Husserl and Analytic Philosophy PDF
Preview Husserl and Analytic Philosophy
HUSSERLAND 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 PublishedbyKluwerAcademicPublishers. P.O.Box 17,3300AADordrecht,TheNetherlands. KluwerAcademicPublishersincorporates thepublishingprogrammesof D.Reidel, MartinusNijhoff, DrW.JunkandMTPPress. Sold anddistributedintheU.S.A.andCanada byKluwerAcademicPublishers, 101PhilipDrive, Norwell, MA02061, U.S.A. Inallothercountries,soldanddistributed byKluwerAcademic Publishers, P.O.Box322,3300AHDordrecht,TheNetherlands. printedonacid-freepaper AllRights Reserved © 1990byKluwerAcademicPublishers Softcoverreprintofthehardcover1stedition1990 Nopart ofthematerial protectedbythiscopyrightnotice maybereproducedor utilizedinanyformorbyanymeans, electronicormechanical includingphotocopying,recordingorbyanyinformationstorageand retrievalsystem, without written permissionfromthecopyrightowner. 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-
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