Abstract
This article presents and compares Frege’s and Husserl’s conceptions of sense, also taking into account their 1891 and 1906 correspondence. It is argued that while the similarities between their views speak in favour of a Fregean interpretation of Husserl’s notion of noematic sense, there are also important differences. With regard to the latter, it is argued that Husserl’s view yields a more general criterion of propositional difference and also provides a more detailed conception of the use of indexicals and non-descriptive singular terms, and of (what determines) their reference. In this context, Husserl’s conceptions of constitution and genetic constitution analysis, respectively, are invoked and interpreted in terms of the epistemic notion of processing mental files or individual “concepts” (as Husserl calls them).
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Cf. Frege 1976, 96.
- 3.
Note, however, that in the letter in question Frege says that he would now replace the term ‘Sinn’ by ‘Bedeutung’ in many places in GA (Frege 1976, 96).
- 4.
Frege 1987, 94; my translation.
- 5.
Also cf. Frege 1987, 23. However, Linnebo (forthcoming) argues that the principle should be interpreted as concerning “meaning (Bedeutung)” rather than sense; also cf. Haaparanta 2006, 292. Note that Frege does not regard it as a necessary condition for a word to mean what it means that it be part of a particular sentence in whose context it means that; words even have meaning “outside the context” of a particular sentence. (This is also required by Frege’s principle of compositionality, which Linnebo shows to be compatible with the context principle. This principle is explained in Sect. 9.2 below.) As Linnebo convincingly argues, Frege merely regards it as a sufficient condition for a word to mean something that it be part of a meaningful sentence (such as an identity sentence), and the context principle is probably intended as an “explanatory principle,” as indicated by the following formulation from the introduction of GA: “One must ask for the meaning of words in the context of a sentence, rather than in isolation.” (Frege 1987, 23; my translation) Also cf. Haaparanta 2006, 293.
- 6.
Evans 1982, 107.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
See Mohanty 1982, 10 ff. (Mohanty does not mention Bolzano in this context.) The citations Mohanty gives in ch. 1 of his book certainly show that Husserl “arrived at the Vorstellung-Sinn[−]reference distinction independently” of Frege (Mohanty 1982, 10), but both this distinction and Husserl’s view, criticized by Frege in his “Ausführungen über Sinn und Bedeutung” (Frege 1983), that logic is concerned with senses or “conceptual contents” (Mohanty 1982, 4) rather than extensions (or Fregean concepts) seem to me to be compatible with psychologism as defined by Mohanty (1982, 1). So they do not speak against Føllesdal’s (1958) hypothesis that Frege’s 1894 review of PA (Frege 1894) was a decisive causal factor with respect to Husserl’s turn against psychologism as manifested in his 1900 Prolegomena (Hua XVIII). Notwithstanding the aforesaid, I agree with Tieszen that Frege’s review largely misses the point of Husserl’s analyses in PA and that at least some of these analyses “represent an early and rather primitive attempt to provide what he would later refer to as a ‘genetic’ analysis of the concept.” (Tieszen 1994, 98).
- 11.
See Beyer 2013.
- 12.
- 13.
Cf. Hua XII, 119.
- 14.
Cf. Hua XII, 122. There is a tension between this objection and Husserl’s claim that numerical concepts are indefinable, for Husserl seems to suggest here that his own method does enable us to define (i.e., analyse) the required sense. But compare and contrast Hua XII, 20 f.
- 15.
Cf. Frege 1976, 94–98.
- 16.
In the first of his LI (1901) Husserl implicitly acknowledges that his notion of (respective) meaning roughly coincides with Frege’s notion of sense: He there criticizes Frege’s terminological decision to use “Sinn” but not “Bedeutung” to refer to what he (Husserl) calls “Bedeutung” (Hua XIX/1, 58).
- 17.
Frege 1976, 96. Another (related) reason one may give in this connection is the nature of predication; see Künne 2010, 251. Thus, to quote Künne’s example, it is one thing to (plurally) refer to all Portuguesean islands in the Mediterranian Sea by ‘the Portuguesean islands in the Mediterranian Sea’ (compare the non-empty plural term ‘the Balearics’) and quite a different thing to apply the predicate ‘is a Portuguesean island in the Mediterranian Sea’ to an island. While the plural term is empty, the predicate is not – it denotes a property no object possesses, and it can be (falsely) ascribed to an object. – It might be replied, on Husserl’s behalf, that he talks about “general names,” and that a predicate like ‘is an island,’ which contains the “general name” ‘an island,’ can be conceived of as meaning the same as ‘is among the islands.’ However, this view does not fit in with the view of predication he develops in EU, according to which basic empirical predicates (to which ‘is an island’ does not belong, though) contain “adjectivity,” i.e. the form of ‘being an independent part of (a substrate),’ as their “syntactic stuff (syntaktischer Stoff)” or “core-form (Kernform)” (see Husserl 1999, 247). Nor does it fit in with his general view of states of affairs (involving properties) as intentional objects of predicative judgments.
- 18.
See Frege 1983, 132 f, 135, where Frege makes it clear that only vague terms are scientifically useless and fail to express (bedeuten) concepts.
- 19.
Hua XXX, 180; my translation.
- 20.
Hua XXX, 181; my translation.
- 21.
Cf. Strawson 1950.
- 22.
Hua XL, 139; my translation.
- 23.
Cf. Strawson 1950, 330.
- 24.
Compare Husserl’s claim, quoted in Frege’s letter to Husserl from Dec. 12, 1906, that “The form with ‘All’ is normally understood in such a way that the existence of objects […] is presupposed as conceded” (Frege 1976, 106), a view also shared by Strawson (but rejected by Frege).
- 25.
Hua XL, 139; my translation.
- 26.
Cf. Donnellan 1966.
- 27.
Of course, the notion of Thought is strictly speaking a successor concept of the notion of judgeable content; see Frege 1893, X. For a critical discussion of Frege’s claim, in the foreword to his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, that the notion of judgeable content “has now split up for me into what I call ‘Thought’ and ‘truth value’” (Frege 1893, X), see Carl 1994, 76 ff.
- 28.
First-person Thoughts are an exception; see Sect. 9.4 below.
- 29.
Cf. Frege 1918, 62.
- 30.
See McIntyre 1987, 532. The distinction between non-committal vs. judgmental propositional thought is also to be found in Husserl (who examines it in greater detail than Frege). Cf., e.g., Hua XIX/1, 462f; Hua XXX, 55.
- 31.
Frege 1976, 243; my translation.
- 32.
Frege 1976, 127; my translation.
- 33.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 25.
- 34.
In LI Husserl criticizes Frege’s use of the term “Bedeutung” as potentially misleading because the term is usually regarded as synonymous with ‘sense;’ cf. Hua XIX/1, 58.
- 35.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 26.
- 36.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 27.
- 37.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 27; also cf. the telescope-analogy on p. 30.
- 38.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 27, fn. 2. This footnote may either be taken to formulate an exception to thesis 2 or to argue that different speakers of one and the same natural language sometimes speak different idiolects of that language. Note that either way the footnote seems to support the ascription of a descriptivist conception of the sense of proper proper names to Frege; also cf. Frege 1918, 65 (headword: “Dr. Gustav Lauben”). In Sect. 9.4 we will see that Husserl has a different view in this regard, arguing that (proper) proper names, demonstratives and referentially used description are more or less on a par as far as their sense is concerned.
- 39.
- 40.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 32.
- 41.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 28.
- 42.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 29.
- 43.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 31.
- 44.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 31.
- 45.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 32.
- 46.
Cf. Frege 1892a, 32, fn. 5.
- 47.
For the point of the addition “as such” see Dummett 1992, 79 ff.
- 48.
Cf. Dummett 1973, 199.
- 49.
This disagreement has already been pointed out by Føllesdal in his 1969 paper on “Husserl’s notion of noema.” Cf. Føllesdal 1969, 686.
- 50.
Cf. Dummett 1973, 227. Also see Beyer 2000, 124 ff, where this idea is used to explain Husserl’s notion of “phenomenological” or “noematic analysis of sense.” This analysis is to be performed from the first-person point of view. However, it may be argued, very much in line with Husserl, that propositional attitude ascriptions are based (at least implicitly) on empathy, and thus have to simulate that point of view. For a defence of this view, see Beyer 2006, ch. 4.
- 51.
Frege 1976, 101–105.
- 52.
Frege 1918.
- 53.
Cf. Frege 1976, 105.
- 54.
Beyer 1996, 107 f.
- 55.
Beyer 1996, 127 f.
- 56.
I am alluding to his view that a judgment that acknowledges a Thought p as true is “the same act (dieselbe Tat)” as a judgment that rejects its contradictory opposite non-p is false, which seems to imply that a sentence expresses the same Thought as its double negation (cf. Frege 1983, 201, 214), so that the two occurences of the negation sign to be found in the latter do not seem to contribute anything to the Thought expressed. Note, however, that this view also seems to imply that in the context of a simple negation the negation sign does contribute something to the Thought expressed, in turning a Thought into what Frege calls its “negation (Verneinung).”
- 57.
- 58.
Compare what Husserl says about the “a priori equivalence a > b and b < a”: “Here we do not have a case in which the same is predicated [ausgesagt] of the same thing on both sides, as the subjects and predicates differ. […] Rather, the relation is now reversed. […] A priori equivalence, but not formal-logical equivalence, obtains in the case of reversed forms [Umkehrungen] like ‘a is more intensive than b’, ‘b is less intensive than a.’ [Provided, that is,] the situation of affairs [Sachlage] is the same on both sides.” (Hua XVI, 98; translation and first emphasis mine) (Note that – somewhat misleadingly – Husserl sometimes refers to situation of affairs as “Verhältnisse,” which could be translated as ‘relations’ as well. On this use of the term, both ‘a > b’ and ‘b < a’ are made true by the same relation.) For the thesis that if the intended relations differ, then the meaning or (sub-) propositional content differs, also see Hua XVI, 44 f. – Compare and contrast Frege’s remarks, in §9 of his Begriffsschrift, about the – in his view identical – “conceptual content” expressed by the sentences ‘Hydrogen gas is lighter than carbon dioxide gas’ and ‘Carbon dioxide gas is heavier than hydrogen gas,’ respectively (Frege 1879, 15–18).
- 59.
Frege 1976, 105 f; my translation.
- 60.
See Künne 2010, 648 f.
- 61.
Frege 1983, 213 f.
- 62.
See the thorough discussion of the clause about logical evidence in Künne 2010, 649 ff.
- 63.
Frege 1892a, 45 f. (fn. 13).
- 64.
Künne 2010, 652.
- 65.
Hua XIX/1. 10 f.
- 66.
- 67.
For the sake of simplicity, Husserl usually assumes that the speaker is sincere.
- 68.
Hua XIX/1, 44. Note that an act does not have to be given voice to in order to function as a meaning-bestowing act – even in the case of a soliloquy Husserl would speak of meaning-bestowing acts. Thus, consider the difference between your reciting to yourself a Greek verse whose meaning you have forgotten and your reciting that very verse to yourself while fully understanding it. In the second case, but not in the first one, you are experiencing a meaning-bestowing act.
- 69.
Hua XIX/1, 40.
- 70.
Hua XIX/1, 40.
- 71.
Hua XIX/1, 44.
- 72.
Hua XIX/1, 44.
- 73.
Hua XIX/2, 572 f.
- 74.
See Beyer 1996, 45.
- 75.
Cf. Hua XIX/2, 625; also see Beyer 1996, 47.
- 76.
Cf. Hua XIX/2, 643; also see Beyer 1996, 48 f.
- 77.
Cf. Hua XXVI, 44, where Husserl approvingly states that “one says of the whole expression that it has a unitary meaning, to which all expression-parts make their contribution.” (my translation)
- 78.
Dummett 1973, 227. Dummett continues: “Indeed, even when Frege is purporting to give the sense of a word or symbol, what he actually states is what the reference is. […] In a case in which we are concerned to convey […] the sense of the expression, we shall choose that means of stating what the referent is which displays the sense […].” For a comparison of this idea of (Dummett’s) Frege’s to Husserl’s closely related notion of a phenomenologically adequate (“noematic”) specification of (sub-)propositional content, as manifested in his 1908 Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre (Hua XXVI), see Beyer 2000, 120–126.
- 79.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 39.
- 80.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 41 ff.
- 81.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 91 f.
- 82.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 86 ff.
- 83.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 84 (headword: “equivalence”).
- 84.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 88.
- 85.
Cf., e.g., Hua XXX, 180 (above).
- 86.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 91 f.
- 87.
The corresponding idea of different levels (Stufen) of understanding, which include the grasping of both character, content and implicitures, is borrowed from Künne, who is also to be credited for pointing out the close similarity between Kaplans character/content distinction and Husserl’s distinction beween general-meaning function and respective meaning; cf. Künne 1982; also cf. Smith 1982, 184. In Beyer 2000 I have worked out the consequences of this distinction for Husserl’s semantics and theory of intentional content (“noematic sense”) in detail, arguing that the latter is to be rationally reconstructed as a moderate version of externalism and can be fruitfully compared to Evans’ (radically externalist) neo-Fregean conception of sense, among others. That Husserl’s view can be read this way lends further support to Føllesdal’s so-called Fregean interpretation of Husserl’s notion of noematic sense (cf. Føllesdal 1969).
- 88.
Here I will not go into Frege’s idea of dynamic Thoughts; I have done so elsewhere (Beyer 2000, §§ 5, 7–10).
- 89.
Cf. Frege 1918, 66.
- 90.
Künne 2010, 456 f; my translation.
- 91.
Cf. Beyer 2015b, 2.
- 92.
Hua XIX/2, 813; my translation.
- 93.
See Beyer 2006, 33 f.
- 94.
See Künne 2010, 460 ff, and the quotations cited there.
- 95.
Cf. Hua XIX/1, 89.
- 96.
See Føllesdal 2006.
- 97.
- 98.
Husserl 1999, 28 f.
- 99.
Husserl 1999, 277; my translation.
- 100.
Cf. Perry 1980.
- 101.
Husserl 1999, 250; my translation.
- 102.
Hua XX/2, 359. For further textual evidence supporting this identification see the following quotation.
- 103.
Hua XX/2, 358; my translation.
- 104.
Husserl 1999, 28.
- 105.
See Husserl 1999, 280 f.
- 106.
See Beyer 2000, 171 ff.
- 107.
Hua XXVI, 28; my translation.
- 108.
Cf. Føllesdal 1969.
- 109.
Hua XXVI, 100 f.; my translation. See Beyer 2000, 67 ff, for further interpretation and discussion.
- 110.
Husserl 1999, 27.
- 111.
See Husserl 1999, 27 ff.
- 112.
See Husserl 1999, 89 ff. – Note that constitution can take the form of intentional action, but in the sphere of perception and empirical thought this is the exception rather than the rule. So clearly, “constitution” does not mean creation.
- 113.
To be more precise, it is only at the level of predicative experience that the subject’s epistemic interests take the form “of the will to knowledge (des Willens zur Erkenntnis);” cf. Husserl 1999, 92.
- 114.
See Husserl 1999, 44; headword: “justification of the doxa (Rechtfertigung der Doxa).”
- 115.
See Husserl 1999, 18 ff, 60.
- 116.
See Husserl 1999, 132 f.
- 117.
Hua XX/2, 358.
- 118.
See Beyer 2000, §7.
- 119.
Cf. Husserl 1999, 58.
- 120.
- 121.
Hua XXVI, 170 f.; my translation. See Beyer 2000, 52–70, for a more extensive interpretation and discussion of this passage.
- 122.
Another argument for the distinction between propositional content and singular state of affairs (and the corresponding situation of affairs, for that matter) is given by Husserl in his 1917/18 lectures on “Logic and general theory of science:” “[…] [I]t is only when the judgment ‘A is b’ is true that we can say that the state of affairs ‘A is b’ corresponds to it. We cannot speak of the state of affairs that Sirius is a diamond, given that we know that such a judgment would be false.” (Hua XXX, 58)
- 123.
See Beyer 2000, 85–100, for further interpretation and discussion.
- 124.
Hua XXVI, 174; my translation.
- 125.
Hua XXX, 357; my translation.
- 126.
Husserl reserves the term “disposition” for forces, tendencies etc. of substances as they are postulated in the framework of the “naturalistic attitude” of science and empirical psychology.
- 127.
Husserl 1999, 137 ff; my translation.
- 128.
Hua XX/1, 74–78; my translation.
- 129.
Hua XIX/2, 553 f; my translation.
- 130.
Frege 1918, 75; my translation.
- 131.
This article was written at the Centre for Advanced Study (Oslo) in the framework of the research group “Disclosing the Fabric of Reality – The Possibility of Metaphysics in the Age of Science” led by Frode Kjosavik and Camilla Serck-Hansen. I gratefully acknowledge the support. For helpful comments I would also like to thank Adriana Pavic.
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Beyer, C. (2017). Husserl and Frege on Sense. In: Centrone, S. (eds) Essays on Husserl's Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics. Synthese Library, vol 384. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1132-4_9
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