Abstract
This chapter continues our discussion of Husserl’s theory of intentionality, focusing on his account of noema and noematic Sinn. We have already argued that, for Husserl, noemata are ideal “contents” of consciousness; specifically, the Sinn in the noema is the component of an act’s content that determines the act’s intentional relation to its object. Now we ask for more details: just what kind of entity is a Sinn and precisely how does it confer intentionality on the act?
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Notes
Føllesdal’s interpretation dates from his 1958 dissertation, Husserl und Frege (Note 10, Ch. Ill above). It is stated most succinctly in his ‘Husserl’s Notion of Noema’ (Note 15, Ch. Ill above) and is applied to perception in ‘Phenomenology’ (Note 19, Ch. Ill above). Also see his ‘An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers’ (Note 10, Ch. Ill above). The interpretation has been expounded and developed in various ways in doctoral dissertations directed by Føllesdal: Hubert L. Dreyfus, ‘Husserl’s Phenomenology of Perception: from Transcendental to Existential Phenomenology’, (Harvard University, 1963); Ronald Mclntyre, ‘Husserl and Referentiality: The Role of the Noema as an Intensional Entity’ (Stanford University, 1970); David Woodruff Smith, ‘Intentionality, Noemata, and Individuation: The Role of Individuation in Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality’ (Stanford University, 1970); John Francis Lad, ‘On Intuition, Evidence, and Unique Representation’ (Stanford University, 1973); and Izchak Miller, ‘The Phenomenology of Perception: Husserl’s Account of Our Temporal Awareness’ (UCLA, 1979).
Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1964), p. 173. Our discussion of Gurwitsch’s interpretation is based on: The Field of Consciousness, esp. pp. 164–68, 173–84; his ‘On the Intentionality of Consciousness’, in Phenomenology, ed. by Joseph J. Kockelmans (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1967), pp. 118–37, reprinted from Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. by Marvin Farber (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1940); and his ‘Husserl’s Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness in Historical Perspective’, in Lee and Mandelbaum (Note 21, Ch. I above), pp. 25–57, reprinted in Dreyfus (Note 10, Ch. Ill above). Also see Dreyfus’s comparison of Gurwitsch’s and Føllesdal’s interpretations of the perceptual noema, in Hubert L. Dreyfus, ‘The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution’, in Life-World and Consciousness, ed. by Lester Embree (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 111., 1972), pp. 135–70, revised and reprinted as ‘Husserl’s Perceptual Noema’, in Dreyfus (Note 10, Ch. Ill above).
Cf. David Kaplan’s use of “meaning marks” in Kaplan (Note 26, Ch. I above), pp. 185–87. The device derives from Quine’s “corner quotes” as employed in W. V. Quine, Mathematical Logic ( Norton, New York, 1940 ).
The definite-description theory of reference is discussed in much detail by Saul Kripke in his ‘Naming and Necessity’, in Semantics of Natural Language, ed. by Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1972), esp. pp. 255–60, 277–303.
See Kripke (Note 25 above), pp. 253–303; Keith Donnellan, ‘Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions’, in Davidson and Harman (Note 25 above), pp. 356–79; Hilary Putnam, ‘Meaning and Reference’, Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973), 699–711, reprinted in Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds, ed. by Stephen P. Schwartz (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N. Y., 1977); and Putnam, ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’, in his Philosophical Papers, Vol. II: Mind, Language, and Reality ( Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1972 ), pp. 215–71.
See Føllesdal, ‘Knowledge, Identity, and Existence’, Theoria 33 (1967), 1–27; Kripke (Note 25 above), esp. pp. 264-89; and Kripke, ‘Identity and Necessity’, in Schwartz (Note 26 above), pp. 77–83.
In this respect Husserl’s view of names and demonstratives is like that of the 1970’s developed in works of Donnellan, Kaplan, and Kripke. On direct reference by proper names, see Keith Donnellan, ‘Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions’ (Note 26 above), and Saul Kripke, ‘Naming and Necessity’ (Note 25 above). On direct reference by demonstratives, see David Kaplan, “Dthat” and ‘On the Logic of Demonstratives’, in Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language, ed. by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., Howard K. Wettstein (University of Minnesota Press, Minnea-polis, 1979), pp. 383–412. Husserl’s account of demonstratives and Kaplan’s coincide up to a point: both hold that demonstratives refer directly; both recognize two levels of meaning for demonstratives, one that varies with the occasion of utterance and one that does not. Where Husserl developed the phenomenological and epistemological foundations of demonstrative reference, Kaplan has developed a modern formal logic, a model-theoretic or possible-worlds semantics or pragmatics, for demonstratives. Two relevant studies of demonstratives that draw on both Husserl and Kaplan are David Woodruff Smith, ‘Indexical Sense and Reference’, Synthese 49 (1981), and ‘What’s the Meaning of “This”?’, Noûs 16, No. 2 (1982).
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© 1984 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Smith, D.W., McIntyre, R. (1984). Husserl’s Theory of Noematic Sinn. In: Husserl and Intentionality. Synthese Library, vol 154. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9383-5_4
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