This document is copyright James Richard Skemp III (homeofjrs[at]eml[dot]cc) http://strivinglife.

net/

Title: Epistemology: Paper on Husserl and Logical Investigations

Description: Paper regarding Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations and the theory of impossible
objects. [~4025WC]
Author: James Richard Skemp III (homeofjrs[at]eml[dot]cc)
Created: April 27th 2003
Modified: June 4th 2003; October 30th 2003; February 13th 2004
Notes: See also my paper titled Husserl’s Phenomenological Epoché and the Theory of Intentionality.

In this paper, I will be trying to discuss Edmund Husserl’s theory of impossible objects
and meanings in the Logical Investigations. His theories of experience, knowledge, truth,
and fact, will also be discussed in an attempt to determine their relation to these
impossible things. By looking at the Logical Investigations Investigation by
Investigation, I hope to see where he speaks of his ideas of experience, knowledge, truth
and fact. After looking at these ideas, I should be able to end by speaking of impossible
things.

The first mention that we get of knowledge is in the Prolegomena, where he is talking
about logic, and how it can be the foundation for the sciences. “Science is concerned, as
its name indicates, with knowing … it represents a set of external arrangements, which,
just as they arose out of the knowledge-acts of many individuals, can again pass over into
just such acts of countless individuals, in a readily understandable manner” (Husserl, Vol.
1, 16-7). Logic, therefore, would be the way that we come upon, and find, or list, these
external arrangements.

Husserl clarifies what knowledge is when he states that “in the narrowest, strictest sense,
it requires to be evident, to have the luminous certainty that what we have acknowledged
is, that what we have rejected is not, a certainty distinguished in familiar fashion from
blind belief, from vague opining, however firm and decided” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 17). To
distinguish it from blind belief, “we need grounded validations in order to pass beyond
what, in knowledge, is immediately and therefore trivially evident” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 19).
In other words, we need a set of rules, a logic, to guide us. Following these rules of logic,
we will eventually come to the truth. Truths then come from knowledge.

While there are other things of importance in the Prolegomena, near the end, he sets up
what he will be discussing in the actual investigations. “Since the essential aim of
scientific knowledge can only be achieved through theory, in the strict sense of the
nomological sciences, we replace our question by a question as to the conditions of the
possibility of theory in general. A theory as such consists of truths, and its form of
connection is a deductive one.” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 149) In other words, logic should be
able to come up with those necessary laws, or truths, that will apply to theories in
general.

A little later, Husserl goes on to state the three tasks of pure logic. The first such task is
to “lay down the more important concepts, in particular all the primitive concepts which
‘make possible’ the interconnected web of knowledge as seen objectively, and
particularly the web of theory” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 153). Objects and their meaning will
then be discussed, and this then will become the foundation that will be used to build

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upon.

The second task is then to look at the laws that are built up from the first task. “On the
one hand, the truth or falsity of meanings as such, purely on the basis of their categorial
formal structure, on the other hand (in relation to their objective correlates), the being and
not being of objects as such, of states of affairs as such, again on the basis of their pure,
categorial form.” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 154)

The third task will be to come up with a theory of manifolds. That is, to create “a science
which definitely works out the form of the essential types of possible theories or fields of
theory, and investigates their legal relations with one another” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 157).
Those investigations that come after this Prolegomena will deal with those first and
second tasks, so that those who attempt the third task will have some foundation to work
with.

In the Introduction before Investigation I, Husserl once again notes what it is that will be
discussed in the following investigations. “The pure phenomenology of the experiences
of thinking and knowing … has, as its exclusive concern, experiences intuitively seizable
and analyzable in the pure generality of their essence” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 165). Here then
he states that we will not deal with the specifics of the experiences, but rather with the
‘essence’ that which is common. He will not be dealing with that which is at first
‘visible’, but rather with that which comes about after analysis; an attempt to find their
foundation.

With the introduction out of the way, Husserl can begin the first task. ‘Expression’ and
‘sign’ are first looked at, and proven to be not equivalent. “Every sign is a sign for
something, but not every sign has ‘meaning’, a ‘sense’ that the sign ‘expresses’.”
(Husserl, Vol. 1, 183)

Husserl next looks at ‘demonstration’ as having two meanings; ‘indication’ and ‘proof’.
Demonstration in the sense of ‘proof’, means to show that something is true. For
example, the premises demonstrate the conclusion in a logical proof. On the other hand,
something is demonstrated in the sense of ‘indication’ when past demonstrations have
proven something to be true, and we therefore rely on that previous knowledge. In
Husserl’s words: “in such situations, where certain states of affairs readily serve to
indicate others which are, in themselves, their consequences, they do not function in
thought as logical grounds of the latter, but work through connections which previous
actual demonstration, or blind learning from authority, has established among our
convictions, whether as actual mental states or as dispositions for such” (Husserl, Vol. 1,
185). Belief in what was proven before serves as the basis of indication in such a case.

Husserl would next like to separate indicative signs from meaningful signs, the latter of
which he calls expressions. Indicative signs are relative to those who in interpret them,
as such, their meaning can change, and hence the expression meant can be lost. All talk
then of expressions in the Logical Investigations, will deal with meaningful signs.

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In section nine, Husserl discusses acts, meanings, and fulfillment. “A name, e.g., names
its object whatever the circumstances, in so far as it means that object. But if the object is
not intuitively before one, and so not before one as a named or meant object, mere
meaning is all there is to it. If the originally empty meaning-intention is now fulfilled, the
relation to an object is realized, the naming becomes an actual, conscious relation
between name and object named.” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 192) I see this as the following; if
someone refers to something, but you at first have no idea what it is that they are
referring to, then there is a meaning, but it means the object that you do not know of.
“Each expression not merely says something, but says it of something: it not only has a
meaning, but refers to certain objects.” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 197)

Husserl seems to believe that the ‘something’ of above (the latter) is intuited; “in order to
be quite clear as to the sense of an expression (or as to the content of a concept) one must
construct a corresponding intuition: in this intuition one sees what the expression ‘really
means’” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 211).

Later we see mention of essences in a context in which we are better able to get a grasp
on what he means. “The knowledge meant is one whose self-evidence calls only for pure
representation of the ‘conceptual essences’, in which the general word-meanings find
their perfect fulfillments: all question as to the existence of objects corresponding to such
concepts, or falling under such conceptual essences, is ruled out. … Conceptual
essences are rather the fulfilling sense which is ‘given’ when the word-meanings (i.e. the
meaning-intentions of the words) terminate in corresponding, directly intuitive
presentations, and in certain cogitative elaborations and formations of the same.”
(Husserl, Vol. 1, 212) That is, it is possible for an intention of a species to be fulfilled by
intuition of the species, and without any real, experienced, object.

Next, Husserl notes the difference between “essentially subjective and occasional
expressions, on the one hand, and objective expressions, on the other” (Husserl, Vol. 1,
218). By subjective, or occasional, expressions, he means expressions that have
meanings that are functions of the occasion of utterance. By objective expressions, he
means expressions that have the same meaning regardless of the occasion of their
utterance. Any expression with an “I”, or time and place, would be an example of a
subjective expression, while mathematical expressions would be an example of an
objective expression.

‘States of affairs’ deals directly with these concepts. “Where the sciences unfold
systematic theories … there is absolutely no talk of judgements, ideas and other mental
acts. The objective researcher or course clarifies his expressions … but he only points
thereby to the objective meaning of his expressions, he indicates what ‘contents’ he has in
mind, which play their part as constitutive moments in the truths of his field. He is not
interested in understanding, but in the concepts, which are for him ideal unities of
meaning, and also in the truths, which themselves are made up out of such concepts.”
(Husserl, Vol. 1, 225)

Someone who wishes to speak of the true ‘state of affairs’ in a specific context, should

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not speak subjectively, from their own perspective, but rather try to be as objective as
possible. Looking at things objectively, and not trying to bring in one’s own ideas, or
judgements, will allow one meaning that all researchers can share, as opposed to a
subjective meaning from each researcher. As is stated still later, “‘Use words with an
absolutely selfsame meaning: exclude all meaning-variations. Distinguish meanings and
keep them distinct in declarative thought, and employ sharply distinct sensible signs.’”
(Husserl, Vol. 1, 231)

Investigation II gives us better understanding of what he means by species, as well as

moments, which was briefly mentioned before. “The relation between the meaning and
the significant expression (or its ‘meaning-tincture’) is the same as the relation, e.g.,
between the Species Red and a red object of intuitive experience (or the ‘moment’ of red
which appears in this object). When we mean red in specie, a red object appears before
us, and in this sense we look towards the red object to which we are nevertheless not
referring. The moment of red is at the same time emphasized in this object, and to that
extent we can again say that we are looking towards this moment of red. But we are not
referring to this individually definite trait in the object, as we are referring to it when,
e.g., we make the phenomenological observation that the moments of red in the separate
portions of the apparent object’s surface are themselves separate. While the red object
and its emphasized moment of red appear before us, we are rather ‘meaning’ the single
identical Red, and are meaning it in a novel conscious manner, thought which precisely
the Species, and not the individual becomes our object.” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 237)

Investigation II also gives us a look at what it is that we mean when we talk of reality. It
is the particulars that are real, and not the universals. “We may simply define ‘reality’ in
terms of temporality. For the only point of importance is to oppose it to the timeless
‘being’ of the ideal.” (Husserl, Vol. 1, 249) Therefore, he seems to say that the cat,
sitting on the mat, is really real, while the idea of ‘cat’, or the ideal ‘cat’, is not.

Moving onto Investigation III, here he talks of wholes and parts, as well as independence
and dependence. Objects, according to Husserl, can either be parts, or they are parts –
“Every object is either actually or possibly a part.” (Husserl, Vol. 2, 4) Wholes, for
example, have parts, but they can also be a part of something else. For another example,
A can be a part of B (which is composed of A, C, E, G, I) and B could be a part of L
(which is composed of B, D, F, H, J). Therefore, in relation to A, B is a whole, while in
relation to L, B is a part. Also, parts are either dependent, or independent.

For example, my head is a part of my whole body. One can have the idea of my head,
hold my head’s image in their mind, without the idea of my whole body. Therefore, my
head is independent of my whole body. However, the colour of an object is dependent
upon the object. While one could have the idea of my head without the context of my
whole body, it is impossible to think of the colour of my skin, eyes, or hair, without
something that is that colour. In order to see colour, we must have extension. Therefore,
one might say that colour is founded on, or dependent on, extension. “A part as such
cannot exist at all without a whole whose part it is. On the other hand we say, with an
eye to independent parts: A part often can exist without a whole whose part it is.”

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(Husserl, Vol. 2, 20) The second chapter of this Investigation gives specific rules that
dependent parts of wholes follow.

Investigation IV uses this discussion of parts and wholes to speak of simple and complex
meanings. If we read the expression ‘a man of iron’, there are parts of this expression –
man and iron – that have meanings, which, when taken together, give the expression
meaning. Therefore, the expression ‘a man of iron’ expresses, or means, ‘a human being
who is as strong as a bar of iron’, for example.

However, as most people realize, meanings can only be combined in a certain order.
That is, there are a priori laws that direct how words can be combined in an expression.
“The expression ‘This tree is green’ has unified meaning. If we formalize this meaning
… we obtain ‘This S is P’, an ideal form whose range of values consist solely of
independent (propositional) meanings.” (Husserl, Vol. 2, 62) We could not switch the
words around and get ‘This green is tree’, without a loss of the unified meaning.

Therefore, while we can substitute ‘ball’, ‘sign’, ‘hat’, etc. for S, we could not substitute
something like ‘gold’, ‘red’, etc. for S. By inserting a word, or words, that are not in the
same category as the original word, we have only a ‘word-series’, an expression which
expresses no meaning because it does not follow the a priori laws, and is therefore
nonsense. This is different then an absurd expression. An absurd statement – such as ‘a
round square’ – has meaning, but it means an impossible object. That is, one can never
have a round square, even though it is grammatically correct.

One final example, following the structure ‘This S is P’ – for instance ‘This tree is
green’. An expression such as ‘This red dog is blue’ would be an expression of nonsense,
while ‘This square is round’ would be an expression of absurdity. Husserl asks the reader
to keep these two concepts separate, as they do not belong together.

Husserl claims that there are laws that should be used in order to prevent nonsense from
occurring in a valid expression. Absurdity, however, is slightly difficult, but there still
must be ways of preventing such expressions from occurring. This then is his idea of our
modern logical rules, which, if the starting expressions are valid and true, then we can be
guaranteed that the expressions that follow are valid and true.

Investigation V discusses experience, and the part that it plays in all this. “Experiences
of meaning are classifiable as ‘acts’, and the meaningful element in each such single act
must be sought in the act-experience, and not in its object; it must lie in that element
which makes the act an ‘intentional’ experience, one ‘directed’ to objects.” (Husserl,
Vol. 2, 79) Husserl later states that, “The experienced content, generally speaking, is not
the perceived object.” (Husserl, Vol. 2, 104)

By this, he seems to mean that it is the senses that we experience. “Sensations, and the
acts ‘interpreting’ them or apperceiving them, are alike experienced, but they do not
appear as objects: they are not seen, heard or perceived by any sense. Objects on the
other hand, appear and are perceived, but they are not experienced.” (Husserl, Vol. 2,

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105)

This, together with his discussion of intention, seems to point to the following ideas.
When one looks at a cat, which is sitting on a mat, then they have an experience of the cat
on the mat. In this case, there is an ego (which is what Husserl calls the perceiver) as
well as objects that are perceived. “The ego is intentionally directed to some object”
(Husserl, Vol. 2, 101), in this case the cat, which is on the mat. Therefore, Husserl says
that we are ‘intending’ the cat on the mat, in that we are “specially noticing, or attending
to something.” (Husserl, Vol. 2, 101) Husserl also clarifies that acts are mental in
nature, not as is commonly held, activities, and “is either a presentation or is founded
upon presentations” (Husserl, Vol. 2, 80). He also states that an ‘intentional experience’
is any “concrete experience that ‘refers’ intentionally to an object” (Husserl, Vol. 2, 144)

‘States of affairs’ are also discussed in this investigation. States of affairs is that which
we direct our intention to, or, in other words, that which we perceive. It is this state of
affairs then, which we then make a judgement about. Therefore, for example, the cat on
the mat would be the state of affairs of reality, which we then perceive, and then make a
judgement about, such as ‘that cat is indeed on the mat’. The state of affairs is the matter
that we make a judgement about. As Husserl stated earlier, it is necessary to keep our
eye on

Moving onto Investigation VI, Husserl points out that all the material that has been
discussed has barely touched upon the task of giving an explanation of knowledge.
Expressions and meaning, leading up to knowledge, will be the topics, the goals, of this
final Investigation.

“Undeniably and importantly, the meaning of expressions must lie in the intentional
essence of the relevant acts” (Husserl, Vol. 2, 184). That is, Husserl states that while we
start with meaning-intention and we work our way up to meaning-fulfillment or from a
‘concept’ to a ‘corresponding intuition’.

Meaning-fulfillment is what we seek to achieve in order to obtain true knowledge of

reality. For example, if my friend looks out his window and says ‘There is a dog running
around in my field’, then I have an idea of what he means. Perhaps I imagine what his
field looks like, from seeing it before, and have a mental picture of a dog, also from
experience, and place the two together. However, there are various things that can occur
that will prevent my meaning from being fulfilled. For example, it could not be a dog
that is in the field, but rather a cat, that due to the distance, my friend mistakenly took to
be a dog. This is what Husserl calls conflict, or frustration, as the meaning cannot be
fulfilled and speak of the true state of affairs.

Now, in this example, what he says has a meaning for me. However, if he had said
something such as ‘There is a wolk in my new rafledum’, then I would only understand
that something was in his new something. If he explains to me that a wolk is a type of
insect, and a rafledum is a type of flower, then I would have a better understanding of his
statement. Here is where Husserl distinguishes between the intuitive contents of a

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presentation and the signitive contents. The intuitive contents are those things that are, or
become, apparent. On the other hand, the signitive contents are those things that do not
become apparent.

Therefore, a purely intuitive presentation would be one with the dog, in which all of the
contents of the presentation, or statement, have readily apparent meaning. A purely
signitive presentation, on the other hand, would be one in which there was nothing in the
statement which was apparent. Therefore, a purely signitive presentation, or if any
signitive contents were in a presentation, then the meaning could not be fulfilled. Husserl
also makes a distinction that purely signitive intentions are empty in that they do not
contain meaning and therefore cannot be fulfilled, while intuitive intentions are fulfilling
in that they can be fulfilled and contain meaning within them.

To go back to our previous, intuitive, example, it is also possible that what my friend saw
was a dog, and in fact was a germen shepherd. However, when I imagined the scene, I
saw a poodle. It is only by my looking at the scene, or by my friend thoroughly
explaining the scene, that my friends meaning could be completely fulfilled. This is
clarified later when he states that “If then, in each pure intuition we take Pp and Ip to be
the weights of its purely perceptual and purely imaginative components, we can write
down the symbolic equation ‘Pp + Ip = 1’ where 1 symbolizes the weight of the total
intuitive content of the pure intuition, and thus the total content of its object. If Ip = 0, i.e.
if the pure intuition is free from all imaginal content, it should be called a pure
perception… But if Pp = 0, the intuition is called pure imagination.” (Husserl, Vol. 2,
237) In other cases, the intuition has some perceptual contents, and some imaginative.

It seems that in the example above, the presentation is purely intuitive, as all of the words
have meaning, as well as a perception of ‘pure imagination’, but if I had a glimpse of the
field, but not the dog, then it would not be a pure imagination or a pure perception, and
instead would lie between the two.

In this case, of a dog in a field, it is entirely possible that the statement will have
meaning. That is, that the statement is not an empty intention, it is internally consistent,
and points to a specific state of affairs in reality. However, it was entirely possible that
the statement was impossible, had there been inconsistencies. This is one of the things
that the laws of a logic should be able to prevent against, as was stated earlier in the
Logical Investigations.

The second third of Investigation VI deals with sensuous and categorial intuitions. While
I have some understanding of what he is talking about here, like the rest of it, I have a
hard time putting it down in words. So, I will try to make some sense of it.

If I have a red ball in my hand, it is a simple object in the respect that it is a whole thing –
a ‘red ball’. However, it is made up of parts. It is red, squishy, bouncy, smooth, etc. We
can say various things about this ball, in the structure of ‘this ball is x’, where x is a
moment of the ball. For example, ‘this ball is red’, ‘this ball is squishy’, ‘this ball is
bouncy’, and ‘this ball is smooth’. Each of these properties is a part of the whole, the

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ball.

When we look at this ball, the whole ball is explicate, while the various parts are
implicate. That is, we clearly see the whole, and through it, the parts. The same is true of
the various parts of the whole. For example, when we see red, we know that extension is
a part of it, as extension is necessary for color to appear.

When we see an object then, we first have a sensuous intuition, followed by a categorial
intuition. Therefore, I believe that he means something like the following: If we
represent the ball as ‘b’, then our simple intuition would give us ‘b’. On the other hand, a
categorial intuition would give us something like ‘b = r • s • y • m • …’ where ‘r’ stands
for red, ‘s’ for squishy, ‘y’ for bouncy, and ‘m’ for smooth. Using any of the modern
logical connectives, as was explained in class, is what distinguishes a categorial, from a
simple intuition.

Therefore, it seems that Husserl talks more about possibility in the Logical Investigations
then he does of impossibility. However, if you do not do what Husserl speaks of in
relation to possible objects and meaning, then you are almost guaranteed to have an
impossible one. While I believe I have a grasp of what it is that Husserl is trying to get
across, from the reading, as well as looking at modern logic, many of his ideas are still a
little sketchy.

Bibliography:

Husserl, Edmund, Logical Investigations Volume 1 and 2, New York, Routledge,

2001.

Cite this document:

James Skemp, Epistemology: Paper on Husserl and Logical Investigations, http://papers.strivinglife.net/, September 23, 2004
(Accessed Reader: Insert Current Date Here)

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