition does possess a predicate and I explore his endeavor to pinpoint what that predicate is. This goal is accomplished in three stages. First, I examine Husserl’s standard theory of predication and categorial intuition from his 1901 Logical Investigations. Second, I show how (...) Husserl imposes those 1901 insights to uncover the predicate of the existential proposition in unpublished manuscripts and lectures. He determines that the existential proposition predicates of the subject, that it corresponds to an actual object. This analysis reveals that Husserl’s descriptions of existential propositions from the late 1890s employed both static and genetic methodologies. In those texts, he carefully untangles and clarifies the co-enmeshed passive and active moments of consciousness and shows that the passive givenness of certain circumstances is the condition of possibility for our active verifying of propositions. Finally, I execute a critical assessment of Husserl’s thought to reveal that, while his insights about existential propositions are largely correct, they are augmented by re-construing them within the context of his mature philosophy. Only by renouncing his metaphysical neutrality and by accounting for intersubjectivity, can Husserl properly clarify existential propositions. (shrink)

This study is about an aspect of the reception of Herbatianism in Austria which has not been thoroughly investigated so far. It pertains to a controversy opposing Robert Zimmermann and Franz Brentano in the context of discussions which took place in the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna. This study looks more specifically at three important episodes involving the Philosophical Society, first, the controversy over Herbartianism, second that over the evaluation of Schelling’s philosophy, and finally the reception of Bolzano (...) in Austria. I will first describe the circumstances that led Zimmermann to get involved in the Philosophical Society and the source of his controversy with Brentano and his followers. I will then comment Zimmermann’s address as chairman of the Philosophical Society and Brentano’s reaction to Zimmermann’s remarks on Schelling and the historical period to which he belongs. I will complete my analysis of Brentano’s reaction with a summary of his evaluation of Herbart’s philosophical program to which Zimmermann adhered. The last part focuses on Zimmermann’s decisive role in the reception of Bolzano in Vienna in connection with the Bolzano Commission established by the Philosophical Society. I will conclude with brief remarks on Zimmermann’s legacy in Vienna. (shrink)

In his semiotic system Peirce distinguished between two interpretants and two objects of a sign: an immediate and a dynamical interpretant, and an immediate and a dynamical object. It is argued that Peirce’s immediate object can be interpreted a qua-object which has the dynamical object as its basis, and the dynamical interpretant consists of an interpreter’s conception of the object of the sign. Peirce semiotic system is compared with the accounts given by Frege, Husserl, Meinong, and the Stoics.

Je soutiens que la prise en compte de Lotze dans la genèse de la phénoménologie du jeune Husserl fournit de nouveaux éléments qui supportent la lecture frégéenne de la phénoménologie. Pour ce faire, je vais d’abord retracer l’origine lozéenne des questions épistémologiques issues du développement de la nouvelle psychologie et de la logique au milieu du XIXe siècle en Allemagne et j’insisterai sur l’apport de trois de ses étudiants prestigieux; je montrerai ensuite que Husserl a acquis sa connaissance de cette (...) problématique via sa fréquentation de Brentano et de Stumpf; je me pencherai ensuite sur la tournant antipsychologiste de Husserl au milieu des années 1890 et examinerai brièvement un manuscrit de Husserl intitulé « Microcosmos » qui date de cette même période et qui montre clairement l’apport de la logique de Lotze dans ce tournant antipsychologiste; j’examinerai enfin brièvement l’apport de Lotze dans la critique que Husserl adresse au psychologisme logique dans ses Prolégomènes. Je conclurai avec quelques remarques sur l’importance de Lotze dans la phénoménologie de Husserl après la publication des Recherches logiques. (shrink)

Some Austro-German philosophers considered thoughts to be mind-dependent entities, that is, psychic products. Yet these authors also attrib- uted “objectivity” to thoughts: distinct thinking subjects can have mental acts with “qualitatively” the same content. Moreover, thoughts, once built, can exist beyond the life of their inventor, “embodied” in “documents”. At the beginning of the 20th century, the notion of “psychic product” was at the centre of the debates on psychologism; a hundred years later, it is rather at the margins of (...) the history of philosophy. While Twardowski’s theory of products has been fre- quently studied, those of Stumpf and the late Husserl have been much less dis- cussed. A presentation of the Austro-German debates about psychic products is all the more important since these discussions might be of direct interest for contemporary philosophy of mind and epistemology. This paper examines the Austro-German notion of psychic products in Stumpf, Twardowski, and the later Husserl. (shrink)

Meinong’s ‘theory of objects’ is a radicalization of Brentano’s intentionalist theory which widens the universe of objects, since every act has a transcendent object as a correlate. The article focuses on two main issues: on the one hand, the object–as correlate of representations –that might be existent, subsistent or nonexistent ; on the other hand, the ‘objective’–as correlate of judgments and assumptions–; I will argue that the problem of nonexistent objects finds its solution here, i.e. within the sphere of propositional (...) acts. The aim will be to show how an authentic intentionalist theory leads necessarily to a theory of objects that gives an account of every kind of object. (shrink)

This study is a commentary on Carl Stumpf's evaluation of Husserl's phenomenology as presented in the Logical Investigations and the first book of Ideas. I first examine Stumpf's reception of the version of phenomenology that Husserl presented in the Logical Investigations and I then look at §§ 85-86 of Ideas I, in which Husserl seeks to demarcate his "pure" phenomenology from that of Stumpf. In the third section, I analyze the criticism that Stumpf, in § 13 of his book Erkenntnislehre, (...) directs toward to the new version of phenomenology that Husserl develops in Ideas I, and in the fourth, I summarize the Spinozist interpretation of the noetico-noematical correlations that Stumpf proposes in his two studies on Spinoza. The last section addresses Husserl's self-criticism regarding the Cartesian aproach to the reduction in Ideas I and the parallelism that the late Husserl establishes between intentional psychology and transcendental phenomenology. I try to show that the version of phenomenology that Husserl develops during the Freiburg period anticipates in many respects Stumpf's criticism and partly confirms the latter's diagnosis of the version of phenomenology advocated in Ideas I. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to assess Husserl’s debt to Lotze’s philosophy during the Halle period (1886-1901). I shall first track the sources of Husserl’s knowledge of Lotze’s philosophy during his studies with Brentano in Vienna and then with Stumpf in Halle. I shall then briefly comment on Husserl’s references to Lotze in his early work and research manuscripts for the second volume of his Philosophy of Arithmetic. In the third section, I examine Lotze’s influence on Husserl’s antipsychologistic turn (...) in the mid-1890s. The fourth section is a commentary on Husserl’s manuscript entitled “Microcosmus,” to which he explicitly refers in his Prolegomena, and which he planned to publish as an annex of his Logical Investigations. This work contains a detailed analysis of the third book of Lotze’s 1874 Logic. The last section examines Husserl’s arguments against logical psychologism in his Prolegomena, which I discuss through the lens of Stumpf’s critique of psychologism in his paper “Psychology and theory of knowledge”. I argue that Stumpf’s early works on this topic make it possible to establish a connection between Lotze’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of Ideas and Husserl’s antipsychologism. My hypothesis is that Stumpf’s analyses represent the background of Husserl's critique of logical psychologism in his Logical Investigations. I shall conclude this study by showing that Husserl’s position with respect to Lotze’s philosophy remains basically unchanged after the publication of his Logical Investigations, and that Husserl’s main criticism of Lotze pertains, in the final analysis, to the absence of a theory of intentionality in Lotze’s philosophy. (shrink)

El propósito del presente estudio es afirmar la deuda de Husserl con la filosofía de Lotze durante el período de Halle. Mi interés se centra especialmente en el pensamiento del joven Husserl desde su llegada a Halle en 1886 hasta la publicación de su Hauptwerk en 1900-1901. Primero me remontaré a las fuentes del conocimiento de la filosofía de Lotze por parte de Husserl durante sus estudios con Brentano en Viena y después con Stumpf en Halle. Luego comentaré brevemente las (...) referencias de Husserl a Lotze en sus primeros trabajos y en sus manuscritos de investigación para el segundo volumen de su Filosofía de la aritmética. En la tercera sección, examino la influencia de Lotze en el giro antipsicologista de Husserl a mediados de la década de 1890. La cuarta sección es un comentario al manuscrito de Husserl titulado "Microcosmos", al cual se refiere explícitamente en sus Prolegómenos, y que planeaba publicar como anexo a sus Investigaciones lógicas. Esta obra contiene un análisis detallado del tercer volumen de la Lógica de Lotze de 1874. La última sección examina los argumentos de Husserl contra el psicologismo lógico en sus Prolegómenos, que yo expongo a través del prisma de la crítica de Stumpf al psicologismo en su artículo "Psicología y teoría del conocimiento". Sostengo que las primeras obras de Stumpf sobre este asunto hacen posible establecer una conexión entre la interpretación de Lotze de la teoría de las Ideas de Platón y el antipsicologismo de Husserl. Mi hipótesis es que los análisis de Stumpf representan el fondo de la crítica de Husserl al psicologismo lógico en sus Investigaciones lógicas. Concluiré este estudio mostrando que la posición de Husserl respecto de la filosofía de Lotze permanece básicamente la misma después de la publicación de sus Investigaciones lógicas, y que la principal crítica de Husserl a Lotze se refiere, en un último análisis, a la ausencia de una teoría de la intencionalidad en la filosofía de Lotze. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the meaning and value of the criticism that Stumpf address to Husserl's phenomenology in Ideas I. My presentation is divided into four parts: I briefly describe the relationship between Stumpf and the young Husserl during his stay in Halle (1886-1901); then I will comment Stumpf's remarks on the definition of Husserl's phenomenology as descriptive psychology in his Logical Investigations; in the third part, I examine Husserl's notice in section 86 of Ideas I (...) where he compares his own terminology to that of Stumpf; finally I comment on Stumpf's criticism of Husserl's phenomenology in his last book Erkenntnislehre. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes two goals. First, I elucidate Edmund Husserl’s theory of inauthentic judgments from his 1890 “On the Logic of Signs.” It will be shown how inauthentic judgments are distinct from other signitive experiences, in such a manner that when Husserl seeks to account for them, he is forced to revise the general structure of his philosophy of meaning and in doing so, is also able to realize novel insights concerning the nature of signification. Second, these conclusions are revealed (...) to be the foundation of Husserl’s pure logical grammar, found in the 1901 “Fourth Logical Investigation.” In his analysis of inauthentic judgments, Husserl already recognized, albeit in a problematic way and for entirely different reasons, many of the central tenets of the 1901 work concerning categoremata and syncategoremata, matter and form, and the isomorphism between them. (shrink)

Brentano distinguishes between intentionality and reference. According to Brentano, all mental acts are intentionally directed toward something. Some mental acts also refer to something, which is the case when their object exists in reality. For Brentano, such acts, besides their intentionality, have a peculiar relation of similarity to their object. However, there is no mention of Brentano’s distinction between intentionality and reference in the literature. Drawing on some lesser known texts, this paper aims both at showing that Brentano makes such (...) a distinction and at underscoring the philosophical significance of his position. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that Edmund Husserl’s frequently overlooked 1890 manuscript, “On the Logic of Signs,” when closely investigated, reveals itself to be the hermeneutical touchstone for his seminal 1891 Philosophy of Arithmetic. As the former comprises Husserl’s earliest attempt to account for all of the different kinds of signitive experience, his conclusions there can be directly applied to the latter, which is focused on one particular type of sign; namely, number signs. Husserl’s 1890 descriptions of motivating and replacing signs will (...) be respectively employed to clarify his 1891 understanding of the authentic and inauthentic presentations of numbers via number signs. Moreover, his schematic classification of replacement-signs in Semiotic will illuminate the reasons why he believed the number system to be necessary for the operation of replacing number signs. (shrink)

This essay addresses the interrelations between philosophy and experimental sciences that lie at the heart of Carl Stumpf’s epistemology. Following a biographical exposé demonstrating how Stumpf succeeded in acquiring a dual competence in both philosophical and scientific fields, we examine the vast array of academic disciplines encompassed by his research. Such a biographical treatment aims, indeed, to better promote the thrust of Stumpf’s assertion that philosophical enquiries should always be carried out in close connection with scientific practices, and underlines how (...) philosophico-scientific interactions established his work as a central pillar in the history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German thought. (shrink)

In the Logical Investigations Husserl announced a critique of Lotze’s epistemology, but it was never included in the printed text. The aim of my paper is to investigate the remnant of Husserl’s planned text with special emphasis on the question of whether it goes beyond the obvious aspects of Husserl’s indebtedness to Lotze. Using Husserl’s student notes, excerpts, and book annotations, I refine the dating of Husserl’s encounter with Lotze and separate the various layers of influence. I argue that Husserl’s (...) acquaintance with Lotze’s epistemology forms a separate layer of influence, and that this layer cannot antedate the middle of the decade before the Logical Investigation. Husserl’s investigation of Lotze’s epistemology constitutes the most interesting aspect of the unpublished text that underlies the missing chapter from the Logical Investigations. I show that the most relevant influence of Lotze’s epistemology on Husserl lies in Lotze’s idea of the formal and real significance of logical laws. Although Husserl negatively evaluated Lotze’s epistemological problem both in the planned chapter and in other printed parts of the Logical Investigations, the problem repeatedly surfaced during Husserl’s Göttingen period. Finally, I use an unpublished student transcript to reconstruct Husserl’s SS 1912 seminar on Lotze’s epistemology. I argue that the deeper dimension of Lotze’s epistemological problem (and Husserl’s rejection of it) lies in the way that it highlights the epistemological function of phenomenology. (shrink)

Brentano clearly asserts, in his Vienna lectures of 1887–1888, that his descriptive psychology is an a priori or “exact” science. Since he rejects Kant's idea of a synthetic a priori, this means that the descriptive psychologist's laws are analytic. My aim in this paper is to clarify and discuss this view. I examine Brentano's epistemology in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and then its later developments. I conclude with a difficulty inherent in Brentano's psychological approach to a priori knowledge.

This dissertation explores and argues for the import of the imagination (Phantasie) in Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method of inquiry. It contends that Husserl's extensive analyses of the imagination influenced how he came to conceive the phenomenological method throughout the main stages of his philosophical career. The work clarifies Husserl's complex method of investigation by considering the role of the imagination in his main methodological apparatuses: the phenomenological, eidetic, and transcendental reductions, and eidetic variation - all of which remained ambiguous despite (...) his extensive programmatic discussions. The work illuminates and clarifies aspects of the Husserlian phenomenological method never before explored. -/- In order to clarify Husserl's eidetic method of inquiry, I propose a new way of thinking about the imagination - as direct intuitive presentation (eigentliche anschauliche Vorstellung) and as horizonal-nexic level of consciousness exhibiting the neutrality, freedom, and possibility as its essential features. Following Husserl's studies of the imagination, I propose a three-level model of consciousness (realizing, imagining, and eidetic) and explore the dynamic flexibility of each level (as horizon within which acts such as judgments or memories can unfold). This model of consciousness allows for a rethinking of the sources and conditions for the possibility of eidetic phenomenological inquiry - topics Husserl was mostly silent about. -/- Through a rethinking of the model of consciousness, I propose a tight and substantial relationship between the natural (everyday) and artificial (methodological, theoretical) attitudes. I argue that the structure and systems of possibilities pertaining to the artificial attitude - i.e., our actual as well as possible methodological tools - are structurally and well as informationally bound to the structure and system of possibilities pertaining to the natural attitude. In order to explore the nature of the relationship between these two attitudes I argue that we must take a closer look at the structure and abilities of imagining consciousness - the sole nexic-horizonal level that can function both naturally and artificially. This insight regarding the nature of consciousness clarifies Husserl's transcendental idealism in its intimate connection to the everyday. Understanding Husserl's philosophical stance is thus purged of all possibility of mistakenly labeling it as entailing immanent detachment, solipsism, or Platonic idealism. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss some aspects of the Marty–Husserl debate about grammar. My suggestion is that the debate is first of all an epistemological debate, that is, a debate about what a priori knowledge is and how it is acquired. The key opposition is between Marty’s Brentanian notion of ‘analytic intuition’ and Husserl’s Bolzanian notion of ideation. As I will argue, the underlying issue is the possibility of a psychological a priori. On the one hand, analytic intuition provides the (...) psychologist with a priori knowledge about empirical facts. On the other hand, ideation provides the logician with entities that are disconnected from empirical facts—entities which are ‘purely logical’. I conclude with some brief remarks on the Brentanian background of both conceptions. (shrink)

The paper contends that abstraction lies at the core of the philosophical and methodological rupture that occurred between Husserl and his mentor Franz Brentano. To accomplish this, it explores the notion of abstraction at work in these two thinkers’ methodological discussions through their respective claims regarding the structure of consciousness, and shows that how Husserl and Brentano analyze the structure of consciousness conditions and strictly delineates the nature and reach of their methods of inquiry. The paper pays close attention to (...) intentionality, founding (Fundierung), and qualitative modification (qualitative Modifikation) understood as principles of consciousness. While intentionality has been the topic of numerous discussions surrounding these two thinkers’ work, founding and qualitative modification have slipped under the radar despite the fact that they hold—as I intend to show—the key to shedding new light on their respective methods of inquiry. More specifically, the paper explicates the ways in which Brentano’s notion of founding (understood as a relationship between whole acts) and his failure to identify radical-qualitative modification as a principle of consciousness preclude him from offering a successful model for philosophical universalizing thought. It is my hope to show that Husserl’s rethinking of founding as a relationship between certain structural moments of acts along with his novel notion of qualitative modification ground his attempt to carve a new method of philosophical inquiry—albeit jejune and ambiguous at the time of the Investigations, yet nevertheless able to successfully negotiate the problems faced by his predecessor. (shrink)

Eine vollständige Darstellung von Edmund Husserls Verhältnis zu Gottlob Frege steht noch aus, so dass es nicht verwundert, einige Missverständnisse, dieses Verhältnis betreffend, im Umlauf zu finden. Selbst scheinbar längst überwundene systematische Dogmen tauchen wieder auf, so z.B. die Auffassung, dass Husserl nicht nur entscheidend von Gottlob Frege beeinflusst wurde, sondern darüber hinaus auch seine schärfste Frege-Kritik 1891 zurückgenommen habe. Mein Beitrag enthält eine überwiegend historisch vorgehende Entgegnung auf solche fälschlich vertretenen Ansichten wie sie sich auch in dem neu erschienenen (...) und mit vielen dokumentarischen Belegen versehenen Frege-Kommentarbuch von W. Künne finden. Die wichtigsten Argumente, die in diesem Buch gegen Husserl gerichtet werden, stützen sich auf Stellen in Husserls Frühwerk, die zwar sehr aufschlussreich für die Beurteilung des philosophischen und menschlichen Habitus Husserls in den 1890er Jahre sind, nicht aber Künnes Thesen stützen oder gar beweisen können. Die als zurückgenommene Frege-Kritik verstandene Selbstkritik Husserls betrifft jedoch nach meinen Darlegungen gerade nicht die Kritik, die er an Freges Buch Grundlagen der Arithmetik geübt hatte, sondern seine eigene systematische Stellungnahme hinsichtlich der Begründung der Arithmetik. Ausgehend von dieser Einsicht werde ich auf ein wichtiges Spezifikum von Husserls Erstlingswerk (Philosophie der Arithmetik) aufmerksam machen, das voreiligen Interpretationen einen Riegel vorschiebt: Dieses Buch ist ein Mosaik aus Einsichten verschiedener Arbeits- und Denkperioden des Verfassers, die sich vor allem auch in dem zweifachen Begriff der Äquivalenz zeigen. Dies knüpft an einen langen geschichtlichen Entwicklungsprozess an, der in eine von Bolzano, Lotze, Brentano und Carl Stumpf geprägte Tradition zurückführt und das Problem der Unterscheidung zwischen Sinn und Gegenstand eines Aktes betrifft. (shrink)

Husserl has undoubtedly considered himself being influenced by Brentano, but his conflicts with the orthodox core of the School of Brentano raise the question whether his adherence to Brentano suffices to adequately grasp the context of his early philosophy. I investigate the biographical details of Husserl’s studies in Vienna to uncover hitherto unknown ties between Husserl and Austrian philosophers outside the School of Brentano. Already during his secondary school studies in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy Husserl was exposed to the philosophy textbooks (...) of Gustav Adolf Lindner; and archival records of the University of Vienna show that he had extensively attended philosophy courses held by other philosophers, especially by Robert Zimmermann. Both Lindner and Zimmermann proposed Herbartian philosophies, and what makes Zimmermann especially interesting is that he had once been a close personal disciple of Bernard Bolzano. I use an unpublished lecture transcript, written by a fellow student of Husserl, to investigate the controversial issue of Zimmermann’s possible transmission of Bolzano’s ideas. While a direct transmission seems improbable, my investigation uncovers a plethora of Herbartian influences, which are interesting on their own terms and have not only furnished Husserl with important parts of his descriptive psychological toolbox but have also helped him navigate the Brentano-School’s debate on intentionality. (shrink)

This article presents the development of the phenomenological movement in Poland in the period 1895–1945. It focuses on the early reactions to phenomenology and the later consolidation of the group of phenomenologists in Lvov. The article also explores the context of Polish phenomenology, its main figures, and their texts. The author suggests that early phenomenology in Poland was a pluralistic discipline that developed in polemical discussions, including discussions with members of the Lvov–Warsaw school. Finally, the article summarizes the major contributions (...) of phenomenologists to philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics in Poland. (shrink)

El artículo analiza la teoría de todos y partes de Carl Stumpf. Por un lado, se presentan los elementos básicos de su psicología descriptiva de la experiencia. Por otro lado, se analiza el desarrollo de la teoría de todos y partes sobre la base de dicha psicología descriptiva. El trabajo pretende probar dos tesis complementarias: primero, si bien la teoría mereológica de Stumpf es aún incipiente y no del todo explícita, constituye un auténtico punto de partida. Segundo, dicha mereología surge (...) a partir de una atenta descripción de la experiencia dada y no es algo impuesto a ésta. The article focuses on Carl Stumpf's theory of parts and wholes. On the one hand, I present the basic elements of his descriptive psychology of experience. On the other hand, I analyze the development of his theory of parts and wholes, which is based upon his descriptive psychology. The article aims to prove two different, yet complementary theses: firstly, despite the fact that Stumpf's mereological theory is still incipient and not quite explicit, it represents an authentic point of departure; secondly, this mereology arises out of an attentive description of given experience and not as an imposition to it. (shrink)

En 1894 Twardowski et Husserl exposent leurs positions divergentes concernant les objets intentionnels tels qu’ils sont introduits par la psychologie brentanienne. Alors que, selon Twardowski, ces objets sont en un certain sens immanents à l’acte de la conscience, Husserl insiste sur le fait que ce n’est rien d’autre que l’objet réel lui-même qui devient intentionnel en tant que visé par un tel acte. Derrière cette controverse se cache, d’ailleurs, la question cruciale de savoir comment penser le passage de la conscience (...) au monde, dont la réponse se trouve dans le concept d’intentionnalité. (shrink)

Despite attending Husserl’s classes, participating in the discussions of the Göttingen phenomenological circle, and writing prolifically on phenomenology, Eugen Enyvvari seems to have been virtually ignored by phenomenological scholarship. I use an array of unpublished sources and a survey of his juvenilia to reconstruct Enyvvari’s biography and intellectual formation, including his confrontation with Melchior Palagyi’s critique of Husserl and Bolzano. Based on both his reports and records from the Göttingen University Archives, I attempt to establish the influences to which he (...) could have been exposed in Göttingen. I rely on a careful micro-analysis of the development of Husserl’s notion of noematical meaning at the time of Enyvvari’s stay in Göttingen in order to asses Enyvvari’s specific contribution to phenomenology and his significance from the point of view of the general historiography of phenomenology. (shrink)

What is phenomenology's contribution to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind? I am here concerned with this question, and in particular with phenomenology's contribution to what has come to be called the problem of consciousness. The problem of consciousness has constituted the focal point of classical phenomenology as well as the main problem, and indeed perhaps the stumbling block, of the philosophy of mind in the last two decades. Many philosophers of mind, for instance, Thomas Nagel, Ned Block, Owen (...) Flanagan, Colin McGinn and David Chalmers, have acknowledged the properly phenomenological character of this problem; Nagel is even willing to entrust the study of phenomenal consciousness to what he calls an “objective phenomenology.” Yet, the phenomenology to which these philosophers resort has little to do with the conceptual framework that was developed within the phenomenological tradition. They put forward an entity they term “phenomenal consciousness,” but only in the hope that it may be explained by means of the theories that currently prevail in the philosophy of mind or in cognitive sciences. (shrink)

In 1913, in a draft for a new Preface for the second edition of the Logical Investigations, Edmund Husserl reveals to his readers that "The source of all my studies and the first source of my epistemological difficul­ties lies in my first works on the philosophy of arithmetic and mathematics in general", i.e. his Habilitationsschrift and the Philosophy of Arithmetic: "I carefully studied the consciousness constituting the amount, first the collec­tive consciousness (consciousness of quantity, of multiplicity) in its simplest and (...) higher levels (consciousness of sums, sums of sums etc.). I immediately separated proper (intuitive) and symbolic consciousness, in the characteriza­tion of the former I hit the radical difference of categorial consciousness [...] and sensuous consciousness of unity." Later on, in the Third Investigation, Husserl makes some very specific claims, that are of considerable importance to assess the development of his early works and their relation to his later phenomenology: "This first work of mine (an elaboration of my Habilitationsschrift, [...], 1887) should be compared with all assertions of the present work on compounds, moments of unity, complexes, wholes and objects of higher order. I am sorry that in many recent treatments of the doctrine of "Gestalt-qualities", this work has mostly been ignored, though quite a lot of the thought-content of later treatments by Cornelius, Meinong etc., of questions of analysis, apprehension of plurality and complexion is already to be found, differently expressed, in my Philosophy of Arithmetic. I think it would still be of use today to consult this work on the phenomenological and ontological issues in question, especially since it is the first work that attached importance to acts and objects of higher order and investigated them thoroughly." Hence, at the time of the Ideas, Husserl retrospectively considers his first works4 as being still relevant for phenomenological issues. Not only does Husserl advance a very interesting priority claim with respect to Von Ehrenfels’ development of the notion of Gestalt and Meinong’s development of Gegenstandstheorie, but also a strong affirmation of continuity and coherence of his position from 1887 all the way up to 1913, encompassing the alleged “revolution” in his position from psychologism to anti-psycho­logism in the 1890s. Indeed, according to much of the recent secondary literature, in 1894, right in the middle of the ten “incubation” years between the Philosophy of Arithmetic and the Logical Investigations, Frege’s destruc­tive review would have converted Husserl to antipsychologism practically overnight. This gives us two conflicting interpretations: on the one hand, Husserl himself in 1913 still seems to approve of the Philosophy of Arithmetic and even considers it to contain valuable phenomenological material, on the other, it is routinely dismissed by much of the secondary literature as hope­lessly psychologistic. So which one is it: do we have a phenomenological arithmetic or a psychologistic arithmetic in Husserl’s first book? On balance, I think that Husserl in his Philosophy of Arithmetic developed a position that does not fall prey to the exaggerated and poorly aimed critiques of Frege, while at the same time, as a descriptive psychology of the genesis and constitution of number, it can certainly be considered as providing phenome­nologically meaningful analyses, though of course not made from within an explicitly transcendental phenomenological framework. (shrink)

There is a two-fold problem the phenomenologist must face: the first has to do with thinking like a phenomenologist given that one is always already steeped in the mundane sphere; the second has to do with the phenomenologist entering into dialogue with those scientists, psychologists, sociologists and other laypersons who still remain in the mundane sphere. I address the first problem by giving an Husserlian-inspired account of the movement from the mundane to the transcendental, and show that there are decent (...) prospects for getting life-world folks to start thinking like phenomenologists. I address the second problem by showing that Husserl has himself caught in a dilemma: either the reduction takes place and no communication is possible between phenomenologist and non-phenomenologist, or the reduction does not take place and the phenomenological method remains a psychological makeshift, supposedly accessible to Husserl and his esoteric followers. (shrink)

In the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time, Edmund Husserl has frequent recourse to sound and melody as illustrations of the processes that give rise to immanent temporal objects. In Husserl’s analysis, there is a philosophically pregnant tension between the geometrical diagrams representing multiple dimensions of immanent time and his intuition that time-points might be no more than fictions leading to absurdities. In this paper, I will address this tension in order to motivate a complementarity approach to temporal objects (...) such as sound and melody that might illuminate the phenomenology of sound-consciousness. (shrink)

El tema de la participación de la escuela de Brentano en la polémica en torno al psicologismo no se deja reducir a una simple y única pregunta, ni se puede responder con una simple y única respuesta, pues presenta una marcada diversidad tanto desde el punto de vista sistemático como histórico, componiéndose de diferentes polémicas que tienen un cierto grado de independencia.