Names, Statements, and Their Corresponding Acts in Husserl’s Logical Investigations

Abstract

At the outset of the second volume of Husserl’s Logical Investigations it is pointed out, in agreement with John Stuart Mille², that language is central to the concerns of logic (Hua XIX/1, p. 5). Among the linguistic expressions which concern Husserl in the subsequent investigations are names (Namen) and statements (Aussagen), as indeed Book I of Mill’s System of Logic was concerned with names and propositions¹. In this regard Husserl and Mill follow a long-standing tradition, in which names and statements are indeed among the elements of logic, to be followed only by inferences. Nonetheless, the topic of names and statements, or any other class of linguistic expressions for that matter, is not Husserl’s ultimate concern in the second volume of the Logical Investigations. This volume, entitled “Investigations in the Phenomenology and Theory of Cognition”², culminates in the fifth and six “Logical Investigations”, which are respectively entitled “On Intentional Lived-Through Processes and their ‘Contents”’³ and “Elements of a Phenomenological Elucidation of Cognition”⁴. In both of these cases Husserl is concerned with intentional lived-through processes which are intentionally directed. This concern with such processes (with acts, as Husserl often says) is of course explicit in the title of the fifth “Logical Investigation”. The term “cognition”, as found in the sixth one, by and large designates those acts in which something is evident⁵. In the following I shall critically examine Husserl’s views in the Logical Investigations on names and statements with particular attention to his observations concerning the corresponding acts of consciousness. As it has been seen elsewhere⁶, Husserl’s belonging to the school of Brentano will prove to be of great relevance here.

In the following the Logical Investigations will be referred in italics when the work as a whole is meant, whereas each of the six investigations in the second volume will be referred to as a “Logical Investigation” (in quotation marks). References to passages from the work will be made in parentheses in the text. The Husserliana edition will be used and thus indicated by “Hua” followed by a Roman numeral to indicate the relevant volume. When the English translation of J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970) is used (albeit often with considerable revisions), this will be indicated as “Findlay” followed by a Roman numeral to indicate the relevant volume of the translation. For the most part, the text of the first edition of the Logical Investigations will be preferred over that of the second one.