Table Of ContentHUSSERLAND ANALYTICPHILOSOPHY
PHAENOMENOLOGICA
COLLECTIONFONDEEPARH.L.VANBREDAETPUBLIEE
SOUSLEPATRONAGEDESCENTRESD'ARCHIVES-HUSSERL
116
RICHARD COBB-STEVENS
HUSSERL AND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Comitederedactiondelacollection:
President: S.Ilsseling(Leuven)
Membres:L. Landgrebe(Koln), W.Marx (Freiburg i.Br.),
J.N.Mohanty(Philadelphia),P.Ricoeur(paris),E.Stroker(Koln),
J.Taminiaux(Louvain-la-Neuve),Secretaire:J.Taminiaux
HUSSERL AND ANALYTIC
PHILOSOPHY
RICHARD COBB-STEVENS
BostonCollege,U.S.A.
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Cobb-Stevens, R1chard, 1935-
Husser! and analytiC ph1losophy / by R1chard Cobb-Stevens.
p, ca, -- (Phaenollenologlca ; 116)
ISBN-13:978-94-010-7342-4
1. Husserl. Edmund. 1859-1938. 2. AnalysIs (Philosophy)
3. Phenollenology" 4. Psychologlsll. 5. Perception. 6. IntuItion.
1. T1tle. 11. Serjes.
B3279.H94C56 1989
146".4--dc20 89-38210
ISBN-13:978-94-010-7342-4 e-ISBN-13:978-94-009-1888-7
001:10.1007/978-94-009-1888-7
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Table ofContents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
ThITRODUCTION 1
I. PSYCHOLOGISMAND LOGICALANALYSIS 7
1.The Debate about Psychologism 7
2.Frege's Critique ofPsychologism 9
3.PropositionsandFacts 13
4. Kantianand Platonic Fragments 19
5. Senses asModes ofGivenness 23
II.SEMANTICS WITHOUTEPISTEMOLOGY 32
1.From Semanticsto Pragmatism 32
2.Wittgenstein'sMetaphors 37
3.Private Sensationsand Public Concepts 42
4.Tacitand PropositionalKnowing 46
III. QUANTIFIERSAND BOUND VARIABLES 51
1.Functions andConcepts 51
2.Frege'sCritique ofTraditionalLogic 54
3.The Quantifier-VariableNotation 58
4.Leibniz' Law 60
5.Conceptsand their value-ranges:Two Paradoxes 67
6.Substitutionvs.Intuition 70
IV. ONWHAT THEREIS 76
1.The Many Senses oftheScienceofBeing 76
2.The Theoryof Substance: From Aristotle toLeibniz 79
v
vi Table ofContents
3.Frege's Critique oftheTheory ofSubstance 84
4. Concepts: ModesofPresentation orExtensions 88
5. Referential Opacity 91
6.The Impoverishment ofOntology 95
V.ASSERTION ANDPREDICATION 102
1.The Development of theModernTheory ofJudgment 102
2.Intentional Directedness andPropositional Attitudes 105
3.Brentano andFrege 109
4. Strawson'sCritique ofRussell 112
5.Sortal Predicates andContextual Identification 115
VI.PSYCHOLOGISMANDCOGNITIVEINTUITION 123
1.From SoultoMind 123
2.Husserl'sBreakthrough: Early Writings 126
3.Husserl andtheLanguage ofModernPhilosophy 132
4. Signs andSignification 134
5.Judgments andPropositions 138
6.The Context ofReference 145
7.Truth as Identity-synthesis 147
8. Categorial Intuition 148
9.AProductive Paradox 152
VII.HUSSERL'STRANSCENDENTALTURN 162
1.Kant'sTranscendentalism 163
2.The IdeaofPhenomenology 165
3.Regions andDimensions 170
4. Propositions andFacts: ATranscendentalApproach 174
VIII.REASON ANDHISTORY 182
1.Esprit de geometric 182
2.Naturalism andthe Logical Calculus 186
3.Naturalism andHistoricism 193
4.Essences andHistorical Perspectives 198
Bibliography 204
Index 214
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Boston College, the Mellon Foundation, and the National
Endowment for the Humanities for generous fellowships, which freed me
from teaching commitments and made possible extended periods of
research. Ishould alsoliketothankPatrickHeelan,Robert Sokolowski, and
Jacques Taminiaux for helpful criticisms of various draftsofthis book, and
Kevin Connolly, Erich Freiburger, and Grace Vinciguerra for their con
siderableassistance inthefmalpreparation ofthemanuscript.
This book isdedicatedtothememoryofVedaCobb-Stevens.
vii
Introduction
The principal differences between the contemporary philosophic traditions
which have come to be known loosely as analytic philosophy and
phenomenology are all related to the central issue of the interplay between
predication and perception.Frege's critique of psychologism has led to the
conviction within the analytic tradition that philosophy may best defend
rationality from relativism by detaching logic and semantics from all
dependence on subjective intuitions. On this interpretation, logical analysis
must account for the relationship of sense to reference without having
recourse to a description of how we identify particulars through their
perceived features. Husserl's emphasis on the priority and objective import
of perception, and on the continuity between predicative articulations and
perceptual discriminations, has yielded the conviction within the
phenomenological tradition that logical analysis should always be comple
mented by description of pre-predicative intuitions. These methodological
differences are related to broader differences in the philosophic projects of
analysis and phenomenology. The two traditions have adopted markedly
divergent positions in reaction to the critique of ancient and medieval
philosophy initiated by Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes at the beginning of
the modern era. The analytic approach generally endorses the modern
preference for calculative rationality and remains suspicious of pre-modern
categories, such as formal causality andeidetic intuition.Its goal is to give
an account of human intelligence that is compatible with the modern
interpretationofnatureasanensembleofquantifiableentities andrelations.
The phenomenological approach stresses intellectual insight over
procedural techniques, and proposes to rehabilitate many of the categories
scornedbymodem thinkers.
This study develops the following theses: 1) the analytic project cannot
be carried through, for logical analysis alone cannot establish any connec-
1
2 Introduction
tion between words and world; 2)by contrast, the phenomenologicalproject
of exploring the continuity between predication and perception makes for a
coherent account of the objectivity of our knowledge; 3) the key to the
phenomenologicalposition isHusserl'stheory ofcategorial intuition, which
retrieves and revitalizes Aristotle's account of how we derive sortal predi
cates from the species-looks ofthings. These are strong claims, which are
not founded on nostalgia for pre-modern certitudes, but on the conviction
that modern philosophy in general and the analytic tradition in particular
have introduced inappropriate criteria for certitude and objectivity. An
effort has been made throughout this study, however, to stress the positive
achievements of the analytic tradition, and to suggest ways in which they
may be coordinated with the often complementary achievements of
phenomenology.There isno reason why rigorous logical analysis cannotbe
combinedwithrigorous descriptionof shared cognitive intuitions.
Frege's critique of psychologism is the founding document of the
analytic tradition. Chapter I focuses on Frege's failure to address the
empiricist premises of psychologism. His occasional and vague references
to Kantian and Platonic themes do not provide an adequate corrective to
Hume's reduction of intuition to the having of sensory impressions.
Moreover, his radical separation of "being-true" from "being-taken-to-be
true" tacitly entails thepostulateof adetached investigatorwho issomehow
not subject to the ordinary human predicament of having to relate the
"senses" of propositions to the intuited conditions of their truth. There is,
however, a hint of a more promising approach to psychologism in Frege's
description of the functional role of senses as "modes of givenness." His
discussion of this notion testifies to a residual commitment to something
like the Greek notion that the intuited forms ofthings are the principles of
their intelligibility.
Chapter II is devoted to an appraisal of subsequent attempts within the
analytic tradition to account for our access to senses and to their truth
conditions without calling into question Frege's suppression of cognitive
intuition. Influenced by the later Wittgenstein, many contemporary
philosophers attach senses more closely than would Frege to contingent
signifiers. Evoking Wittgenstein's dictum that the meaning of a word is not
some real or ideal object that it designates, but a rule guiding its use, they
contend that to grasp the sense of a sentence is simply to know "how to"
use it appropriately in a language-game currently operative in one's
linguistic community.It follows that there is no need to locate propositions
in some other-worldly realm, because their objectivity is sufficiently
guaranteed by their being expressed within the common language. Neither
is it necessary to postulate a screen of concepts functioning as mediators
Introduction 3
betweenwordsandworld.ThiswasthepointofWittgenstein's replacement
of the visual metaphors of "picturing" and "mapping" by the more prag
matic metaphors of "use" and "game." However, he never adequately
distinguished between intelligent praxis and routinizedhabit. His position
has therefore encouraged behavioristic interpretations of linguistic usage.
Moreover,his language-gamesemanticsremains implicitlycommittedto a
nominalismthat rejectsany linkbetweenlinguisticsensesandthe looks of
things. What is needed is a description of how the forms of things are
availableto cognitiveintuitions,andofhowspeechactsconsciouslydeploy
a repertory of senses derived from such intuitions.The method of logical
analysisdoesnot,andcannot,addresstheseissues.
Chaptersill and IV consider how Frege's argument-functionmodel for
predication and his quantifier-variable notation for expressing generality
transformed both logic and ontology. His innovative interpretation of
conceptsasfunctionscalledattentiontotheunityandasymmetryofnaming
and predicating, and accentuated the difference between the incomplete
being of concepts and the complete being of objects. His invention of the
quantifier-variable notation made it possible for logic to sort out am
biguities of scope in sentences containing multiple and overlapping in
dicatorsof generality.Unfortunately,however,hispenchantformathemati
cal modelsandnotationalsystemsinclinedhim finally to opt for an exten
sionallogic whichdefines the interplayof senseand referenceexclusively
in terms of procedures involving substitutions. Having thus detached
predication from pre-predicative intuitions, Frege's logic rejects the
primacy given by Aristotleto the presentationalfunction of species-looks.
These decisions have the effect of minimizing the ontological difference
between concepts and objects, for they make it impossible to regard
conceptsas senses, i.e., as modes of presentation.Frege's criticism of the
traditionaltheoryof predicationis, in fact, basedon a misunderstandingof
the Aristotelian categories of substance and essence, as filtered through
subsequentinterpretationsby Locke and Leibniz.A sketchof the transfor
mation of these categories during the modem era sets the stage for an
appraisal of Frege's claim that traditional logic reifies concepts and thus
generatesthe pseudo-problemof the existence of universals. Finally, there
is a link between his decision to rely on a substitutional account of
reference and the general impoverishment of ontology within the subse
quent analytic tradition. The extensional approach to logic obscures all
ontological difference between objects and modes of presentation, and
ultimatelyreducesobjectstopossibles,andexistencetoinstantiation.
Contemporary theories of speech acts construe judgment as a stance
takenwithregardtoapropositionalcontent.ChapterVtracesthisinterpreta-
