Husserl
Language, Judgment and Truth
Let's take stock of our progress so far. We’ve been focused on Husserl’s specification of the
phenomenological and eidetic reductions as the necessary path to philosophy as a rigorous
science. More specifically, we’ve concentrated on how the phenomenological reduction serves
as the basis for rejecting the naturalizing tendencies increasingly common in human thinking, as
Husserl addresses them in the forms of psychologism and historicism. His concern with both
positions is that they have two implications which are inconsistent with the ideal of science
(which is, for him, the proper ideal for philosophy), because a) all naively empirical
(naturalistic) approaches are reductive and are thus unable to make the distinction between fact
and essence necessary to science as such, and b) at best such approaches can produce contingent
rather than necessary truths (raising the specter of skepticism). What is needed is a theory of
judgment that overcomes both of these one-sided implications of the naturalizing approach.
A Theory of Language
In IHP, the author’s turn to the Logical Investigations in order to detail Husserl’s theory of
language. The starting point in the Investigations’ discussion of language is the idea of a sign.
Why start here? In part, the starting point is determined by what was (and still is) a contentious
debate about the function of language. One way in which this debate has been framed concerns
the correct answer to the question: "What is the meaning of 'meaning?'
A popular answer to this question is to define meaning in terms of indication. This is where the
idea of the sign comes in. According to this answer, language 'means' by pointing to the world.
Husserl believes that this account misses something important about meaning: the fact that it is
an essential, rather than factual, property. In other words, there is more to 'meaning' than
indication, namely, expression. Expression is, when properly understood, this essential element
of meaning. The phenomenological analysis of expression reveals the ideal object proper to a
'pure' logic. Understanding this is going to be our work for the day.
He begins by pointing out that although it is often the case that we collapse the expressive
function of language into the indicative, there is an everyday way in which we maintain their
difference. Clarifying this distinction is the first step in this phenomenological analysis.
What is a sign? Every sign points beyond itself, it is a sign for something. But not every
'pointing' has the same character. Indicative signs are those that we most commonly think of as
signs: for example, a nation’s flag or a bio-hazard marker. In these, and similar cases, the sign
marks or points out a thing or state of affairs. Indeed, all indicative signs have this structure:
two distinct real things, one of which, through the relation of indication, points toward another.
This relation is not, H is careful to insist, a necessary one. Rather, through some sort of
association, natural or learned, one of the objects is a sign for the other.
H distinguishes merely indicative signs from expressive signs. It is only in the realm of
expression that H feels it is possible to isolate meaning as an ideality. For, though it is the case
that in concrete instances of expressive signs (words or speech for instance) there is an
indicative element, their essential characteristic is that they are informed with a sense. What are
expressed in expressions are meanings. Unlike indicative signs which, as founded in natural or
artificial acts of association, function (at least apparently) independently of their founding
intention, expressive signs are inescapably tied to the act of intending a certain object through a
particular meaning—that is, from the conscious acts which make them expressive. There are
then two moments of any concrete expressive sign: the phenomenal marker, spoken or written,
and the intention. These two moments are not somehow external to each other. They form a
single event.
An intentional act for H intends its object through and in a specific sense. Of course, as it is,
this sense is empty; it is mere intention independent of any confirmation or fulfillment.
Fulfillment comes only when the meaning intention is joined with an intuitional intending; that
is, when it is joined with a confirming perception, either imaginative or real. We can thus
discern the following moments in any fulfilled meaning intention: the intentional sense itself,
the intending act, the fulfillment of this act and finally, the intended object itself. When we then
talk of the intentional component of an expression, we mean this whole structure.
Husserl analyses expression through what he identifies as its original function: communication.
In all cases of communicative expression, there is an irreducible indicative element. The words
indicate the meaning intentions of speaker to the hearer. H identifies this function of words as
“intimation.” Such intimation arises only within a horizon of intuitive perceptions. There is no
immediate grasp of the intentions of the speaker; rather the expression only intimates to the
hearer the experiences and intentions of the speaker within the horizon (in the sense of a set of
non-cognitive interpretive constraints or assumptions) that the speaker is a person who has
those sorts of experiences and intentions. It is not the case of course that the hearer ever has
what we could identify as an adequate presentation of these experiences. It is on the basis of
this difference, between the speakers immediate having of his sense and the hearer’s necessarily
mediate one, that H is ultimately going to establish the ideality of meaning.
For it is in what H calls “solitary life,” in “soliloquy” that we are going to locate an expression
completely uncontaminated by any indicative element. This possibility is recognizable in two
features of solitary life. First, expressions used in soliloquy have no material component. Even
though we can imagine words floating somewhere in our mind when we think, we should be
careful, he insists, not to hypostatize what are merely after all imagined objects, especially since
in any case the particular form of expression is unimportant to the meaning. Secondly, though
it is common to speak of this soliloquy as a sort of interior dialogue, this is an error. There is no
communication in the soliloquy for the simple reason that there is no gap to cross, no
mediateness either physically or (most importantly) temporally.
On the basis of this analysis, H distinguishes between two different types of idealities
discernible in expressive acts. First of all, expressive signs can be considered ideal in the sense
that they are repeatable. No sign, indicative or expressive, is constrained to a particular or
contingent event—to be a sign means, at least in principle, to be repeatable. Secondly, the
meaning itself is another ideal entity, considered without regard for the particular expression it
may be joined to. Meaning is that which remains the same throughout, for example, our various
struggles to express that meaning as carefully and succinctly as possible in a set of lecture
notes.
A further element of this analysis should be noted. Despite H’s insistence on the unity of the
phenomenon of expression, it is only the meaning intention that is responsible for meaning in an
expression; the material element is completely non-essential. It is not however the case that this
material element is entirely without purpose. Indeed, it is the medium that allows the
possibility of communication of my meaning intendings to others (which purpose is served by,
for H, and is the original function of, words). It seems then, that despite H’s continued
insistence on the unity of the expressive act—an insistence no doubt grounded in experience—
he offers in effect a dualistic schema.
Let’s compare this account with that offered by psychologistic treatments of meaning, using the
example of the expressive sign "Lion." Each of us has different psychological components of
our intending of "Lion." If that's all there were, then we would be at a loss to explain the
possibility of "Lion" having any objective sense. In order to be able to account for such sense, it
is necessary to recognize an ideal complex, the intentional unity of meaning, that is independent
of these psychological components, though it is always factually co-present with them. The
reduction of the indicative elements of expression in "solitary life" reveals this ideality to us.
Truth
In the analysis of the sign function of language we caught sight of the key to the Husserlian
account of truth: intentional fulfillment (IHP181). Let’s try to be more specific about
fulfillment: “A fulfillment is a cognitive act in which an empty intention or assertion is brought
into synthetic connection wit a corresponding intuition such that by way of this synthesis the
intention is confirmed and corroborated or, respectively, disappointed” (Ibid.). Let’s take a
quick look at how this is presented in the Logical Investigations.
In the sections referred to in IHP, Husserl concentrates on the lived experience of meaning: in
particular, the various strata of meaning revealed in the static union of a sense-giving and an
immediately present fulfilling intuition.
Ex. The cup
What does the theory of language we just considered tell us about an expression referring to the
cup?
It’s important to recognize that this type of analysis is only a first step to understanding
Husserl’s theory of truth. There are a number of strata of sense that have to be made evident.
For example, talk of the cup includes a sense not immediately accounted for: namely, that it is
mine. This sense, which is not an element of the objective sense of the cup, is immediately
present in the sensible intuition of it. That is, it is perceived as mine. Husserl talks about this
sense 'overlaying' the perceptual intuition. It is a real (that is, independent and actual) though
not material component of the sense of the cup.
This example points to a few things we need to consider.
1) The act of perception itself: comprised of a sequence of perceptual moments unified by
specific intentional acts (called 'interpretations'). Prominent amongst these in our example of the
cup is the 'interpretation' "material thing."
2) The unity of these perceptual moments and interpretations is what Husserl calls
"Recognition." A concrete instance of this unity is the fulfillment of the cup as 'mine.'
The static analysis of the cup is somewhat limited. After all, the lived experience of meaning is
rarely a static affair. More typically, the transmission of sense is a developmental process. At
first, the expressive sign is apprehended emptily, and only later (with the appropriate
fulfillment) is the sense 'known.' In this development, nothing is added to the static analysis.
What changes is the function of time. This temporalization does reveal something missed in the
static analysis. In particular, it underscores that recognition is an act. The unity of intention and
intuition has to itself be intended as such (Recognition = consciousness of this unity as a
fulfilled one).
A last few remarks about intentions. We have noted that an intention need not be fulfilled. Such
unfulfilled intentions have a phenomenological character distinct from the fulfilled ones. (Ex. of
walking into a room, not finding something we expected). We should also note that intentions
should not be confused with expectations. Intentions are not essentially connected to the future
(Ex. intentional analysis of perception).