Abstract
Let us now review our deliberations up to this point and their results.
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Notes
Because of the obvious suggestion of this terminology to the contrary, it is necessary to point out immediately that Husserl’s position is not that the collective combination is psychological or “mental” in any usual sense of the word. Rather, it is ‘psychological’ only in the sense that it is a member of a unique class of relations the defining features of which are paradigmatically exemplified by intentionality, which Brentano had used to characterize the psychological or psychical over against the physical. DW
James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, ed. J. St. Mill, London 1897, Vol. II, pp. 7ff. DW
Op., cit., p. 9n. Cp. further J. St. Mill, Logic, Book I, ch. 3, § 10.
Logic, Book I, ch. 2, § 7.
In regard to the signification of the terms “physical” phenomena and “psychical” phenomena, and the fundamental distinction underlying them, which is indispensable for the following reflections, cp. Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Vol. I, Book 2, ch. 1, (translated by A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell and Linda L. McAlister, New York: Humanities Press, 1973 DW).
Ibid., pp. 88ff.
In the foregoing discussions I have avoided the expression “physical phenomenon,” which in Brentano is paired with “psychical phenomenon,” because it is somewhat awkward to designate a similarity, gradation, and the like, as a “physical phenomenon.” Also, Brentano himself had in mind with that phrase only the non-relational [absoluten] primary contents — and, indeed, individual phenomena, not abstract Moments in an intuition. However, it is clear from the above expositions that the property of intentional inexistence — which in Brentano functions as the first and most penetrating mark distinguishing psychical from physical phenomena — also leads to an essential division in the classification of relations.
Cp. for example, M. W. Drobisch, Neue Darstellung der Logik, 4th edition, Leipzig 1875, p. 34.
Cp. also C. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, Vol. II, p. 310.
Concerning the concept of the fusion of relations see Chapter XI below.
Therefore Mill is quite right in strongly emphasizing that objects already stand in relation to each other even if we only think of them together. Precisely with respect to the psychical act which thinks them together they form parts of a psychical whole; and by means of reflexion upon that act they also can at any time be recognized as combined. That constitutes their “relation.” And only if one were to restrict this term to what we have called “primary relations” could there, of course, be no more talk of relation in the case of a psychical combination. On the one hand this certainly is a terminological matter. But, on the other hand, there is de facto so much in common between the primary relation and the psychical relation, as to their essential Moment, that I fail to see why a common term would not be justified here.
Locke describes the activity of colligating in Essay, Book II, ch. XI, sect. 6, under the heading “Compounding.” He also observes that it links the units in a number. Nevertheless, he has not recognized the role which this activity plays in the abstraction of the concept of number.
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Husserl, E. (2003). The Psychological Nature of the Collective Combination. In: Philosophy of Arithmetic. Edmund Husserl, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0060-4_4
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