HUSSERL AND INTENTIONALITY

A PALLAS PAPERBACK

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 DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH
Dept. of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine

and

RONALD McINTYRE
Dept. of Philosophy, California State University, Northridge

HUSSERL AND
INTENTIONALITY
A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language

D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY

A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP

DORDRECHT/BOSTON/LANCASTER
 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Smith, David Woodruff, 1944-

Husser! and intentionality.

(Synthese library; v. 154)

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Husser!, Edmund, 1859 1938. 2. Intention (Logic)--
History--20th century. 3. Thought and thinking-History-
20th century. 4. Semantics (Philosophy)--History-20th century.
1. McIntyre, Ronald, 1942- II. Title
B3279.H94S55 1982 128'.2 82-9865
ISBN 978-90-277-1730-6 ISBN 978-94-010-9383-5 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-94-010-9383-5

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 T ABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

ABBREVIA TIONS ix

PREFACE xi

INTRODUCTION xiii

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xix

CHAPTER 1/ Intentionality and Intensionality

CHAPTER II / Some Classical Approaches to the Problems ofInten-
tionality and Intensionality 40
CHAPTE R III / Fundamentals of Husserl's Theory of Intentionality 87
CHAPTER IV / Husserl's Theory of Noematic Sinn 153
CHAPTER V / Husserl's Notion of Horizon 227
CHAPTER vI/Horizon-Analysis and the Possible-Worlds Explica-
tion of Meaning 266
CHAPTER VII / Intentionality and Possible-Worlds Semantics 308
CHAPTER VIII / Definite, or De Re, Intention in a Husserlian
Framework 354

BIBLIOGRAPHY 407

INDEX OF NAMES 417

INDEX OF TOPICS 419

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the appropriate parties for their kind permission to quote at some
length, for the purpose of scholarly commentary, from the following works
by Edmund Husserl:
Cartesian Meditations, English translation by Dorion Cairns (Martinus
Nijhoff, The Hague, 1960);
Experience and Judgment (revised and edited by Ludwig Landgrebe),
English translation by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Northwestern
University Press, Evanston, 1973) (British Commonwealth rights licensed to
Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd.);
Ideen zu einer rein en Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philos-
ophie, erstes Buch, herausgegeben von Walter Biemel (Martinus Nijhoff, The
Hague, 1950), quotations being in our own English translations;
Logical Investigations, Volumes One and Two, English translation by J. N.
Findlay (Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., London, 1970) (American rights
licensed to Humanities Press, Inc., Atlantic Highlands, N.J.).
 ABBREVIA TIONS

The following abbreviations of Husserl's works are employed in the text.

Translations from Ideas and from works not available in English at the time
of our writing are our own. Otherwise, we have made use of available English
translations, and page references are to these editions. We have sometimes
made translational changes in passages cited from English translations; on
those occasions page references are followed by the notation 'with trans.
changes'.

CM Cartesian Meditations. Trans!. by Dorion Cairns. Nijhoff, The Hague, 1960.

[Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortriige. Edited by S. Strasser
(Husserliana I). Nijhoff, The Hague, 1973.) Originally published in French
in 1931, trans!. by J. Peiffer and E. Levinas.
Crisis The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Transl.
by David Carr. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1970. [Die
Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phiinomen-
ologie. Ed. by Walter Biemel (Husserliana VI). Nijhoff, The Hague, 1954.)
EJ Experience and Judgment. Trans!. by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks.
Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1973. [Erfahrung und Urteil.
Ed. by Ludwig Landgrebe. Claassen, Hamburg, 1964. Originally published
in 1939.)
FTL Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans!. by Dorion Cairns. Nijhoff, The
Hague, 1969. [Formale und transzendentaleLogik. Niemeyer, Halle, 1929.)
Ideas Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie.
Erstes Buch. Ed. by Walter Biemel (Husserliana Ill). Nijhoff, The Hague,
1950. [Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Transl. by
W. R. Boyce Gibson. George Allen and Unwin, London, 1931.) Originally
published in 1913.
Ideas, III Ideen zu einer rein en Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie.
Drittes Buch. Ed. by Marly Biemal (Husserliana V). Nijhoff, The Hague,
1952.
IP The Idea of Phenomenology. Transl. by William P. Alston and George
Nakhnikian. Nijhoff, The Hague, 1964. [Die Idee der Phiinomenologie. Funj
Vorlesungen. Ed. by Walter Bieme!. Nijhoff, The Hague, 1950.) Lectures
delivered by Husserl in 1907.
LI Logical Investigations. Revised ed. Trans!. by J. N. Findlay. Prolegomena
and Investigations I-VI in 2 vols. Humanities Press, New York, 1970.
[Logische Untersuchungen. Revised ed. 2 vols. in 3 parts. Niemeyer, Halle,
1913 and 1921. [Vol. I and Vol. II, Pt. 1 (Prolegomena and Investigations

ix
x ABBREVIATIONS

I-IV) were published in 1913; Vol. II, Pt. 2 (Investigation VI) was published
in 1921.) 5th printing, Tiibingen, 1968.) The flIst edition of Logische
Untersuchungen was published in 1900-1901 in Halle by Niemeyer.
PP Phenomenological Psychology. Trans!. by John Scanlon. Nijhoff, The Hague,
1977. [Phiinomenologische Psychologie. Ed. by Walter Biemel (Husserlillna
IX). Nijhoff, The Hague, 1962.) Lectures delivered by Husserl in the sum-
mer semester of 1925.
Time The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Ed. by Martin Heideg-
ger. Transl. by James S. Churchill. Indiana University Press, Bloomington,
Ind., 1964. [Vorlesungen zur Phiinomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstsein.
Ed. by Martin Heidegger. Niemeyer, Halle, 1928.)
Zeit. Zur Phiinomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins. Ed. by Rudolf Boehm
(Husserlillna X). Nijhoff, The Hague, 1966. In addition to Husserl's Vor-
lesungen zur Phiinomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstsein, this volume
contains supplementary texts not translated in Time. References to these
texts will be indicated by ·Zeit.'
 PREFACE

This book has roots in our respective doctoral dissertations, both completed
in 1970 at Stanford under the tutelage of Professors Dagfmn F ¢llesdal, John
D. Goheen, and Jaakko Hintikka. In the fall of 1970 we wrote a joint article
that proved to be a prolegomenon to the present work, our 'Intentionality via
Intensions', The Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971). Professor Hintikka then
suggested we write a joint book, and in the spring of 1971 we began writing
the present work. The project was to last ten years as our conception of the
project continued to grow at each stage.
Our iritellectual debts follow the history of our project. During our dis-
sertation days at Stanford, we joined with fellow doctoral candidates John
Lad and Michael Sukale and Professors F¢llesdal, Goheen, and Hintikka in
an informal seminar on phenomenology that met weekly from June of 1969
through March of 1970. During the summers of 1973 and 1974 we regrouped
in another informal seminar on phenomenology, meeting weekly at Stanford
and sometimes Berkeley, the regular participants being ourselves, Hubert
Dreyfus, Dagfmn F¢llesdal, Jane Lipsky McIntyre, Izchak Miller, and, in
1974, John Haugeland. More recently, we enjoyed discussions and presented
some of our results at the 1980 Summer Institute on Phenomenology and
Existentialism, on 'Continental and Analytic Perspectives on Intentionality'
(held at the University of California, Berkeley, directed by Hubert Dreyfus
and John Haugeland, under the auspices of The Council for Philosophical
Studies with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities). We
are grateful to all the above-mentioned philosophers for intellectual inspira-
tions of many forms. We should also like to thank our students and colleagues
over the years and our audiences at various institutions and conferences for
their responses to presentations of ideas that were taking shape for the pre-
sent book.
The book is for the most part thoroughly co-authored, with both content
and wording being the result of inextricably joint efforts at several stages of
writing. The only exceptions are as follows. Section 2.3 of Chapter II derives
from Smith, 'Meinongian Objects', Grazer Philosophische Studien 1 (1975).
Sections 3.2 and 3.3 of Chapter N derive from McIntyre, 'Intending and
Referring: Some Problems for HusseTl's Theory of Intentionality', in Husserl,
xi
xii PREFACE

Intentionality, and Cognitive Science: Recent Studies in Phenomenology, ed.

by Hubert Dreyfus (MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, 1982), and
McIntyre, 'Husserl's Phenomenological Conception of Intentionality and
its Difficulties', Philosophia (forthcoming). Section 3.4 of Chapter IV derives
from Smith, 'Hussed on Demonstrative Reference and Perception', also in the
Dreyfus anthology just cited. Finally, Chapter VIII was written by Smith,
with benefit of commentary by McIntyre. A version of most of Part 2 of
Chapter IV appeared as McIntyre and Smith, 'Husserl's Identification of
Meaning and Noema', The Monist 59 (l975).
We wish to thank Professor F¢llesdal for his encouragement of our project
and especially for introducing us to Hussed's philosophy in a way that made
its importance so clearly evident. We are deeply grateful to Professor Hintikka,
both for the intellectual stimulation he has provided over the past fifteen
years and for his efforts and kind support as advising editor for D. Reidel
Publishing Company. We thank as well the editors at Reidel, especially Ms.
J. C. Kuipers, for their cooperation, encouragement, and patience. And we
thank Lynne Friedman for her expert typing of most of the manuscript, and
Wanda Roach and Virginia Drew for their equally able typing of remaining
parts.
Our deep gratitude goes to Mary Douglas (Smith) and Jane Lipsky Mc-
Intyre for their enduring support for our project.

Irvine and Los Angeles DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH

August, 1981 RONALD McINTYRE

NOTE

On some prior occasions we have referred to the present book under an earlier title,
Intentionality and Intensions: Husserl's Phenomenology and the Semantics of Intentional
Modalities. That title gave way to another more accurately indicating the focus of the
f"mished work.
 INTRODUCTION

The theme of our study is intentionality, the property of a thought or experi-

ence that consists in its being a consciousness "of" or "about" something.
'Intentionality' is a technical term of philosophy, but there is nothing more
familiar to any person than that for which it stands: it is the characteristic
feature of what is commonly called "being conscious" or "being aware". By
virtue of being conscious, a person stands in a special kind of relation to his
or her environment: we are not merely affected by physical things, events,
states of affairs, and other persons; we are also conscious of all these things,
of numbers, propositions, our own mental states, and of anything else that
we bring before our minds. This relational character of being conscious is
"intentionality". It manifests itself in every instant of our mental life, in
perceiving, desiring, remembering, fearing, loving, doubting, judging, and even
dreaming or day-dreaming. Intentionality, then, characterizes that aspect of
a person that is called "consciousness" or "mind". And so the study of inten-
tionality is a central part of the philosophy of mind. Specifically, it is a study
of the unique way in which mind or consciousness relates to its objects and
of the features of consciousness by virtue of which it has this relational
character.
The focus of our study is the theory of intentionality developed in the
early part of the Twentieth Century by the Czecho-German philosopher
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Our approach is part scholarly and part
systematic. Approximately half our efforts will be toward formulating and
understanding Husserl's theory of intentionality, by interpreting his texts
and by relating it to work by other thinkers both of his day and of recent
years. The other half of our efforts will be toward evaluating and extending
the type of theory of intentionality that Husserl advocated, assessing its
strengths and weaknesses and indicating how it can be developed beyond
Husserl's own achievements.
There are both historical and theoretical reasons for studying Husserl's
theory of intentionality. Husserl, of course, was the founder of the discipline
called "phenomenology" and the father of the influential Twentieth-Century
movement of phenomenological philosophy and psychology. Phenomenology
began with Husserl as a kind of descriptive psychology, analyzing experiences
xiii
xiv INTRODUCTION

as their subject experiences or "lives" them. Ultimately, however, he devel-

oped phenomenology into a transcendental analysis, somewhat like Kant's,
of the basic functions of the ego that are necessary for the very possibility
of intentional experiences of various fundamental kinds. Phenomenology is
perhaps most widely known for the method Husserl proposed for carrying
out his phenomenological investigations - a method that includes a kind of
internal reflection, called "epoche", that "brackets" concern with the external
world and focuses on the internal structures of experiences, on the "contents"
of consciousness. However, Husserl was a systematic thinker who developed
interlocking doctrines of epistemology, ontology, logic, and phenomenology,
as well as a methodology for developing these doctrines. And the foundation
for nearly all his work was his theory of intentionality. Husserl's phenom-
enology has been succeeded in European thought by existential (as opposed
to transcendental) phenomenology, hermeneutics, structuralism, and now
post-structuralism. All trace in one way or another to the work of Husserl,
by extending or modifying it, by using it as a springboard to new ideas, or by
reacting against it or against the Cartesian-Lockean-Kantian heritage that
some say culminates in Husserl's philosophical system. So Husserl's philos-
ophy, fundamentally grounded in his theory of intentionality, has consider-
ably influenced the intellectual currents of contemporary continental Europe.
And although it has been less influential elsewhere, there are signs of an
emerging interest in Husserl's work among English-speaking philosophers.
Husserl's major works are now available in English translation, and Anglo-
American philosophers are beginning to find that Husserl speaks to central
concerns of their tradition. As the breadth and depth of Husserl's thought
become evident, Husserl may indeed take his place among the other great
systematic philosophers of the West.
Perhaps the most important reason for studying Husserl's theory of inten-
tionality, though, is that there is still much to be learned from it, especially
as it forms a basic part of a theory of mind. For most of this century, at least
in the English-speaking world, the dominant philosophical theories of mind
have been behaviorist, physicalist, functionalist, or causal theories. These
theories would study mind from the outside, from a third-person point of
view. Indeed, some would defme mind in "external" terms. The phenom-
enological theory of mind is a vital alternative to these theories. With roots
in Descartes and Kant, Husserl's philosophy is perhaps the most developed
form of a theory of mind studied from the first-person point of view. And
Husserl's theory, unlike its antecedents, is founded in a fully articulated
theory of intentionality. Though Cartesian in spirit, a phenomenological
 INTRODUCTION xv

theory of mind is worthy of the attention of contemporary philosophy, which

tends to classify 'mind' as a four-letter word that is too ontologically embar-
rassing to be used in polite society. For it is not a Cartesianism that takes an
ontological distinction between mind and body as basic; what is basic is inten-
tionality. A phenomenological theory of mind must account for intentionality,
but it need not necessarily rule out an ultimately physicalist ontology.
(Interestingly, modern cognitive science adopts a theory of mind based on
a notion of mental representation that is similar to Husserl's notion of in-
tentionality, while yet it remains basically physicalist.) An externalist theory
of mind will likely omit intentionality, however, and in so doing will fail to
account for the fundamental feature of conscious life as we all experience
it. So it is important to study Husserl's theory of mind, which emphasizes
the intentionality of mind while remaining neutral about further issues of
physicalism.
Husserl's theory is one of the very few theories of intentionality (or mental
representation) to have been systematically developed. And where philoso-
phers recently have attended to intentional states of mind, especially the
so-called propositional attitudes such as belief, they have almost unanimously
focused on the "objects" of these attitudes or experiences. Their results
reflect an important assumption about the problem of intentionality: the
assumption that the objects of our consciousness are not ordinary things, such
as physical objects, and that, therefore, the problem of intentionality is to
discover what kinds of entities the objects of intentional attitudes and experi-
ences are. Husserl offers an important alternative to this approach, an alterna-
tive that focuses on the "contents" rather than the "objects" of intentional
experiences. At fIrst he adopted what would today be called an "adverbial"
theory, to the effect that the intentionality of an experience, such as seeing
a dog or imagining a unicorn, is a non-relational state of being conscious in a
certain way. But later he offered a more weighty theory of the "content" of
an intentional state, a theory whose goal was to explain how the content of
an experience can succeed in relating it to an entity of some ordinary sort,
such as a physical object. We shall be developing this phenomenological,
"content", theory of consciousness in detail so that it may be evaluated for
both its doctrinal and its historical importance.
Husserl's developed account of the phenomenological content of an ex-
perience is his theory of "noesis" and "noema". (The terms derive from the
Greek word for perception or mind.) Our emphasis will be on the noema of
an experience, which is its abstract content or form. A noema embodies the
"way" in which the object of an experience is presented or intended in the
xvi INTRODUCTION

experience; and, as an abstract entity, it can be shared by other experiences

that present the same object in the same way. Husser! characterized this
abstract content of an experience as its "meaning" or "sense" (Sinn). As
Dagfmn F¢>llesdal has stressed, the notion of meaning that Husser! here in-
voked is very similar to Gottlob Frege's notion of sense, which has been so
influential in contemporary semantic theory.
It is through this notion of noema that our study of Husserl's theory of
the intentionality of mind becomes, in a central way, also a study of meaning
and language. As the content of an intentional experience, a meaning or
noema is what gives the experience its intentional character: the noema
prescribes an object, and if there is such an object then that is the object
intended in the experience. And Husserl sees an analogous role for noemata
in language. Husserl himself developed a Frege-like theory of lingUistic mean-
ing and reference, based on the classical view that language is expressive of
thought. The "thoughts" expressed in language, he held, are the abstract,
shareable contents - the meanings or noemata - of speakers' judgments and
other experiences of thinking. Accordingly, the meanings that words express
are themselves the noemata of the various intentional experiences that under-
lie the use of words. And as expressed in language, meanings or noemata are
what give language its "referential" character: they prescribe objects of refer-
ence, so that language, too, is "of" or "about" something -- and for the very
same reason that experiences are intentional. Accordingly, there derive from
Husserl's interlocking doctrines about mind and language important parallels
between intentionality and reference. Indeed, the meanings that HusserI
proposes as the proper objects of study in semantic theory and the contents
of experience that he proposes to study through phenomenological analysis
are the very same entities. We hope to show, therefore, that semantic theory
in the Frege-HusserI tradition and theory of mind in the phenomenological
tradition can illuminate each other in fruitful ways.
For HusserI, the phenomenological content of an experience - its meaning
or noema - can be grasped in inner reflection by the phenomenological
method of epoche or bracketing. But, he held, the meaning of an experience
can be further explicated by laying out what he called the "horizon" of the
experience. There are two different, but cognate, notions of horizon. As
HusserI usually defined it, the horizon of an experience is the range of possible
further experiences (especially perceptions) of the same object, experiences
that could present the same object from different perspectives in ways com-
patible with the content of the given experience. This notion of horizon
aligns in some ways with a verificationist or pragmatist analysis of meaning
 INTRODUCTION xvii

in t~rms of possible evidence or experience. But Husserl's cognate notion of

horizon, the horizon of an object with respect to a given experience, points
in another direction. This horizon consists of the range of possibilities left
open by the experience, possible circumstances in which the object presented
in the experience takes on various further properties and relations to other
objects in ways that are compatible with what the content of the experience
prescribes. We shall show that this notion aligns more closely with recent
analyses of meaning, derived from Rudolf Camap, in terms of "possible
worlds". The explication of meaning in terms of possible worlds is central
to the semantic analyses of intentional idioms like "believes" and "perceives"
given by laakko Hintikka, Richard Montague, and others. The notion of
horizon is thus a crucial link connecting this part of semantic theory with
Husserl's phenomenological theory of intentionality and mind.
Our study may be perceived as consisting of three interconnected parts.
The first (Chapters I and II) introduces the topic of intentionality and pre-
sents some of the historical and philosophical background of Husserl's theory.
In particular, we discuss some of the problems that a theory of intentionality
must solve and relate them to logical and seman tical problems concerning the
analysis of so-called "intensional" contexts (e.g., 'Smith believes that --').
We then discuss the "object-approach" to intentionality, especially as exem-
plified in the accounts of intentionality offered by Franz Brentano and
Alexius Meinong, and Frege's theory of sense and reference and his analysis
of intensional contexts. The second part (Chapters III, IV, and V) is our
study of Husserl's theory of intentionality per se.We contrast his phenomen-
ological approach to intentionality with the object-approach and discuss his
conception of phenomenology and phenomenological method. We trace the
development of his notion of content from Logical Investigations to Ideas,
drawing on related doctrines of Kasimir Twardowski, Bernard Bolzano, and
Frege. We argue for and defend a basically F~llesdalian interpretation of
noema as meaning, but we also fmd that Husserl's analysis of intentionality
in terms of noema alone is inadequate for certain important kinds of experi-
ences. We then develop Husserl's cognate notions of horizon in detail and
indicate some fruitful ways in which they extend his basic phenomenological
theory of intentionality and meaning. The third part (Chapters VI, VII, and
VIII) extends Husserl's theory of intentionality in further ways, primarily by
relating the notions of noema and horizon to the possible-worlds explication
of meaning. This discussion draws significantly on related ideas of Camap,
Hintikka, C. I. Lewis, and Montague. We develop a theory of intentionality
that makes heuristic use of possible-worlds but also retains a more basic
xviii INTRODUCTION

commitment to meanings as contents of intentional experiences. Finally', we

apply this theory to some kinds of intentional experiences that Hussed
addressed in suggestive but inconclusive ways; these experiences are what
we call "defmite" or "de re" intentions, and they include both perceptual
experiences and experiences in which an object is "individuated" for the
person who intends it.
 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1/ INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY

1. The IntentiOfUllity ofACf$ of Consciousness

1.1. Intentionality 1
1.2. "Acts" of Consciousness 3
1.3. The Objects of Acts 5
1.4. Direct-Object Acts versus Propositional Acts 6
1.5. Propositional Acts and Intending "About" Something 8

2. Some Main Characteristics of "Intentional Relations" 10

2.1. "Intentional Relations" 10
2.2. The Existence-Independence of Intentional Relations 11
2.3. The Conception-Dependence of Intentional Relations 13
2.4. Conception-Dependence and the Individuation of Intentions 15
2.5. The "Indeterminacy" in Intentions of Transcendent Objects 16
2.6. Definite and Indefinite Intentions 18

3. The Intenllionality ofAct-Contexts 21

3.1. Intensionality 21
3.2. The Failure of Substitutivity of Identity for Act-Contexts 25
3.3. Failure of Existential Generalization for Act-Contexts, Case 1: Failure
of Existence 28
3.4. Failure of Existential Generalization for Act-Contexts, Case 2: Indefi-
niteness 30
3.5. "De Dicto" and "De Re" Modalities 31

4. Intensionality vir-a-vir Intentionality 33

CHAPTER II / SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES TO THE

PROBLEMS OF INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 40

1. Theories of Intentionality as Theories About the Objects of Intention 40

1.1. The Object-Approach to Intentionality 40
1.2. "Intentional Objects" 42
1.3. Ambiguities in the Notion of "Intentional Object" 44

2. Object-Theories of Intentionality 47
2.1. Mind-Dependent Entities as Objects of Intention: An Interpretation of
Brentano's Early Theory 47

xix
xx ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

2.2. Problems with Mind-Dependent Entities as Objects of Intention 51

2.3. Intentional Objects as "Objects Beyond Being": Meinong's Theory of
Objects 54
2.4. Intentional Objects as "Fictions": Brentano's Later Theory 57

3. Frege's Approach to Meaning, Reference, and the Problems of Intensionality 61

3.1. Parallels Between Frege's Semantics of Act-Sentences and the Object-
Approach to Intentionality 61
3.2. Frege's Theory of Meaning and Reference 63
3.3. Meanings as Abstract "Intensional Entities" 67
3.4. Frege's Semantics for Sentences of Propositional Attitude 69
3.5. Intensional Entities in Intentionality: Objects or Mediators of Inten-
tion? 75

CHAPTER III / FUNDAMENT ALS OF HUSSERL'S THEOR Y

OF INTENTIONALITY 87

1. Husserl's Phenomenological Approach to Intentionality 88

1.1. Husserl's Conception ofIntentionality 88
1.2. Husserlian Phenomenology and Phenomenological Method 93
1.3. Toward a Phenomenological Theory of Intentionality 104

2. "Phenomenological Content" 108

2.1. Act, Content, and Object: Twardowski's Formulation of the Distinction 109
2.2. Husserl's Conception of Content in Logical Investigations 112
2.3. Husserl's Mature Conception of Content: Noesis and Noema 119
2.4. The Structure of an Act's Noema: its "Sinn" and "The tic" components 125
2.5. Content, Noesis, and Noema in Review 135
2.6. The Content of Perception: its Sensory (or Hyletic) and Noetic Phases 136

3. Husserl's Basic Theory: Intention via Sinn 141

3.1. Noematic Sinne as Mediators 141
3.2. The Theory and Its Account of the Peculiarities of Intention 145

CHAPTER IV / HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 153

1. Interpreting Noematic Sinn 154

1.1. Noema as Content and as Meaning 154
1.2. What is the "Intended as Such"? 157
1.3. Sinne versus Meinongian "Incomplete" Objects 165
1.4. Noema versus Essence 167

2. Husserl's Identification of Linguistic Meaning and Noematic Sinn 170

2.1. Husserl's Conception of Linguistic Meaning 171
2.2. Husserl on Meaning and Reference 176
 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xxi

2.3. Every Linguistic Meaning is a Noematic Sinn 179

2.4. Every Noematic Sinn is Expressible as a Linguistic Meaning 182
2.5. Qualifications and Extensions of the Expressibility Thesis 184
2.6. Noematic Description 187
2.7. Noemata as a Kind of Propositions (Siitze) 192

3. How Is Intention Achieved via Sinn? 194

3.1. Husserl's Account of the Structure of a Noematic Sinn: the "X" and
the "Predicate-Senses" 195
3.2. Some Problems for a "Definite-Description" Model of Intentionality 204
3.3. The Problem of Definite, or De Re, Intentions 208
3.4. The Sinn of Perception as "Demonstrative" 213
3.5. Intentionality and Pragmatics: Contextual Influences on Intention 219

CHAPTER V / HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 227

1. Meaning and Possible Experience: The Turn to Husserl's Notion of Horizon 227
1.1. The "Indeterminacy" in Intentions of Transcendent Objects 227
1.2. Husserl's Notions of Object-Horizon, Act-Horizon, and Manifold 229
1.3. Horizon-Analysis as a New Method of Phenomenological Analysis 233

2. Husserl's Conception of Horizon 236

2.1. Early Notions of Object-Horizon: Ideas (1913) 236
2.2. The Horizon of Possible Experiences Associated with an Act: Cartesian
Meditations (1931) 239
2.3. Act-Horizon and Object-Horizon 240
2.4. The Central Role of Perception in Horizon 241
2.5. The Maximal Horizon of an Act: An Act's Manifold of Associated Pos-
sible Acts 244

3. Horizon and Background Beliefs 246

3.1. The "Pre delineation" of an Act's Horizon 246
3.2. Horizon and Fundamental Background Beliefs 249
3.3. Horizon and Concrete Background Beliefs; Background Meaning 252
3.4. Counter-Evidence within an Act's Horizon 255

4. The Structure of an Act's Horizon 256

4.1. Internal and External Horizon 256
4.2. Temporal Structure in the Horizon 258
4.3. The Horizon's Breakdown into Verification Chains 259
4.4. Synthe~is of Identification Within the Horizon 261
4.5. Summary of Husserl's Account of Horizon-Structure 261

5. Toward a Generalized Theory of Horizon 262

xxii ANAL YTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI/HORIZON-ANALYSIS AND THE

POSSIBLE-WORLDS EXPLICATION OF MEANING 266

1. Horizon-Analysis as Explication of Sinn and Intention 267

1.1. Horizon-Analysis and the Verification Theory of Meaning 267
1.2. Horizon-Analysis and the Carnapian, or Possible-Worlds, Theory of
Meaning 268
1.3. Sorting Husserl with the Carnapian 270
1.4. Horizon-Analysis as "Pragmatic" Explication of Intention 271
1.5. Husserl's Appraisal of Horizon-Analysis Revisited 274
1.6. The Significance of Horizon-Analysis: Beyond Frege to New Horizons 275

2. The Explication of Meaning in Terms of Possible Worlds 278

2.1. Intension and Extension 278
2.2. Intension and Comprehension 279
2.3. Intensions as Functions on Possible Worlds 281
2.4. Intensions as Functions: Explication versus Definition 283
2.5. Two Kinds of Intensional Entities and Their Explication 285
2.6. "Individual Concepts", or Individual Meanings 289
2.7. Rigid and Individuating Meanings 290
2.8. The Explication of Noematic Sinn in Terms of Possible Worlds 292
2.9. "Pragmatic" Explication of Intention in Terms of Possible Worlds 295

3. The Basis in Husserl for a Possible-Worlds Explication of Meaning and

Intention 296
3.1. Possible Objects and Possible Worlds in Husserl 296
3.2. The Equivalence of Horizon-Analysis and Possible-Worlds Explication
of Sinn and Intention 300
3.3. The Eliminability of Possible Entities from Husserl's Theory of Horizon 304

CHAPTER VII / INTENTIONALITY AND

POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 308

1. Intentionality in Possible- Worlds Theory 309

1.1. Husserl's Theory of Intentionality With and Without Possible Worlds 309
1.2. The "Husserlian" Possible-Worlds Theory of Intentionality 310
1.3. The Pure,Possible-Worids Theory of Intentionality 313
1.4. The Possible-Worlds Approach to Intentionality 315

2. Possible-Worlds Semantics for Propositional Attitudes 316

2.1. Fregean, Tarskian, and Possible-Worlds Semantics 317
2.2. Hintikka's Possible-Worlds Approach to Semantics for Propositional
Attitudes 322
2.3. The Account of Intensionality in Possible-Worlds Semantics for Propo-
sitional Attitudes 325
 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xxiii

2.4. Meaning Entities in Possible-Worlds Semantics for Propositional Atti-

tudes 328
2.5. Background Beliefs in Possible-Worlds Semantics for Propositional
Attitudes 332

3. Intentionality in Possible-Worlds Semantics for Propositional Attitudes 333

3.1. Object and Content of Belief 334
3.2. The Aboutness of Indefinite, or De Dicto, Belief 336
3.3. The Aboutness of Definite, or De Re, Belief 339
3.4. EXistence-Independence and Conception-Dependence of Aboutness 341
3.5. States of Affairs as Objects of Belief 343

4. A Husserlian Possible- Worlds Semantics for Propositional Attitudes 345

CHAPTER VIII I DEFINITE, OR DE RE, INTENTION

IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 354

1. The Characterization of Definite, or De Re, Intention 354

1.1. Modes of Definite Intention 354
1.2. Must the Object of a Definite Intention Exist? 357
1.3. Expressing and Describing Definite Intentions: Proper Names, Demon-
strative Pronouns, and Quantifying-In 358
1.4. The Explication of Definite Intention in Terms of Horizon and Possible
Worl~ %1

2. Perceptual Acquaintance 362

2.1. The "Demonstrative" Acquainting Sense in Perception 363
2.2. The Explication of Perceptual Acquaintance in Terms of Possible Worlds 366

3. Identity, Individuation, and Individuation in Consciousness 369

3.1. Concerning Identity and Individuation 370
3.2. The Identity of a Natural Individual and Its "Transcendence" 375
3.3. Husserl on Individuation Through Time 379
3.4. Husserl on Trans-World Individuation 383

4. Toward a Phenomenological Account of Individuative Comciousness 387

4.1. The Phenomenological Structure of Individuative Intention: Toward a
"Pragmatic" Analysis of Individuative Definiteness 387
4.2. Knowing-Who and Individuative Consciousness 391
4.3. A Closer Look at the Structure of Individuative Intention 394
 CHAPTER I

INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY

Our purpose in this chapter is to introduce briefly some of the main topics
with which we shall be concerned throughout the rest of the book. These
topics fall into two major categories: (1) metaphysical and ontological prob-
lems concerning the intentionality of acts of consciousness and the status of
the objects toward which intentional phenomena are directed; and (2) logical
and semantic problems concerning the behavior of linguistic expressions in
intensional contexts, specifically, in sentences attributing intentional phe-
nomena to persons. Here we shall concentrate on describing in as theory-
neutral a way as we can the characteristics of mental phenomena that consti-
tute their intentionality and the characteristics of act-sentences that constitute
their intensionality, and we shall suggest ways in which intentionality and
intensionalityare related. It will be the task of subsequent chapters to develop
a theoretical framework within which these characteristics of acts and act-
sentences can be systematically explained and understood.

1. THE INTENTIONALITY OF ACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

1.1. Intentionality
The philosophical foundations of phenomenology, for the most and better
part, are the work of one man, Edmund Husserl. And according to Husserl,
phenomenology - both as a philosophical theory of consciousness and as
applied description of specific forms of human consciousness - simply is
the theory of intentionality, pure and applied. "Intentionality", he says,
"expresses the fundamental property of consciousness; all phenomenological
problems ... are classified according to it" (Ideas, § 146, p. 357).
In Ideas, §84, HusserI'defines the intentionality of consciousness as "the
peculiarity of experiences [Erlebnissen] 'to be the consciousness of some-
thing'" (p. 204). The term 'intentionality' derives from the Latin verb 'in-
tendere', meaning "to point to"; and in the sense of being the consciousness
of something, each intentional event of consciousness can be said to "point
to" or to "be directed toward" something. Thus, intentionality is often
characterized as the "directedness" of consciousness. Husserl himself says
2 CHAPTER I

in Logical Investigations: "Intentional experiences have the peculiarity of

relating in various ways to presented objects.... An object is 'meant'
['gemeint'] or 'aimed at' ['abgezielt'] in them ... " (V, §1l, p. 558; with
trans. changes). Examples of intentional phenomena include desiring, perceiv-
ing, hoping, judging, and the like. Each ''aims at", or is "directed toward",
something in a relevant sense: in desiring one is desirous of something, in
perceiving one perceives something, in hoping one hopes for something, in
judging one judges about something or judges that something is the case, and
so on.
It was Husserl's teacher, Franz Brentano, who revived interest in the
medieval notion that "mental phenomena" (as he called them) are in this way
intentional, or "directed toward" something.

Every mental phenomenon [Brentano said] is characterized by ... reference to a con-

tent, direction toward an object.... In presentation something is presented, in judgment
something is affumed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired, and so
on.!

Indeed, Brentano took intentionality to be the defming characteristic of the

mental; he thus considered all (and only) mental phenomena to be intentional.
But it is not at all obvious that such mental phenomena as joy, sorrow, and
delight, for example, are invariably directed toward something. One may
be joyful or sorrowful about some event, or take delight in or be delighted
by some thing or occurrence; but it seems that such states need not be so
directed, and even when they are they often persist for some time after one
ceases to be "conscious of" any relevant object. Even less plausibly charac-
terized as "intentional" are moods, such as depression or euphoria, and sensa-
tions, such as pain or dizziness. Brentano, however, thOUght all such mental
states and events to be intentional and suggested for at least some of them
"internal" objects of awareness. The object of one's pleasure at hearing a
sound, he said, is sometimes not the sound or the source of the sound but
the hearing of it. 2
Unlike Brentano, Husserl does not insist that every mental occurrence be
characterized as intentional. In particular, he takes pure sensations (what he
calls the "sensory materials", or "hyle", of perception) to be non-intentional,
though he suggests that they occur only as constituents of complex inten-
tional phenomena, specifically perceptions (cf. LI, V, § 15 ; Ideas, § §36, 85).
And he suggests that feelings and moods, of the sort mentioned above, are
sometimes better classified with sensations than with the intentional (LI, V,
§15). Thus, it is not Husserl's aim to impose intentionality on every mental
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 3

event. His concern is rather to provide a general theory of intentionality for

clearly intentional phenomena and, within the framework of such a theory,
to develop an account of the role played by sensations and any other non-
intentional mental phenomena in more complex events of consciousness, such
as perceptions, that are intentional. In this way Husserl includes even these
non-intentional phenomena in the study of intentionality. He says, in the
passage we earlier quoted elliptically: "All phenomenological problems,
including the hyletic, are classified according to [intentionality]" (Ideas,
§146, p. 357;our emphasis).

1.2. ''Acts'' of Consciousness

like Husserl, we shall leave open the possibility that there are pure sensations
and perhaps other components of consciousness that are not themselves
intentional. Husserl refers to those mental phenomena that are intentional as
acts of consciousness or, more simply, acts, and we shall also adopt this
terminology. This use of the term 'act' for such phenomena as perceiving
and judging should not itself be taken as suggesting any particular sort of
analysis of these phenomena, however. As Husserl introduces it, the term is
simply shorthand for 'intentional phenomenon' or 'intentional experience
(Erlebnis 3 )':

We shall avoid the term 'mental phenomenon' entirely, and shall talk instead of 'inten-
tional experiences' [intentionalen Erlebnissen] . ... The qualifying adjective 'intentional'
names the essence common to the class of experiences we wish to Rlark off, the peculiar-
ity of intention, of relating to what is objective.... As a briefer expression ... we shall
use the term 'act'. (LI, V, § 13, p. 562; with trans. changes.)

Any mental phenomena that are not intentional are thus not to be called
"acts". And where mental phenomena are intentional, Husserl excludes from
the notion of an act any "extra-experiential", or "non-phenomenological",
elements that may be connected with them. By an act Husserl means just that
component of an intentional event of consciousness that the subject himself
can discern by "reflecting" on his experience, excluding empirical facts about
the intended object and its de facto relation to the subject. Hence, an act is
just what we might call the "experiential" component of an intentional event,
"purified" (as Husserl says) of presumptions concerning its "interlacing with
nature" (cf.Ideas, §§38, 50, 51).
This point is particularly important to keep in mind when considering
perception, Husserl's own paradigm of intentionality. In ordinary usage
perceptual notions often encompass much more than ~hat Husserl wants to
4 CHAPTER I

call an act of perception. Perceptual terms, such as 'sees', properly apply in

ordinary language to qUite complex events that include not only the visual
experience "of" something but also the physical (especially, causal) relation
between the subject of the experience and the perceived object.4 Thus, when
we say that Smith "saw" the cat we often mean to imply not only that Smith
had visual experiences as of the cat but also that the cat was the appropriate
distal stimulus of his experiences. In this sense, 'sees' is meant to include an
extra-experiential component relating to the "physical" side of perception
and, hence, to include more than that component of perception that Husser!
calls an act. Indeed, some ordinary uses of 'sees' emphasize the "physical"
side of perception to the near exclusion of the "experiential" side. Even
though Smith himself may have had no idea it was the cat he saw, and even
though he may have said that he saw something else, we sometimes still say
that Smith "saw" the cat - meaning only that it was in fact the cat that
appropriately caused whatever visual experiences Smith had. In this sense
'sees' is used "objectively" and non-phenomenologically, since it refers only
to the physical relationship that in fact obtains between one physical object
- Smith, as a receptor and processor of visual stimuli - and another - the
cat.
There is, however, also a third sense in which perceptual verbs are some-
times used, a sense that emphasizes the phenomenological and suppresses
the objective side of perception. Even if we know that the distal stimulus of
Smith's experience was in fact something other than a cat (perhaps he mis-
took a hat for a cat) or that there was no appropriate distal stimulus at all
(perhaps Smith was hallucinating), we may nonetheless say that Smith "saw"
the cat - meaning now only that he had visual experiences as of the cat. This
third sense we shall call the phenomenological, or the experiential,s sense of
'sees': it refers to the. experience of seeing, as the subject of the experience
would himself be able to describe it. It is in this sense that perceptual verbs
may be used to attribute acts of perception to a person. Many philosophers
would prefer to use special verbs, such as 'seems to perceive' or 'seems to see',
to denote the experiential (or act-) component of perception. But Husser!
does not do so, and neither shall we. Instead, we shall assume it understood
throughout our discussion that perceptual verbs (and any others, e.g., 're-
members', that present similar problems) are used only in what we have called
their "phenomenological" or "experiential" sense. Since it is as experiences
that perceptual phenomena are said to be intentional, it would also be appro-
priate for us to speak here of the intentional sense of perceptual verbs.
There are many different kinds, or species, of acts (or, as Husserl says, acts
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSION ALiTY 5

with different "thetic characters"): perceiving, judging, imagining, hoping,

and so on. Husser! often uses the verbs 'vermeinen' and 'meinen', and occa-
sionally 'intendieren', as generic verbs covering these different species of
consciousness. Although 'vermeinen' and 'meinen' are more literally trans-
lated as 'to mean', we shall often find it more helpful to translate all three
verbs as 'to intend' (though when deviating from the literal translation we
shall always also include the German word being translated). Husser! some-
times says that an act consists in an ego's (a conscious subject's) intending
(vermfdnen), or being directed (gerichtet) to, or being related (bezogen) to,
an object. And he often says that an act intends (or is directed to, or is
related to) an object - meaning, we take it, that in the act the ego intends
the object. Husserl thus often calls acts of consciousness intentions (Inten-
tionen). The object intended in an act Hussed calls the object of conscious-
ness or the object of the act of consciousness. We shall fmd it convenient to
follow Hussed in these various usages. We shall thus say, quite generally, that
an act consists in an ego's (person's, subject's) intending an object.

1.3. The Objects ofActs

In Chapter II we shall consider the view that the intentionality of acts, in
every case, consists in their being directed to objects of a peculiar sort, some-
times called ''intentional objects". Since theories of intentionality often
incorporate such a view, we should emphasize from the start that it is one
that Hussed does not hold. Husserl rejects a univocal view of the objects of
consciousness and maintains, throughout his writings, that in most cases the
intentionality of consciousness relates persons to quite ordinary entities rather
than to objects of some unusual kind. In Ideas, for example, drawing on
perception as a paradigm, he says: "The thing [Ding], the object in nature
that I perceive, the tree there in the garden; that and nothing else is the actual
[wirkliche] object of the perceiving 'intention'" (§90, p. 224). And in
Logical Investigations, V, he says quite emphatically:

It is a serious error to draw a real [reell] distinction between ... "intentional" objects,
on the one hand, and "transcendent", "actual" objects, which may correspond to them,
on the other.... The intentional [or intended] object of a presentation is the same
as its actual object, and, when appropriate, as its external object . ... The transcendent
object would not be the object of this presentation, if it was not its intentional object.
(Appendix to §11 and §20, pp. 595-96;with trans. changes.)

Husser! maintains that there are as many kinds of objects of acts as there
are kinds of entities, and his own ontology is notoriously rich. Acts such as
6 CHAPTER I

Smith's seeing the Blarney Stone or his remembering his high school French
teacher are directed to concrete, "natural" individuals (physical objects or
persons). Others, such as Smith's contemplating chastity, imagining the color
red, or thinking of the number seven, seem to take as their objects abstract
entities or (as Husserl calls them) essences. There are also "propositional"
acts, such as Smith's remembering that Mont Blanc is the highest of the Alps
or judging that seven plus five equals twelve, whose objects are more complex
entities, perhaps propositions or (as Husserl maintains) states of affairs
(Sachverhalten). And, according to Husserl, there are second-order acts of
reflection that take as their objects non-reflective acts and other constituents
of consciousness; special among second-order acts are acts of "phenomenolog-
ical reflection", directed to noernata (which are abstract meaning-entities) and
to noeses and hyletic data (the temporal constituents of "phenomenologically
reduced" acts).
According to Husserl, then, the objects of acts may be concrete or abstract;
particular or universal; relatively simple or complex; and either ''immanent''
mental entities or events, occurring as a part of the stream of consciousness
in which they are intended, or ''transcendent'' external entities, existing in-
dependently of their being intended. Putting aside differences of ontological
detail, our own view agrees with Husserl's here: not all acts intend objects
of the same sort; and, in general, the objects of acts are to be found among
whatever entities we should have had to recognize anyway, independently of
any special considerations of intentionality.
Our own discussion will concentrate on acts that involve natural individuals
in rather simple ways. The problems involved in characterizing and under-
standing the features that are special to intentional relations between acts
(or egos) and objects generally are all clearly evident in acts involving natural
individuals. Consequently, by focusing on this narrower class of acts we may
hope to avoid overshadowing Husserl's general theory of intentionality with
special and controversial features of his rather liberal ontology. Husserl's own
paradigm of the perception of physical objects will thus be prominent in our
discussion, although perceptual acts exhibit some peculiarities of their own
(due, primarily, to the special role of sensation, or hyle, in perception). And
where our concern is with "propositional" acts, our emphasis will be on acts
directed to concrete states of affairs involving physical objects or persons.

1.4. Direct-Object Acts versus Propositional Acts

Acts of intending that such-and-such - Smith's remembering that Mont Blanc
is the highest of the Alps, for example - we have called propositional acts.
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 7

By way of contrast, we shall call non-propositional acts of intending so-and-so

- such as Smith's remembering his high school French teacher - direct-object
acts. The terminology is rather obviously suggested by the grammar of the
sentences one would often naturally use in attributing these different sorts
of acts to a person. Propositional acts are customarily described in ordinary
language by sentences in which a verb of intention is followed by a proposi-
tional, or 'that'-, clause; direct-object acts, by sentences in which a verb of
intention is followed by a substantive phrase functioning grammatically as a
direct -object.
The distinction we wish to emphasize here is not primarily a grammatical
distinction between different kinds of sentences, however, but a phenomen-
ological distinction between different kinds of acts. The grammatical dis-
tinction, in fact, is not always a reliable indicator of the phenomenological
distinction. In particular, use of the direct-object construction is sometimes
merely an elliptical way of describing a propositional act: when one says that
Smith desires the ice cream, for example, one may mean that Smith desires
that he have (or eat) the ice cream. Direct-object constructions used in attri-
buting acts cannot always be expanded into propositional constructions in
this superficial way, however; and when they cannot, we shall take the dis-
tinction in grammar to be indicative of interesting and important differences
in the "deep-structure" of intending. 6
We include among direct-object acts such acts as Smith's seeing the Blarney
Stone, remembering Bertrand Russell, fearing the man in the shadows, imagin-
ing little Red Riding Hood, and so on. And among propositional acts we
include Smith's seeing that the Blarney Stone is weathered, remembering
that Bertrand Russell was imprisoned, fearing that the man in the shadows
is up to no good, imagining that little Red Riding Hood often visited her
grandmother, and the like. As these examples indicate, the difference between
direct-object acts and propositional acts is not primarily a difference between
species of acts (such as perceiving vs. judging). Some species of acts do seem
to be necessarily propositional in fonn: in judging or believing, for example,
one judges or believes that such-and-such. 7 But others, such as perceiving and
remembering, may be either direct-object or propositional.
Husserl discusses both propositional and direct-object acts. But where his
discussions of the general features of intentionality are developed about spe-
cific examples, his preferred examples are usually direct-object acts. Especially
prominent in some of the more detailed of these discussions are direct-object
acts of perception, such as someone's seeing the tree in the garden (Ideas,
§ §88ff.), or hearing the tone of a violin (Ideas, §44), or seeing "this" die
8 CHAPTER I

(eM, § § 17ff.). We shall also often appeal to direct-object acts as examples

of intentional phenomena, especially when our discussion builds on Husserl's.
But propositional acts will be more prominent in some parts of our discus-
sion. Although direct-object acts (of perception, especially) and propositional
acts differ in important ways, the general characteristics of intentionality
with which we shall primarily be concerned are to be found in acts of both
sorts.

1.5. Propositional Acts and Intending ''About'' Something

Propositional acts will turn out to be of special interest for our purposes. If
we include among these acts such "dispositional" states as belief (roughly
characterizable as the disposition to judge or to affum that such-and-such),
they coincide with what Bertrand Russell and others outside the phenomen-
ological tradition have called propositional attitudes, i.e., the "attitudes" or
"acts" of believing that, judging that, remembering that, hoping that, and the
like. s Since the propositional attitudes have received considerable attention
from philosophers of language, propositional acts will provide a convenient
touchstone for relating studies in philosophical semantics to the problems
of intentionality with which Husserl is concerned. (One may wish to distin-
guish "acts" from "attitudes", taking acts to be occurrent mental events of
discrete duration and attitudes to be states or dispositions. However, since
little if anything we shall say turns on this distinction, we shall usually pass
over it, using the term 'acts' for both sorts of mental phenomena.)
Some propositional acts are intentional, or directed toward an object, in
more than one way. According to Husserl, the primary object of a proposi-
tional act is a state of affairs, which we refer to by using a 'that'-clause -
as when we say, for example, 'Smith judges that the Blarney Stone is old'.
Smith's act of judging is thus said to be directed, not to the Blarney Stone,
but to the state of affairs that-the-Blarney-Stone-is-old. There is a secondary
sense, however, in which the Blarney Stone itself is intended in such a
judgment: Smith's judgment is a judgment about the Blarney Stone. Husserl
notes this distinction quite succinctly in Logical Investigations:

The knife is the object about which we judge or make a statement, when we say that
the knife is on the table; the knife is not, however, the primary or full object of the
judgement, but only the object of its subject. The full and entire object corresponding
to the whole judgement is the state of affairs [Sachllerhalt] judged.... The wish that
the knife were on the table, which coincides (in object) with the judgement, is concerned
with the knife, but we don't in it wish the knife, but that the knife should be on the
table, that this should be so. (V, § 17, pp. 579-80.)
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 9

Since there are in these cases two rather different senses in which proposi-
tional acts can be said to have objects, it will be helpful to make a distinction
terminologically between what is primarily intended in a propositional act
and what is secondarily intended in such an act. The "full and entire" object
primarily intended in a propositional act we shall (at least for now) suppose
with Husser! to be a state of affairs. For propositional acts directed to con-
crete states of affairs involving natural individuals, the object secondarily
intended will be the physical object or person about which something is
judged, believed, perceived, etc. We should note, however, that not all propo-
sitional acts are "about" individuals in this way. Among propositional acts
lacking such a secondary relation to an individual are judgments directed to
"general" states of affairs (such as Smith's judging that all men are mortal)
and also certain "existential" judgments (such as Smith's judging that some
men are Cretans).
Our focus on problems involved in the intending of natural individuals
will lead us to emphasize (though perhaps no more than Husser! does) the
relation of propositional acts to their "secondary" objects. Husser! himself
seems to consider these secondary relations to individuals about which some-
thing is intended, as well as the primary relations of propositional acts to
states of affairs, to be relations of intending. In fact, he sometimes takes
secondary intendings of individuals in propositional acts to be on a par with
direct-object intendings of individuals, choosing to speak of perceiving or
thinking of an individual and judging or wishing that something be true of
it as simply different modes of intending the very same object. In Logical
Investigations, V, for example, Husser! says:
To think of an object, e.g., the Schloss at Berlin, is to be minded in this or that descrip-
tively determinate fashion. To judge about this Schloss, to delight in its architectural
beauty, or to cherish the wish that one could do so, etc., etc., are new experiences
[Erlebnisse], phenomenologically characterized in new ways. All have this in common,
that they are modes of objective intention, which cannot be otherwise expressed in
normal speech than by saying that the Schloss is perceived, imagined, pictorially pre-
sented, judged about, delighted in, wished for, etc., etc. (§ 11, pp. 559-60; with trans.
changes.)

We shall indeed find that the same general features characterizing direct-
object intendings of physical individuals also characterize these secondary
intendings of individuals in propositional acts.
10 CHAPTER I

2. SOME MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF

"INTENTIONAL RELATIONS"

2.1. "Intentional Relations"

The claim that the intentionality of acts is their "directedness" to objects
seems to construe the consciousness of something as a certain sort of relation
- an intentional relation, we might say - between persons (or acts) and
various kinds of objects. Indeed, Husserl says in Ideas: "AU experiences
[ErlebnisseJ, ... insofar as they are consciousness of something, are said to
be 'intentionally related' to this something" (§36, p. SO). In perceiving a
tree, one is thus ''intentionally related" to a physical object; in judging that
the tree is an elm, one is "intentionally related" to a concrete state of affairs
or to a concrete individual about which one judges; and so on.
Of course there are many relations between persons and objects that do
not involve consciousness in any essential way: obvious examples include
someone's dropping a book, sitting on a chair, or being taller than the stand-
ard meter stick. Husserl is thus correct when he later says that ''no advance
is made by saying and discerning that every presentation is related to some-
thing presented, every judgment to something judged, etc." (Ideas, §S7,
p. 216): simply characterizing intentionality as a relation to objects fails to
capture anything unique to acts of consciousness. What does make inten-
tionality a feature special to consciousness, we shall argue, is that intentional
relations are ''relations'' of a unique sort, different from other, non-intentional
relations between persons and objects. A characterization of these differences
is a preliminary, but fundamental, part of a theory of intentionality.
Theories of intentionality sometimes attempt to locate the special nature
of intentional relations in the objects of acts of consciousness. According to
these "object-theories" of intentionality, intentional relations are unique
because the objects to which acts are related are of a unique sort, different
from the sorts of entities that enter into non-intentional relations. Brentano
himself, after characterizing intentionality as "direction toward an object",
immediately added that this ''is not to be understood here as meaning a
thing".9 We shall be returning in Chapter II to a more detailed discussion of
this "object-approach" to intentionality. But we have already seen that in
many typical cases intentional relations seem to relate persons to quite
ordinary sorts of objects - paradigmatically, physical objects and concrete
states of affairs involving physical individuals. Theories that posit other, more
unusual entities as the objects of acts will not be plausible unless there are
good reasons for suspecting that things are not what they seem here.
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 11

Our discussion in the rest of this chapter assumes with Husserl, and against
theories of ''intentional objects", that in most cases the intentionality of
consciousness does relate persons to the ordinary entities to which acts seem
to be directed and not to unusual ''intentional objects". On this assumption,
what distinguishes intentional relations from others is not that the objects
of intentional relations belong to some unusual ontological category; it is
rather that intentional relations themselves exhibit characteristics that, in
comparison with ordinary, non-intentional relations, appear to be metaphysi-
cally anomalous. In particular, we shall see that intentional relations, unlike
ordinary relations, are independent of the existence of objects to which they
relate conscious subjects and are in each case dependent on a particular
conception of the intended object.
Some philosophers might say that, since intention has the peculiarities it
does, it should not be considered a relation at all. Husserl himself contrasts
intentional relations with "real" relations having "actual" existence: of per-
ception he says that with phenomenological reduction "the actual [wirkliche]
existence of the real [realen] relation between perception and perceived is
suspended; and yet a relation between perception and perceived ... is clearly
left over" (Ideas, §88, p. 220; cf. §36, p. 80). So long as we are careful to
avoid being misled by terminology, though, we can continue to speak with
Husserl of ''intentional relations", understanding these "relations" to be of a
special and unique sort.
We tum now to a closer characterization of the special nature of inten-
tional relations. As we do so we should perhaps emphasize that here we shall
only be describing the main features that distinguish these relations from
others; ultimately, of course, an explanation of how and why intention has
these features will have to be a main concern of any theory of intentionality.

2.2. The Existence-Independence of Intentional Relations

Smith can stand in an ordinary, non-intentional, relation to an object only
if that object exists. Smith can be taller than the postman or to the left of
the grandfather clock, for example, only if the postman and the grandfather
clock are existing entities. Similarly, the horses Smith rides and the balls he
kicks must be existing objects. Non-intentional relations thus obey what
we might call the principle of "existence-dependence" with respect to the
entities they relate: a non-intentional relation holds between two or more
entities only if those entities exist.
Intentional relations between persons and objects, on the other hand, are
independent of the existence of the objects intended. The intentionality of
12 CHAPTER I

an act of consciousness - its directedness toward something - does not

require that there actually exist an object toward which the act is directed
(though, of course, the conscious subject of an act must exist). Husserl says
in Logical Investigations, V:

Intentional experiences [Erlebnisse] have the peculiarity of relating in various ways to

presented objects, but they do so in an intentional sense .... If [such an] experience
is present, then eo ipso, through its own essence ... , the intentional "relation to an
object" is achieved.... And of course such an experience may be present in conscious-
ness together with its intention, although its object does not exist at all, and is perhaps
incapable of existence; the object ... is then merely intended [vermeint] and is nothing
in reality [Wahrheitj. (§11, p. 558; with trans. changes. Cf. §20, p. 587; Appendix
to §11 and §20, pp. 595-96;andldeas, §46.)

Unlike the relations of being taller than, being to the left of, riding, and
kicking, intentional relations need not relate persons to existing objects.
Smith cannot ride a pink elephant or be taller than Godot, for there are no
such entities; yet Smith's acts of seeing a pink elephant and waiting for (or
anticipating) Godot are equally as intentional as those of seeing Secretariat
and waiting for the postman. After all, to see a pink elephant is not to see
nothing, nor is waiting for Godot the same as waiting for nothing at all. And
even such acts as seeing Secretariat and waiting for the postman do not de-
pend for their intentionality on the de facto existence of their objects: should
it turn out that Secretariat and the postman do not (and never did) exist,
these acts would not thereby prove non-intentional. Husser! thus continues
the passage in Logical Investigations, V:

If, however, the intended object exists, nothing becomes phenomenologically different.
What is given to consciousness is essentially the same, whether the presented object
exists, or is fictitious, or is perhaps completely absurd. I think of [the god] Jupiter as
I think of Bismarck, of the tower of Babel as I think of Cologne Cathedral. ... (§ 11,
p. 559; with trans. changes.)

In propositional acts also, intentional relations are independent of the

existence, or the actuality, of the objects intended. Smith's hope that he
will win the Irish Sweepstakes is not directed to an actual state of affairs,
and his belief that Natty Bumpo ran the first four-minute mile is not even
"about" an existing individual. But vain hopes and false beliefs are just as
intentional as realized hopes and true beliefs. Propositional acts may thus be
intentional when the states of affairs "primarily" intended in them fail to
be actual and when any individuals "secondarily" intended in them (any
individuals they are "about") fail to exist. So, both the primary and the
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 13

secondary intentional relations achieved in propositional acts are in this sense

"existence-independent" with respect to their objects.
In his book Perceiving, R. M. Chisholm succinctly sums up the existence-
independence of intentional relations:

"Diogenes sits in his tub" is concerned with a relation between Diogenes and his tub.
Syntactically, at least, "Diogenes looks for an honest man" is similar: Diogenes' quest
seems to relate him in a certain way to honest men. But the relations described in this
and in ... other psychological statements, if they can properly be called "relations",
are of a peculiar sort. They can hold even though one of their terms, if it can properly
be called a "term", does not exist. It may seem, therefore, that one can be "intentionally
related" to something which does not exist. 10

2.3. The Conception-Dependence of Intentional Relations

Ordinary, non-intentional relations obey a second principle, which we might
call the principle of "conception-independence", with respect to the entities
they relate: whether a non-intentional relation holds between two or more
entities is independent of how anyone conceives those entities. In general,
one and the same entity can be conceived in many different ways. Napoleon,
to draw on one of HusserI's examples, can be conceived as the victor at Jena
or as the vanquished at WaterIooY But these different conceptions of
Napoleon are irrelevant to the non-intentional relations into which he enters.
If, for example, the relation of being taller than holds between Smith and
Napoleon, then that relation holds independently of whether Napoleon is
conceived as the victor at Jena, or as the vanquished at Waterloo, or in some
other way. In particular, such a non-intentional relation between Smith and
Napoleon does not depend on any conception Smith may have of Napoleon:
even if Smith never conceives Napoleon as the victor at Jena, the fact that
Smith is taller than Napoleon and the fact that Napoleon and the victor at
Jena are one and the same individual insure that the relation of being taller
than holds between Smith and the victor at Jena. Non-intentional relations
in general are in this way independent of any particular way of conceiving
the entities they relate.
Intentional relations between persons and objects, however, are dependent
on a certain conception of their objects: an intentional relation holds between
a person and an object only relative to the particular conception (HusserI's
term is 'Auffassung') the person has of the object. If Smith stands in a non-
intentional relation to the author of Intention, he thereby stands in that rela-
tion to the woman he saw at the tobacconist's - if the woman and the author
are in fact one and the same individual. But not so for Smith's intentional
14 CHAPTER I

relations to that individual: looking forward to what he (mistakenly) believes

will be his first meeting with the famous Oxford philosopher, Smith may
expect the author of Intention and not expect the woman he saw at the
tobacconist's. The intentional relation of expecting may thus hold between
Smith and Professor Anscombe under one conception of Anscombe and fail
to hold under another conception of her.
Both direct-object acts and propositional acts may be in this way "concep-
tion-dependent" with respect to their objects. Smith may fear the man from
whom he receives threatening phone calls and not fear his next-door neighbor
- even though they are the very same man. For propositional acts, both
"primary" intentional relations to states of affairs and "secondary" inten-
tional relations to individuals "about" which something is intended are
conception-dependent: although the vanquished at Waterloo and the victor
at Jena are the same individual, and so presumably participate in the same
states of affairs,12 Smith may believe that the vanquished at Waterloo had a
Napoleonic complex while not believing that the same is true of the victor
at Jena.
An intentional relation is thus not simply a relation between a person and
an object, but a relation between a person and an object under a particular
conception of the object. As Husserl says: "The phenomenological content
of the act ... determines not only that the act [or the ego, in the act] appre-
hends [auffasst] the object but also as what it apprehends it ... " (LI, V,
§20, p. 589; with trans. changes). In light of this conception-dependence of
intentional relations, the traditional gloss of intentionality as the "conscious-
ness of something" ought to be embellished: intentionality is the conscious-
ness "or' something ''as'' conceived in a particular way.
In the simple cases we have considered., intending an object "under a
conception" involves having prominently in mind some descriptive character-
ization of the intended object. But the notion must be understood in a more
general way if conception-dependence is to be a general characteristic of
intention. Conception-dependence in direct-object perception, for example,
may turn more on one's "intuitional" acquaintance with an object than on
one's conceptual knowledge of it; here, perceiving an object ''under a concep-
tion" need be no more than perceiving it from a given perspective, in which
it is presented from one aspect rather than another. There are still other cases
in which no description of the intended object seems to be actively present
in one's consciousness at all, as when one simply expects Professor Anscombe
without thereby conceiving her in any particular descriptive fashion. 13 In
such cases, especially where the intended object is thought of by name rather
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 15

than by description, the "conception" involved in an intention will consist

of background information or beliefs about the intended object, presupposed
but not actively articulated in the intention. CNe discuss such intentions in
Chapter VIII below.) We shall find that with Husserl's theory of intentionality
the general claim that acts are conception-dependent will become the claim
that the intention in any act is not determined simply by its object but is
relative to a certain meaning, or "noema", through which the object is in-
tended (see Chapter III, Section 3.2).

2.4. Conception-Dependence and the Individuation of Intentions

Because intention is relative to a conception of the object intended, inten-
tional relations are more complex than non-intentional relations and the
individuation of intentional relationships is correspondingly more complex.
A non-intentional relationship is completely specified by indicating which
entities are related and which relation holds between them. But to specify an
intentional relationship completely one must also specify the particular way
in which the object of the intentional relation is conceived by its subject.
Acts that consist in the same kind of intention of the same intended object
by the same subject may yet be distinct acts. Smith's expecting the author
of Intention is not the same act as his expecting the woman he saw at the
tobacconist's, although they involve the same kind of intention (expecting)
and the same entities (Smith and Anscombe): they are different because the
intended object is not conceived in the same way in each. To uniquely identify
an intentional relationship it is thus not enough to indicate which kind of
intention (expecting, believing, perceiving, etc.) is involved and which entities
are related. In Logical Investigations, V, Husser! very clearly describes what
we have called "conception-dependence" and draws from it this same conse-
quence concerning the individuation of intentions (note that in Logical Inves-
tigations Husserl calls the kind of intention achieved in an act the "quality"
of the act):

... One is at first tempted to interpret the situation simply: ... an act is ... unam-
biguously determined by its qualitative character and by the object it is to intend. This
seeming obviousness is, however, delusive.... Even if quality and objective direction
are both fIxed at the same time, certain variations remain possible. Two identically
qualified acts, e.g., two presentations, may appear directed ... to the same object,
without coinciding in their complete intentional essence. The presentations "equilateral
triangle" and "equiangular triangle" differ in content, though both are directed ... to
the same object. They present the· same object, although "in a different way [Weisel".
( § 20, p. 588; with trans. changes. Our emphasis.)
16 CHAPTER I

To have the same presentation means, but does not mean exactly the same as, having
a presentation of the same object. The presentation I have of Greenland's icy wastes
certainly differs from the presentation Nansen has of it, yet the object is the same ....
We have the same presentation of a thing, when we have presentations in which the
thing is not merely presented, but presented as exactly the same . ... The same holds
in regard to other species of acts. Two judgements are essentially the same judgement
when ... everything that would pertain to the judged state of affairs according to the
one judgement, and nothing else, must also pertain to it according to the other. (§ 21,
pp. 590-91; with trans. changes. Our emphasis.)

A full specification or description of an act, then, must include a specifica-

tion of the particular way in which the subject conceives the object intended
in the act. Act-descriptions might do so explicitly. Descriptions of simple
direct-object acts, for example, might take the form 'e intends 0 (conceived)
as rp', where 'rp' is a simple or complex predicate indicating the property or
set of properties the subject, e, conceives the object, 0, as having. (Descrip-
tions of more complex acts, e.g., propositional acts, would of course be
correspondingly more complex.) Alternatively, descriptions of simple acts
might take the form 'e intends the rp' (or, for some cases, 'e intends a rp').
Here the object intended in an act is specified by means of a definite (or
indefmite) description (such as 'the author of Intention') that denotes the
object via a description that expresses the appropriate conception of it. But
whatever kind of act-description is given, the conception-dependence of
intention requires that the intended object be described in a way that captures
the conception under which it is intended.

2.5. The ''Indeterminacy'' in Intentions of Transcendent Objects

The intention achieved in an act is relative to the subject's conception of the
intended object. But Husser! emphasizes that there is often much more to the
object itself than what is prescribed of it by the conception under which it is
intended in a specific act. Those objects that Husser! calls "transcendent" are
such that any conception under which they are intended necessarily captures
only a very small part of all that is actually true of them.
Transcendent objects - particularly physical individuals and other objects
of natural experience (Erfahrung) - are objects that have many "aspects"
(Seiten), not all of which can be encompassed in any given intention of them.
It follows that the direct, perceptual evidence for the existence of a natural
object, as given in any single perception of it, is always "incomplete" and
''inadequate''; for natural objects can be perceived only through perspec-
tives (Abschattungen), from one aspect or side at a time (cf. LI, VI, §14,
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 17

pp. 712-14; Ideas, § §41-44; CM, §28). More generally, and more to our
present point, the conception under which a transcendent object is intended
(whether "intuitively" - i.e., with evidence, as in perception - or not) will
itself be "incomplete", characterizing the object in some respects but not in
all. The properties such an object is intended as having will always be far
fewer and often less specific than the properties the object actually has; thus,
a transcendent object, as intended in a given act, is always partly "indeter-
minate" - i.e., indeterminately characterized by the conception under which
it is intended. Hussed thus says:

We must distinguish ... between the object, as it is intended [so wie er intendiert
ist], and simply the object which is intended. In each act an object is "presented"
as determined in this or that manner .... [There can be attributed] to the identical
presented object objective properties which are not at- all in the scope of the intention
of the act in question; e.g., various new presentations can arise, all claiming ... to be
presenting the same object. In all of them the object which is intended is the same,
but in each of them the intention [intention] is different, each means [meint] the
object in a different way [Le., under a different conception]. E.g., the presentation
"German Emperor" presents its object as an Emperor, and as Germany's Emperor.
The man himself is the son of the Emperor Frederick III, the grandson of Queen
Victoria, and has many other properties here neither named nor presented. With respect
to a given presentation, one can therefore quite consistently speak of the intentional
and extra-intentional content of its object; one can also find other suitable, non-tech-
nical expressions that would not lead to misunderstandings, e.g., 'what is intended of
the object' [das Intendierte vom Gegenstande]. (LI, V, §17, pp. 578-79; with trans.
changes.)

On Hussed's view, the "incompleteness" of our conceptions of transcend-

ent entities does not mean that such entities cannot be intended or that we
intend "incomplete" entities of some sort in their stead (cf. Section 1.3
above). In transcendently directed acts it is the intending of an object, not
the object intended, that is ''incomplete'' or "one-sided". Transcendent en-
tities are themselves intended, and they have further properties not specified
by the conception under which they are intended in a particular act. Further-
more, Husser! insists, we intend these entities "as" transcendent: although
no conception of a natural object can "determine" it in all its detail, that
it has further detail, not "determined" but "determinable", is implicit in
every conception under which a transcendent object is intended (cf. Ideas,
§44, p. 100; CM, § § 19-20). We shall see later (in Chapter V) that these
points concerning the intending of transcendent objects provide the basis for
Husserl's important notion of an act's "horizon", i.e., its relation to other
actual and possible acts directed to the same object.
18 CHAPTER I

2.6. Definite and Indefinite Intentions

We have just seen that natural individuals are indeterminately characterized

by any conception under which they can be intended: the conception of such
an individual never prescribes all its properties, nor does it "determine" in a
completely specific way all those properties it does prescribe. A related, but
more radical, lack of determination of intended objects may also occur: the
conception involved in an act may fail to prescribe some one particular entity
as the object intended in the act. In this sense, the very identity of the object
of an act, and not merely further details concerning the properties of an
intended object, may fail to be specified by the conception under which
something is intended. We shall say that such acts are indefinitely directed,
and the intentions achieved in them we shall call indefinite intentions. By
contrast, acts whose directedness is toward specific entities we shall say are
definitely directed, and the intentions achieved in these acts we shall call
definite intentions. 14
A shopkeeper's act of expecting her 100000th customer today is an
"indefmite" intention: inasmuch as she has no pre-conceived idea as to just
who this individual will tum out to be, her act is "indefmitely directed" to
whomever happens to enter her shop at the appropriate time. Similarly, if
Smith has no favorite candidate but merely wants to be done with interview-
ing, he may hope that the next applicant - whoever he or she is - will get
the job. Smith's hope is then not "about" any particular person but is rather
an indefmite intention, having as object (in the secondary sense we defined
in Section 1.5) whichever applicant turns up next. And if Smith does not
know which horse last won the Triple Crown, then his belief that the latest
winner of the Triple Crown was Kentucky-bred will be an indefmite inten-
tion: Smith's conception of the "subject" of the intended state of affairs will
distinguish no particular horse from any others that (so far as Smith knows)
might have gained the coveted victories. What is common to indefinite inten-
tions of this sort is that in each of them the conception under which an object
is intended fails to determine just which object it is. Indeed, the conception
involved in such an act is itself "indefmite" concerning the identity of the
intended object, so that there seems not to be any precise entity toward
which the act can be said to be directed.
Let us contrast with these indefmite intentions other acts whose direction
is "defmite", i.e., acts that are not directed merely "indefmitely" to which-
ever entity happens to have a certain property (or set of properties) but "defi-
nitely" to some specific individual, intended "as" that particular individual
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 19

(having that property or set of properties). Smith's act of expecting his

mother today is such a "definite" intention, directed not to whomever
happens to be his mother but to that one particular person who has come to
love Smith as only a mother can. Smith's hope that his best friend will get
the job is (in secondary intention) definitely directed in much the same way,
for it is "about" a specific individual whom Smith knows well. And if Smith
believes that Secretariat last won the Triple Crown, then his beliefs about
the latest winner of the Triple Crown will also be definite intentions, having
Secretariat as their (secondary) object.
The definite intentions we have just considered are of a sort that we shall
call individuatively definite, or definite by virtue of individuation; and we
may now say that the indefinite intentions with which we contrasted them
are individuatively indefinite. Intentions that are individuatively definite we
shall usually call simply individuative intentions. What gives definiteness of
direction to individuative intentions is that in each of them the subject of the
act knows (or has an opinion about) who (or which) the intended object is.
The conception under which an object is intended in such an act can be said,
in this sense, to include the subject's "conception of the identity" of the
intended object; and insofar as this is so, the object of the act is individuated
(in the sense in which we shall use the term) for the subject of the act.
We shall discuss individuative intentions at some length in Chapter VIII.
By way of preview, we would note two points here that may help us avoid
conveying an overly simple view of individuative definiteness. First, in the
sense in which an individuatively definite intention requires that one have
a conception of the identity of the intended object, we shall find that the
"conception" under which one intends an object will typically have to include
much more than what is explicitly "in one's mind" at the moment of intend-
ing; we will argue (in Chapter VIII) that such a "conception of identity" is
best understood as dispersed, as it were, throughout a network of background
beliefs about the intended object. Thus, we shall hold that, whatever is re-
quired for one to come to know who (or which) an object is, this work is
typically not achieved in an individuative intention itself but, rather, is pre-
supposed by it. Second, we shall hold that individuative definiteness is a
matter of degree. One cannot know everything about any natural object,
nor can one have a complete conception of its identity. We shall agree with
Husserl that the identity of a transcendent object is itself transcendent and
that, hence, one can have at best an inadequate grasp of a natural object's
identity (see Ideas, § 149; cf. Chapter VIII, Sections 3.2 and 4.2, below). It
thus seems that just which properties of an sbject, and how many of them,
20 CHAPTER I

one must know in order for one's conception of its identity to count as
knowing who (or which) it is will be a relative and pragmatic matter: what
counts as individuation in one context will be only partial in that context,
and it may count scarcely at all in another.
There are other ways in which defmiteness of direction may be achieved,
even in cases in which there is virtually no individuation of an object - where
one has almost no conception of its identity. For example, an act may be
definitely directed by virtue of a subject's perceptual "acquaintance" with
a particular object. Even the simplest perception of an individual, no matter
how meager one's knowledge of it may be, will provide a minimal sort of ftx
on which individual it is. For, at the very least, an object is given in an act of
perception as this object, the one here before me now. Let us say that such
direct-object acts of perception, as well as propositional acts "about" objects
given directly in perception, are perceptually definite.
Perceptual defmiteness seems due to the fact that perception is a species
of what HusserI calls "intuition" (Anschauung), providing one a direct and
immediate acquaintance with the perceived object. HusserI takes other sorts
of acts - apparently including direct-object acts of memory and imagination,
as well as "eidetic" acts (directed to "essences") and acts of reflection - to
be also intuitional. We might accordingly broaden the notion of perceptual
defmiteness so that it would also apply to these acts and to any others that
present their objects directly and intuitionally. Let us say that all such in-
tentions, and also propositional acts "about" objects given intuitionally in
such intentions, are intuitionally definite, or definite by virtue of acquaint-
ance. IS
We should note explicitly that intuitional deftniteness and individuative
defmiteness need not go hand-in-hand. Acts that are intuitionally defmite
may be either individuativcly indefinite - as when Smith sees (or remembers)
the little man with the big cigar but has no further conception of his identity,
of who he is - or individuatively defmite - as when Smith sees (or remem-
bers) him as being his long-lost uncle from Detroit. And, of course, acts that
are not intuitional will not be intuitionalIy defmite, whether they be individ-
uatively defmite or indeftnite.
It is rather surprising to ftnd that HusserI virtually ignores indefmite in-
tentions in his theory of intentionality. He seems to take it to be a general
truth about intention that an act's conceptual content not only prescribes
properties its object is intended as having but also, in some sense, determines
which object it is - in HusserI's words, "makes the act's object count as this
one and no other" (LI, V, §20, p. 589; with trans. changes). That HusserI
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 21

chose perception as his paradigm of intentionality may explain, to some

extent, his failure to treat indefmite directedness in any serious way; for, as
we have seen, there is a sense in which perception is always of some particular
object. But not all acts are definite in the way perception is, and perceptual
definiteness does not, at any rate, entail the richer sort of definiteness that
we have called "individuative". Hussed's paradigm is thus an infelicitous one
for illustrating the distinctions with which we have been concerned in this
section. Nonetheless, we shall find that Husserl's emphasis on definiteness of
intention and his attempts to account for it lead to some of the most interest-
ing and important aspects of his theory of intentionality.

3. THE INTENSIONALITY OF ACT-CONTEXTS

3.1. Intensionality
Our attention so far in this chapter has been focused on metaphysical prob-
lems concerning the nature of intentional relations and the ontological status
of their objects. Similar problems have appeared in Twentieth-Century ana-
lytic philosophy in a different guise, namely, as logical and semantic problems
concerning the reference of expressions in so-called intensional contexts, such
as 'Smith believes that ~_ _ '. Our purpose in Part 3 is to describe these
problems of intensionality and to relate them to the metaphysical problems
of intentionality that we have already described. Thus, we focus here, not on
acts of consciousness themselves, but on "act-sentences", i.e., sentences used
to describe or report acts of consciousness.
The term 'intensional', as we here apply it to linguistic constructions,
contrasts with the term 'extensional'. In semantic theory an expression is
said to be extensional if and only if its extension is a function of the exten-
sions of its semantically significant parts. 16 The "extension" of an expression
is what is sometimes called its referent or denotation, what an expression
stands for. We may assume Rudolf Carnap's now-standard definition of
'extension': the extension of a Singular term (e .g., 'Socrates') is the individual
to which the term refers, the extension of a predicate (e.g., 'wore sandals')
is the class of individuals of which the predicate is true, and the extension
of a sentence is its truth-value. 17 The sentence 'Socrates wore sandals' is an
extensional sentence: its truth-value depends only on whether the individual
to whom 'Socrates' refers is a member of the class of individuals of whom
'wore sandals' is true; hence, its extension (i.e., its truth-value) is a function
of the extensions of its components, 'Socrates' and 'wore sandals'.
22 CHAPTER I

The sentence 'It is not the case that Socrates wore sandals' is also exten-
sional. Its truth-value is determined by the truth-value of its component
sentence 'Socrates wore sandals', which is, in turn, determined by the exten-
sions of the components 'Socrates' and 'wore sandals'; thus, the extension
of the whole sentence is a function of the extensions of these smaller com-
ponents. Indeed, the result of preftxing any extensional sentence with the
expression 'It is not the case that' will be a sentence that is also extensional.
For this reason, the context 'It is not the case that _ _ ' is itself said to
be extensional. Generally, a context is an extensional context if and only if
the result of·applying it to any extensional expression 'e' is an expression
whose extension is a function of the extensions of the semantically signiftcant
parts of 'e'. Briefly, then, extensional contexts are those that preserve exten-
sionality.
Any construction that is not extensional is said to be intensional. 18 An
intensional sentence, then, is a sentence whose truth-value is not determined
by the extensions of its semantically significant parts. The sentence 'It is
necessary that Socrates wore sandals' is such an intensional sentence. Its
truth-value is not determined by the truth-value of its component sentence
'Socrates wore sandals' (it is not settled simply by determining that Socrates
is a member of the class of individuals who wore sandals), and so its truth-
value is not a function of the extensions of the smaller components 'Socrates'
and 'wore sandals'. The failure of extensionality here is due to the expression
'It is necessary that': prefixing this expression to an extensional sentence 'p'
may result in a sentence whose truth-value is not a function of the truth-value
of 'p' or of the extensions of the semantically signiftcant parts of 'p' (we say
"may result" since 'It is necessary that p' is always false when 'p' is false).
Since it is then not extensional, the context 'It is necessary that _ _ ' is
an intensional context.
The paradigmatic, and most thoroughly studied, species of intensional
construction is that involving the sentential operators or modifters 'It is
necessary that' and 'It is possible that' (or 'Necessarily' and 'Possibly').
Necessity and possibility are themselves called "modalities". These operators
are accordingly called modal operators or, sometimes, modalities, and the
contexts 'It is necessary that _ _ ' and 'It is possible that _ _ ' are called
modal contexts.
The modal operators have the effect of invalidating, in ways we shall be
discussing, two deeply entrenched rules of logical inference, the principles
of substitutivity of identity and of existential generalization. Both these prin-
ciples hold when applied to singular terms occurring in extensional contexts;
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 23

in fact, the first - the principle of substitutivity of identity - is customarily

taken as defining the notion of extensionality. But these principles fail for
tenns in modal contexts, and it is their failure that marks these contexts as
intensional.
Now, as we shall see, sentential operators constructed from "act-verbs" -
operators such as 'Smith believes that', 'Smith hopes that', 'Smith sees that' -
create the same sorts of logical and semantic oddities as do modal operators.
These oddities mark all such act-contexts - 'Smith believes that ___ ',
'Smith hopes that _ _ ', 'Smith sees that _ _ ', and so on - as inten-
sional. For that reason, we shall generalize the notion of modality so that
act-operators are a species of modal operator, and we shall treat the logic
and semantics of act-sentences as a special case of the logic and semantics of
modalities. 19 We shall call act-modalities intentional modalities and act-
contexts intentional contexts.
Act-operators such as 'Smith believes that' prefix to sentences to create
act-sentences of the fonn 'Smith believes that p' (where 'p' is a sentence).
Such act-sentences attribute propositional acts, or propositional attitudes, to
a person. It is just these sentences of propositional attitude that have received
most of the attention from philosophers interested in the logic and semantics
of act-sentences, and our discussion of intensionality will accordingly focus
on them. But not all acts are propositional, and not all act-sentences are
sentences of propositional attitude, constructed by prefixing act-operators to
sentences. Those acts that we earlier called "direct-object acts" (see Section
1.4 above) are described by such sentences as 'Husserl sees the tree in the
garden' or 'Smith remembers the winner of the tournament', in which an
act-verb is immediately followed by a noun phrase functioning as a gramma-
tical direct-object. Though some direct-object act-sentences can be rather
trivially reduced to 'that' -constructions, we shall not attempt to reduce all
act-sentences to sentences of propositional attitude. Rather, we shall assume
that some acts are more properly described by direct-object constructions,
of the fonn 'a intends 0' (where '0' is a singular tenn). (Ind\!ed, by taking
'that' -clauses to be a type of singular term, naming propositions or states of
affairs, we could construe the direct-object construction as the more basic.
Husserl's own treatment of propositional acts and of 'that'-clauses suggests
such a move, though nothing in our own discussion seems to hinge on this
issue.)
At any rate, we shall see that direct-object act-sentences - where the act-
verbs are appropriately used in their phenomenological, or experiential,
sense - are like sentences of propositional attitude in being intensional. 20
24 CHAPTER I

Thus, the distinction between intensional and extensional sentences comes

close to being the linguistic counterpart of Brentano's and Husserl's distinc-
tion between intentional and non-intentional phenom~na. It falls short only
because some intensional contexts are not intentional. 21
Before we proceed to characterize more precisely the intensionality of
act-sentences, it is perhaps advisable to add a few words of caution about
what we shall be doing. The first is that we shall not be attempting anything
like a complete inventory of the different forms that act-sentences may take
or of the logical and semantic problems such sentences pose. Rather, we focus
on a few highly salient problems whose connections with intentionality theory
can be made readily apparent. Our discussion at this point will, in fact, be
confined to the behavior of definite descriptions in propositional and direct-
object act-constructions. We deliberately ignore for now act-sentences in
which proper names or demonstrative terms occur in intensional contexts
and any special problems they invoke. These problems go beyond what we
shall be discussing right now, in ways that are important both for semantics
and for the theory of intentionality generally. We shall be addressing them
later, especially in Chapter VIII.
We should also emphasize again that in all our discussion we take act-
sentences to be descriptive of the experiential component of the phenomena
in question. There is often a vast difference between how the subject of an
act can describe it (and its object) and what others can say about it. 22 Though
in our examples we often refer to the subjects of acts in the third person, we
nevertheless presume that all these act-sentences are such that the subject
himself could, on the basis of "phenomenological reflection" alone, assent
to them.
Finally, we should like to say emphatically that it is not our intention to
suggest that the problems of intentionality are in any sense only "linguistic"
problems. Our view, rather, is that the problems of intensionality in act-
sentences are at base themselves due to the peculiarities of the intentional
phenomena they describe or report and to the conception of these phe-
nomena as intentional that is inherent in our language about them. Thus,
our interest in intensionality is prompted by the belief that an understand-
ing of why act-contexts exhibit the peculiarities they do will help unravel
our intuitive understanding of the nature of intending. We will be giving
some arguments for these claims, and in Chapter IV we will detail why,
and in what sense, Husserl would have taken them to be true. For the most
part, however, it will be the purpose of the whole book to try to show that
they are.
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 25

3.2. The Failure of Substitutivity of Identity for Act-Contexts

The most striking logical characteristic of intensional contexts is the failure

of the principle of substitutivity of identity. 23 This familiar principle can be
stated as follows:

(SI) From a statement of identity 'a =b' and a sentence' ... a ... ' we
may infer ' ... b .. .', where 'a' and 'b' are singular terms and
' ... b .. .' results from' ... a .. .' by substituting 'b' for 'a' in at
least one of its occurrences.

According to (SI), if two singular terms refer to the same entity, then they
can be substituted for one another in any sentence without changing the
truth-value of the sentence. Examples of valid applications of the principle
are easy to find. If the expressions 'the author of Intention' and 'the woman
Smith saw at the tobacconist's' refer to the same person, then the identity
statement

(1) The author of Intention = the woman Smith saw at the tobac-
conist's

is true. Hence, in accordance with the principle (SI), substitution of the latter
term for the former in the true sentence

(2) The author of Intention is a philosopher

yields a sentence that is also true, viz.,

(3) The woman Smith saw at the tobacconist's is a philosopher.

The principle of substitutivity of identity seems little more than an

enunciation of a basic intuition about reference: the truth-value of a sentence
about an individual does not depend on how the individual is referred to in
,the sentence - refer as one will, the important thing is which individual one
is referring to and whether what is said is true of it. Indeed, (SI) is simply the
logical or syntactic correlate of the semantic principle of extensionality as it
applies to singular terms: if it is the referent of a singular term that affects
the truth-value of a sentence, then substitution of another term with the
same referent will leave truth-value unaffected. The principle of (SI) can, in
fact, be extended to predicates and sentences as well: replacing a predicate
with another having the same extension (Le., the same class of entities of
which it is true), or replacing a sentence with another having the same truth-
26 CHAPTER I

value, will not affect the truth-value of the sentence in which the replacement
is made. 24
Nevertheless, the principle of substitutivity of identity may fail when
co-referential terms are interchanged within a sentence about someone's acts
of consciousness. Even if both (1) above and
(4) Smith believes that the author of Intention is a philosopher
are true, the truth of
(5) Smith believes that the woman he [Smith] saw at the tobac-
conist's is a philosopher
does not follow. For if Smith is unaware or fails to believe that the author of
Intention and the woman he saw at the tobacconist's are one and the same
person, he may also fail to believe that what is true of the author is thereby
true of the woman at the tobacconist's. Again, from 'Balzano was the source
of Husserl's most important insights' and 'Professor Grossmann believes that
Twardowski was the source of Husserl's most important insights' one is not
permitted to infer 'Professor Grossmann believes that Twardowski was
Bolzano', the principle of substitutivity of identity notwithstanding. The same
holds for other propositional act-contexts, using 'remembers that', 'sees that',
'hopes that', 'expects that', etc. And it marks all such contexts as intensional.
The failure of (SI) in act-contexts is just the logical manifestation of what
we earlier characterized as the 'conception-dependence' of intentional re-
lations. We noted (in Section 2.4) that in order to specify an intentional
relationship it is not sufficient merely to indicate the subject, the species of
intention achieved in an act, and the object intended, for not every way of
specifying the intended object will be appropriate to the particular conception
under which it is intended. If an act-sentehce is to attribute the right intention
to a subject, a descriptive singular term referring to the object of the inten-
tional relation must not only refer to the right object; it must also describe
the object in the right way, i.e., describe it "as" conceived in the act by the.
subject. How (under what description) the object is referred to, as well as
which object is referred to, is in this way relevant to the truth of an act-
sentence. Consequently, when a singular term denoting the object of an
intentional relation is replaced in an act-sentence by another expressing
different descriptive content, even if it has the same referent, the result is
an act-sentence attributing a different act to the subject. And so one of these
sentences may be false even though the other is true.
(4) attributes to Smith a propositional act of intending something "about"
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 27

an individual, and the failure of (SI) in (4) is due to the conception-depen-

dence of Smith's (secondary) intentional relation to this individual. But
conception-dependence also characterizes non-propositional intendings of
individuals, and our considerations of the last paragraph ought to apply to
them as well. So (SI) should also fail, and for the same reasons, in direct-
object act-sentences. Indeed, to take a literary example, the whole story of
Oedipus is a chronicle of such failures: because intention is relative to the
conception under which an object is intended, Oedipus could despise the man
he killed on the road from Delphi and not despise his own father, he could
desire the queen and not desire his mother, he could loathe the murderer of
Laius prior to coming to loathe himself, and so on.
Nonetheless, direct-object constructions such as 'Smith sees _ _ ' and
'Smith remembers _ _ ' are also often used in ordinary language in such
a way that (SI) does not fail. If Smith testifies that he saw his next-door
neighbor, and if his next-door neighbor turns out to have been the murderer,
then a jury may legitimately conclude that Smith saw the murderer. Such
uses of these constructions are non-intensional, but they do not constitute
genuine counter-examples to the claim that all act-sentences - including
direct-object act-sentences - are intensional. Rather, they indicate that in
ordinary language verbs of intention such as 'sees' and 'remembers' - espe-
cially when used in direct-object constructions - are not always used in the
phenomenological, or experiential, sense we earlier characterized. 2s In our
courtroom scene, for example, it is not primarily Smith's "state of mind",
not the phenomenological content of his perceptual act, that interests the
jury, but rather the whereabouts of the murderer at a particular time. How-
ever, when 'sees' is used strictly in the experiential sense, so as to exclude
everything extraneous to what is occurring in a subject's consciousness, sub-
stitutivity of identity does fail; for in that sense one "sees" just what his
visual experiences seem to him to be experiences "of". Indeed, where (as in
the Oedipus examples) it is a subject's consciousness that is at issue, ordinary
usage grants the failure even for perceptual verbs: Smith's honest claim that
he does not see the murderer, even if made while seeing the (in fact guilty)
defendant, will not subject Smith to a charge of perjury. Hence, where 'sees'
is used experientially, from

(6) Smith sees the defendant

and

(7) The defendant =the murderer

28 CHAPTER I

one may not conclude

(8) Smith sees the murderer.

Similarly, from 'Smith's first logic professor is the man who drove Smith's
taxi' and 'Smith remembers his first logic professor' one cannot infer 'Smith
remembers the man who drove his taxi'.
In general, we conclude, wherever verbs of intention are used in the
experiential sense - i.e., as descriptive of "conception-dependent" intentional
phenomena - they create intensional contexts in which substitutivity of
identity fails as a valid rule of inference.

3.3. Failure of Existential Generalization for Act-Contexts, Case 1: Failure

of Existence
Intentional contexts, and intensional contexts generally, exhibit another
logical peCUliarity, namely, the failure of existential generalization on terms
occurring in those contexts. This equally familiar principle or rule of inference
can be stated as follows:

(EG) For any sentence ' ... a .. .' in which a singular term 'a' occurs,
from ' ... a .. .' may be inferred '(3x) ( ... x ... )'.

(yVe use '(3x)' as the existential quantifier 'There is something x such that'.)
The principle (EG) allows one to infer, for example, from 'Smith visited the
Louvre' the existential sentence '(3x) (Smith visited x)" i.e., 'Something is
such that Smith visited it' or, more colloquially, 'Smith visited something'.
According to the principle of existential generalization, any singular term
occurring in a sentence may in this way be replaced by a variable bound by
an existential quantifier standing in front of the resulting formula.
This principle, too, seems to capture a basic intuition about the use of
referring expressions: all it says is that if a predicate is true of an entity
referred to by a term, then something exists of which the predicate is true.
And it is a clearly valid principle for extensional sentences, whose truth or
falsity is dependent on the referents of any singular terms that occur in them.
Nevertheless, the principle of existential generalization fails for terms in
intentional contexts. There are, in fact, two sorts of circumstance in which
it fails.
The most obvious circumstance in which (EG) may fail for intentional
contexts is when a singular term in an act-sentence fails to refer to any
existent entity. From the true sentence
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 29

(9) Ponce de Leon hoped that the fountain of youth would be found
in Florida

the principle of existential generalization would have us infer

(10) (3x) (ponce de Leon hoped that x would be found in Florida).

But (10) seems to be false: since there was (and is) no fountain of youth, it
cannot be the entity whose existence makes (10) true, and no other entity
that does exist seems to play the appropriate role in Ponce de Leon's inten-
tion.
Existential generalization also fails for singular terms in direct-object act-
contexts. Since there is no bogey man, from the true sentence

(11) Smith fears the bogey man

one cannot infer

(12) (3 x) (Smith fears x).

Similarly, the truth of

(13) Luther saw the prince of darkness
is compatible with the falsity of
(14) (3x)(Luther saw x),
since 'sees', when used experientially, ceases to carry its usual "success"
conditions. These failures of (EG) show that the truth-value of act-sentences
is not dependent on the referents of terms in act-contexts, for such sentences
can be true even when those terms fail to refer. The failures thus mark (11)
and (13) and their ilk, as well as (9) and its, as intensional.
Failure of (EG) in these circumstances is, of course, the logical manifesta-
tion of what we earlier (in Section 2.2) called the "existence-independence"
of intentional relations. Since the intention attributed Ponce de Leon in (9),
for example, does not depend on the existence of the object he hoped would
be found, (9) can be a true attribution of intention even though there is no
referent of 'the fountain of youth' and hence no existing entity that would
make (10) true. To note this connection with "existence-independence" is
not to minimize the puzzling aspect of the failure of (EG), however: each
of (9), (11), and (13) does seem to assert a relation to something, and we still
need an understanding of how these relations - the "intentional relations"
30 CHAPTER I

of hoping fearing, and seeing - can hold when what is intended does not exist.
Given that they can, however, the failure of (EG) follows as a consequence.
There is a second sort of circumstance in which (EG) fails for intentional
contexts. It has nothing to do with the failure of intended objects to exist,
and so is quite different from the case we have just considered. It deserves
special attention in its own right.

3.4. Failure of Existential Generalization for Act-Contexts, Case 2: Indefi-

niteness
The second circumstance in which the principle of existential generalization
may fail for terms in act-contexts is when an act-sentence attributes to a
subject an "indefinite intention". Here the problem is not that the object
intended in an act may fail to exist but that an act may fail to be "definitely"
directed to anyone particular object rather than another (cf. Section 2.6
above).
When (EG) is applied to an act-sentence, the result is a sentence that
involves "quantifying into" an act-context, i.e., a sentence in which a variable
inside an act-context is bound by a quantifier standing outside the context. 26
For example, applying (EG) to the sentence

(15) Mother Hubbard hopes that her most intelligent child will be-
come famous

yields the "quantifying-in" construction

(16) (3x) (Mother Hubbard hopes that x will become famous),

i.e., 'Someone is such that Mother Hubbard hopes that he or she will become
famous'. In order for such a sentence involving quantifying-in to be true,
there must be some particular individual of whom the quantified formula is
true. But this condition may fail to be fulfilled and, so, (16) may be false,
even though (15) is true. The problem in this case is that, although there may
exist such an individual as Mother Hubbard's most intelligent child, the act
of hoping attributed Mother Hubbard in (15) may not be a definite intention
"about" that, or any other, particular one of her children. The truth of (15)
does not presuppose that Mother Hubbard has come to have an opinion as to
which of her children is in fact the most intelligent (and if she has several and
they are sufficiently young, she quite likely will not have). If she has not - if
she has no "conception of the identity" of her most intelligent child - then
of none of her children will it be true to say that Mother Hubbard hopes that
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 31

he or she will become famous. Consequently, there will be no particular

individual of whom the quantified formula 'Mother Hubbard hopes that x
will become famous' is true. Thus, (16) can be false although (15) is true,
and so (EG) again fails for terms in act-contexts.
Consider a more suspenseful case. From

(17) Sherlock believes that the murderer used belladonna

one cannot infer

(18) (3x) (Sherlock believes that x used belladonna).27

If (18) is true, Sherlock will be pounding pavement to make an arrest. Not

so given only the truth of (17) as it might naturally be understood, for Sher-
lock may have yet to take the leap of logic that would give him an opinion as
to the identity of the murderer. Again the problem is not that the murderer
happens not to exist but rather that there are no grounds for supposing
Sherlock's belief, insofar as it is characterized by (17), to be a definite inten-
tion about that individual as opposed to any of the other individuals on
Sherlock's list of suspects.
This second sort of failure of (EG) is clearly distinct from the fust sort we
considered. As applied to propositional acts, the first failure was due to the
fact that that which a propositional act seems to be about - that which
answers to a certain description, such as 'the fountain of youth', in an act-
context - may not exist. In the second failure, however, even if an individual
does exist answering to the appropriate description, there are insufficient
grounds for saying that the act in question is about that (or any other) in-
dividual. The problem of intentionality underlying this second failure of
(EG), then, is that the acts attributed in such sentences as (15) and (17) may
be indefinitely directed. The failure of (EG) for such act-contexts evinces
the fact that it is not clear which individual an indefinite propositional act
is about, or even that it is about any particular individual at all.

3.5. "De Dicto" and "De Re" Modalities

At hand in our examples (15)-(18) is the distinction, which will later play
prominently in our discussion of intentionality, between the so-called "de
dicto" and "de re" modalities. For any modal operator 'M', the construction
'M(3x) (... x ... )' is called a de dicto modality and the "quantifying-in"
construction '(3x)M( . .. x ... )' is called a de re modality. (The same distinc-
tion applies also to constructions using the universal quantifier 'for all x',
32 CHAPTER I

abbreviated '(VX)'.)28 The position of a quantifier, vis-a-vis a modal opera-

tor, makes a genuine difference in the truth-conditions of a sentence, as an
example of W. V. Quine's nicely shows: in a game in ~hich ties are not per-
mitted it is necessary that some player will win, but of none of the players
can it be said to be necessary that he will win; hence, the de dicta modality
'Necessarily (3x) (x will win)' will be true and the de re modality '(3x)
Necessarily (x will win)' will be false. 29 For the intentional modalities, using
act-operators such as 'Mother Hubbard hopes that' or 'Sherlock believes that',
the de dicta-de re distinction reflects the difference between indefinite and
definite intentions.
Consider (l7), 'Sherlock believes that the murderer used belladonna', for
example. This sentence is subject to two different interpretations, depending
on whether the intention it attributes is taken to be definite or indefinite.
We may express these different readings in a somewhat stilted way as the
difference between

(l7a) Sherlock believes that the murderer, whoever he is, used bella-
donna

and

(l7b) Sherlock believes of the murderer that he used belladonna.

We took Sherlock's intention to be indefinite and, thus, assumed the inter-

pretation of (17) as (l7a) in arguing that the inference from (l7) to (18) can
fail. This interpretation takes Sherlock to believe that there is exactly one
person who is the murderer and that he used belladonna, though it does not
assume that Sherlock has a belief as to who this person is. Thus, the force of
(17) as descriptive of an indefinite intention can be perspicuously displayed
as a de dicta intentional modality:

(l7a') Sherlock believes that (3x) (x ::: the murderer and x used bella-
donna).

We shall say that (l7a') expresses the de dicta interpretation of (17).

The second interpretation of (l7), as (l7b), takes Sherlock's belief to be
a defmite intention "about" the one individual who in fact did commit the
murder; i.e., it supposes there is exactly one individual - the murderer - of
whom it is true that Sherlock believes that he used belladonna. Thus, the
logically perspicuous formulation of this interpretation of (17) is as a de re
intentional modality:
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 33

(17b') (3 x) (x = the murderer and Sherlock believes that x used bella-

donna).

Let us say that (17b') expresses the de re interpretation of (17).

Just knowing that an act-sentence such as (17) is true does not deter-
mine whether its correct interpretation is de dicto or de re; also required
is collateral information about the kind of act the sentence purports to
describe. In particular, as the second sort of failure of (EG) for act-contexts
showed, the de re interpretation will not be true when the act involved is
indefinitely directed. Thus, the de dicto-de re distinction as applied to act-
sentences manifests a distinction in intentional phenomena themselves: the
de re act-sentence describes a definite intending "of" or "about" a partic-
ular individual; the de dicto, an indefinite intending that there is such an
individual. Thus, the differences in the truth-conditions of de dicto and de re
act-sentences relate, in ways that we shall later be exploring, to the differ-
ences in indefinite and definite intentions that we have already noted. For
this reason, we shall also call the acts themselves, in which such indefinite
and definite intentions are achieved, de dicto and de re acts, respectively
(and we shall extend the terminology to include direct-object, as well as
propositional, acts).

4. INTENSIONALITY VIS-A.-VIS INTENTIONALITY

Intentionality, the "directedness" of consciousness, is a matter of meta-

physics and ontology; a theory of intentionality is thus an ontological theory,
whose purpose is to characterize the phenomenological properties of con-
sciousness that constitute its being intentional. Intensionality, on the other
hand, is a matter of the logical and semantical properties of certain sentences
or linguistic constructions; as we see it, a theory of intensionality is a se-
mantic theory whose purpose is to explain why intensional contexts have
the logical properties they do. As we have already been suggesting, however,
there is a close relationship between the ontological problems of intention-
ality and the logical and semantical problems of intensionality.30 Basically,
what we have been urging is that the intensionality of act-contexts is a mani-
festation in language of the conception of mental phenomena as intentional.
We believe that a well-developed theory of intentionality should enable one
to develop a semantics for act-contexts that would explain their intensionality.
And given a semantics for act-sentences, we believe one should be able to
extract from it at least the rudiments of a theory of intentionality.
34 CHAPTER I

There is one fairly obvious way in which a semantic analysis of act-sen-

tences relates to problems of intentionality. In the tradition of modern
semantics, we may take a "semantic" analysis of a sentence to be a systematic
account of how the expressions that go to make up the sentence are related
to extra-linguistic entities in such a way as to make the sentence true or
false. The task of this part of semantic theory is thus to formulate the truth-
conditions for sentences in terms of the ''word-to-world'' relations of their
parts (where the explication of these word-to-world relations may itself intro-
duce into the theory entities such as the senses, or meanings, of expressions
as well as their referents and extensions). Now, we saw that the claim that
acts of consciousness are intentional, directed to objects, seems to construe
every act as some sort of relation between a conscious subject and an object
of consciousness, and this claim is reflected in the apparently relational form
of simple act-sentences. Simple acts, at least, can be described in language
by act-sentences consisting of a subject term denoting the subject of the act,
a transitive verb phrase indicating the particular relation of intending (and
act-species) in question, and an object phrase denoting the object of the act -
i.e., act-sentences having the apparently relational form 'a (P'S 0' (for more
generality we may here suppose that the object phrase '0' may be either a
singular term or a 'that' -clause). A semantic analysis of such a sentence must
tell us what contribution each of these three constituents of an act-sentence
makes to its truth-conditions: in particular, it will have to tell us what entity
is referred to by the phrase following the act-verb and what sort of "relation"
between subject and object is attributed by the act-verb. In this wayan
adequate semantics for act-sentences becomes immediately involved in the
ontological problems of intentionality, the problems of saying what the
objects of consciousness are and what is the nature of the "relation" of in-
tending them.
There are also other, more complicated ways in which problems about
the reference of expressions in intentional contexts are problems of inten-
tionality. On Husserl's view, if Smith says, "I remember my high school
French teacher", his words serve to express his underlying act of memory.
Smith's referring to the object of his act via the use of a linguistic expression
embodies in a certain way and makes public his underlying intention of his
high school French teacher. We shall see that Husserl's account of the relation
between linguistic expressions and their referents sheds light on his theory of
how acts are intentionally related to their objects. Indeed, linguistic reference
in general, according to Hussed, is itself a species of intention, or direction
toward an object. Thus, theory of reference, and semantic theory generally
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 35

(in the tradition of Frege), turn out to be subparts of Husserl's theory of

intentionality. (These claims we develop in Chapter IV.)
Let these brief remarks suffice for now to indicate our view of the rela-
tions between intensionality and intentionality. Details of the view will be
developed throughout the remainder of the book, especially in Chapter VII.

NOTES

1 Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. by Linda L. McAlister,

trans. by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister (Humanities Press,
New York, 1973), p. 88. Brentano's Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt was
originally published in 1874; Book II, with the addition of some notes and supplemen-
tary essays, was reissued in 1911 under the title, Von der Klassi[ikation der psychischen
Phiinomena; and a second edition of Psychologie, including several more essays by
Brentano, was published in 1924 under the editorship of Oskar Kraus. The English
edition is a translation of Kraus' 1924 edition.
2 Brentano (Note 1 above), p. 90.
3 The expressions 'Edebnis' and 'Erfahrung' occur frequently in Hussert's writings,
and both are rather naturally translated as 'experience'. Hussed does not use them as
synonyms, however. 'Edebnis' seems to have several uses in Hussed: see J. N. Mohanty,
The Concept of Intentionality (Warren H. Green, St. Louis, 1972), pp. 60-64. In the
usage that is relevant to our discussion 'Edebnis' is a quite generic term, covering any
mental process or event whatsoever, and might better be translated as 'event of con-
sciousness'. 'Erfahrung' is used more narrowly for "empirical" acts, specifically, percep-
tions, whose objects are transcendent entities and in which the occurrence of sensory
data ("hyle") is an essential ingredient; one might prefer to reserve 'experience' as a
translation of it. Nonetheless, we shall translate both expressions as 'experience', indicat-
ing in every case which of the German expressions Hussed has used.
4 See D. C. Dennett, Content and Consciousness (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,
1969), pp. 24-25. Cf. D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind (Routledge
& Kegan Paul, London, 1968), pp. 229-31.
5 Izchak Miller suggested the term 'experiential' for this sense of perceptual verbs. David
Carr also distinguishes the phenomenological component of perception from its objective
component in his 'Intentionality', in Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding,
ed. by Edo PivCevic (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975), pp. 30-32.
6 Jaakko Hintikka's work on perception as a propositional attitude provides an ex-
tremely important and interesting account of these differences. Hintikka analyzes direct-
object perception sentences in terms of propositional perception sentences of a special
kind, thus achieving a reduction of most non-propositional forms of perception to
propositional forms. See his 'On the Logic of Perception', in Perception and Personal
Identity, ed. by Norman S. Care and Robert H. Grimm (The Press of Case Western
Reserve University, Cleveland, 1969), reprinted in Hintikka's Models for Modalities
(D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1969), pp. 151-83; and 'Objects of Knowledge and Belief:
Acquaintances and Public Figures', Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970), reprinted in
36 CHAPTER I

Hintikka, The Intentions of IntentioTll1lity and Other New Models for Modalities (D.
Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975), pp. 43-58.
7 There are some apparent exceptions, such as believing the President or believing in
ghosts. But these seem to be elliptical descriptions of propositional acts, e.g., believing
that what the President says is true or believing that there are ghosts. Believing in
the President or believing in God, however, are at least more complicated and may
constitute genuine counterexamples. Judging a track meet seems only superficially
direct-object, consisting in making judgments that certain propositions are true (though
here certain "pragmatic" factors are relevant: for example, the person "judging" must
have the authority to declare a winner).
8 Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (George Allen & Unwin, Lon-
don, 1940), p. 210.
9 Brentano (Note 1 above), p. 88.
10 Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, N.Y., 1957), pp. 169-70.
11 See LI, I, § 12, where Husser! uses the terms 'the victor at Jena' and 'the vanquished
at Waterloo' to illustrate how linguistic expressions with different meanings can refer to
the same entity. This point about language parallels our point that one and the same
entity can be conceived in different ways. We shall later see that the "conception" under
which an entity is intended is explicated by Husser! in terms of an act's also having a
meaning (or "noema"), which he says is a generalization of the notion of linguistic
meaning (see Chapter IV).
12 We take Husserl to have a rather objective notion of states of affairs, as complex
transcendent entities consisting, in the simplest case, of a property and a concrete in-
dividual appropriately coupled (cf. LI, V, § 33, p. 623; VI, §44, p. 783). On this view,
the state of affairs that the vanquished at Waterloo has a certain property is the same as
the state of affairs that the victor at Jena has that property, since the vanquished at
Waterloo is the victor at Jena. On a more intensional notion of state of affairs than that
we have attributed Husserl, a state of affairs (of the relevant kind) might consist of a
property and something like an individual concept (e.g., the concept "the vanquished at
Waterloo"). On this latter view, states of affairs involving the vanquished at Waterloo
(or the corresponding concept) would be distinct from those involving the victor at Jena
(or the corresponding concept).
13 Philippa Foot convincingly argued for this case in discussion at UCLA in spring,
1976.
14 For a short discussion of the distinction see Peter Geach, Logic Matters (University
of California Press, Berkeley, 1972), pp. 148-49. The distinction we shall draw is closely
related to (and perhaps underlies) Keith Donnellan's distinction between "referential"
and "attributive" uses of definite descriptions: see his 'Reference and Definite Descrip-
tions', Philosophical Review 75 (1966), 281-304. For its relation to the distinction
between "de re" and "de dicto" sentences of propositional attitude, see Section 3.5
below.
IS Cf. Hintikka's discussion of what he calls "perceptual individuation" in 'On the Logic
of Perception" (Note 6 above) and his more generalized notion of "contextual individua-
tion" or "individuation by acquaintance" in 'Objects of Knowledge and Belief' (Note 6
above). Hintikka's account of the difference between perceptual or contextual individua-
tion and "physical" or "descriptive" individuation is closely related to, but not identical
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 37

with, the account of the difference between intuitional and individuative definiteness
that we give in Chapter VIII below. Note that Hintikka also uses his distinction to
explicate the difference between what we have called direct-object and propositional
acts.
16 See Russell (Note 8 above), pp. 324-28; and Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necesnty,
2nd ed. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956), pp. 46-48. The whole of
Chapters I and III of Meaning and Necessity is directly related to our current discussion.
17 Carnap (Note 16 above), pp. 19,26,40.
18 A narrower deftnition of 'intensional' that would make intensional constructions a
sub~lass of non-extensional constructions is perhaps to be preferred here. Indeed, our
actual concern will be with sentences of propositional attitude and, to a lesser extent,
with the logical modalities but not with other non-extensional constructions, such as
quotation-contexts. Within semantic theories that recognize intensions, or meanings, of
expressions as well as extensions, intensional expressions in this narrower sense might
be roughly characterized as those non-extensional expressions whose extensions are
dependent on the intensions, and not merely on the extensions, of their semantically
relevant parts. Carnap defines a notion of intensionality that is in this spirit but, since
the propositional attitudes tum out to be neither extensional nor intensional on his
definition, it is too narrow for our purposes (see Carnap (Note 16 above), pp. 48,53-
55).
19 Hintikka is perhaps the chief proponent of this approach to act-sentences. See, for
example, his 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes', in Models for Modalities (Note
6 above), pp. 87-111, reprinted in Reference and Modality, ed. by Leonard Linsky
(Oxford University Press, London, 1971). When we call act-operators 'modalities' we
do not intend, at this point, to suggest any particular analysis of act-sentences; rather,
we intend only to call attention to the logical and semantic similarities between act-
contexts and modal contexts strictly so~ed. Later on (in Chapter VII), however, we
shall consider the same sort of "possible worlds" analysis of intentional modalities that
Hintikka does.
20 It is not quite appropriate to call these direct-object act-sentences intentional
"modalities" in our extended sense, however, since they are not constructed from
sentential operators. But even this qualification can be dropped if these direct-object
constructions can be rendered propositional in form, perhaps along the lines of Hintikka's
analysis in 'Different Constructions in Terms of the Basic Epistemological Verbs', in
The Intentions of Intentionality (Note 6 above), pp. 1-25; 'On the Logic of Perception'
(Note 6 above); and 'Objects of Knowledge and Belief' (Note 6 above).
21 Chisholm has attempted to enunciate additional logical characteristics of intentional
contexts, over and above their intensionality, that would distinguish them not only from
extensional contexts but from the non-intentional modalities as well. See his Perceiving
(Note 10 above), Ch. 11; 'Intentionality', in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by
Paul Edwards (Macmillan & The Free Press, New York, 1967), IV, pp. 203-204;
'Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Intentional', in Phenomenology and
Existentialism, ed. by Edward N. Lee and Maurice Mandelbaum (The Johns Hopkins
Press, Baltimore, 1967), pp. 21-23; 'Notes on the Logic of Believing', Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 24 (1963-64), 195-201, reprinted in Intentionality, Mind,
and Language, ed. by Ausonio Marras (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1972); and
'On Some Psychological Concepts and the "Logic" of Intentionality', in Intentionality,
38 CHAPTER I

Minds, and Perception, ed. by Hector-Neri Castaneda (Wayne State University Press,
Detroit, 1967), pp. 11-35. Chisholm's criteria of intentionality have been the subject
of much discussion: see, for example, the essays in Marras, Part I; also the symposium
by J. O. Urmson and L. Jonathan Cohen on 'Criteria of Intensionality', Proceedings of
The Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 42 (1968), 107-42; and Mohanty (Note 3
above), pp. 25-35.
22 Cf. Romane Clark's distinction between "Scribe" and "Agent" attributions of
propositional attitude, in his 'Comments' (on Hintikka's 'On the Logic of Perception'),
in Care and Grimm (Note 6 above), pp. 176-77; cf. also Charles Taylor's comments on
"intentional description" in his The Explanation of Behaviour (Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London, 1964), pp. 58-59.
23 See Carnap (Note 16 above), pp. 133-36; Russell, 'On Denoting', Mind 14 (1905),
reprinted in Russell's Logic and Knowledge, ed. by Robert C. Marsh (G. P. Putnam's
Sons, Capricorn Books, New York, 1971), pp. 47-48; and Willard Van Orman Quine,
Word and Object (The M.LT. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 141-51.
24 These points are carefully made in Dagfmn F~llesdal, 'Quine on Modality', Synthese
19 (1968), 152-53; reprinted in Words and Objections, ed. by Donald Davidson and
Jaakko Hintikka (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975).
25 Some philosophers seem to believe that verbs of perception are used only non-inten-
tionally in direct-object constructions. Chisholm, for example, in Theory of Knowledge
(Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), pp. 10-11, sorts the intentional (or inten-
sional) use of perceptual verbs with the propositional construction and the non-inten-
tional (or extensional) with the direct-object construction (cf. Perceiving (Note 10
above), pp. 142ff). And Armstrong (Note 4 above), p. 228, suggests that direct-object
perceptual constructions are used when one wants to indicate the object of a perceptual
experience without committing oneself about what the subject perceives it "as". Our
own examples seem to us to indicate that ordinary usage is not univocal on these mat-
ters, though faithfulness to ordinary language is not really our major concern here.
26 See, for example, Quine, 'Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes' ,Journal of Philos-
ophy S3 (1956), 177-87, reprinted in Quine's The Ways of Paradox (Random House,
New York, 1966), also reprinted in Linsky (Note 19 above); David Kaplan, 'Quantifying
In', Synthese 19 (1968), 178-214, reprinted in Davidson and Hintikka (Note 24 above)
and also in Linsky; and Hintikka, 'Quine on Quantifying In: A Dialogue', in The Inten·
tions of Intentionality (Note 6 above), pp. 102-36.
27 Names of fictional characters (e.g., 'Sherlock Hoimes'), whether in intensional or
extensional contexts, pose special problems in the philosophy of language. These prob-
lems relate to our discussion only insofar as intentions of or about fictional characters
are illustrative of the existence-independence of intention and, hence, only where names
of such characters occur within intentional contexts. The name 'Sherlock', which occurs
in extensional position as the grammatical subject of (17) and (18), as well as the name
'Mother Hubbard' as it occurs in (15) and (16), should therefore be understood as
there naming actual persons, not the fictional characters they are sometimes used to
name. We offer the following general disclaimer: all names occurring in this book as
grammatical subjects of act-sentences are names of actual persons; any resemblance
between these nat'IiICS and the names of fictional characters, living or dead, is purely
coincidental. And we extend the disclaimer to apply also to names occurring within
act-contexts, except where the sentences in which they occur are expressly illustrative
 INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY 39

of the existence-independence of intention. (No use of the name 'Smith' in any of our
examples refers to either of the authors of this book, however.)
28 See Georg H. von Wright, An Essay in Modal Logic (North-Holland, Amsterdam,
1951), pp. 6-35; and A. N. Prior, Formal Logic, 2nd ed. (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1962), pp. 209-15. For some of the history of the distinction, see William Kneale,
'Modality de Dicto and de Re', in Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed.
by Ernest Nagel et al. (Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1962), pp. 622-
33.
29 Quine, 'Reference and Modality', in From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. (Harper
& Row, New York, 1961), p. 148, reprinted in Linsky (Note 19 above).
30 For other discussions of the relations between problems of intensionality and prob-
lems of intentionality see the symposium by Kneale and Prior on 'Intentionality and
Intensionality', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 42 (1968),
73-106; Carr (Note 5 above), pp. 17 -36; and J. 1. Mackie, 'Problems of Intentionality',
in Pivrevic (Note 5 above), pp. 37-50. See also Prior, Objects of Thought, ed. by Peter
Geach and Anthony Kenny (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971), esp. Chs. 4,8, and 9.
 CHAPTER II

SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES TO THE PROBLEMS OF

INTENTIONALITY AND INTENSIONALITY

In this chapter we begin to explore systematic ways of explaining how and

why intentional phenomena come to exhibit the characteristics they do. To
give such a systematic and explanatory account is the purpose of a theory of
intentionality.
One common approach to the theory of intentionality focuses on the
nature and ontological status of the objects toward which intentional phenom-
ena are directed. Theories based on this "object-approach" differ markedly
from Husserl's: they assume that relations of intending are ordinary relations,
differing from others only in that the objects of intention are entities of some
unusual sort. In Part 1 we examine the motivations for this approach, and in
Part 2 we discuss the theories of Brentano and Meinong as possible examples
of it.
In the third part of the chapter we return to the semantic problems of
intensionality. Specifically, we consider Frege's theory of meaning and refer-
ence and the role that meanings, or senses, play in his proposed solution to
some of the problems of intensionality. Frege's proposal suggests an object-
approach to intentionality with meanings serving as objects of intention, but
we consider whether some other role for meanings in intention might also be
compatible with Frege's semantics.
We shall see in Chapter III that Hussed rejects the object-approach to
intentionality. Meanings, of the sort Frege describes, play the key role in
Hussed's own theory; but for Hussed, we shall find, these entities (which he
calls "noemata") are "mediators" rather than objects of intention.

1. THEORIES OF INTENTIONALITY AS THEORIES ABOUT

THE OBJECTS OF lNTENTION

1.1. The Object-Approach to Intentionality

In the last chapter we explicitly assumed the Husserlian view that typical acts
of consciousness - perceiving a tree, remembering a melody, desiring an ice
cream cone, and the like - have as their objects ordinary entities no more
unusual than trees, melodies, and ice cream cones. Hussed seems to take this
40
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 41

view about the objects of acts to embody a basic datum, so that any theory
of intentionality that held otherwise would simply have to be rejected as
incompatible with the "phenomenological facts" of experience. Nonetheless,
there are rather alluring theoretical grounds for questioning this assumption
about the objects of consciousness, and some philosophers have been led to
abandon it altogether.
The difficulty with the Husserlian view is this: if we assume that the ob-
jects of acts are just the ordinary entities they seem to be, then the relations
of intending these objects must themselves be considered "relations" of an
unusual sort, different in kind from ordinary relations. For, as our considera-
tions in Chapter I have shown, an "intentional relation" can hold when the
ordinary object that seems to be intended does not exist at all, and it can
hold under certain conceptions of this object while failing to hold under
other conceptions of it. But it is not easy to make sense of such "intentional
relations", and the considerations that led us to suggest such unusual relations
can in fact be interpreted in a different way that avoids them altogether.
Many philosophers who have dealt with the problems of intentionality have
assumed that intention is an ordinary sort of relation and have taken the
existence-independence of intention, in particular, to show that it is our
realistic assumptions about the objects of consciousness that must be aban-
doned. According to these philosophers, the intentionality of an act does not
consist in a peculiar sort of "intentional relation" to an ordinary object, but
in an ordinary relation to a peculiar sort of "intentional object".
The main feature of this second, non-Husserlian approach to the problems
of intentionality is that it attempts to explain the peculiarities of intending
as peculiarities in the objects that acts intend: intentionality is taken to be
unique (and unique to consciousness) not because intentional relations are
relations of an ontologically unique sort, but because the objects to which
they relate persons are entities of a special kind, different from the entities
that normally enter into non-intentional relations. The purpose of a theory of
intentionality, according to this line of thinking, is to explicate the ontologi-
cal type and ontological status of these "intentional objects", as they are
sometimes called, so that intending can be construed as an ordinary relation
to these extraordinary objects. Because theories based on this approach take
the problems of intentionality to be primarily problems about the objects
of consciousness, we shall speak of it as the object-approach to the theory
of intentionality and we shall call the resulting theories object-theories of
intentionality.
42 CHAPTER II

1.2. ''Intentional Objects"

The basic assumption underlying object-theories of intentionality is that the

intentionality of an act, in every case, consists in a relation of the ordinary
sort between the subject of the act and an intended object. Although there
are different versions of object-theories, this basic assumption itself in com-
bination with the considerations of Chapter I, Part 2, serves to introduce
"intentional objects" into the analysis of intentionality and to defme some
of the main characteristics they must have in order to play their appointed
role in intentionality.
If intentional relations are relations of the ordinary sort, then a relation
of intention cannot hold between a subject and an object unless there is
such an object. But we have seen that intentional relations are "existence-
independent" with respect to the ordinary entities to which they seem to
relate conscious subjects (cf. Chapter I, Section 2.2): an act such as Smith's
desire for the woman of his dreams is intentional, although there may fail
to exist any person with all the perfections Smith envisions. Nonetheless,
according to object-theories of intentionality, since this act is intentional
there must be some object to which Smith is related. If there is no ordinary
existent that can play the role of intended object, then some other sort of
object must do so. Thus, object-theories account for the intentionality of
such ''non-veridical'' acts by postulating a domain of intentional objects,
distinct from the domain of ordinary existents. Even in cases in which the
appropriate ordinary entity does exist, object-theories typically take the
objects of consciousness to be distinct from these entities. Since an act can
be intentional whether a corresponding ordinary object exists or not, it seems
that this ordinary object, even if it does exist, cannot be what makes the act
intentional. Hence, object-theories typically hold that in every case an act's
intentionality consists in its relation to an intentional object having an on-
tological status different from that of ordinary entities.
Once intention is thought of as an ordinary relation, the "conception-
dependence" of intention reinforces the view that the objects of acts are
always intentional objects. If the intentionality of an act consists in an
ordinary relation between a subject and an object, then this relation must
hold independently of the different ways in which the object can be con-
ceived or described (cf. Chapter I, Section 2.3). But consider Smith's act of
fearing the man from whom he receives threatening phone calls, and suppose
that this man is in fact Smith's next-door neighbor. If the intentionality of
this act is an ordinary relation between Smith and the phone caller, then
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 43

Smith ought to stand in that same relation to his next-door neighbor. But
Smith may not fear his next-door neighbor. Failing to relate Smith to his
next-door neighbor, Smith's intention seems also to fail to relate him to the
phone caller; and there are no other ordinary entities that Smith, in this act,
can more appropriately be said to intend. Barring the view that it is the rela-
tion of intending itself that is onto logically peculiar, one seems forced to
conclude that the object of Smith's act all along was not an ordinary sort of
object but an intentional object.
The conception-dependence of intention also suggests a characteristic of
intentional objects that would serve to differentiate them from concrete
existents: it suggests that intentional objects are themselves, in some sense,
conception-dependent entities. We have seen that Smith's act of fearing the
man who makes the threatening phone calls must be distinguished from his
act of fearing his next-door neighbor. Now, an object-theory of intentionality
will have to make this distinction solely in terms of the objects intended. For,
if intentions are relations of the ordinary sort, then intentions are individ-
uated by specifying their subjects, the specific relations of intending involved
(and, of course, the times at which they obtain), and the objects intended
(cf. Chapter I, Section 2.4). Here, however, the subjects are the same and so
are the relations of intending (and, we may suppose, their times). So, what
would make these acts distinct - given the assumption underlying the object-
approach - would be their directedness to distinct objects. Similarly, a third
act, e.g., Smith's fearing the banker who can refuse him a loan, involving yet
another conception of the same man would not be directed to this man but
to some third intentional object. The objeCts of acts may be thought gen-
erally to vary concomitantly in this way with the differing conceptions the
subjects of acts may have: to each way of conceiving an ordinary, non-"in ten-
tional" object there may correspond a distinct act and, according to object-
theories, each of these will intend a distinct intentional object.
Intentional objects are sometimes further characterized as ''indeterminate''
or ''incomplete'' (or ''incompletely determined") objects. As we noted earlier
(in Chapter I, Section 2.5), any particular conception of an ordinary object
is quite limited in what it prescribes of the object: one's conception need not
be completely specific about some of the properties of an object (as when
one conceives of a tree as a fir, but not as a Douglas fir or as any other specific
kind) and it need not specify others at all (as when the tree is conceived
neither as having moss on it nor as not). Since on the object-approach to
intentionality different conceptions of an ordinary object serve to defme acts
directed to distinct intentional objects, one I'Ilight suppose (thOUgh perhaps
44 CHAPTER II

one need not} that each such intentional object has just those properties
prescribed by the subject's conception in the act. But if so, then every lack
of specificity in the intention of an object becomes a lack of specificity in
the intended object itself. As conception-dependent entities, intentional
objects may in this way come to be thought of as themselves indeterminate,
or incompletely propertied.
In her provocative essay, 'The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical
Feature', G. E. M. Anscombe sums up these features of "intentional objects":

Supposing 'X' to be the name of a real person, the name of something real has to be put
in the blank space in 'X bit _ _ ' if the completed sentence is to have so much as a
chance of being true. Whereas in 'X worshipped _ _ ' and 'X thought of _ _ ' that
is not so .
. . . Let us not be hypnotized by the possible non-existence of the object. There are
other features too: non-substitutability of different descriptions of the object, where it
does exist; and possible indeterminacy of the object. In fact all three features are con-
nected. I can think of a man without thinking of a man of any particular height; I cannot
hit a man without hitting a man of some particular height, because there is no such thing
as a man of no particular height. And the possibility of this indeterminacy makes it
possible that when I am thinking of a particular man, not every true description of him
is one under which I am thinking of him.
I will now define an intentional verb as a verb taking an intentional object; inten-
tional objects are the sub-class of direct objects characterized by these three connected
features.!

The features Anscombe describes closely parallel the characterization we have

given of intentional objects: (I) intentional objects are distinct from ordinary
existents (in Anscombe's terms, they are not "something real"); (2) they
depend upon, or vary with, different conceptions (or, as Anscombe says,
descriptions) of ordinary objects; and (3) they are, on some accounts, indeter-
minate entities, neither having nor not having some properties. These three
features may be taken as providing an ontological characterization of inten-
tional objects, distinguishing them from ordinary entities (paradigmatically,
physical individuals). (We should note, though, that the point of Anscombe's
own analysis of intentionality as a "grammatical feature" is to avoid giving
any such ontological import to the notion of ''intentional object".)

1.3. Ambiguities in the Notion of "Intentional Object"

The term 'intentional object' is often used in rather different senses, some-
times appealing to the ontological type or status of a class of entities and
sometimes to the presumed roles of certain entities in intentionality. There
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 45

are, accordingly, some noteworthy ambiguities in the notion of "intentional

object".
In the primary, ontological sense in which we shall use the term, intentional
objects are entities of some special ontological category or type. This sense
we characterized in the preceding section. Thus, intentional objects are dis-
tinct from ordinary existents such as trees, and they are in some way mind-
related (if not mind-dependent) entities correlated with ways of conceiving
ordinary existents. Further, intentional objects stand in a many-to-one
relationship with ordinary entities (since distinct intentional objects correlate
with the many different ways of conceiving anyone ordinary entity). And,
finally, on some accounts they are incompletely determined.
This ontological characterization of intentional objects is itself vague, for
it does not capture a single ontological category or type. Indeed, if we set
aside the trait of indeterminacy, such diverse entities as "ideas", mental
images, Platonic Forms, attributes, "thoughts", propositions, individual
concepts (li la Carnap), and senses or meanings (li la Frege) might all qualify
as intentional objects. Even sense-data, as some philosophers of perception
have characterized them, would be a class of intentional objects (though they
would be correlated, somewhat more narrowly, with ways of perceiving rather
than with ways of conceiving) - they are sometimes even considered to be
indeterminate. Thus, our ontological characterization of intentional objects
has been so broad as to embrace entities of quite different kinds. We should
note also that the postulation of these various kinds of entities need not be
tied in any direct way to the needs of intentionality theory, although it may
be: we were led to our own characterization of intentional objects by con-
sidering what entities would have to be like in order to play the role assigned
them in intention by object-theories of intentionality.
An important class of entities that would qualify as intentional objects
in the ontological sense are those called intensional entities, or intensions.
The notion of ''intension'' stems from semantic theory in the tradition of
Gottlob Frege: the intension of an expression is that which it expresses as
its meaning; an expression's intension contrasts with that which the expres-
sion refers to or stands for, i.e., its referent, or "extension". Different kinds
of entities have been considered "intensional" and designated as "intensions"
in different semantic theories. We shall be primarily concerned, at different
points throughout this book, with those that Frege and Husserl called senses
or meanings (Sinne) (cL Sections 3.2 and 3.3 below and Chapter IV).
We observed that the term 'intentional object' is sometimes used in senses
other than the ontological, particularly in senses that calIon the roles the
46 CHAPTER II

designated entities play in intentionality rather than on their ontological

type or status. In one not uncommon use of the term, the intentional object
of an act is simply the object toward which the act is directed - that is, the
intended object, there being no suggestion that such an object must be of
some peculiar ontological type or status. HusserI, for example, in a passage
we earlier quoted more fully, says that ''the intentional object of a presenta-
tion is the same as its actual object", often a ''transcendent object" (LI, V,
Appendix to §1l and §20, p. 595;cf. Chapter I, Section 1.3, above). Clearly,
by 'intentional object' Husserl here means simply 'intended object': the very
point of his remark is to deny that intended objects are anything peculiar,
e.g., peculiarly ''intentional'' entities. Similarly, outside the phenomenological
tradition, A. N. Prior uses the term in this onto logically neutral sense when
he says that ''intentional objects are ... those objects towards which our
thinking, knowing, wanting, hoping, etc. are directed". For Prior then goes
on to discuss whether these objects are always ''intensional objects, i.e., not
ordinary objects but propositions, properties and the like" or sometimes
"individuals of a philosophically ordinary sort".2 We ourselves shall avoid
using the term 'intentional object' to mean the object intended in an act;
for that purpose the terms 'intended object', 'object intended', and 'object
of intention' will serve better.
According to object-theories, "intentional objects" actually play two roles
in intentionality. Because object-theories assume that intention is a relation
of the ordinary sort between a person and an object intended, they appeal to
assumed peculiarities in the objects that acts intend in order to account for
the peculiarities of intentional phenomena. Within these theories, then,
intentional objects are the objects toward which acts are directed, and they
are also entities that account for the peculiarities of intention itself. Hence,
we can distinguish another sense of 'intentional object', associated with the
second of these roles rather than the first: an intentional object is an entity,
correlated in some way with an act, in virtue of which the act is intentional.
The intentional object of an act, in this sense, need not be assumed to be
the same entity as that toward which the act is directed - although, as we
have seen, object-theories make just that identification. We shall find that
HusserI often uses the term 'intentional object' in this third sense, to mean
whatever entity it is that makes an act intentional, while at the same time
he rejects the identification of that entity with the object intended in the act
(cf. Chapter III). And we shall see that ultimately he takes that entity - and
not the object intended - to be also intentional in ontological kind; indeed,
he takes it to be an intensional entity, a sense (cf. Chapter IV).
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 47

There are, then, at least three different notions of ''intentional object".

By an "intentional object" one might mean: (1) an entity of the ontological
type or status we characterized broadly above; (2) an intended object, what-
ever its ontological type or status might be; or (3) an entity by virtue of
which an act is intentional, whatever the ontological type or status of that
entity might be and whatever further role it might play in the act. These
notions need be kept distinct, for it is by no means obvious that an entity
that is ''intentional'' in some one of these senses is ''intentional'' in either of
the other two. What is distinctive about object-theories of intentionality is
that they require the very same entities to be ''intentional'' in all three senses:
according to these theories, it is because the object intended in an act is
peculiarly intentional in kind that acts exhibit the features characteristic of
intentional phenomena.

2. OBJECT-THEORIES OF INTENTIONALITY

The object-approach to intentionality has spawned various theories of inten-

tionality differing from one another primarily in the specific kinds of entities
proposed as objects of consciousness. We now proceed to discuss three of the
most prominent of these theories: Brentano's early theory of ''intentionally
inexistent" entities, Meinong's theory of objects "beyond Being", and
Brentano's later theory of "fictions" (which is ultimately an abandonment
of the object-approach). Although these theories are largely motivated by
the problem of acts whose apparent objects fail to exist, we shall try to show
how problems related to the conception-<iependence of intention would also
be handled within such theories. Any adequate theory of intentionality must,
of course, account for both the existence-independence and the conception-
dependence of intention.

2.1. Mind-Dependent Entities as Objects of Intention: An Interpretation of

Brentano's Early Theory
Brentano's initial statement of what has become known as his ''thesis of
intentionality" seems clearly to suggest an "object-theory" of intentionality,
with intentional phenomena directed not toward "things" (Realia, i.e., con-
crete individuals) but toward objects having a peculiar sort of ''intentional
(or mental) inexistence".3 Brentano seems to have held that the objects of
intention are mental entities, "existing in" and dependent on the acts that
intend them. In his later writings Brentano rejected this interpretation of his
48 CHAPTER II

doctrine of "intentional inexistence", but it will nonetheless be instructive

to develop the interpretation and to see what he finds objectionable about it.
Brentano's famous statement of his thesis occurs in his Psychology from
an Empirical Standpoint, first published in 1874:

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages
called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call,
though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object
(which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every
mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself .... 4

The passage suggests several things: that the intentionality of an act consists
in its directedness toward an object; that every act must have an object toward
which it is directed (''include something as object") in order to be intentional;
and that these objects, toward which acts are directed and without which
they would not be intentional, are not ordinary "things" but ''immanent''
objects, having ''intentional (or mental) inexistence" within the mental phe-
nomena that are directed toward them. Thus, it seems that Brentano's theory
is an object-theory and that his specific version takes the objects of conscious-
ness to be mind-dependent entities, immanent entities "existing in" the
events of consciousness in which they are intended.
The interpretation of Brentano's theory as a theory in which the objects
of intention are mind-dependent entities is strongly reinforced by a later
discussion, in which Brentano compares the ontological status of an actually
existing entity A with an ''A which is contemplated or thOUght about":

It is just as true that this A is a contemplated A [ein gedach tes A I as it is that this A is
an actual A, existing in reality. A can cease to be actual and yet continue to be thought
about - so long as the thinking person does in fact think about it. And conversely it
can cease to be thought about - if the person stops thinking about it - and yet continue
to be actual.
In contrasting the A which is contemplated or thought about with the A which is
actual, are we saying that the contemplated A is itself nothing actual or true? By no
means! The contemplated A can be something actual and true without being an actual
A.1t is an actual contemplated A .... 5

Here Brentano is saying that the entity one contemplates or thinks about -
that is, apparently, the object of one's act of contemplating or thinking - has
an ontological status in its own right. Even if a corresponding actual entity
exists in objective reality, this immanent entity that is intended is a different
entity and independent of it. But "the A which is contemplated or thOUght
about", though it is "something actual and true", is not independent of the
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 49

person who contemplates or thinks about it. In the next paragraph Brentano
goes on to say:

There cannot be anyone who contemplates an A unless there is a contemplated A; and

conversely .... The two concepts are not identical, but they are correlative .... The
second is the concept of a being which is only a sort of accompaniment to the first;
when the first thing comes into being, and when it ceases to be, then so too does the
second.

For the purposes of a theory of intentional objects as mind-dependent

entities, one might take an "immanent objectivity" to be a psychological
event or state peculiar to a person at a time (or over a period of time). Such a
mental entity would be literally a constituent of an act of intending an object
and, for that reason, its existence would be dependent on the occurrence of
the act. It would also, for the same reason, be a completely "private" entity,
capable of being intended only on one particular occasion by the one partic-
ular person in whose consciousness it exists. Alternatively, one might construe
a mental entity as an intersubjectively shareable entity produced by qualita-
tively similar acts of consciousness (e.g., a "type" of which particular acts
are the "tokens"). However the details of such a theory get worked out, its
crucial features are summarized in Brentano's own words: "There cannot be
anyone who contemplates an A unless there is a contemplated A; and con-
versely". In saying that "there cannot be anyone who contemplates an A
unless there is a contemplated A ", Brentano embraces one of the basic tenets
of the object-approach to intentionality: there can be no intention without
an intended object. And in affirming the converse - that there can be no
contemplated A unless someone contemplates an A - Brentano asserts the
mind-dependence of these intended objects: there are no objects of intention
apart from their being intended.
As we have interpreted the passages we have been examining, Brentano
understands "intentionally inexisting" objects to be mind-dependent entities
in some rather strong sense, and he takes these mental objects to be the in-
tended objects, i.e., the objects toward which intentional phenomena are
directed. Both these points of interpretation receive some interesting col-
lateral support from what Brentano says about the objects of perception in
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.6 Brentano claims that we do not
perceive physical objects themselves or the qualities that (according to natural
science) they actually possess; rather, the objects of "external perception"
are qualities as sensed - what Brentano calls "physical phenomena", such as
"a color, a figure ... which I see, a chord which I hear, warmth, cold, odor
50 CHAPTER II

which I sense".7 Now, in contrast with physical objects, which we presume to

exist "truly" and "in reality" (p. 19), Brentano says that "color, sound, and
warmth have only a phenomenal and intentional existence" (p. 93) and that
"we will ... make no mistake if in general we deny to physical phenomena
any existence other than intentional existence" (p. 94). So the view Brentano
takes here on perception is just a more particular version of the view we have
attributed him on intentionality generally: the objects of perceptual inten-
tions are not physical "things" but physical "phenomena", mental entities
that are a part of and eXistentially dependent on a subject's consciousness of
them. 8 Brentano says explicitly:

We have no right, therefore, to believe that the objects of so-called external perception
really exist as they appear to us. Indeed, they demonstrably do not exist outside of us.
In contrast to that which really and truly exists, they are mere phenomena. (P. 10.)

The entities Brentano introduces into this early account of intentionality,

as we have interpreted it, are "intentional objects" in all the relevant senses:
they belong to an appropriate ontological category distinct from that of
ordinary existents; they are the objects toward which acts are directed; and,
we may suppose, Brentano's purpose in introducing them is to account for
and explain the distinctive characteristics of mental phenomena that con-
stitute their being intentional. Indeed, a theory that takes the objects of acts
to be mental entities does provide one sort of explanation of the main pecu-
liarities of intentional relations.
The theory explains the existence-independence of intention without
abandoning the view that intentional phenomena unfailingly have objects
toward which they are directed. On Brentano's early theory, existence-inde-
pendence does not show that the objects of intentional relations need not
exist, but only that they may be immanent entities rather than individual
things of the sort that exist in extra-mental reality. 9 The non-existence of the
woman of Smith's dreams notwithstanding, Smith's desire for her then has
an object - albeit an entity that is only the product of his own imagination.
The conception-dependence of intention is explained in a similar way.
Although Smith's next-door neighbor and the man from whom Smith receives
threatening phone calls are the same objective entity, we may suppose that
Smith's conception of his neighbor and his conception of the caller are dis-
tinct mental entities (assuming they are in some sense mental). If an act's
intentionality consists in its relation to an immanent object, then Smith's
act of fearing the threatening phone caller and his act of fearing his neighbor
can be taken to be directed to these distinct mental entities rather than to
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 51

the man himself. Then these acts will not intend the same object and, for that
reason, they will be different acts. Similarly, taking the conception involved
in an intention to be itself the object of the intention will provide objects
for acts that are "indefmitely directed" (cf. Chapter I, Section 2.6). We noted
earlier that Sherlock's de dicto belief that the murderer used belladonna,
where Sherlock fails to have a conception of the identity of the murderer,
does not seem to be "about" any particular actual individual (cf. Chapter I,
Sections 3.4 and 3.5). Nonetheless, if intention is again taken to be a relation
to an immanent entity, then even this act can be given an object: namely,
Sherlock's "incomplete" and ''indefinite'' conception of "the murderer,
whoever he is''.lO
It seems, then, that a theory taking mind-dependent entities as the objects
of consciousness does meet with some success - at least insofar as its goal is
to construe every instance of intentionality as a relation to an object.

2.2. Problems with Mind-Dependent Entities as Objects of Intention

Despite whatever success the object-theory we have attributed Brentano
might have in finding solutions to the problems of intentionality, in his later
writings Brentano himself emphatically rejects it. One reason for his doing so
is bas~d on an admitted change in his metaphysical views: he comes to believe
that there are no entities other than concrete individuals (Realia, things) and,
hence, he denies that there are any entities, mental or otherwise, having a
peculiarly "intentional" mode of existence. Consequently, a major change in
his account of intentionality, Brentano writes in 1911, is "that I am no longer
of the opinion that a mental relation can have something other than a thing
[ReaZes] as its object".ll We shall examine in Section 2.4 below the new
account of intentionality that emerges with this change in metaphysical view.
But independently of it, Brentano rejects as ''foolishness'' the object-theory
we have attributed him and claims that it is not even a correct interpretation
of his earlier words on intentionality. His reason for objecting to this inter-
pretation has to do not with the ontological status of intentional objects but
rather with their supposed role in intentionality: even if there are peculiarly
mental entities that are brought into existence in acts of consciousness, these
entities are not the objects toward which acts are usually directed. Brentano
says:

... That which is thought ... is the object of our thoughts - in the one case, horse; in
another, that which is coloured; in another, the soul, and so on. But the term 'horse'
does not signify "contemplated horse", or "horse which is thought about", the term
52 CHAPTER II

'coloured' does not signify "coloured thing which is thought about", and the term 'soul'
does not signify "soul which is thought about". For otherwise one who affirmed or
accepted a horse would be afflllning or accepting, not a horse, but a "contemplated
horse", ... and this is certainly false.l 2

While a theory of mind-dependent entities as objects of intention does

succeed in giving every act an object, its major failure as a theory of inten-
tionality is that in most cases it gives acts the wrong objects. As Chisholm has
deftly observed, entities peculiarly mental or in the mind cannot adequately
serve as objects of our usual acts; he says of Brentano's early theory, inter-
preted as a theory of mind-dependent objects of intention:

Whether or not there are honest men, Diogenes in his quest was looking for an actual
honest man, not for an intentionally inexisting honest man. If the doctrine of inten-
tional inexistence is true, the very fact that Diogenes was looking for an honest man
implies that he already had the immanent object; hence it could not be the object of
his quest. 13

There may be acts that are directed to mental entities, but such acts are not
among our more frequent and ordinary intentions.
Indeed, as Chisholm's example suggests, even where the requisite ordinary
existent to which an act would seem to be directed fails to exist a mental
entity does not adequately substitute for it. Smith's desire for the woman
of his dreams, even if she does not exist, is not accurately characterized as
directed toward a mental entity: Smith's desire is not for some idea or fig-
ment of his imagination, but for another human being with whom his rela-
tionship need not be purely Platonic. And suppose Smith's dreams come
true: Brentano himself says of promising what also applies to desiring and
wishing, viz., that "it is paradoxical in the extreme to say that a man prom-
ises to marry an ens rationis and fulfills his promise by marrying a real per-
son ... ".14
An appeal to mental entities as the objects of acts also fails to give a
correct account of conception-dependence and of acts that are indefmitely
directed. No matter how "incomplete" or "inadequate" Smith's conception
of the mysterious phone caller may be, it seems clear that the object of
Smith's fear is an entity all too "actual" and "real". Similarly, Sherlock's
indefmite, or de dicto, belief that the murderer (whoever he is) used bella-
donna - if properly "about" any entity at aU - is not about a mental object
but a concrete individual, no less objectively real than the poison he used.
And consider Brentano's example of a promise to marry: even if rendered in-
defmite, or de dicto, as a promise (made to one's parents) to marry someone,
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 53

someday, it can be kept only by going to the altar with some particular and
actual person.
We conclude that even the cases that should be most favorable to a theory
of mental entities as objects of intention - the cases in which it is most dif-
ficult to find appropriate ordinary existents to which acts can be said to be
directed - tum out to be quite implausibly characterized as directed toward
mental entities. If invoking such entities as the objects of acts does not pro-
vide acceptable solutions to these problem cases, then there is little motiva-
tion for invoking them in more ordinary cases, such as veridical perception
and defmite, or de re, belief. What is needed, it seems, is some solution to
the problems of intentionality that will not construe all our intentions as
relations only to the contents of our own minds.
In defending his original formulation of the thesis of intentionality against
an interpretation that elicits all these difficulties, Brentano says that it was
never intended as the claim that acts are directed toward mind-dependent
entities. 'The misinterpretation that leads to that supposed claim, he says,
concerns his use of the term 'immanent'. He now tells us that by an act's
immanent (or intentionally inexisting) object he did mean the object that
is intended in the act but did not mean that this object is a mental entity
created in the act. His purpose in calling it "immanent" was only to avoid
the suggestion that what is intended must in every case exist.
When I spoke of "immanent object", I used the qualification "immanent" in order to
avoid misunderstandings, since many use the unqualified term 'object' to refer to that
which is outside the mind. But by an object of a thought I meant what it is that the
thought is about, whether or not there is anything outside the mind corresponding to
the thought.
It has never been my view that the immanent object [i.e., the object intended] is
identical with "object of thought" (rorgestelltes Objekt). What we think about is the
object or thing and not the "object of thought". If, in our thought, we contemplate a
horse, our thought has as its immanent object - not a "contemplated horse", but a
horse. And strictly speaking only the horse - not the "contemplated horse" can be
called an object.
But the object need not exist. The person thinking may have something as the object
of his thought even though that thing does not exist.! 5

Brentano's clarification of his thesis of intentionality, even if it rescues the

thesis from apparent absurdities, is nonetheless disappointing. For it seems
that Brentano's doctrine of the immanent or intentional inexistence of the
objects of acts is not a theory of intentionality at all. If we accept his clarifi-
cation as definitive, the doctrine is not an explanation but only a recognition
of the existence-independence of intentional relations. Perhaps, then, there is
54 CHAPTER II

much less foolishness in Brentano's early view than there is in the interpreta-
tion of it as a theory of mind-dependent intentional objects; but if so, it is
because there is simply much less to the view than one would like to find
there.
2.3. Intentional Objects as "Objects Beyond Being": Meinong's Theory of
Objects
Alexius Meinong, who was a student of Brentano's, proposes an object-theory
of intentionality that avoids the specific objections we have raised above
against theories of mind-dependent objects of intention. Meinong (apparently
following Kasimir Twardowski) makes the absolutely crucial distinction
between what is "in the mind" in intention and what is intended. (On
Twardowski's distinction, see Chapter III, Section 2.1, below.) The former
he calls the "content" (Inhalt) of an intentional experience, the latter, the
"object" .16 Thus, Meinong avoids the problem of confusing the object
intended in an act, which is in typical cases an entity "external" to the act,
with any mental phenomena that are produced in or parts of the act. But
although for Meinong the objects of consciousness are generally not mental
entities literally in the mind, they turn out nonetheless to be entities of a
rather odd sort. Their peculiarities are due to the fact that Meinong does not
abandon the object-approach to intentionality: though distinguishing content
and object, Meinong continues to account for the peculiarities of intention
in terms of the objects intended.
like Brentano, Meinong considers the intentionality of acts to consist in
their being related, in the ordinary sense, to objects. And he follows Brentano
in taking the existence-independence of intentional relations to indicate that
the objects of these relations are themselves independent of ordinary exist-
ence: an object need not exist, in the ordinary sense, in order to be intended,
to be an object of consciousness. But Meinong's explanation of this existence-
independence differs from that of the ''mental object" theory we fust at-
tributed Brentano. It is not, as that theory would have it, that the objects
of consciousness must have a sort of existence (or "being") - such as mental
''inexistence'', existence in the mind - different from the existence of
ordinary entities. It is rather, Meinong says, that the objects of consciousness
are "ausserseiend", or "beyond being"; that is, they are independent of being
of any and every sort. 17
Meinong does hold that there are different senses or species of "being".
Concrete, physical individuals may "exist", he says, while abstract individuals
and also facts or states of affairs (which he calls "objectives") may "subsist";
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 55

Meinong calls all these types of entities "objects". But acts may be directed
to objects that do not have being in either of these senses (much less, we may
infer, mental "inexistence"). Pegasus, the largest prime number, and the
earth's being flat are all objects that acts may intend. Yet, these entities do
not exist, as does Secretariat, nor do they subsist, as do the number two and
the earth's being round. And Meinong argues that nothing is to be gained by
assuming that these objects have some third sort of being. 18 Rather, he
concludes, being an object of consciousness simply does not entail having
being. Nor, of course, does it entail having non-being. The realm of "objects"
includes everything to which acts of consciousness may be directed. And
every object, as a matter of fact, either has being (exists or subsists) or has
non-being (neither exists nor subsists). Its status qua object, however, is
independent of its being or non-being. Meinong says:
Those who like paradoxical modes of expression could very well say: "There are objects
of which it is true that there are no such objects". 19
The Object as such ... stands "beyond being and non-being". This may also be
expressed in the following less engaging and also less pretentious way, which is in my
opinion, however, a more appropriate one: The Object is by nature indifferent to being
[ausserseiendl, although at least one of its Objectives of being, the Object's being or
non-being, subsists. 2o

Thus, Meinong solves the problem of existence-independence by extending

the realm of objects to embrace the non-existent (and non-subsistent) as well
as the existent (and subsistent). On Meinong's view, Pegasus, the largest prime
number, the earth's being flat, and the woman of Smith's dreams are all
objects and may be intended; yet, none of them, it so happens, either exists
or subsists or has any other sort of being. To be or not to be, that is not the
question: the question of whether an object has being is an issue beyond
questions about which object it is and what its characteristics are.
Insofar as Meinong's objects are "indifferent" to being, they are not so
different from the "possible" entities assumed in more recent work on the
semantics of modality (cf. Chapters VI and VII below). (But Meinong also
assumed impossible objects.) However, Meinong's objects may not only fail
to exist or subsist; Meinong also holds that some of them are "incomplete"
entities. Smith's act of conceiving a golden mountain is different from his act
of conceiving a snow-capped golden mountain. The difference, according to
Meinong, lies in the objects conceived: the second object has a property, that
of being snow-capped, that the first does not. But Smith's conceiving a golden
mountain is also different from his conceiving a golden mountain that is not
snow-capped, and again - according to Meinong - the difference is that the
56 CHAPTER II

latter object has a property, that of not being snow-capped, that the former
does not. Consequently, when Smith conceives a golden mountain he is
conceiving an object that has neither the property of being snow-capped nor
the property of not being snow-capped. By repetition of the argument, one
can conclude that the object of Smith's act of conceiving a golden mountain
has only the properties of being golden and being a mountain; for every other
property, this object neither has nor does not have the property. Such objects,
Meinong says, are "incompletely determined" or "incomplete" objects.21
An incomplete object never exists or has being in its own right, Meinong
holds, although it may have a derived sort of existence by being "embedded
(implektiert) in" existing complete objects: if the properties of an incomplete
object are shared by one or more existing complete objects, then, Meinong
says, the incomplete object exists "embeddedly" in those complete objects.22
The Meinongian argument for incomplete objects is the key to a Meinong-
ian treatment of conception-dependence, though Meinong seems not to
address that topic explicitly. Meinong holds that all objects that actually
exist (or subsist) are complete objects but that, due to the finite capacities
of the human mind, we can never conceive any such complete object. Acts of
intending complete, existent objects are, strictly speaking, directed to incom-
plete objects that stand proxy for them. When Smith conceives Napoleon, for
example, he cannot conceive Napoleon in all his detail; rather, he conceives
only an incomplete object, e.g., "the vanquished at Waterloo". Smith intends
Napoleon, not in the sense that Napoleon is the object of his intention, but in
the secondary, or indirect, sense that what he does intend - viz., the incom-
plete object "the vanquished at Waterloo" - is "embedded in" the complete
object Napoleon (that is, the properties of this directly intended incomplete
object are properties shared by exactly one existent complete object, namely,
Napoleon). Similarly, what Smith conceives as "the victor at Jena" is also an
incomplete object, and although it, too, is "embedded in" Napoleon it is
distinct from both the incomplete object "the vanquished at Waterloo" and
the complete object Napoleon. According to Meinong's views, then, acts in
which Smith conceives Napoleon as the vanquished at Waterloo and acts in
which he conceives Napoleon as the victor at Jena - both of which can be
said to be acts of intending Napoleon - are in fact directed to distinct (in-
complete) objects and, for that reason, are distinct intentions. 23
There is perhaps some plausibility in the view that acts directed toward
such objects as the woman of one's dreams or a golden mountain have objects
that are non-existent and incomplete. But we have seen that Meinong's claims
do not stop with these cases. Because intention is conception-dependent, and
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 57

because our conceptions are always limited in what they can include concern-
ing ordinary objects, Meinong's object-approach to intentionality forces the
conclusion that the objects ( directly) intended in even our most commonplace
acts are not ordinary, complete existents. The objects of all our intentions
are "indifferent to being", they vary with different conceptions of ordinary
objects, and they are "incomplete": they are, in short, "intentional objects"
par excellence. 24 That Meinong's "objects" deserve to be afforded any legiti-
mate ontological status is not obvious;2s and that they, and only they, are
the objects of consciousness is hardly more plausible than the claim that all
our acts are directed toward the creations of our own minds.

2.4. Intentional Objects as "Fictions": Brentano's Later Theory

In Brentano's later discussions of intentionality, his main concern is to give
an account of "mental reference" (as he calls it) that will square with a
conservative ontology. Brentano adopts the view that there is but one legiti-
mate ontological category, namely, that of "Realia" or "things", comprising
only concrete individuals. "There cannot be anything at all other than sub-
stantive objects", Brentano says, "and the same unitary concept of a thing, as
the most general concept of all, comprehends everything which is truly an
object".26 With this view, Brentano denies the existence of such abstract
entities as universals, propositions, and Meinongian "objectives", as well as
"objects of thought" (what we have called "intentional objects") of every
sort. Brentano treats all these ''non-things'' as "fictions resulting from an
improper understanding of the multiplicity of linguistic forms which we
happen to have".27 His general way of dispensing with ontological commit-
ments to such entities is to translate any sentence containing a term that
seems to refer to such an entity into an equivalent sentence containing no
such referring term. For example, he says, "'There is the being of A' and
'There is the non-being of A', respectively, should be reduced to 'A exists'
and 'A does not exist' ".28 It is by applying this technique of logical recon-
struction, or paraphraSing, to attributions of intention that Brentano hopes
to show that objects of a special sort need not be invoked as the objects of
acts.
Brentano reiterates his thesis of intentionality as follows: "What is charac-
teristic of every mental activity is, as I believe I have shown, the reference
to something as an object. In this respect, every mental activity seems to
be something relational."29 Brentano's task is to explicate this notion of
"reference to something as an object" without appealing to entities that are
not ordinary individuals. What Brentano in fact concludes, however, is that
58 CHAPTER II

consciousness is only apparently relational and that the "something as ob-

ject" in terms of which "mental reference" is dermed is itself a linguistic
"fiction" .
In order to see at least some of the reasoning that leads Brentano effec-
tively to deny any ontological commitment to objects of consciousness, let
us consider again the problem of existence-independence. If Smith judges
that Pegasus does not exist, then what is the "something as object" to which
his act makes a ''reference''? Brentano, we know, now rejects the invocation
of abstract entities, such as the proposition or "truth" that Pegasus does not
exist or the Meinongian "objective", the non-existence of Pegasus. 30 Some
of the sentences one might use to describe Smith's act (e.g., 'Smith judges
that Pegasus does not exist' or 'Smith affirms the non-existence of Pegasus')
contain expressions ('that Pegasus does not exist', 'the non-existence of
Pegasus') that seem to refer to such abstract entities. But, according to
Brentano, these sentences can all be translated into some equivalent sentence
- say, 'Smith rejects Pegasus' - in which no names of "non-things" occur:
'Smith rejects Pegasus' attributes to Smith a "mental reference" to an in-
dividual ''thing'', namely, Pegasus. 31 But, of course, there is a problem for
Brentano here: if 'Pegasus' is not the name of a "non-thing", then there is
no existing entity to which it refers. And, furthermore, Brentano refuses to
sanction non-existing entities of any sort: he rejects the view that entities may
have "being" without existing in the ordinary sense,32 as well as Meinong's
claim that an entity need not have ''being'' in any sense in order to belong to
the realm of "objects";33 and, as we saw earlier, he denies that entities pecul-
iarly ''in the mind" are the objects toward which such acts are directed. 34
But, then, to what are we referring when we say that Pegasus is the object of
Smith's intention? Brentano's answer is emphatic: we are not referring to any
entity at all other than Smith. He says: "If someone thinks of something, the
one who is thinking must certainly exist, but the object of his thinking need
not exist at all .... So the only thing which is required by mental reference
is the person thinking".3s
Brentano concludes that intentions may be of or about things that have
no existential or ontolOgical status whatsoever. But what thus begins as the
comparatively modest proposal that a special category of intentional objects
ought not be invoked as the objects of these intentions now seems to become
for Brentano the much more radical claim that intention never actually relates
persons to objects of any sort. In a passage that Chisholm has cited from
Brentano's Kategorieniehre Brentano says that the notion of an "object of
thought" is, in every case, a ''fiction'':
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 59

Instead of saying that a person is thinking about a thing, one may also say that there is
something which is the object of his thought. But this is not the strict or proper sense
of is. For the thinker may in fact deny that there is any such object as the object he is
thinking about. Moreover, one can think about what is contradictory, but nothing that
is .;:ontradictory can possibly be said to be. We said above that roundness cannot be said
to be, in the strict and proper sense of the term; that which is round, but not roundness,
may be said to be. And so too, in the present case. What there is in the strict and proper
sense is not the round thing that is thought about; what there is is the person who is
thinking about it. The thing "as object of thought" is a fiction .... What we say can be
expressed in such a way that we do refer to a being in the strict sense of the term -
namely, the thinker who has the thought. And what holds generally for that which is
thought about also holds more particularly, for that which is accepted, that which is
rejected, that which is loved, that which is hated, that which is hoped for, that which is
feared, that which is willed, and so on. 36

In general, according to Brentano, a "fiction" (or, we might say, an in-

stance of fictitious reference) arises when the logical form of a sentence fails
to match its grammatical form, especially when an expression that functions
grammatically as a name has some quite different logical or semantic role. 37
Accordingly, when Brentano says that "objects of thOUght" are fictions, he
seems to mean that when an expression occurs in the "object"-position in an
act-sentence (and thus seems to refer to an object of intention), it does not
there actually refer to any entity at all - even if the expression is used as a
referring expression in other contexts and if what it refers to in those other
contexts is an existing "thing". Brentano says:

When we say that a man is thought of, 'man' no longer refers to a real entity and no
longer refers to anything in and of itself. What is involved is a thought-of man and if he
is affirmed, what is really being affirmed is only someone who is thinking of him .... 38

Chisholm's account of Brentano's later theory of intentionality provides a

helpful way of understanding Brentano's meaning here. 39 In an act-sentence
such as 'Smith is thinking of a man' (read the sentence as meaning that Smith
is thinking of one particular man), 'man' is not to be understood as having an
autonomous semantic function (it does not refer "in and of itself"). Rather,
'man' here functions "synsemantically", or "syncategorematically", as an
inseparable part of an unanalyzable predicate 'is thinking of a man'. The se-
mantic function of this predicate is not to refer to or to characterize an object
of Smith's thought but to characterize the only entity that is actually referred
to in the sentence, namely, Smith. In the spirit of Brentano's method of ex-
posing fictitious reference by logical reconstruction, Chisholm suggests that
Brentano's proposal might be made explicit by translating such apparently
60 CHAPTER II

relational constructions as 'Smith is thinking of a man' or 'Smith rejects

Pegasus' into non-relational forms, such as 'Smith is-thinking-of-a-man' or
'Smith is a Pegasus-rejector'. In this way, the notion of an "object of thought"
(or an object of intention) is itself exposed as only a convenient linguistic
fiction, fostered by the apparently (but only apparently) relational gramma-
tical form that act-sentences ordinarily take.
As the notiol). of "objects of thought" becomes a fiction, so, too, does
the notion of intention as ''reference to something as an object". And so
Brentano himself concludes that intention is not a relation, in the ordinary
sense, but only "quasi-relational" or "relation-like" ("ReZativliches"): 40 act-
sentences have the surface grammatical form of relational statements, but
acts themselves involve no relation to any entity at all.
We might note that more recent philosophers have offered proposals similar
to Brentano's. W. V. Quine, for example, maintains that terms in act-contexts
(and intensional contexts generally) are often used "non-referentially". Ac-
cording to Quine, a term that is used in ordinary (Le., extensional) contexts
to refer to an object may, when used in an act-context, fail to refer to any
object at all; and an act-sentence will in that case not assert a relation to the
entity that the term ordinarily names. 41 Anscombe, too, seems to reach a
similar position with her assessment of the intentionality of perception as a
"grammatical" feature. 42
Brentano's theory of intentional objects as fictions is interesting, for it
illustrates what can happen to intentionality theory if the assumptions under-
lying the object-approach are combined with a substantial degree of ontologi-
cal conservatism. Object-theories treat intention as though it were a relation
of the ordinary sort, only to fmd that they must then deny that it is a relation
to ordinary entities. Their usual move is to posit other, peculiarly "inten-
tional", entities for acts to be directed toward. But Brentano's theory of
fictions suggests another alternative: avoid postulating such intentional ob-
jects by simply denying that acts of consciousness involve a relation to any
objects at all. The ''solution'' that this alternative provides to the problems
of intentionality is, however, disastrous for intentionality theory based on
the object-approach: it declares the phenomenon of intention along with its
attendant peculiarities to be only illusory. For if, as object-theories maintain,
the intentionality of an act is the act's relation to an object and if, as Brentano
now maintains, this relation is only apparent, then intentionality is itself only
a "fiction".
It seems that Brentano himself does not take the step that would eliminate
intentionality altogether but, rather, abandons the object-approach by fmally
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 61

adopting the view that intention is a non-relational, but nonetheless genuine,

characteristic of consciousness. 43 If so, Brentano avoids both the alternatives
available to object-theories, neither embracing unusual intentional objects as
the entities toward which acts are directed nor abandoning intentionality
theory as a spurious enterprise. But all these ways of dealing with the prob-
lems of intentionality, including Brentano's, exact the same major price -
the price of severing, in one way or another, all our intentional relations to
ordinary entities. We shall have to see whether Husserl's rather different
analysis, which turns its attention to the relation of intending itself rather
than to its objects, can fare better.

3. FREGE'S APPROACH TO MEANING, REFERENCE, AND THE

PROBLEMS OF INTENSIONALITY

In this part of the chapter we turn once again to semantic issues and to the
semantic problems that constitute the "intensionality" of act-sentences -
sentences of propositional attitude, in particular. Our purpose is to glean
from Frege's semantics some insights that we will later see put to work in
Husserl's theory of intentionality. Of particular interest are Frege's concep-
tion of meaning, or sense, the role of meanings in his theory of reference
generally, and his appeal to these entities in explaining the problems created
by certain intentional contexts. We will be especially concerned, ultimately, to
see what place might be found for these entities in a theory of intentionality.

3.1. Parallels Between Frege's Semantics of Act-Sentences and the Object-

Approach to Intentionality
In Chapter I we suggested that there are close connections between the
ontological properties that constitute the intentionality of acts and the logical
and seman tical properties that constitute the intensionality of act-sentences.
Basically, we urged, the conception-dependence and existence-independence
of intention are reflected in language as failures in act-contexts of the basic
principles of extensionality, i.e., the principles of substitutivity of identity
and existential generalization. And the distinction between definite and in-
defmite intentions, we noted, also has its semantic counterpart in the distinc-
tion between de re and de dicta intentional modalities. Given the connections
between the problems of intentionality and intensionality, it is interesting to
find that proposed solutions to these different problems have often proceeded
along quite similar lines. Specifically, the Fregean approach to intensionality
- the approach that originates with Gottlob Frege's analysis of sentences of
62 CHAPTER II

propositional attitude - parallels an object-approach to intentionality in

interesting ways.
The main feature of object-theories of intentionality, we said, is that they
avoid treating intentional relations as metaphysically anomalous. They assume
that these relations obey the same general principles that apply to ordinary
relations and, hence, that intention must be understood in such a way that
intentional relations are not really, as they seem, conception-dependent and
existence-independent with respect to their objects. Frege approaches the
problems of intensionality in a similar way by avoiding treating act-contexts
as semantically anomalous. He assumes that act-contexts obey the same gen-
eral principles that apply to extensional contexts and, hence, that act-contexts
must be understood in such a way that the principles of substitutivity of
identity and existential generalization will not fail for referring expressions
in these contexts. Now, we saw that object-theories of intentionality, in order
to preserve their basic assumption about intentional relations, conclude that
the objects of these relations are not the entities they at first appear to be;
these theories then posit entities of some other sort as the objects of inten-
tion, so that with respect to these objects intentional relations will not have
the peculiarities they otherwise seem to exhibit. And the attempt to preserve
the principles of extensionality for act-contexts leads to a similar result. Frege
and his followers conclude that expressions in act-contexts do not have their
ordinary extensions - that singular terms, for example, in such contexts do
not refer to the individuals to which they customarily (i.e., when in exten-
sional contexts) refer. The Fregean move is then to propose entities of another
sort as objects of reference in intensional contexts, so that with respect to
these referents substitutivity of identity and existential generalization will
not fail.
Consider in this light the principle of substitutivity of identity. Although
in extensional contexts 'the vanquished at Waterloo' and 'the victor at Jena'
both refer to Napoleon, so that
(1) The vanquished at Waterloo = the victor at Jena
is true, we know that the truth of
(2) Smith believes that the vanquished at Waterloo died in exile
is compatible with the falsity of
(3) Smith believes that the victor at Jena died in exile.
It is quite tempting to say, then, as Frege did, that in sentences such as (2)
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 63

and (3) singular terms like 'the vanquished at Waterloo' and 'the victor at
Jena' refer to different entities despite their being co-referential in extensional
contexts. According to the principle of substititivity of identity, if 'the van-
quished at Waterloo' refers to Napoleon in (2) then any other term that also
refers to Napoleon can be substituted for it salva veritate. But since (2) and
(3) can have different truth-values, the principle of substitutivity of identity
can be preserved only if 'the vanquished at Waterloo' in (2) does not refer to
the same entity as that to which 'the victor at Jena' refers in (3) - and in
that case there is no reason to suppose that either of these terms refers to
Napoleon in these contexts. In this way one is led to conclude that (2) and
(3) are not sentences about the man Napoleon at all.
Interestingly, Frege concluded that expressions in act-contexts refer to
their customary senses (the entities that they customarily, when in exten-
sional contexts, express as their meanings) rather than to the entities that are
their customary referents. And Frege conceived the senses of expressions as
abstract entities of a special sort, sometimes called "intensional entities",
differing in ontological type and status from the entities to which words
ordinarily refer.
We turn now to a discussion of Frege's basic distinction between sense and
referent, of the role of senses in Frege's account of linguistic reference, and
of his conception of senses as intensional entities. Afterward, we discuss the
rather different role of these entities in his analysis of act-contexts and the
possible roles this analysis suggests for intensional entities in the theory of
intentionality. We shall find in later chapters that this discussion of Frege
illuminates the role that Husserl finds for senses, or meanings, in his own
account of intentionality.

3.2. Frege's Theory of Meaning and Reference

A fundamental distinction in semantic theory in the Fregean tradition is that
between the intensions, or meanings, and the extensions, or referents, of
linguistic expressions. The distinction, in various forms and under various
titles, has a long history, but the formulation of it that has most influenced
modern-day semantics is Frege's distinction between what he calls "Sinn" and
"Bedeutung".
In his essay, 'On Sense and Reference' (1892), Frege maintains that the
meaningfulness of referring expressions is to be distinguished from their
having reference: an expression is meaningful if and only if it expresses some-
thing as its Sinn; it has reference if and only if it refers to, or stands for,
something as its Bedeutung; and the Sinn of an expression is always distinct
64 CHAPTER II

from its Bedeutung. Thus, the Sinn of an expression is the sense, or meaning,
that it expresses; while the Bedeutung of a singular term is the entity to
which it refers, i.e., its referent. 44 Frege also applies the distinction between
Sinn and Bedeutung to expressions other than singular terms - notably,
predicates and sentences - that are not usually thought of as referring expres-
sions and whose Bedeutungen are not referents in the ordinary sense. Accord-
ing to Frege, the Bedeutung of a one-place predicate is a "concept", the
Bedeutung of a many-place predicate is a "relation", and the Bedeutung of a
sentence is its truth-value. (Frege's "concepts" and "relations" are functions,
whereas more recent writers - e.g., Carnap - usually take the "extensions"
of predicates to be classes. However, the function that for Frege serves as
Bedeutung of a given predicate defines, and is defmed by, the class of entities
of which the predicate is true - Le., its extension in the usual sense.)45 Frege
does not give details about the different kinds of entities that are to serve
as the Sinne of different kinds of expressions, though, as we shall see, he
explicitly takes Sinne of all kinds to be abstract entities. Since 'Sinn' and
'Bedeutung' are technical terms for Frege, we shall freely use them without
translation; but we shall also use the terms 'sense', or 'meaning', and 'referent',
understood in an appropriately technical sense, as English equivalents. (J{e
use 'reference' for the relation of an expression to its Bedeutung, or referent,
but not for the Bedeutung itself.)
Frege's distinction between sense and referent enables him to account for
features of language that elude theories that appeal to objects of reference
alone. For example, if the sense of an expression is identified with its referent,
such expressions as 'Pegasus' and 'the fountain of youth' must be declared
meaningless unless entities of some unusual sort are postulated as their refer-
ents. But according to Frege, such expressions are meaningful if they express
Sinne, even though they have no Bedeutungen at all; for an expression's being
meaningful is not dependent upon there being any entity to which it refers.
The distinction also enables Frege to explain why the use of one expression
rather than another in a sentence may make a difference in the meaning the
sentence expresses, even though both expressions refer to the very same
entity. 'The Evening Star' and 'the Morning Star', for example, have the same
referent, for both refer to the planet Venus. Even so, Frege notes, the sen-
tences 'The Evening Star is a planet with a shorter period of revolution than
the Earth' and 'The Morning Star is a planet with a shorter period of revolu-
tion than the Earth' do not express the same sense; ''for somebody who does
[not] know that the Morning Star is the Evening Star m,ight regard one as
true and the other as false".46 According to Frege, since the Sinn expressed
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 65

by an expression is a distinct entity from its Bedeutung, 'the Evening Star'

and 'the Morning Star' may express different Sinne even though they have
the same Bedeutung; and replacing an expression in a sentence with another
expression having a different Sinn will result in a sentence expressing a differ-
ent Sinn.
Although the Sinn and the Bedeutung of an expression are distinct, Frege
sees an intimate connection between them: the relation of an expression to
its Bedeutung is determined by the expression's Sinn. According to Frege,
sense determines reference. An expression's sense determines just which
entity (if any) the expression refers to: "The regular connexion between a
sign, its sense, and its referent is of such a kind that to the sign there corre-
sponds a definite sense and to that in turn a definite referent ... ".47 To each
sense, then, there corresponds at most one referent; and, so, the referent of
an expression is a function of the sense of the expression. (Of course, as we
have seen, some senses fail to determine any referent at all: "In grasping a
sense", Frege says, "one is not certainly assured of a referent".)48
According to Frege, the sense of an expression determines what its referent
is because the sense contains a "mode of presentation" of the entity referred
to; thus, the sense includes or corresponds to a particular ''way'' of determin-
ing the referent. So each sense, Frege says, "serves to illuminate only a single
aspect of the referent, supposing it to have one".49 Accordingly, different
expressions expressing different senses may refer to the same entity, each
sense determining the same referent by appeal to a different "aspect". The
senses expressed by 'the Evening Star' and 'the Morning Star', for example,
determine the same referent, but one does so by virtue of Venus' appearance
in the evening sky while the other does so by virtue of its appearance in the
morning sky. In this way, expressions may have the very same referent and
yet differ in their reference, i.e., in the relation in which they stand to their
common referent. In his Begriffsschrift Frege says: "Different names for the
same content [referent] are not always just a trivial matter of formulation;
if they go along with different ways of determining the content, they are rel-
evant to the essential nature of the case".50 And in 'On Sense and Reference'
Frege notes that an identity statement, 'a = b', need not be trivially analytic
like 'a = a', provided that "the difference between the signs corresponds to
a difference in the mode of presentation of that which is designated" Y Frege
then says: "What I should like to call the sense of the sign [is that] wherein
the mode of presentation [Art des Gegebenseins] is contained".52 In virtue
of the particular sense it expresses, then, each expression refers to a particular
entity (if it refers at all) and it does so in a particular ''way'', determining
66 CHAPTER II

the entity referred to from one particular aspect, in accordance with a certain
way in which that entity may be presented.
The Sinn of an expression thus plays an important role in the expression's
relation to its Bedeutung. The Sinn is not itself the Bedeutung, it is not the
entity to which the expression refers, but it is an entity by means of which
the expression stands in a given relation of reference to the entity that is its
Bedeutung. In this sense, let us say, the Sinn of an expression mediates the
reference of the expression: an expression refers to its referent in a particular
way via, or in virtue of, the sense it expresses.
The following five theses summarize what we have said about the Fregean
account of the role of sense, or Sinn, in the relation of an expression to its
referent, or Bedeutung: (1) The sense (Sinn) of an expression is always dis-
tinct from its referent (Bedeutung). (2) To each sense there may correspond
at most one referent: the referent of an expression is a function of its sense.
(3) An expression can express a sense, and thus be a meaningful expression,
even though it has no referent. (4) The sense of an expression determines the
way in which the expression refers to its referent. (5) Different senses can
determine the same referent; thus, expressions with different senses can refer
to the same entity.
Frege's semantics of meaning and reference has become the model on
which a general tradition in semantic theory, sometimes called the theory of
"intension and extension", has been based. In this tradition, the extension
of an expression is the entity to which the expression refers, or for which it
stands; the intension of an expression is the meaning expressed, rather than
the entity referred to or stood for, by the expression; and the intension of
an expression is always distinct from its extension. Expressions of different
syntactic kinds (notably, singular terms, predicates, and sentences) are taken
to stand for entities of different kinds as their extensions and also to express
entities of different kinds as their intensions. Semantic theories within this
general tradition sometimes differ in the kinds of entities they postulate as
the extensions and intensions of various expressions, but two fundamental
principles prevail: (1) that the extension of a complex expression is a function
of the extensions of its semantically significant parts, and (2) that the inten-
sion of a complex expression is a function of the intensions of its semantically
significant parts. The first of these principles, called the principle of exten-
sionality, has already played prominently in our discussion of the problems
of intensionality (cf. Chapter I, Section 3.1). An important instance of this
principle is that the extension of a sentence - according to Frege and Carnap,
its truth-value - is a function of the extensions of its (semantically significant)
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 67

parts, of what its parts stand for; thus, the principle of substitutivity of
identity is a direct consequence of the principle of extensionality applied
to sentences and their constituent singular terrns (given, of course, that
'a = b' is true just in case 'a' and 'b' have the same extension, i.e., refer to
the same object), and the principle of existential generalization is also argu-
ably grounded in the principle of extensionality.
Various semantic theories, differing from Frege's in some of their details,
have been developed within this generally Fregean tradition. The most famil-
iar, and perhaps the most ontologically economical, is Carnap's.53 like Frege,
Carnap takes the extension of a sentence (e.g., 'The victor at Jena died in
exile') to be its truth-value and the extension of a singular term (e.g., 'the
victor at Jena') to be the individual object to which the term refers. But the
extension of a predicate (e.g., 'died in exile') Carnap takes to be a class,
namely, the class of entities of which the predicate is true, rather than a
function. The entities Carnap proposes as intensions also seem to be entities
rather different from Frege's Sinne (although, as we noted earlier, Frege does
not actually describe the different sorts of senses expressed by expressions of
different syntactic categories). Carnap takes the intension of a predicate to
be the property associated with it (e.g., the property of having died in exile);
the intension of a singular term to be an "individual concept", i.e., a concept
or meaning that determines an individual rather than a class (e.g., the concept
"the victor at Jena"); and the intenson of a sentence to be a complex entity,
called a "proposition", whose components are the intensions of predicates
and singular terms (e.g., the proposition that the victor at Jena died in exile).
Importantly, Carnap stresses that the notion of intension is "not to be under-
stood in a mental sense, that is, as referring to a process of imagining, think-
ing, conceiving, or the like, but rather to something objective ... ".54 We
shall see that on this point - that intensions, or meanings, are not subjective
entities or events - Carnap is in full agreement with Frege.

3.3. Meanings as Abstract "Intensional Entities"

A crucial ingredient in Frege's theory of meaning and reference is his concep-
tion of senses, or Sinne, as abstract entities. The Sinne of expressions are not
the entities to which those expressions ordinarily refer, and in particular they
are not physical objects, such as planets. But, according to Frege, one should
not conclude that Sinne are therefore "ideas" (Vorstellungen), i.e., subjective
mental entities or events. The Sinn expressed by, say, 'the Evening Star' is
not the material object Venus to which the term refers; but neither is it to
be identified with someone's idea of Venus, if. by an "idea" one means a
68 CHAPTER II

subjective event or content constituent in the psychological state of a person

at a particular time. Frege's main reason for distinguishing Sinne from ideas
or mental entities, in a psychological sense, is that Sinne are objective - i.e.,
intersubjective - entities while ideas are private and idiosyncratic to the
particular person who has them. He says:

The referent and sense of a sign are to be distinguished from the associated idea. If the
referent of a sign is an object perceivable by the senses, my idea of it is an internal image,
arising from memories of sense impressions which I have had and acts, both internal and
external, which I have performed .... The same sense is not always connected, even in
the same man, with the same idea. The idea is subjective: one man's idea is not that of
another .... This constitutes an essential distinction between the idea and the sign's
sense, which may be the common property of many and therefore is not a part or a
mode of the individual mind. For one can hardly deny that mankind has a common store
of thoughts [Gedanken I which is transmitted from one generation to another. 55

In his essay, 'The Thought: A Logical Inquiry', Frege also makes it clear
that the ontological category to which Sinne belong is distinct both from
that of physical objects and from that of subjective ideas. Unlike physical
objects, Sinne do not exist in space and are not perceivable by the senses. And
unlike ideas, they are timeless entities: they are not produced by the psycho-
logical processes through which they are apprehended nor is their existence
dependent on their being present to any mind. Frege says of "thoughts"
(Gedanken), the senses expressed by declarative sentences:

... I can ... recognize the thought, which other people can grasp just as much as I, as
being independent of me .... We are not bearers of thoughts as we are bearers of our
ideas. We do not have a thought as we have, say, a sense-impression, but we also do not
see a thought as we see, say, a star .... In thinking we do not produce thoughts but we
apprehend them. 56

Hence: "The thought belongs neither to my inner world as an idea nor yet
to the outer world of material, perceptible things". 57
It is appropriate to say that Sinne, or senses, as conceived by Frege, are
"intentional objects" in the ontological sense we earlier defined (cf. Section
1.3 above). Frege's Sinne are distinct from the entities to which words
ordinarily refer; and, in particular, as abstract entities they are distinct in
ontological kind from such ordinary objects as trees and planets. Although
Sinne are clearly not mind-dependent for Frege, they are in at least one sense
mind-related entities: each Sinn includes a "mode of presentation" of the
referent it determines, and so determines the referent in a particular "way",
by appeal to a particular aspect or, as could also be said, under a particular
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 69

conception. And Sinne stand in a many-to-one relation to ordinary entities

since, as we have seen, different Sinne may determine the same referent. In
ontological type and status, then, Sinne form a class of intentional objects;
whether they might also be considered "intentional objects" in one or both
of the other senses we defined (in Section 1.3) we shall be discussing shortly,
as we turn to a consideration of the role or roles that such entities might play
in intention.
Abstract entities that play the role of Fregean Sinne in semantic theory are
commonly called intensional entities - the terminology deriving from the
term 'intension', especially as that term has been used by Camap. We noted
that somewhat different entities are chosen to play this role in different
semantic theories, so that the notion of "intension" or ''intensional entity"
- like that of ''intentional object" - does not properly characterize a single
ontological category. We shall mean by 'intensional entities', or 'intensions',
entities that are abstract, that are expressible in language as the meanings of
linguistic expressions, and that play the role in linguistic reference of mediat-
ing the relation of reference that holds between an expression and its referent.
The main focus of our discussion throughout the book will be on a class of
entities that Husseri calls ''noemata'' or "noematic Sinne", and we shall argue
(in Chapter IV) that they are intensional entities in just this sense. These
entities will be the cornerstone of Husseri's theory of intentionality.

3.4. Frege's Semantics for Sentences of Propositional Attitude

In Frege's semantics, intensional entities, or Sinne, ordinarily play the role
of mediating reference. Via the sense it expresses, an expression refers to
some ordinary, non-intensional entity; and it is then that non-intensional
entity that plays the role of referent of the expression. But Frege's account
of sentences of propositional attitude gives intensional entities quite another
role. When an expression occurs within an intentional context such as 'Smith
believes that ___ ', according to Frege, the expression refers not to its
customary referent but to the intensional entity - the Sinn, or sense - that
it customarily expresses. Hence, the sense customarily expressed by an ex-
pression, which ordinarily mediates reference, becomes itself an object of
reference in such intentional contexts.
Frege is led to this conclusion by his adherence to what we have called the
"principle of extensionality", that the extension, or referent, of a complex
expression is a function of the extensions, or referents, of its semantically
significant parts. If this principle is true, and if the referent of a sentence
is its truth-value, then, Frege says, "the truth value of a sentence remains
70 CHAPTER II

unchanged when an expression is replaced by another having the same refer-

ent".S8 However, we know that sentences of propositional attitude present
apparent exceptions to this principle. If 'the vanquished at Waterloo' and 'the
victor at Jena' are taken to have the same referent in light of the truth of

(1) The vanquished at Waterloo = the victor at Jena,

then the principle of extensionality will apparently enable us to infer that

(2) Smith believes that the vanquished at Waterloo died in exile

and
(3) Smith believes that the victor at Jena died in exile

have the same truth-value. But, of course, that conclusion may be false. And
from (say) 'Smith believes that p' we will apparently be able to infer 'Smith
believes that q' provided only that 'q' has the same truth-value as 'p'. S9 But
this inference, too, is clearly unwarranted. The principle of extensionality
thus seems to fail in ''belief''-contexts. According to Frege, however, such
examples do not show that the principle of extensionality fails when applied
to such intentional constructions. Rather, Frege takes these apparent excep-
tions to the principle to show only that an expression need not refer to the
same entity in every context. In particular, Frege concludes, when expressions
occur in such contexts as 'Smith believes that _ _ ' they do not take their
usual referents. Expressions that ordinarily refer to the same entity (such as
'the vanquished at Waterloo' and 'the victor at Jena') may accordingly refer
to different entities when in these intentional contexts, so that the principle
of extensionality will then not sanction their interchange. 60
Given this basic idea, that the extension, or referent, of an expression
may depend on the context in which it occurs, Frege can then appeal to the
principle of extensionality to decide what the referent of an expression is in
a given context: what an expression refers to within the context of a partic-
ular linguistic construction must be that on which the extension, or referent,
of the whole construction depends. In the case of sentences of propositional
attitude, in particular, Frege says, "it is not permissible to replace one expres-
sion in the subordinate clause by another having the same customary referent,
but only by one having the same ... customary sense".61 Hence, Frege claims,
expressions in these intentional contexts refer to the senses they customarily
(i.e., when in non-intensional contexts) express, rather than to the entities
that are customarily their referents. In contexts of this sort, Frege says,
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 71

words do not have their customary referent but designate what is usually their sense ....
We distinguish accordingly the customary from the indirect referent of a word; and its
customary sense from its indirect sense. The indirect referent of a word is accordingly
its customary sense. 62

According to this doctrine of "indirect reference", then, a sentence 'p' within

the context (say) 'Smith believes that p' does not stand for its truth-value;
instead, it stands for its indirect referent, viz., the "thought" (or proposition)
that p, which is customarily expressed as the sense of the sentence. (Frege
says that the indirect sense of the sentence - the sense it expresses when it
stands for its indirect referent - is not the thOUght that p but the sense of
the words 'the thOUght that p'.)63 And a singular term in such a context does
not stand for the individual object to which it customarily refers; instead, it
stands for the sense it customarily expresses.
Frege's doctrine of indirect reference provides solutions to some of the
main problems created by intentional contexts. In particular the first prob-
lem mentioned above, the apparent failure of substitutivity of identity for
singular terms in act-contexts, is easily explained by Frege's theory. The
truth of (1) requires that 'the vanquished at Waterloo' and 'the victor at Jena'
stand for the same customary referent. But, since the relation of senses to
referents is many-to-one, identity of customary referent does not entail
identity of customary sense. 'The vanquished at Waterloo' and 'the victor
at Jena' in fact customarily express different senses, and if it is these cus-
tomary senses that the terms refer to in intentional contexts, then in (2) and
(3) they refer to different entities. And, so, the principle of extensionality·-
and, more specifically, the principle of substitutivity of identity - will not
sanction the substitution of one of these terms for the other in (2) and (3)
on the basis of the truth of (1); nor will it sanction the substitution in such
act-contexts generally of any terms that are, when in extensional contexts,
co-referential but non-synonymous. The second problem we mentioned -
that sentences with the same truth-value are not always substitutable within
belief-contexts salva veritate - is explained in a similar way. Sentences with
the same truth-value often express different thOUghts. So, if sentences in
belief-contexts stand for the thoughts they customarily express rather than
their truth-values, then sentences with the same truth-value may not be
substitutable for one another in these contexts by appeal to the principle
of extensionality.
We noted earlier that the principle of existential generalization, which
holds for extensional contexts, also seems to fail when applied to terms in
act-contexts (cf. Chapter I, Sections 3.3-3.5). One kind of failure of this
72 CHAPTER II

principle occurs when a singular term in an act-context fails to have a cus-

tomary referent. For example, from

(4) Ponce de Leon hoped that the fountain of youth would be found
in Florida
one cannot infer
(5) (3x) (Ponce de Leon hoped that x would be found in Florida),

since there was, and is, no such entity as the fountain of youth (and so though
(4) be true, (5) is not). Now, although Frege himself does not discuss quan-
tifying into intentional constructions, the doctrine of indirect reference does
provide an explanation of this apparent failure of existential generalization.
As we ordinarily understand (5), the fact that there is no fountain of youth
may render (5) false, because there may then be no concrete object at all of
which the formula 'Ponce de Leon hoped that x would be found in Florida'
is true. However, on Frege's analysis of (4), the non-existence of the fountain
of youth is irrelevant to the truth of (4); for in (4) 'the fountain of youth'
refers to its customary sense, and so the truth of (4) depends not on the
customary referent but on the customary sense of 'the fountain of youth'.
And so (5), as we have understood it, cannot be inferred from (4), as Frege
analyzes it, by existential generalization. (Frege's analysis of (4), however,
suggests a modification of our ordinary understanding of (5); we shall return
to this point shortly.)
In our earlier discussion we also found a second kind of failure of existen-
tial generalization on terms in act-contexts (cf. Chapter I, Section 3.4). For
example, we argued, from

(6) Sherlock believes that the murderer used belladonna

one cannot infer
(7) (3x) (Sherlock believes that x used belladonna),

for reasons independent of whether 'the murderer' has a customary referent.

(6), we said, ascribes an "indefinitely" directed, or de dicto, belief that is not
strictly "about" any particular person. But then the formula quantified in
(7), 'Sherlock believes that x used belladonna', may not be true of any con-
crete individual, not even the murderer. (7), as we ordinarily understand it,
will then be false even though (6) is true. Now, Frege's doctrine of indirect
reference also permits an explanation of this second kind of apparent failure
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 73

of existential generalization. For, on Frege's analysis, in (6) 'the murderer'

does not take its customary referent but, rather, refers to its customary sense.
So the formula 'Sherlock believes that x used belladonna' may not - and will
not - be true of any particular concrete individual, not even the murderer.
And so (7), as we ordinarily understand it, cannot be inferred by existential
generalization from (6), as analyzed by Frege.
We might thus see Frege's doctrine of indirect reference as invalidating
existential generalization on terms in intentional constructions. But it is also
possible to draw from Frege's doctrine a rather different conclusion. Frege's
analysis of unquantified act-sentences, such as (4) and (6), strongly suggests
that quantified act-sentences, such as (5) and (7), should be understood in a
different way than we have supposed; and on the modified understanding of
such sentences, existential generalization will in fact succeed when applied
to terms in intentional contexts. In considering the truth-value of (5) and (7)
we tacitly assumed that the variables of quantification there take as their
values the same sort of non-intensional entities that variables typically range
over when in extensional contexts - paradigmatically, concrete physical
objects, such as ordinary fountains and common criminals. But this assump-
tion - and hence our ordinary understanding of (5) and (7) - finds no
support in Frege's theory. What the truth of (4), for example, insures is that
the formula 'Ponce de Leon hoped that x would be found in Florida' is
true of the entity to which 'the fountain of youth' refers in (4). But Frege's
doctrine of indirect reference tells us that this entity is the customary sense,
not the customary referent, of 'the fountain of youth'. Hence, while the
truth of (4) does not insure that the quantified formula in (5) is true of any
ordinary, non-intensional entity, it does insure that there is some intensional
entity - viz., the sense customarily expressed by 'the fountain of youth' -
of which that formula is true. (5) does follow, then, from (4) by existential
generalization, as does (7) from (6), provided the values of the bound vari-
ables in (5) and (7) are taken to be senses, of the type customarily expressed
by singular terms, rather than concrete entities, of the type such terms cus-
tomarily refer to.64
Frege's theory, when so applied to quantified act-sentences, can be seen
as accomplishing two things. It explains why existential generalization on
terms in act-contexts seems to fail, viz., because the inferred sentences are
(incorrectly) understood in the usual way, with variables of quantifying-in
ranging over non-intensional entities. And, in accord with the principle of
extensionality, it restores existential generalization as a valid rule of inference
for terms in intentional contexts, on the condition that the values of variables
74 CHAPTER II

of quantification into these contexts be restricted to intensional entities, or

senses.
Nevertheless, the Fregean account of the apparent failures of existential
generalization into act-contexts is far from satisfactory. For one thing, Frege's
analysis gives one explanation for what seem to be two distinct failures of
existential generalization. Intuitively, the failure of inference from (4) to (5)
is due to the fact that the fountain of youth, the object that Ponce de Leon's
hope seems to be about, does not exist; while the failure of inference from
(6) to (7) is not due to the non-existence of the object Sherlock's belief is
about but is due, rather, to the fact that Sherlock's belief is indefmite and
thus not strictly about a specific person. According to the Fregean account,
however, the two inferences fail (when the quantified sentences are under-
stood in the usual way) for the very same reason: the terms on which we
want to generalize, in both cases, refer to entities other than those that would
make the resulting quantified sentences true. The problem in each case, then,
is that the sentence to which existential generalization is applied is itself not
a sentence about a concrete physical individual but a sentence about an inten-
sional entity, a sense. Frege's analysis thus passes over the difference between
the two cases. Moreover, in both instances, the analysis offers an explanation
that is at variance with our intuitive understanding of these failures.
There is a second, perhaps more serious, difficulty with the preceding
Fregean account of existential generalization on terms in act-contexts and the
reinterpretation of quantified act-sentences it suggests. For the account seems
to leave no room for de re act-sentences, which typically ascribe acts that are
properly about ordinary, non-intensional individuals. Given the interpretation
of quantified act-sentences that the doctrine of indirect reference suggests,
the values of variables. of quantification into intentional contexts are always
abstract intensional entities, Sinne, and never the concrete objects to which,
typically, our singular terms customarily refer. On this Fregean approach,
then, there is no genuinely de re reading of (7), for example, saying that there
is some particular person whom Sherlock believes to have used belladonna.
So the important distinction between de dicto and de re sentences of proposi-
tional attitude is effectively obliterated (cf. Chapter I, Section 3.5).
This second difficulty is closely related to a third: if variables of quantify-
ing-in are taken to range over senses, the preceding Fregean account sanctions
existential generalization on terms in act-contexts without restriction. From
any sentence of propositional attitude that contains a singular term within
the scope of an intentional operator, the theory permits the existential infer-
ence to the corresponding sentence involving quantifying-in, since there is
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 75

some sense - viz., that expressed by the given singular term - that is an
appropriate value of the given bound variable.
These last two difficulties with the doctrine of indirect reference, as
extended above to quantified act-sentences, have been thoroughly discussed
by David Kaplan in his fruitful article 'Quantifying In'.65 Kaplan shows how
Frege's theory may be supplemented in certain ways that shore up the pre-
ceding Fregean interpretation of quantified act-sentences, reinstate the de
dicto/de re distinction, and appropriately restrict existential generalization
on terms in act-contexts. In particular, Kaplan's work emphasizes the need
to make the customary referents of terms in act-sentences relevant to the
truth-value of the sentences. We shall reach a similar conclusion in our next
section, arguing primarily from the needs of a theory of intentionality rather
than from needs of semantic theory.

3.5. Intensional Entities in Intentionality: Objects or Mediators of Intention?

Frege's semantics for sentences of propositional attitude, like his theory of
meaning and reference generally, is distinguished by the prominent role it
gives to intensional entities, senses. Drawing on Frege's semantics, we want
now to see what role we might fmd for these entities in a theory of inten-
tionality. Our discussion here will necessarily go considerably beyond Frege's
own words, for he did not himself address the ontological problems of inten-
tionality in any direct way. But we have argued that the semantical problems
to which his doctrine of indirect reference is addressed can be seen as issuing
from presumptions about the peculiarities of the intentional phenomena that
sentences of propositional attitude ascribe. Given this perspective, Frege's
semantics for sentences of propositional attitude can be seen as based on and
presupposing a partial theory of intentionality. Let us try to uncover this
theory, taking belief as a paradigm.
Frege's most basic claim, for our present purposes, is that the truth of a
sentence's believes that ... ' depends on the customary senses of the expres-
sions following 'believes that'. Importantly, however, Frege explains this
dependency in a way that treats belief-sentences as subject to the same
principles of extensionality and the same kind of semantic analysis as non-
intensional sentences. Specifically, he proposes, the customary sense of an
expression in a belief-context is the entity to which the expression refers in
that context; and, given this proposal, the truth-value of a belief-sentence -
like that of a non-intensional sentence - depends only on the entities to
which its constituent parts refer. Frege's analysis thus presupposes that in-
tentional verbs such as 'believes' refer to, or stand for, relations that are like
76 CHAPTER II

other relations except for the fact that they relate persons to intensional
entities, or senses, rather than to more ordinary entities. For in's believes
that p', 's' refers to its customary referent - the person s; 'that p' has "in-
direct" reference to the "thought", or proposition, that is customarily ex-
pressed by 'p' - as we shall say, the thought that p; and 'believes' refers to
the relation that holds between s and the thought that p just in case's believes
that p' is true. 66 Let us call the relation to which 'believes' refers "H"; we can
then express the basic claim of Frege's analysis of belief as follows:
(*) s believes that p if and only if s stands in the relation H to the
thought that p.
Now, on a Fregean analysis of belief-sentences, not only sentences but also
singular terms have indirect reference when they occur in belief-contexts:
they there refer to the senses they customarily express. Hence, in's believes
that a is 1/>', the singular term 'a' refers to its customary sense, a sense that is
a constituent of the thought that a is I/> (in the sense that this thought, or
proposition, is a function of the senses customarily expressed by 'a' and 'is
1/>'). Consequently, if's believes that a is 1/>' is true, then s stands not only in
relation H to the thought that a is I/> but also in another relation - call it "H'"
- to the sense customarily expressed by 'a'. And so we can formulate a
second Fregean claim about belief:
(**) If s believes that a is 1/>, then s stands in the relation H' to the
(customary) sense of 'a'.
The two claims, (*) and (**), seem genuinely to be presupposed by Frege's
semantics for sentences of propositional attitude. But they yield only a partial
theory of the intentionality of belief, and we will have to go beyond Frege
to fill it out. Most importantly, Frege's semantics does not tell us what role
intensional entities play in belief. We do know the role of the thought that p
in Frege's semantic analysis of a sentence's believes that p': it is the entity
to which the clause 'that p' refers. And we also know that it is the "object"
to which a "subject" s stands in the relation H when s believes that p. But we
do not know, and Frege seems not to have specified, what the relation H is
to which 'believes' refers. The obvious suggestion is that H is simply the rela-
tion of believing. In that case, Frege's analysis yields an "object-theory" of
the intentionality of belief (cf. Part 1 above): thoughts are then the objects
of belief and believing itself is an ordinary sort of relation to these intensional
entities, a species of what we earlier called "intentional objects" (cf. Sections
1.3 and 3 .3 above). However, if H is not the relation of believing but is some
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 77

other relation (not yet specified), in which a person necessarily stands to a

thought when he has a belief, then we will need a more complicated account
of how a thought, or proposition, enters into the intentional relation of
believing.
Similarly, we need to inquire further after the relation B' and the precise
role of the sense of 'a' in the belief that a is cp. Now, we know that belief and
other propositional acts may exhibit two kinds of "directedness": a belief
is "primarily" directed toward the object believed - a thought, if B is the
relation of believing - and it may be "secondarily" directed toward the object
the belief is "about" (cf. Chapter I, Section 1.5). And so we might take B' to
be this secondary relation of intending - of believing about - and, hence,
take the sense of 'a' to be the object the belief that a is cp is about. This view
would simply extend to the relation of "aboutness" the development of the
Fregean analysis of belief as an object-theory of intentionality: the primary
object of belief would then be a thought, and the secondary object - the
object the belief is about - would be the sense of a singular term. And in
both forms of directedness the intention involved would consist of an ordi-
nary sort of relation to an intensional entity. However, if we decide not to
identify B' with the relation of believing-about we will need to seek a different
role for senses in the aboutness of belief.
Let us examine first the "object-version" of a Fregean theory of the inten-
tionality of belief, that is, the version that takes intensional entities as the
objects beliefs are directed toward or are about. A theory of this sort can
explain both the existence-independence and the conception-dependence of
belief, for it makes the intentions achieved in belief dependent on intensional
entities - entities that may exist whether there is any corresponding ordinary
entity or not and that vary with the different ways in which ordinary entities
may be conceived or described. For example, it explains how Ponce de Leon's
belief that the fountain of youth is in Florida is a belief about something, de-
spite the fact that there exists no such entity as the fountain of youth: accord-
ing to the theory, the belief is not about the fountain of youth, which does not
exist, but is about the sense customarily expressed by 'the fountain of youth',
which exists independently of the existence of the legendary fountain. And
it explains how Smith can believe that the vanquished at Waterloo died in
exile without also believing that the victor at lena died in exile: although the
vanquished at Waterloo and the victor at lena are the same person, Smith's
belief is not about this person; it is, rather, about the sense customarily
expressed by 'the vanquished at Waterloo', which is a different sense from
that customarily expressed by 'the victor at lena'. Similar results hold for the
78 CHAPTER II

primary directedness achieved in belief. Ponce de Leon's belief is directed to

the thought that the fountain of youth is in Florida, which exists whether or
not there is (or was) an actual state of affairs that the fountain of youth is
in Florida. And Smith's belief is directed to the thought that the vanquished
at Waterloo died in exile, which is distinct from the thought that the victor
at Jena died in exile.
Despite these noteworthy successes, the object-version of a Fregean theory
of intentionality is not very plausible, especially in the case of intentions
whose objects are entities of the ordinary sort. For example, when Smith
perceives the Blarney Stone, remembers his high school French teacher, or
fears the man from whom he receives threatening phone calls, it is quite
implausible to suppose that what he perceives, remembers, or fears is an
intensional entity, or any other sort of intentional object. (Chisholm's obser-
vation that Diogenes, in searching for an honest man, "already had the im-
manent object" applies with equal force to whatever intensional entity we
might take to be the object of Diogenes' intention - cf. Section 2.2 above.)
Now, Frege does not discuss sentences ascribing such direct-object acts, and
so we might not expect a Fregean theory of intentionality to generalize
directly to these acts. But the difficulties in the view that intensional entities
are the objects of intentions are just as evident in the aboutness of beliefs.
One kind of aboutness is that which occurs in an "indefinite", or de dicta,
belief, such as Sherlock's belief that the murderer used belladonna: insofar
as Sherlock has no hypothesis concerning the identity of the murderer, his
belief cannot be said to be about any specific person and is, in that sense, an
"indefinite" belief. Now in this case, a Fregean object-theory has the merit of
explaining why Sherlock's belief is not about any specific person. According
to the theory, it is not about a specific person because it is not about any
person at all: beliefs are about intensional entities, or senses, rather than
about concrete individuals. However, this explanation does not tell us how,
or in what way, the belief is indefmite. Indeed, according to the explanation
given, the belief is not indefinite with respect to the object it is properly
about, for that object is a quite specific sense, the sense customarily expressed
by 'the murderer'. In effect, then, a Fregean object-theory must explain the
indefmiteness of beliefs that seem to be about non-specific, but concrete,
individuals by construing them as definite beliefs about specific, but abstract,
intensional entities. On the face of it, such an attempt seems to have little
chance of success. And given the ordinary notion of "having a belief about
something", the meaning of the claim that Sherlock's belief is about a sense
is itself unclear: just what can we say Sherlock believes about this sense that
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 79

would be equivalent to our saying that Sherlock believes that the murderer
used belladonna?
Even if a Fregean object-theory of aboutness can somehow be rendered
plausible in the case of de dicta belief, it cannot work without serious modifi-
cations for the aboutness that occurs in "definite", or de re, belief. Consider,
for example, the mayor's belief that the governor is a scoundrel, and suppose
that the mayor has known the governor well and long so that there is some
quite specific individual who has become the object of the mayor's disaffec-
tion. (There are other varieties of definite, or de re, belief, but these need not
concern us here. See Chapter VIII, Section 1.1, and also cf. Chapter I, Section
2.6.) Now, the object-version of a Fregean theory of aboutness would yield
an account of the mayor's belief that does not at all capture the sense in
which his belief is definite. For, according to the theory, this belief would
not be about the governor herself in any way, either definitely or indefinitely;
rather, it would be construed as definite with respect to an intensional entity,
namely, the sense that it is about. In this regard, however, the aboutness of
the mayor's definite belief differs not at all from that of Sherlock's indefinite
belief. And so the difference between these beliefs goes unexplained on a
Fregean object-theory of aboutness, which would simply take both beliefs
to be about senses that do not differ from each other in any relevant way.
Even more importantly, though, the mayor's belief as described is correctly
construed only as being about a concrete individual, the governor herself.
Because there was no specific person whom Sherlock's indefinite belief could
unequivocally be said to be about, the object that belief is about was a legiti-
mate matter of speculation. But the belief we are now considering is about a
specific person: if, after campaigning long and bitterly against the governor's
reelection, the mayor announces his belief that the governor is a scoundrel,
we will surely miss his intent if we do not take him to be offering an opinion
about a particular person. Hence, the mayor's belief is of the sort that in
logical notation would be unambiguously expressed by means of an explicitly
de re belief-sentence: here, by '(3x) (x = the governor and the mayor believes
that x is a scoundrel), (cf. Chapter I, Section 3.5). And so the mayor's belief
is properly understood only as a belief about the governor and not as a belief
about the sense customarily expressed by 'the governor'.
In sum, then, the object-version of a Fregean theory of belief shares both
the strengths and the weaknesses of object-theories of intentionality generally.
The chief virtue of introducing some sort of "intentional objects" into the
analysis of intention is that a theory of intentionality can then appeal to spe-
cial features of these entities in order to explain the existence-independence
80 CHAPTER II

and the conception-dependence of intentions. But theories that account for

these characteristics of intentionality by taking the objects of intention to be
intentional objects, of any sort, ultimately pay a price: the price of thwarting
all our intentions at the level of intentional objects, so that none of our acts
can properly be said to be directed toward, or to be about, the more ordinary
entities we usually take ourselves to be intending.
Consequently, if the introduction of intensional entities into the analysis
of intention is to provide a significant advance over object-theories, such as
those of Brentano and Meinong, these entities must be divested of one of
the main roles traditionally given to intentional objects: intensional entities
must not be the objects toward which acts of consciousness are directed.
The "intentional object" of an act - in the sense of an entity that, by virtue
of its own peculiarities, accounts for the act's exhibiting the properties that
characterize it as intentional - must be distinguished from the object that
the act intends (cf. Section 1.3 above). To make this distinction, however,
is to deny the fundamental assumption that defines the object-approach to
intentionality, the assumption that belief and other relations of intending are
ordinary two-place relations between persons ( or acts) and the objects they
intend. For, given that assumption, it is the objects of acts that must account
for the peculiarities of intention, and so these objects themselves must take
on the ontological characteristics of intentional objects (cf. Section 1.2
above). Ultimately, then, an adequate theory of intentionality - whether
developed along Fregean lines or others - must abandon the object-approach
to intentionality.
Now, a remark by Alonzo Church, who has carefully tried to preserve
Frege's basic doctrines in developing his own semantics, suggests that Fregean
semantics need notin fact be committed to an object-theory of intentionality.
Says Church:·
According to the Fregean theory of meaning we are advocating, 'Schliemann sought the
site of Troy' asserts a certain relation as holding, not between Schliemann and the site
of Troy ... , but between Schliemann and a certain concept, namely that of the site of
Troy [Le., the sense expressed by 'the site of Troy'). This is, however, not to say that
'Schliemann sought the site of Troy' means the same as 'Schliep1ann sought the concept
of the site of Troy' .... The relation holding between Schliemann and the concept of
the site of Troy is not quite that of having sought, or at least it is misleading to call it
that in view of the way in which the verb to seek is commonly used in English. 67

Church does not tell us more about this relation to a "concept", or a sense;
nor does he tell us how a sense is involved in the relation that is the inten-
tional relation of having sought. But his comments do suggest that a basically
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 81

Fregean theory of the intentionality of belief can be developed in a way that

is rather different from the object-version we have been considering. For, if
B in (*) and B' in (**) are also "not quite" the relations of believing and
believing-about, then the intensional entities that are their objects need not
be the objects of the intentional relations of believing and believing-about.
What we propose - as we shall see later, the proposal originates with
Husserl - is that intentions be understood as relations that are mediated by
meanings and so obtain between conscious subjects and objects of various
sorts - in typical cases, ordinary physical objects. That is, we propose that
meanings, or senses, play fundamentally the same role in intentionality that
Frege gives them in his theory of reference generally: meanings mediate
relations to objects other than themselves. Such a proposal accommodates
the view that, in most instances, the objects of acts are not senses or any
other sort of intentional objects but are quite ordinary entities; and, at the
same time, it retains the basically Fregean insight that the intentions achieved
in belief and other acts are essentially dependent on intensional entities. Each
act involves a relation to an intensional entity, as in (*) and (**); and, by
virtue of this intensional entity, the subject of the act stands in an intentional
relation to the object determined by this intensional entity. And so the
"intentional object" of the act - the sense, or meaning, that is involved in
the act - is not itself the object intended in the act but is, rather, the entity
by means of which the act intends whatever object it does. According to this
view, then, an intentional relation itself is not an ordinary sort of relation to
either ordinary or extraordinary objects; as a relation to ordinary objects via
intensional entities, an intentional relation is a meaning-mediated relation -
and therein a relation of an unusual sort - to ordinary entities.
Let us not try to work out immediately all the details of such a "mediator-
theory" of intentionality. Its full development will be the specific topic of
our next two chapters, and the rest of the book as well will be concerned
with extending and modifying such a theory in various respects. And let us
also leave aside the question whether the historical Frege might have held
or approved such a theory, though it seems to us to be at least consistent
with, and perhaps implicit in, his semantics for sentences of propositional
attitude. Our further investigation of the role of intensional entities in inten-
tionality will in fact be guided not by Frege's views but by Husserl's. We shall
fmd that Husserl's theory of intentionality is structurally identical with the
mediator-theory we have just sketched and, furthermore, that his theory is
virtually identical in ontological assumptions: the entities Husserl sees as
mediating intentional relations are quite properly characterized as intensional
82 CHAPTER II

entities in the sense of Fregean Sinne. Indeed, in developing these views

Hussed draws on doctrines of meaning and reference that he shares with
Frege and that, at least to some extent, reflect Frege's influence. It is thus
appropriate that our short study of Frege is the transition that leads our dis-
cussion away from the object-approach to intentionality and into a study of
Husserl.

NOTES

1 In Analytical Philosophy, 2nd series, ed. by R. J. Butler (Blackwell, Oxford, 1965),

pp.160-62.
2 Prior, 'Intentionality and Intensionality' (Note 30, Ch. I above), pp. 101,104.
3 Brentano does not use the term 'Realia' primarily to contrast what is "real", or
existent, with what is "unreal", or non-existent. Rather, Realia are concrete particulars,
or "things" - including physical individuals, such as trees and houses, and non-material
individual souls. What contrasts with Realia are abstract entities, such as universals and
propositions. On this point see Linda L. McAlister, 'Chisholm and Brentano on Inten-
tionality', Review of Metaphysics 28 (1974), 331; and Chisholm, 'Brentano on Descrip-
tive Psychology and the Intentional' (Note 21, Ch. I above), pp. 13-15. Our discussion
of Brentano's theory draws considerably on Chisholm's very helpful article (which, we
might note, seems free of the defects that McAlister finds in some of Chisholm's earlier
expositions of Brentano's thesis of intentionality).
4 Brentano, Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), p. 88.
S Brentano, The True and the Evident, trans. by Roderick M. Chisholm, lise Politzer,
and Kurt R. Fischer, ed. by Roderick M. Chisholm (Humanities Press, New York, 1966),
p. 27. This work is a translation of Brentano's Wahrheit und Evidenz, ed. by Oskar Kraus
(Felix Meiner, Leipzig, 1930). The passage cited is from a short fragment written not
later than 1902.
6 See Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), esp. pp. 9-10,19,78-80,91-100. Cf. Kraus's
notes on pp. 79-80, 94.
7 Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), pp. 79-80. Cf. McAlister (Note 3 above), pp. 333-
34.
8 Brentano apparently also recognizes a wider ordinary-language sense of 'perceive',
according to which perceiving would include a complex of judgments, beliefs, associa-
tions, and the like in virtue of which what is strictly perceived is also conceptually inter-
preted: see Kraus's Introduction to the 1924 edition of Psychology, pp. 396-97 of the
English translation (Note I, Ch. I above). The objects of perception, in this wider sense,
would be more complex than the physical phenomena that are perceived in the strict
sense. Still, given what Brentano has said about the objects of contemplation and
thought, it is not at all clear that these objects would be actual physical objects rather
than just more complex intentionally inexistent entities (cf. also Psychology., p. 19).
9 Cf. McAlister (Note 3 above), p. 331.
10 Note that the "incompleteness" of Sherlock's conception is different from the
"incompleteness" of which we spoke in Section 1.2 above. It would be something of a
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 83

"category-mistake" to suppose that the incompleteness or indeterminacy of the concep-

tion consists in its being incompletely or non~pecifically propertied; for the properties
"conceived" do not properly belong to the conception, but to the entity Sherlock con-
ceives as being so propertied. This sort of incompleteness involves no violation of the law
of excluded middle and is thus significantly different from that discussed above (which is
the incompleteness of Meinongian objects, to be discussed in Section 2.3 below).
11 Brentano, Psychology (Note 1, Ch. I above), p. xx. The comment is from Brentano's
Foreword to the 1911 edition, The Clossification of Mental Phenomena.
12 The True and the Evident (Note 5 above), pp. 95-96 [from a 1914 letter to Kraus).
13 Chisholm, 'Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Intentional' (Note 21, Ch. I
above), p.ll.
14 Psychology (Note 1, Ch. I above), pp. 385 [from a letter to Kraus, cited by Kraus in
his Introduction to the 1924 edition) .
15 The True and the Evident (Note 5 above), pp. 77-78 [from a 1905 letter to Anton
Marty) .
16 See J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, 2nd ed. (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, Oxford, 1963), pp. 1-41. Our interpretation of Meinong relies heavily on
Findlay's excellent exposition, esp. his Chs. I, II, and VI.
17 Alexius Meinong, 'The Theory of Objects', trans. by Isaac Levi, D. B. Terrell, and
Roderick M. Chisholm, in Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, ed. by
Roderick M. Chisholm (The Free Press, New York, 1960), pp. 76-117, esp. pp. 76-86.
[This essay is a translation of 'Uber Gegenstandstheorie', first published in 1904). Cf.
Findlay (Note 16 above), pp. 42-58.
18 Meinong's argument is as follows: We have seen that there are objects that neither
exist nor subsist. Suppose we postulate that, therefore, there must be some more general
sort of being that even these objects have; call it "quasi-being". Now let us consider
whether there might also be other objects that fail even to have "quasi-being". If so,
then it seems that a still more general sort of being would have to be postulated to in-
clude them; objects lacking this fourth sort would require a fifth sort of being; and so
on. If, on the other hand, we stop the regress by denying that any object can lack "quasi-
being", then "quasi-being" will belong to every object: "quasi-being", says Meinong,
would have no opposite. Hence, to say that some object has "quasi-being" tells us noth-
ing that could conceivably be false about the object, for it tells us only that it is an
object. And to say that an object that does not have being may nonetheless have "quasi-
being" is only to say that being an object is independent of having being - which is
Meinong's own account of the matter. (Cf. Meinong (Note 17 above), pp. 84-85.)
19 Meinong (Note 17 above), p. 83.
20 Meinong (Note 17 above), p. 86.
21 Cf. Findlay (Note 16 above), pp. 152-66.
22 Cf. Findlay (Note 16 above), pp. 166-70.
23 We have indulged a large simplification here. Meinong recognizes that we do not ordi-
narily take the objects of our intentions to be incomplete objects; rather, we intend them
as being complete, even though we do not know what properties complete them. The
objects of our ordinary intentions ought, therefore, to have (in S?me sense) the property
of being complete, even though they are (in the sense we have been discussing) incom-
plete objects. Meinong calls such objects "completed" incomplete objects. The details
of this view are rather complex and obscure and, as Fin(hey says, it faces "formidable
84 CHAPTER II

difficulties". The crucial point, though, is that even with the admission of these "com-
pleted" objects our intentions still fail to reach complete objects: Meinong holds that the
very best we can do is to intend completed (but nonetheless incomplete) objects that "do
duty" for them. See Findlay (Note 16 above), pp. 170-80. Cf. David Woodruff Smith,
'Meinongian Objects', Grazer Philo90phische Studien 1 (1975),43-71, esp. 53-55.
24 The arguments leading to this conclusion are developed in greater detail in Smith,
'Meinongian Objects' (Note 23 above).
25 For recent interesting and sympathetic reconstructions of a generally Meinongian
ontology see Terence Parsons, 'A Prolegomenon to Meinongian Semantics', Journal of
Philosophy 71 (1974), 561-80; Parsons, Nonexilitent Objectli (Yale University Press,
New Haven, Conn., 1980); and Hector-Neri Castaiieda, 'Thinking and the Structure of
the World',Phii0liophill4 (1974), 3-40.
26 Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), p. 300 [from 'On Genuine and Fictitious Objects',
added in 1911 ed.).
27 The True and the Evident (Note 5 above), p. 84 [from a 1906 letter to Marty).
28 The True and the Evident (Note 5 above), p. 109 [from an essay dictated in 1914).
29 Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), p. 271 [from 'Mental Reference as Distinguished
from Relation in the Strict Sense', added in 1911 ed.J.
30 See Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), pp. 292-94 ['On Genuine and Fictitious
Objects', added in 1911 ed.) , and p. 322 ['On Objects of Thought', dictated in 1915,
added in 1924 ed.).
31 Cf. The True and the Evident (Note 5 above), p. 117 [essay of 1915) .
32 See Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), p. 274 ['Mental Reference as Distinguished
from Relation in the Strict Sense', added in 1911 ed.).
33 The True and the Evident (Note 5 above), p. 112 [essay dictated in 1914).
34 Cf. Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), pp. 346-47 ['On Enli Rationili', written in
1917, added in 1924 ed.).
35 Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), p. 272 [from 'Mental Reference as Distinguished
from Relation in the Strict Sense', added in 1911 ed.).
36 Dictated in 1914 and included in Kategorienlehre, ed. by Alfred Kastil (Felix Meiner,
Leipzig, 1933), p. 8; cited by Chisholm in 'Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the
Intentional' (Note 21, Ch. I above), p. 15.
37 See The True and the Evident (Note 5 above), pp. 67- 70 [essay of 1904); and
Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), pp. 322-33 ['On Objects of Thought', dictated in
1915, added in 1924 ed.).
38 Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), pp. 334-35 [from 'On the Term "Being" in its
Loose Sense, Abstract Terms, andEntill Rationili', dictated in 1917, added in 1924 ed.).
39 Cf. Chisholm, 'Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Intentional' (Note 21,
Ch. I above), pp. 18-19.
40 Psychology (Note I, Ch. I above), p. 272 ['Mental Reference as Distinguished from
Relation in the Strict Sense', added in 1911 ed.).
41 See Quine, Word and Object (Note 23, Ch. I above), pp. 141-56; and 'Reference and
Modality' (Note 29, Ch. I above), pp. 139-44.
42 Anscombe (Note 1 above).
43 Cf. Findlay's elaboration of the view that Brentano takes intentionality "to be a case
of a unique logical category", in his Values and Intentions (Allen & Unwin, London,
1961), pp. 35-43.
 SOME CLASSICAL APPROACHES 85

44 The fundamentals of this theory are expounded by Frege in 'On Sense and Refer-
ence', in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, trans. by Peter
Geach and Max Black (Blackwell, Oxford, 1966), pp. 56-78, esp. pp. 56-67. The essay
was first published, as 'Ober Sinn und Bedeutung', in Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und
Philosophische Kritik 100 (1892), 25-50; a more recent German edition may be found
in Gottlob Frege, Funktion, Begriff; Bedeutung: Funf logische Studien, ed. by Gunther
Patzig (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen, 1962), pp. 40-65. For fuller accounts of
Frege's philosophy of language see Montgomery Furth's introduction to Frege's The
Basic Laws of Arithmetic, ed. and trans. by Montgomery Furth (University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1967), pp. v-liii; and Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language
(Harper & Row, New York, 1973), esp. pp. 81-109, 152-203.
45 See Frege, 'Function and Concept', in Geach and Black (Note 44 above), pp. 30-32.
Cf. Furth (Note 44 above), pp. xxxvii-xliv.
46 'Function and Concept' (Note 45 above), p. 29.
47 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 58. (Note that in the sentence cited
we have used 'referent' as a translation of 'Bedeutung', where Geach and Black have
'reference' .)
48 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 58. (,Referent' is again substituted for
'reference'.)
49 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 58. ('Referent' is substituted for 'refer-
ence'.)
50 Begriffsschrift, in Geach and Black (Note 44 above), p. 12.
51 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 57.
52 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 57 (cf. pp. 41, 43-44 of Patzig's
German edition, cited in Note 44).
53 Cf. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), esp. Chapters I and III.
Other semantic systems in the generally Fregean tradition include those of Alonzo
Church and C. I. Lewis: see Church, 'A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denota-
tion', in Structure, Method and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Henry M. Scheffer, ed. by
Paul Henle, H. M. Kallen, and S. K. Langer (Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1951), pp. 3-
24; Church, 'The Need for Abstract Entities in Semantic Analysis', Proceedings of The
American Academy of Arts and Sciences 80 (1951), 100--112, reprinted in Contem-
porary Readings in Logical Theory, ed. by Irving M. Copi and James A. Gould (Mac-
millan, New York, 1967); and Lewis, 'The Modes of Meaning', Philosophy and Phe-
nomenological Research 4 (1944), 236-49, reprinted in Semantics and the Philosophy
of Language, ed. by Leonard Linsky (The University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1952).
54 Carnap (Note 53 above), p. 21, cf. p. 27.
55 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 59. ('Referent' is substituted for
'reference' .)
S6 Frege, 'The Thought' A Logical Inquiry', trans. by A. M. and Marcelle Quinton, Mind
6S (1956), 307, reprinted in Philosophical Logic, ed. by P. F. Strawson (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, Oxford, 1967), also reprinted in Essays on Frege, ed. by E. D. Klemke
(University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1968).
57 'The Thought' (Note 56 above), p. 308.
58 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 65. (,Referent' is substituted for
'reference' .)
S9 Cf. Frege, 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 65.
86 CHAPTER II

60 Cf. Frege, 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), pp. 66-67. Cf. also David
Kaplan, 'Quantifying In' (Note 26, Ch. I above), pp. 182-84.
61 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 67. (,Referent' is substituted for
'reference' .)
62 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 59. (,Referent' is substituted for
'reference' .)
63 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44 above), p. 66.
64 Carnap has similarly proposed for the logical modalities that the range of variables
of quantifying-in be restricted to intensions; see Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I
above), pp. 178-82. For a criticism of that approach to quantified modal logic, see
Quine, 'Reference and Modality' (Note 29, Ch. I above), pp. 150-56.
65 Kaplan (Note 26, Ch. I above).
66 Cf. The Basic Laws of Arithmetic (Note 44 above), p. 37, where Frege says: "We say
that the object r stands to the object ~ in the relation \II(E, t) if [and only if) \II(r,~)
is the True". Also cf. 'Function and Concept', in Geach and Black (Note 44 above),
pp.38-39.
67 Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Vol. I (Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1956), p. 8, n. 20.
 CHAPTER III

FUNDAMENT ALS OF HUSSERL'S THEORY

OF INTENTIONALITY

We turn now to Husserl's theory of intentionality. We see this theory as

differing fundamentally from theories that take what we have called the
"object-approach" to intentionality. To articulate this difference in a clear
and convincing way is one of our most important tasks. Our interpretation
of Husserl's theory of intentionality, our understanding of Husserl's phenom-
enology in general, and our own treatment of some of the problems of inten-
tionality in later chapters are all predicated on a proper appreciation of this
difference.
The basic tenet of Husserl's theory is that the intentionality of any act is
due to there being associated with the act an entity he calls its "intentional
content", or "noema". Our goal in this chapter and the next will be to ex-
plicate the nature of this entity and its role in intentionality. As we shall see,
Husserl sharply distinguishes the noema of an act from the act's object. The
object intended in an act, that toward which the act is directed, is usually
some ordinary sort of thing like a physical individual or a natural state of
affairs. But the noema of an act is an abstract, or "ideal", entity - an "inten-
tional object" in the ontological sense we discussed earlier; Husserl says it
is a "meaning" or "sense". An act's noema is embodied in the internal, or
phenomenological, structure of the act itself; thus Husserl calls it the act's
"phenomenological content". It is not in any sense an object that is intended
in the act, an object of which the subject is conscious in the act. But it is in
virtue of this "content", Husserl holds, that an act achieves its intentional
relation to its object proper. Accordingly, we shall argue, Husserl's theory
of intentionality is not an object-theory but a mediator-theory, of the sort
we sketched at the end of the last chapter: for Husserl, an act is directed
toward an object via an intermediate "intentional" entity, the act's noema.
In the first two parts of the chapter we layout some of the philosophical
and historical background of Husserl's theory of intentionality. With its focus
on an act's noema, Husserl's account of intentionality takes a decisively
"inward" turn, a turn away from the objects of acts and toward the acts
themselves and their "contents". For the noema of an act is not something
of which the subject is conscious in the act; the subject becomes aware of it
only in a distinct act of internal, or phenomenological, reflection on the act
87
88 CHAPTER III

and its structure per se. This inward turn in itself characterizes a rudimentary
sort of phenomenology, which Hussed continually sought to improve and
refine. In Part 1 we discuss the phenomenological thrust of Hussed's approach
to intentionality and also take a brief look at some of the main features that
characterize a distinctively Husserlian phenomenology. Part 2 addresses the
general notion of "phenomenological content", as conceived by Hussed and
by others whose work was familiar to Husser!' The notion undergoes impor-
tant changes in Hussed's own writings, and we compare and contrast his
conception of content in Logical Investigations with his conception of noema
(and the correlative notion of "noesis") in Ideas. Then Part 3 outlines the
basic features of Husserl's theory of intentionality, focusing on his use of
the notion of noema in dealing with the traditional problems of intentionality
that we have previously introduced.
Our interpretation of Hussed's theory of intentionality differs from those
that take the noema of an act to be some sort of object of intention. We take
the noema to be, for Hussed, the ideal "content" of the act, and we take
seriously Hussed's characterization of it as a "meaning" or "sense", indeed,
the same sort of meaning that is expressed in language. The present chapter
contains only half the case for our interpretation, however. Here we argue
that the noema is a content, rather than an object, of intention and that it
is an abstract entity. These arguments can all be accepted whether or not
one takes the additional step that identifies ideal contents, or noemata, with
linguistic Sinne of a Fregean sort; and this first half of our case is sufficient
to establish our basic account of Husserl's theory of intentionality. The
additional arguments for identifying noemata with meanings (specifically,
the meanings that are expressed in language) are presented in Chapter IV.
The identification does not change the basic account but it adds significant
detail to it, detail that ultimately enables us to see some of the shortcomings
of Hussed's theory of intentionality.

1. HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH

TO INTENTIONALITY

1.1. Husserl's Conception of Intentionality

Husser! approaches the theory of intentionality with a strong intuitive, pre-
theoretical conception of intentionality. To understand his general approach
and the kind of theory to which it leads, it is important first to understand
this guiding conception of intentionality. We shall see that Hussed takes the
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 89

intentionality of an act to be a phenomenological feature of the act, i.e., a

feature that the act has solely in virtue of its internal structure, or as Husserl
sometimes says, its "phenomenological content". Accompanying this concep-
tion of intentionality is a new way of seeing the problems of intentionality:
not as problems about the kind of objects that acts intend, but as problems
about the nature of consciousness itself insofar as consciousness is intentional.
Accordingly, Husserl's theory of intentionality is not a theory about the
ontological status of objects of consciousness but an integral part of a phe-
nomenological theory of mind.
"Object-theories" of intentionality, as we have called them, are theories
that attempt to preserve Brentano's relational view of intentionality by
postulating a class of unusual entities, often called "intentional objects",
as the entities that acts intend, or are "related to" (see Chapter II, Part 1,
above). But, as we have noted on several occasions (see especially Chapter I,
Section 1.3), Husserl rejects the view that the objects of intention are entities
of some special, extraordinary kind. He insists, to the contrary, that the
things we perceive, desire, judge about, or otherwise intend are not "inten-
tional objects" but usually quite ordinary entities of various familiar sorts -
for example, as he says, "a house when a house is presented" (LI, V, §17,
p.578).
In particular, and against the view suggested by Brentano's doctrine of
"intentional inexistence" (cf. Chapter II, Section 2.1, above), Husserl holds
that the object of an act is not a mental or "immanent" entity that literally
"exists in" the act in which it is intended (see LI, V, § 11; Ideas, §90, pp.
223-24). Only acts of reflection are directed toward subjective states or
processes in the subject's own stream of consciousness, and even for these
acts Husserl distinguishes the object intended in an act from the act, or ex-
perience, that intends it (Ideas, §35, pp. 76-78; §38;LI, V, §17, p. 578).
For non-reflective acts the distinction is even clearer: here the object of an
act is not something subjective or immanent to consciousness at all, but an
"external" and "transcendent" entity - paradigmatically, a physical object.
When someone sees a tree, for example, the object of his perception is not a
sense-datum or any other kind of intentional object; it is a tree, a physical
individual in the natural world. (See Ideas, § §35, 38, 41-43, 90;IP, pp. 27-
28; LI, V, Appendix to §11 and §20, pp. 595-96.) Of course, Husserl's
ontology comprises entities of many other kinds, too, including persons,
events, states of affairs, essences, and also intentional or intensional entities,
i.e., meanings and noemata; and for all these entities there are intentions of
appropriate sorts that take them as objects. The point is simply that, when
90 CHAPTER III

any of these entities is intended, that entity itself and not some different
"intentional object" is the object of the act in question. As Husserl says in
Logical Investigations: " ... The intentional [i.e., intended] object of a
presentation is the same as its actual object, and, when appropriate, as its
external object, and . .. it is absurd to distinguish between them" (V, Appen-
dix to §11 and §20, p. 595; with trans. changes). Husserl's general view is
that the object intended in an act - if there is such an object at all - is always
something distinct from and independent of the act that intends it and is
ordinarily an entity of some standard ontological kind.
However, the objects of intentional experiences are not Husserl's main
concern. As we saw in Chapter I (see Part 2), "intentional relations" are
apparently "existence-independent" with respect to their objects and "con-
ception-dependent". But whereas these peculiarities of intention lead some
to postulate intentional objects, they lead Husserl to a different conclusion:
the object intended in an act is not what makes the act intentional. An act
may fail to relate to anything real or actual, but, he says, that does not mean
that the act is directed toward an entity with a peculiarly "intentional" mode
of being. Rather, imaginations, hallucinations, and other "non-veridical"
experiences show that an act can be intentional even if there fails to exist
any object to which the act relates. Continuing the passage we just quoted
from Logical Investigations, V, Husserl says:

If I present to myself God or an angel, ... a physical thing or a round square, etc., I
mean the transcendent object named in each case ... ; it makes no difference whether
this object exists or is imaginary or absurd. That the object is a "merely intentional" one
does not, of course, mean that it exists, though only in the intentio (as a real [reelleg)
constituent of it), or that some shadow of it exists therein. It means rather that the in-
tention, the "meaning" ["Meinen") of an object with such qualities, exists, but not that
the object does. On the other hand, if the intentional [i.e., intended) object exists then
not only does the intention, the meaning [of it), exist but the thing meant [Gemeinte)
algo exists. (P. 596; with trans. changes. Cf. Ll, V, § 11, pp. 558-59.)

And so, Husserl concludes, the intentionality of an act is not essentially

dependent on the ontolOgical status of the object toward which the act is
directed. Nor is it determined by empirical facts about the object intended
in the act. The Emperor of Germany in 1900 was in fact the eldest grandson
of Queen Victoria. Even so, Husserl notes, a person may be intending the
German Emperor without at the same time intending Queen Victoria's grand-
son (cf. LI, V, § 17, pp. 578-79). Object-theories would typically account
for the difference by taking these acts to be directed not to the man himself
but to distinct intentional objects (cf. Chapter II, Section 1.2). Husserl's view
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 91

is quite different: he holds that these acts have the same object but that the
de facto identity of the object to which they relate does not suffice to make
the intentions the same. In general, Husserl concludes, the specific relation
of intending achieved in an act depends on how the intended object is con-
ceived by the act's subject and so is not determined by what is in fact true
of the object in itself. (See L/, V, §20, pp. 588-89; cf. Chapter I, Sections
2.3-2.4, above.)
Husserl's treatment of these problematic features of intentionality makes
it clear that the "relation" of intending an object, as he conceives it, is not
to be thought of as a relation of the usual sort. For "intentional relations"
between persons and the objects they intend are not dependent on the de
facto status of their objects in the way ordinary, empirical relations are.
Semantically, the difference is reflected in the "intensionality" of sentences
ascribing intentional relations: expressions in intentional contexts fail to
satisfy the logical principles of extensionality, especially the principles of
existential generalization and substitutivity of identity (see Chapter I, Part 3).
Husserl himself draws a closely related conclusion, which has important
methodological consequences. An act's intentional relation to an object is
not a "real" (reell) relation "in objective reality [Wirklichkeit]", he says
(Ideas, §36, p. 80; §88, pp. 220-21; cf. Crisis, pp. 236, 238). What Husserl
means is that an act's intentional directedness is not determined by what is
empirically and contingently true in the natural world. A relation of intend-
ing cannot be reduced to purely physical relations between a person's body
and other physical objects or even to psychophysical relations between a
person's ego (taken as a psychologically real, though perhaps non-physical,
natural entity) and the physical entities (including the person's body) that
affect it. If an act of perceiving a tree is hallucinatory, Husserl notes in Ideas
(§88, pp. 220-21), there exists no perceived object and there cannot be any
"real", empirical relations (such as causal relations) between perceiver and
perceived. There is only the act of perceiving. Nonetheless, the act itself is
intentional: the perceiver is "conscious of something", and in that sense the
act retains its intentionality, irrespective of what the actual empirical situa-
tion may be. Husserl reiterates this point quite nicely in Phenomenological
Psychology, his lectures from the summer of 1925:

If I perceive a house, ... a relationship of consciousness is contained in the perceptual

experience [Wahmehmungserlebnis] itself, and indeed a relation to the house perceived
in it itself. It can happen that later on I become correctly convinced that I have fallen
victim to an illusion. But previously I did have purely the consciousness "house-existing-
there"; descriptively it is no different from any other perceiving. Of course there can be
92 CHAPTER III

no talk of external-internal psychophysical causality if the l).ouse is a mere hallucination.

But it is clear that the momentary experiencing IETleben) is in itself not only a subjec-
tive experiencing but precisely a perceiving of this house. Therefore, descriptively, the
object-relation belongs to the experiencing, whether the object actually exists or not.
Likewise, if I imagine a centaur, the experiencing of the fiction is itself a fantasy of this
or that centaur; the experiencing that we call remembering includes the relation to the
past; loving itself, the relation to the loved; hating, to the hated; willing, to what is
willed,etc. (§3(d), pp. 22-23;with trans. changes.}

We can see that Husserl's rejection of the object-approach to intentionality

goes hand-in-hand with a new conception of intentionality, a conception that
it is natural to characterize as "phenomenological". According to Hussed, it
is not the intended object or any properties of it that accounts for an act's
being intentional. Rather, as he says above, "A relationship of consciousness
is contained in the . .. experience itselF'. Hussed's view is that the inten-
tionality of an act is determined by the act's own intrinsic character, and for
this reason it does not depend on what is actually true of the intended object
or even its existence. He says in Ideas: "It is inherent in the essence of each
experience [Erlebnis] itself not only that, but also of what, it is a conscious-
ness" (§36, p. 80); and in Logical Investigations: "That ... a presentation
relates to a certain object in a certain way is not due ... to anything external
to the presentation but to its own inner peculiarity alone" (V, §25, p. 603;
with trans. changes). (This theme is one that Hussed emphasizes throughout
the various stages of his philosophical development. See, for example,/P, pp.
31,36,43;PP, §3(b), pp. 19-20; and eM, §14, pp. 32-33.) The focus of
Hussed's theory of intentionality, accordingly, is not on the object intended
in an act but on what he sometimes calls the "phenomenological content"
of the act - the inner, "experiential", features of the act that give it, as part
of its own internal structure, the character of being a "consciousness of
something". And this focus on the inner structure of intentional experiences
is what characterizes Husserl's resulting theory as phenomenological, in
perhaps the most basic and pervasive non-theoretical sense of that term.
The purpose of a phenomenological theory of intentionality, ala Husserl,
is to explicate the various aspects of an act's intentionality purely in terms
of the act's "phenomenological content". And a basic purpose of Hussed's
methodological devices - epoche, or "bracketing", and phenomenological
reflection - is to turn our inquiry away from the objects of our acts and
toward the acts themselves, so that we may discover the inner structures or
contents by means of which these acts gain their intentionality. (We shall
see in the next section, though, that Hussert's phenomenological reductions
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 93

involve more than this.) And so Hussed's approach to the problems of inten-
tionality differs fundamentally from the "object-approach": in every case of
intentionality, the important question for Hussed is not "What sort of object
must we say is intended in this act in order to account for its intentionality?"
but rather "What is the phenomenological structure of this act by virtue of
which it is an intentional experience, directed toward a given object in a
specific way?"
Thus, Husserl's phenomenological approach to intentionality requires a
distinction that object-theories do not: the distinction between the intended
object of an act - that which the act is directed toward, or is "of" or "about"
- and the act's content - that which gives the act its directedness, and so
makes it "of" or "about" some object. In general, for Husser!, it is only this
latter entity, the act's content, that is peculiarly "intentional" in ontological
kind. The content of an act, then, is an "intentional object" in two of the
senses we earlier defmed, but not in the third: it is an entity intentional in
kind, and it is an entity whose correlation with an act accounts for the act's
being intentional, but it is not itself an object intended in the act in which
it plays that role (see Chapter II, Section 1.3). And by contrast, what is
intended in an act - the act's object - is neither intentional in kind nor
necessary for the act's having its characteristic property of intentionality.
We shall shortly be looking in detail at Husserl's own account of an act's
"phenomenological content". The ac.count is complex, but what will emerge as
most important for our concerns is an element of content that he characterizes
as a "meaning" or "sense" (Sinn). In Logical Investigations he calls this ele-
ment of content the "matter", or the "interpretive sense" (Auffassungssinn),
of an act; and, with some evolution, it is what in Ideas and subsequent writ-
ings he calls the "noema" of an act or, more specifically, the "noematic Sinn"
in the noema of an act. Hence, we shall see, it is the "meaning" -content, the
noematic Sinn, of an act that gives the act its directedness toward the object
it intends; and to explicate an act's intentionality in terms of the act's phe-
nomenological content is primarily to explicate the role of this meaning entity
in intentionality.

1.2. Husserlian Phenomenology and Phenomenological Method

We characterized Husserl's approach to intentionality as "phenomenological"
because it attempts to explain intentionality exclusively in terms of the
contents of intentional experiences as opposed to their objects. Broadly
defmed, phenomenology is simply a study of the intrinsic structures of con-
sciousness, or contents of experiences. Now, while this definition captures
94 CHAPTER III

Husserl's general conception of phenomenology, there emerges in his writings

a more restrictive and more sophisticated conception of phenomenology as a
distinctively philosophical discipline. Transcendental, or pure, phenomenology
Husserl conceives as a special kind of study of the structures of consciousness,
a study whose results are to be completely independent of - and so "purified"
of - all empirical or naturalistic assumptions. Although, like psychology, it
is a study of mental phenomena, transcendental phenomenology is to be
sharply distinguished from empirical psychology, which is enmeshed with
naturalistic assumptions. Indeed, Husserl holds, it must proceed by a distinc-
tive methodology, called transcendental-phenomenological reduction, which
involves a special kind of inner reflection. This program of transcendental
phenomenology develops out of philosophical concerns that include not only
intentionality but also fundamental problems of ontology, epistemology, and
philosophic methodology generally. Its larger motivations lie with matters of
epistemology and methodology. These concerns go far beyond the particular
issues of intentionality that have been and will continue to be our primary
concerns, and many are tangential to our study. However, to make no note
of them would leave us with a picture of Husserl's phenomenology that is at
once overly general and overly parochial. Accordingly, in this section we turn
briefly to Husserl's specific version of phenomenology as it emerges in the
context of these larger themes. In this way we mark out the place and the
motivations of Husserl's theory of inten~ionality in his overall philosophy of
transcendental phenomenology.
The epistemological motivations of his philosophy Husserl himself often
characterizes as Cartesian. The basic task of philosophy, he believes, is to
discover the ultimate foundations of our beliefs about the world and about
our place in it, and to justify - or at least to effect an understanding of - the
framework within which all our thinking about the world takes place, both
our everyday, common-sense thinking and our theoretical, scientific reasoning
(cf. CM, § § 1-3). Like Descartes, Husserl thinks these foundations lie with
an understanding of the nature of the experiencing subject and his conscious-
ness. Husserl's phenomenology takes the form it does largely because of the
role he sees for it in this larger philosophical enterprise. For, he thinks, only a
phenomenology purified of the assumptions that underlie our naturalistic
thinking can hope to clarify or to justify the foundations of that thinking.
Transcendental-phenomenological reduction is Husserl's method for at-
taining a phenomenology appropriate to these ultimate philosophical goals.
In Ideas and Cartesian Meditations he characterizes this reduction as most
naturally proceeding in three steps, each of which is itself characterized as a
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 95

kind of "reduction". A "reduction" in Husserl's sense is a methodological

device for "reducing", or narrowing down, the scope of one's inquiry. Im-
portantly, then, Husserl's reductions are not ontological reductions, whereby
entities of one category are defined or eliminated in terms of entities of some
other category (as some have sought to reduce physical objects to sense-data,
or minds to bodies, or values to facts, and so on). Rather, the purpose of
Husserl's reductions is that of successively delimiting the subject matter of
phenomenology. Accordingly, the purpose of the first reduction - sometimes
called the "psychological", or "phenomenological-psychological", reduction
- is to focus our attention on consciousness and its experiences, rather than
on the various external objects with which consciousness is more typically
occupied. But this reduction achieves only the broad, rudimentary form
of phenomenology we first described, a phenomenology that is not yet
distinguished from psychology. The purpose of the second step - called the
"transcendental" reduction - is to eliminate from this study of consciousness
all empirical or naturalistic considerations. Accordingly, it is the transcen-
dental reduction that yields the "pure" version of phenomenology suitable
to Husserl's philosophical tasks. The purpose of the third step - an instance
of what Husserl calls "eidetic" reduction - is to generalize the results attained
through a transcendental study of consciousness. The phenomenology finally
attained, Husserl believes, will then not be merely an account of the phe-
nomenologist's own consciousness, or his own experiences, but will have the
status of a general "science" of consciousness. Let us take a closer look at
these three methodological steps and what they are supposed to achieve. 1
The first step - psychological reduction - yields a study of the ego and its
acts that proceeds by means of "natural", or "psychological", reflection (eM,
§15; Ideas, § 34), a reflection that takes place within what Husserl calls the
"natural attitude". This natural attitude is the everyday, pre-philosophical
attitude that pervades our ordinary conscious life. Basic to this attitude is our
simply taking it for granted that the natural world exists, that the objects we
intend are, for the most part, real entities within that world, and that we
ourselves and our experiences are also parts of that world and in causal inter-
action with its other parts. These presuppositions of our everyday life make
up what Husserl calls the "general thesis" of the natural attitude (Ideas, §27-
30). Now, it is precisely the legitimacy of this natural attitude and its general
thesis that is called into question by Descartes' philosophical program. For
nothing short of a philosophical grounding of the presuppositions underlying
our ordinary beliefs about the world will suffice as an ultimate grounding of
those beliefs themselves. Consequently, a philosophy that sets this Cartesian
96 CHAPTER III

task for itself cannot assume or make use of the presuppositions of the natural
attitude, on pain of begging the very questions it seeks to answer. For these
philosophical purposes, then, all such presuppositions must be suspended,
or set aside: The suspension of these presuppositions is what Husserl calls
"epoch€:", or "bracketing" the thesis of the natural attitude: to "bracket"
this thesis is to refuse to make or to use the assumption that there is a real,
natural world to which our intentions relate. And bracketing this general
assumption entails making no use of the more particular beliefs that presup-
pose it; beliefs about particular objects and all the theories of natural science
are thereby bracketed as well, Husserl says. (See Ideas, § §31-32.)
The purpose of bracketing, or epoch€:, is to turn our attention away from
the objects of the natural world so that our inquiry may focus instead on the
most fundamental evidences on which our naturalistic beliefs about these
objects are based. And for Husserl, as for Descartes, this turn to evidences is
a turn toward the conscious subject and his experiences. (Cf. CM, § §5-8).
Whether the natural world exists or not, Husser! believes, it is self-evident to
the experiencing subject that he undergoes experiences, experiences that at
least purport to be of or about external objects, and that he himself exists
as the subject, or ego, having these experie~ces. Setting aside his ordinary
concern with the natural world, the subject can explicitly direct his attention
to these experiences, and to himself as their subject, in what Husserl calls acts
of "reflection" (Ideas, § §38, 77, 78; CM, § 15.) Consequently, by bracketing
the thesis of the natural attitude as it applies to the objects of our ordinary
intentions, we effect a first "reduction" of the field of philosophical inquiry:
the search for evidences now centers, not on the objects that we ordinarily
intend, but on the intentions themselves and the ego who undergoes them, as
revealed in reflection.
We noted that Husserl calls this reduction "psychological" and that it
takes place within the natural attitude. This means that the reflection in-
volved here is not something unusual or unfamiliar to us in our everyday life
(although its Cartesian motivation may be). Rather, it is simply the kind of
reflection we engage in whenever we attend to our own conscious life and so
make explicit our awareness of ourselves as thinking, experiencing conscious
beings. But it also means that, although we have bracketed the natural attitude
as it applies to the objects of our everyday intentions, we have not bracketed
this attitude as it applies to ourselves and our experiences. We continue to
affmn our belief in the existence of ourselves as natural persons, at least
insofar as we are psychologically functioning conscious egos. And our inten-
tions, likewise, we continue to treat as natl,lral events making up this ego's
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 97

psychological reality. (See Ideas, § §39, 53.) Thus, this first reduction is
"psychological" inasmuch as it lays before us the kind of data that would
be subject matter for a psychology of inner experiences, i.e., a natural science
whose goal is to articulate and to understand the psychological reality of a
person independent of whether that inner reality corresponds to the external
world. A psychology that proceeds from this data would be appropriately
characterized as "phenomenological" in the broad sense we earlier defined;
Husserl calls it "phenomenological psychology". (See Crisis, §69; §72, p.
263; CM, § §16, 35; also cf. PP, §4.)
In Cartesian Meditations Husserl criticizes Descartes for having failed "to
make the transcendental turn" (§ 10, p. 23). Although we can reflect on the
ego and its experiences, Husser! says,

... It must by no means be accepted as a matter of course that, with our apodictic pure
ego, we have rescued a little tag·end of the world, as the sole unquestionable part of it
for the philosophizing Ego, and that now the problem is to infer the rest of the world
by rightly conducted arguments, according to principles innate in the ego. (eM, § 10,
p.24.)

Now, it is not clear that Descartes did think of the ego as a "little tag-end of
the world", the world whose existence he had placed in question (though it
is true, as Husserl says (p. 24), that Descartes in the final analysis conceived
the ego as causally related to that world). But however that may be, Husserl's
point is simply that the psychological reduction alone is not sufficient for
Descartes' philosophical purposes. Insofar as the ego and its acts are con-
ceived in naturalistic terms, even if we think of the ego as an essentially non-
physical entity causally interacting with the physical, talk of the ego and its
experiences already presupposes the truth of at least part of the general thesis
of the natural attitude and so cannot establish the foundations of that thesis.
Consequently, Husser! says, the method of epoche, or bracketing, must be
extended even to my own ego and to its intentions. We cannot then affirm
the existence of the ego as a psychological reality - what Husser! calls the
"empirical", or "psychological", ego - nor can we affirm the existence of
our acts as constituents of this psychological reality. Nonetheless, Husserl
holds, there still remains an inner life of consciousness that can be described
independently of even these naturalistic affirmations. Our intentions so
described Husserl calls "pure", or "transcendental", acts of the ego; and the
ego that undergoes these acts he calls the "pure", or "transcendental", ego
(/ch). The epoche that brackets the empirical elements in consciousness, thus
leaving only the transcendental ego and its pure acts, is what he calls the
98 CHAPTER III

"transcendental reduction". And reflection on these transcendental elements

of consciousness he calls "pure", or "transcendental", reflection. (See Ideas,
§§33,51,54,57,80;CM, §§1O-1l, 14-15.)
The transcendental reduction is at once the most important and the most
problematic of Husserl's methodological devices. It is crucially important
because the transcendental reduction is what explicitly reveals the structures
of consciousness that are the subject matter of Husserl's phenomenology. But
many of Husserl's followers and interpreters have questioned its fruitfulness
and even its possibility. Although we shall not enter fully into these con-
troversies concerning the transcendental reduction, we should like to argue
that Husserl's distinction between the empirical and the transcendental ego
has a considerable degree of plausibility.
Questions about the empirical nature of the ego, what the ego is really
like, are a commonplace in science and philosophy. What is the true theory
of the ego? Can consciousness or the ego be completely explained in purely
physical terms? Is the ego a structure of innate behavioral tendencies genet-
ically inherited from a long line of human and pre-human ancestors? Is the
mind a Turing machine? Does Freud's theory of ego, id, and superego have
psychological reality? These questions, and hundreds more like them, have
not been answered with any degree of fmality. Yet, with what confidence
we all speak about many of our thoughts and experiences! It seems, then,
that Husserl is right in his belief that we can describe the ego and its acts
without presupposing the truth of any particular theory about the ego. And
this is at least part of what lies behind his notion of epoche as it applies to
the empirical ego: even if we "bracket" all empirical theories about the ego
and so make no assumptions about the truth of any of these theories - even
if we make no assumptions about what the ego is in fact like as a natural, an
empirical, reality - we can yet describe our experiences as we live them.
Furthermore, Husser! is also right in seeing that Descartes' skeptical
questions extend in a certain way to the ego itself. For our experiences, even
if their occurrence is in some sense indubitable for us, give us little immediate
knowledge of the true empirical nature of ourselves. Simply in virtue of
having experiences, we know something about them and about ourselves.
But does this knowledge tell us whether these experiences are or are not
identical with certain brain processes? Can we know that the ego who under-
goes these experiences inhabits a physical body? Could our experiences not
be just as they are even though we were merely brains in vats (appropriately
stimulated, or even unconsciously self-stimulated)? All these questions sug-
gest that there is a knowledge of our experiences gained in reflection that is
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 99

independent of the actual facts about the empirical reality of our conscious-
ness. If so, there does indeed seem to be a level of description of the ego and
its acts that makes no ontological commitments about the ultimate de facto
reality and nature of the ego. To describe the ego and its acts in this ontologi-
cally neutral way, just as they appear in reflection, is to describe just those
features of the ego that remain when we "bracket" our empirical, or psy-
chological, beliefs about the ego as an empirical reality. But this epoche,
along with the reflection that sets before us the requisite features of the ego,
is just Husserl's "transcendental turn"; and the ego so described is just the ego
in its transcendental aspect, i.e., the transcendental ego.
With this account of transcendental reduction we see that Husserl's doc-
trine of the transcendental ego is not a doctrine of a second ego, a transcen-
dental puppeteer standing behind the empirical ego and manipulating its
activities. Rather, it is the doctrine that there is a level of description of one-
self that is methodologically independent of, and indeed prior to, any further
description of one's ego, one's experiences, and their relationship to each
other and to the world. "As transcendental ego, after all, I am the same ego
that in the worldly sphere is a human ego," Husserl says (Oisis, §72,p. 264;
cf. CM, § 15, p. 37). But transcendental-phenomenological description of this
ego and its consciousness makes no commitments about its status as "human
ego" in the "worldly sphere" - no commitments as to whether the ego and
its acts reside ultimately in soul or body, in ghost or machine, in a person in a
social milieu or merely in a brain in a vat.
What, then, can we say about the ego on this transcendental level of de-
scription? Primarily, says Husserl, the ego is the subject of experiences -
indeed, the common subject of all the experiences that make up a single
stream of consciousness (Ideas, § §57, 80; CM, §31). And to describe the ego
in more specific terms, he says, is just to describe the particular experiences,
especially the intentional experiences, that the ego undergoes and how it
undergoes them .

... The experiencing ego [erlebende Ich) is nothing that could be laid hold of in itself
and made into an object of investigation in its own right. Apart from its "ways of
relating" or "ways of comporting" ["Verhaltungsweisen"), it is completely empty of
essential components, it has absolutely no explicable content, it is in itself indescribable:
pure ego and nothing further. (Ideas, § 80, p. 195.)

Thus, the properties of the ego that are captured in phenomenological de-
scription are its properties of having, or undergoing, these and those particular
experiences and, derivatively, whatever more. enduring t~aits of the ego are
100 CHAPTER III

made manifest therein. Unlike David Hume or Jean-Paul Sartre, however,

Husser! thinks it proper to speak of the ego as an entity and so to ascribe
these properties of experiencing to a subject per se. 2 And further, he believes,
the experiences undergone by the ego carve out more abiding dispositional
properties that remain with the ego and so affect the ego's further acts
(though not unalterably). Each ego, accordingly, manifests in the inner his-
tory of its experiences a distinct "style", or "personal character", that helps
defme its personal identity (CM, § 3 2). Nonetheless, it is not the personal
character of the ego that Husserl's phenomenology is designed to capture. In
addition to its "personal style" of experiencing, he believes, each ego mani-
fests in its experiences certain universal, or essential, features. These charac-
terize not just this ego but any ego, actual or possible, insofar as an ego is a
possible subject of intentional experiences at allor, only somewhat less
generally, a possible subject of intentional experiences of various kinds. A
phenomenological theory of the ego is concerned only with these transcen-
dental features of the ego that are essential to it as subject of intentional
experiences. And similarly, a phenomenological theory of experiences is
concerned only with the essential, and not the idiosyncratic, transcendental
features of the ego's acts. (See Ideas, § 75; CM, §34.) These essential features
of the. ego and its intentional experiences are isolated by means of what
Husserl calls "eidetic reduction" applied to the ego and its acts as described
after transcendental reduction.
Eidetic reduction, then, is the third step in Husserl's method for securing
the subject matter of transcendental phenomenology. Yet, this reduction can
be defmed independently of phenomenology, and its use here should not be
confused with its applications in other areas of study. Eidetic reduction in
general is Husserl's method for turning the focus of any study from the
concrete to the general, from individuals to their essences, yielding a priori
essential generalities concerning things of a given type. By "essences", or
"eidos", Husser! means properties, kinds, or types - "ideal species" - that
entities may exemplify. With respect to entities of a given type, or essence,
eidetic reduction is the methodological procedure of "bracketing" the partic-
ular individuals that exemplify the essence and so ignoring or passing over
their individual peculiarities. We thereby turn our attention instead to the
type, or essence, itself and to what is necessarily true of all individuals insofar
as they have that essence. Unlike induction, or empirical generalization,
eidetic reduction has the goal of ascertaining for a given domain universal
truths that are not merely probable but certain, not empirical but a priori,
and not merely "factual" or contingent but essential or necessary. And its
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 101

way of proceeding also differs from that of induction: eidetic generalization

proceeds by imagination of possible cases rather than observation of actual
cases. This HusserI calls "eidetic variation". One considers in imagination
possible changes an individual can undergo while remaining an instance of
the given type or essence. Only properties of the individual that cannot be
so "varied" belong to that essence. Thus, in eidetic variation one grasps essen-
tial generalities about individuals of a given type or essence, and thereby one
grasps the essence. The apprehension of essences that so results from eidetic
reduction HusserI calls "essential insight", "eidetic intuition", or "ideation".
Importantly, such apprehension of an essence is usually incomplete, inasmuch
as one usually cannot grasp all the essential generalities relevant to a given
essence. (See Ideas, §§ 2-26,69-70;PP, §§ 9-10.)
According to HusserI, any domain of entities whatsoever can be subjected
to an eidetic reduction, which will uncover essential truths about things of
that domain (including, apparently, what Kant called "synthetic a priori"
truths - cf. Ideas, §20, p. 46). Applied to the domain of physical nature, for
example, it yields the most general truths about physical things, truths con-
cerning what properties things must necessarily have in order to count as
physical at all. These truths make up what HusserI calls "eidetic sciences" or
"ontologies" of nature: "sciences that ontologically investigate what essen-
tially belongs to physical nature-objectivity as such" (Ideas, §60, p. 144).
SimilarIy, applied to the domains of social behavior or psychological activity,
it yields "ontological-eidetic sciences" corresponding to the observational,
or empirical, sciences of sociology or psychology (Ibid.). It is perhaps not
surprising, therefore, that Hussed's method of eidetic reduction has received
considerable attention in disciplines outside philosophy proper and that some
may even have seen it as potentially HusserI's most important methodological
contribution to the natural and human sciences. Nonetheless, HusserI himself
cautions against simply equating phenomenology with the use of this method
and so identifying phenomenology and the study of essences. "If the phe-
nomenological domain ... would surrender itself by mere transition from
[the natural observational attitude] to the eidetic attitude", HusserI says,
''then it would need no elaborate reductions ..." (Ideas, § 16, p. 145). The
transcendental reduction is what lays open to reflection the basic data of
phenomenology - the ego and its acts, "purified" of naturalistic assumptions.
And this reduction, HusserI says, brackets not only the individuals of the
natural worId but also their essences: phenomenology then makes no use of
the empirical natural sciences or of their corresponding eidetic ontologies
(Ideas, §60, pp. 143-44). Thus, phenomenology is not eidetic science in
102 CHAPTER III

general. Rather, it is the eidetic science of one very special domain: the
domain of consciousness and its experiences as revealed by the transcendental
reduction:"Phenomenology ... as eidetic science [is the] theory of essences
of transcendentally purified consciousness ... " (Ideas, §60, p. 142).
Eidetic reduction is part of phenomenological method for Husserl, then,
only when it is the final step in his three-part transcendental-phenomenologi-
cal reduction. First, one reflects on consciousness: whatever act is under
consideration, one ceases to be concerned with its object (whether this object
be an individual, an essence, a state of affairs, or some other kind of entity)
and turns one's attention instead to the act in which the object is intended
and to the ego as subject of this act. Second, one disregards the naturalistic
aspects of consciousness through transcendental reduction of the ego and its
acts: this reduction isolates the "pure" data of consciousness from their
presumed naturalistic environment. Third, the data that remain over after
transcendental reduction are then studied eidetically by applying to them
the method of eidetic variation. The result is phenomenology as an "eidetic
science" of transcendental consciousness, a study of those transcendental
features of the ego and its acts that are universal and necessary.
Applied to the reflecting phenomenologist's ego, the eidetic reduction
disregards what is merely idiosyncratic, focusing instead on the transcendental
features essential to it as ego and so necessarily shared by any other ego,
actual or possible. Thus, the "science" of phenomenology includes what
Husserl calls "transcendental egology": a theory of the characteristics neces-
sary to any possible ego, not as empirical ego of any presumed natural kind,
but purely as ego - whatever its actual, empirical nature might be. Similarly,
applied to the transcendentally reduced acts of the ego, eidetic reduction
yields the features of these acts that are necessarily shared with any ego's
acts of the same kind. Thus, phenomenology also includes accounts of the
general features that are necessary for the possibility of various kinds of
experiences: these accounts constitute phenomenological, or transcendental,
theories of perception, of logical and mathematical thinking, of our experi-
ences of other persons, of aesthetic experience, and so on. (See CM, §34;
Ideas, §75.)
The theme uniting phenomenology as theory of the ego and phenomen-
ology as theory of acts is intentionality (Ideas, §84; CM, §14, pp. 32-33).
The most general universal property of acts is their intentionality: to be
intentional is an essential, an eidetic, feature of any actual or possible experi-
ence qua act, any experience of the type "act". And the most general univer-
sal property of the ego is that it is a possible subject of such experiences: to
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 103

be a subject of intentional experiences is an essential, an eidetic, feature of

any actual or possible ego, qua ego. Accordingly, an eidetic phenomenology
is first and foremost a transcendental theory of intentionality, an articulation
of those transcendental features of the ego and its acts that are necessary for
the possibility of any ego's intentionally relating, through its various more
specific types of experiences, to objects of various sorts.
At the eidetic level, then, Hussed's phenomenology is "transcendental"
philosophy in the very same sense that Immanuel Kant first introduced: its
ultimate concern is with the necessary conditions for the possibility of inten-
tional experiences. What is essential for any kind of intentional experience,
Husserl holds, is that the ego be able to structure the items of experience into
coherent, meaningful, presentations wherein objects of consciousness can be
distinguished from one another and from the experiences in which they are
given. The ego so structures its experiences by giving them meanings (see
Ideas, § §85, 90; cf. Sections 2.3 and 2.4 below). And in giving meanings to
its experiences, the ego coimects its experiences in rule-governed ways with
other actual and possible experiences, thus fitting them into patterns, or
"syntheses", of actual and possible experiences wherein one and the same
object is presented (see CM, § § 17-20; cf. Chapter V, Sections 1.2 and 3.1,
below, on "horizon" and "pre delineation"). Inasmuch as an object's presen-
tation to consciousness is in virtue of such a meaningful structuring of experi-
ences, Hussed says an object is "constituted" in consciousness, presented
"as" such-and-such, through the particular meaning given to an experience.
For each general type of object - physical objects, mathematical entities,
persons, aesthetic objects, and so on - transcendental phenomenology is the
study of those meanings and rules universally employed by the ego when it
intends objects as being of that type. These studies in intentionality Husser!
calls transcendental theories of constitution, since they are theories that
articulate the structures of meanings necessary for intending objects as being
of various types (CM, § §21-22; cf. Chapter V, Section 3.2, below).
These theories of constitution provide a transcendental-phenomenological
foundation, a "rational grounding", for beliefs and judgments about objects
of any given type (see Ideas, § §142, 149-53). This notion of "rational
grounding" is what fmally emerges as Hussed's version of philosophical
"foundationalism". But it is remarkably different from the Cartesian idea of
securing certainty for our beliefs. Indeed, Hussed himself comes to reject the
specific goals and methods of Cartesian epistemology:

It is naturally a ludicrous, though unfortunately common misunderstanding, to seek to

104 CHAPTER III

attack transcendental phenomenology as "Cartesianism", as if its ego cogito were a

premise or set of premises from which the rest of knowledge ... was to be deduced,
absolutely 'secured'. The point is not to secure objectivity but to understand it. (Crisis,
§ 55, p. 189; our emphasis. Cf. CM, § § 12, 40, 41.)

And the kind of "understanding" to be gained through phenomenology is an

understanding of the structures of our own minds, rather than the absolute
certainty of their claims to knowledge. Thus, despite his abiding homage to
Descartes, Husserl's transcendental resolution of Descartes' epistemological
program is not Cartesian but Kantian. Husserl calls it a "transcendental
theory of knowledge" (CM, §40, p. 81), and, he says, "Phenomenology is
eo ipso 'transcendental idealism' ... " (CM, §41, p. 86). This transcendental
idealism is an epistemological rather than a metaphysical doctrine (such as
Berkeley's idealism). Although it is difficult to define, its goal is to clarify
the meanings through which the mind can know objects of various sorts:

... We have here a transcendental idealism that is nothing more than ... an explication
of my ego as subject of every possible cognition, and indeed [explication of it 1 with
respect to every sense of what exists. ... This idealism ... is sense-explication ...
carried out as regards every type of existent ever conceivable by me, the ego .... (CM,
§41, p. 86. See also § §11-12 and Ideas, §55.)

Phenomenology, then, is a study of the meaning-giving activities of the

ego and of the meanings, or senses, that it gives to our experiences. Thus, we
arrive at the same conception of Husserl's phenomenology - that it is an
analysis of the meaning-contents of intentional experiences - whether we
find its motivations, as here, in the needs of a transcendental theory of
knowledge or, as in Section 1.1, in the needs of a theory of intentionality
per se.

1.3. Toward a Phenomenological Theory of Intentionality

Our concerns with intentionality are largely independent of Husserl's epis-
temological goals and the details of his phenomenological methods_ Yet,
Husserl's understanding of phenomenology as a transcendental study of
consciousness places important constraints on what he can say about con-
sciousness and its intentionality. We earlier characterized Husserl's conception
of intentionality as "phenomenological": he takes intentionality to be an
intrinsic property of consciousness, a property that accrues to an act solely
in virtue of the act's phenomenological content. Our studies in the last sec-
tion enable us to see more clearly just how strong this conception is and, at
least in outline, what a "content-theory" of intentionality must be like. For
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 105

intentionality itself, as Hussed conceives it, is a property of consciousness

that survives the transcendental reduction. And the tum from object to con-
tent in the analysis of intentionality is of a piece with the "transcendental
tum" of phenomenology, provided content is understood in an appropriately
non-psychological way.
What does it mean to say that intentionality is a property of consciousness
that survives the transcendental reduction? For Husserl, it means that the
notion of intentionality to be explicated is simply intentionality as we experi-
ence it, irrespective of whatever naturalistic account of it may turn out to be
true. Intentionality, in this sense, is independent of all that is "bracketed" in
transcendental reduction. And that means that an explication of intentionality
as we experience it should not be essentially bound up with any naturalistic
theories or facts, whether these be about the natural environment in which
our experiences take place or about ourselves as psychophysical organisms.
Husserl's conception of intentionality as phenomenological and his concep-
tion of phenomenology as transcendental combine to preclude his explicating
intentionality in terms of any of the naturalistic approaches commonly taken
in the philosophy of mind. Accordingly, a transcendental theory of inten-
tionality cannot appeal, in whole or in part, to causal relations between acts
(or contents or egos) and objects in the external environment. Nor can such
a theory appeal to bodily behavior or dispositions to behave, patterns of
social interaction or "forms of life", causal or physiological states of the
brain, or psychological drives and instincts, either conscious or unconscious.
So the tum to content, for Husserl, is not merely a rejection 'Of what we have
specifically called the object-approach to intentionality; it is a rejection of
all these further approaches as well, whether they be formulated as versions
of the object-approach or as alternatives to it.
Our focus in the rest of this chapter is on Husserl's notion of content.
Given this focus, Husserl's task is to develop a theory of intentionality by
articulating in detail a non-psychological account of an act's phenomenologi-
cal content that will explain an act's intentionality, and do so in a way that
enables us to understand why intentional "relations" exhibit the peculiarities
they do. In short, the goal of a Husserlian theory of intentionality is to tell
us just what kind of entity an act's content is and to convince us that an
experience's involvement with an entity of that kind is both necessary and
sufficient for the intentionality of the experience.
This goal is by no means trivially attained. In fact, Hussed's own notion
of content increases in complexity from the Investigations to Ideas, so much
so that our discussion of it (in Part 2 below) may sometimes tend to lose
106 CHAPTER III

the purpose of the enterprise in the explication of it. However, we are in a

position to say now, before embarking on those details, what a "content-
theory" of intentionality will look like, at least structurally, if there are
"contents" of consciousness that can do what Husserl's phenomenological
approach to intentionality requires of them.
1. On a content-theory of intentionality, the content of an act is to be
sharply distinguished from the act's object. Whatever is true of the object of
an act is "bracketed" in transcendental reduction and so is unavailable for use
in a phenomenological explication of intentionality. The content of the act -
that which makes the act intentional - is by contrast not intended in the act
and in fact reveals itself only in transcendental reflection on the act as pure
experience, after the object and all else that transcends the act have been
suspended by phenomenological "epoche".
2. The content of an act is alone what confers intentionality on the act.
That is to say, it is the act's content that gives the act its relationlike char-
acter of being "of" or "about" some object; just in virtue of having this
content, the act "points" beyond itself toward something.
3. If the intention achieved in an act succeeds in reaching an existing
object, it is the content that determines which object this is: the act reaches
this object and not another simply because this is the object that the content
of the act prescribes or points toward.
4. But even if the intention is unsuccessful - Le., even if there exists no
such object as that which the content prescribes - the "prescribing" or
"pointing" chalacter of the content is unaffected; for the act's being inten-
tional in virtue of having this content is independent of the existence or non-
existence of an intended object - indeed, it is independent of the existence
of anything not found among the phenomenological, or transcendental,
features of the experience. Accordingly, this "pointing" character of an act's
content must be an intrinsic feature of the content, due to its very own nature
alone; and it is therefore not properly analyzable in terms of any natural, or
empirical, relations that might happen to obtain between content (or act)
and object. This point is perhaps the main obstacle to an easy understanding
or acceptance of Husserl's theory of intentionality, for there may seem to be
no obvious category of entities having such a property of "pointing beyond
themselves". In fact, Husserl seems to believe that in this regard contents of
consciousness are sui generis and that, for this very reason, the relation of
intending is also sui generis and so not like, or analyzable in terms of, any
more familiar sorts of relations. An anticipation of our further discussion
of content (in the rest of this chapter and in Chapter IV) may be of some
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 107

present help, however: Hussed characterizes contents as meanings or senses

(Sinne), and he identifies them (or, more precisely, the elements of contents
that have this "pointing" character) with the meanings that are expressed in
language. Since Husserl construes linguistic meanings in much the same way
Frege did, this means that contents of consciousness at least turn out to be
philosophically familiar entities and that the relations of intending that they
establish are of one flesh with semantic relations of reference as Fregean
theories explain them. Nonetheless, we would caution against undue optimism
about the explanatory value of this identification. There is wide disagreement
about how linguistic meaning and reference are themselves to be understood,
and Husserl would in fact argue that an understanding of these semantic
notions is to be derived from an understanding of the workings of meaning-
contents in intentionality, rather than vice versa. At any rate, our present
point is simply this: since contents have an intrinsically pointing character,
an act will be intentional - directed toward something - just in virtue of
having a content, whether a corresponding object exists or not.
S. The contents of acts are closely tied to what we have called "concep-
tions" or "ways of conceiving" an object. The intention achieved in an act
depends not merely on which object is intended but also on how it is intended
or conceived in the act by the act's subject, on what the object is intended
"as". If content is the determinant of intention, these differences in intention
due to different conceptions of what is intended must be accounted for as
differences in content. Thus, contents vary concomitantly with different ways
of conceiving an object (though Husserl's commitment to a transcendental
account of content requires an appropriately non-psychological account of
this conception-relativity of content). And the content of an act must not
only determine which object the act is directed toward; it must also prescribe
which properties or aspects the object is intended as having.
6. It follows from the last point that different contents, if correlated with
different conceptions of the same object, must be able to prescribe or point
to the same object. Acts having these different contents will then be directed
toward the same object but will differ in what they intend this object "as"
and so will in this way differ in their intentionality.
7. Some acts - in fact, all acts directed toward objects in the natural
world - intend their objects as transcendent, and this feature of intentionality
is also to be accounted for in terms of content. Thus, while the content of
an act prescribes properties the object is intended as having, the object itself
- insofar as it transcends the act in which it is intended - must have further
properties that the content does not prescrib~. Moreover, inasmuch as natural
lOB CHAPTER III

objects are intended as transcending any given intention of them (as opposed
to merely being so in fact), the content (in some way that Hussed must
explain) presents the object as having properties that are not explicitly deter-
mined by that content itself.
B. The content of an act is a rather complex entity. That contents are
composed of various constituents is already required by the points we have
noted. But there are also structural differences in intention that must be
accounted for in terms of content. Some acts intend their objects as individual
entities having certain properties; others intend their objects as states of
affairs, in which individuals are intended only secondarily as participants in
states of affairs or not at all. Such structural differences in intention - as
manifest, for example, in seeing the elm tree in the yard versus seeing or
judging that the tree in the yard is an elm - would seem to require corre-
sponding differences in the structure of act-contents, differences in the way
the constituents of contents are arranged rather than in the constituents
themselves. Indeed, we shall see that Hussed's construal of contents as mean-
ings allows him to take just this line. Contents are complexes of meanings,
"syntactically" structured so as to present either an individual object or a
state of affairs or an essence - if those are the fundamental ontological "cate-
gories". Contents structured so as to present states of affairs Hussed in fact
characterizes as "propositions" (Siitze).
And so we turn now to the notion of content as Hussed conceives it. Since
this notion is of the very essence of Husserl's theory of intentionality, we
shall try to develop it in detail and with close reference to Hussed's own
words about it, especially in the Investigations and Ideas.

2. "PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONTENT"

The foundation of Hussed's theory of intentionality is his version of the

distinction between the content and the object of an act of consciousness and
his focus on content, rather than object, as the determinant of an act's inten-
tionality. Hussed's own conception of an act's "phenomenological content"
reaches its full development in Ideas with the doctrine of "noesis" and
"noema". But the general notion of content does not originate with Ideas
or even with Husserl. Rather, Husserl's doctrine in Ideas emerges from his
earlier doctrine in Logical Investigations, and that doctrine emerges from an
extensive tradition of philosophical thought concerning content and object
of consciousne~s. This tradition includes other thinkers in Husserl's intellec-
tual milieu and traces back to Bernard Bolzano's work a half century earlier
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 109

and perhaps all the way back to the Stoics. Accordingly, we shall try to
illuminate the notions of noesis and noema by viewing them within the
context of this larger philosophical tradition. We shall not attempt to give
an exact or exhaustive accounting of Husserl's philosophical debts or of his
intellectual history, but we shall seek to articulate some of the basic concep-
tual connections between Husserl's views and those of others and to see the
relations between his own later and earlier views.

2.1. Act, Content, and Object: Twardowski's Formulation of the Distinction

The distinction between the content and the object of an act of consciousness,
in its basic outline, is not new with Husserl, we observed. Other philosophers
and psychologists of Husserl's day, responding in part to Brentano's emphasis
on intentionality, also proposed a three-fold distinction among act, content,
and object. On that proposal, the object of an act is distinguished from the
act itself: the object of an act is that of which the subject is conscious in the
act; not itself a part or constituent of the act, it is that toward which the act
is directed. Additionally, the act's content is distinguished from its object:
the content (Inhalt) of an act is that in the act that accounts for the act's
being directed toward, or being of or about, its object; the content incor-
porates the internal (psychological and/or phenomenological) structure of
the act in virtue of which the act is directed in a certain way. The distinction
paves the way for a "mediator-theory" of intentionality: through the content,
the act is directed toward the object. Of course, precisely what such a theory
comes to depends crucially on how the notion of content is conceived.
In this section we take a brief look at a typical and influential early formu-
lation of the act-content-object distinction, that of Kasimir Twardowski's
On the Content and Object of Presentations (1894).3 Twardowski's views
directly influenced Meinong and they are rudimentary forms of some of
Husserl's key ideas in Logical Investigations. Like Husserl, Twardowski was
a student of Brentano's (though at a later time), and Husserl was thoroughly
familiar with Twardowski's book, having reviewed it in 1896. 4 Still, it seems
clear that Husserl did not simply borrow from Twardowski: Husserl was
himself actively thinking and writing about the notion of content in the
early 1890's,5 and both in his review and in Logical Investigations he finds
important differences between his views and Twardowski's. In any event,
Twardowski's little book is remarkable for its lucidity and conciseness and
it makes clear the general line of thought characterizing this part of the
philosophical scene in which Husserl was at work.
Twardowski takes up from Brentano the thesis of intentionality: "There
110 CHAPTER III

always corresponds to the mental phenomenon of being presented with some-

thing, of judging, of desiring, and of detesting something presented, something
judged, something desired, and something detested" (p_ I). But the terms
associated with the thesis of intentionality are ambiguous. By the term
'presentation' ('Vorstellung'), he notes, "one can understand ... sometimes
the act of presenting; sometimes, however, one can mean by it what is pre-
sented ..." (p. I; our emphasis). And the expression 'what is presented', or
'the presented', Twardowski also fmds ambiguous: it can mean either the
object of the presentation or the content of the presentation. Hence, he says,
"one has to distinguish . . . between the object at which our idea 'aims, as
it were', and the immanent object or the content of the presentation" (p. 2).
(Following Brentano, Twardowski distinguishes presentation - merely enter-
taining an object in thought - from judgment; but he draws the act-content-
object distinction for judgment as well as presentation (pp. 3ff), and it
evidently extends also to desire, detest, etc.)
To explain the distinction between act, content, and object of presenta-
tion, Twardowski forms an analogy:

In comparing the act of presenting with painting, the content with the picture, and the
object with the subject matter which is put on canvas - for example, a landscape - we
have also more or less approximated the relationship between the act on the one hand
and the content and the object of the presentation on the other. For the painter, the
picture is the means by which to depict the landscape; he wants to picture, paint, a real
or merely imagined landscape, and he does so in painting a picture. He paints a landscape
in making, painting, a picture of this landscape. The landscape is the "primary" object
of his painting activity; the picture is the "secondary" object. Analogously for presenta-
tions .... In presenting to himself an object, a person presents to himself at the same
time a content which is related to this object. The presented object, that is, the object
at which the presenting activity, the act of presentation, aims, is the primary object of
the presenting. The content through which the object is presented is the secondary
object of the presenting activity. (Pp. 15-16.)

Twardowski then proposes to follow the terminology of his contemporary

Zimmermann:

We shall say of the content that it is thought, presented, in the presentation; we shall
say of the object that it is presented through the content of the presentation .... What
is presented in a presentation is its content; what is presented through a presentation is
its object. (p. 16.)

Importantly, the role of an act's content, for Twardowski, is to make the

act intentional, to give the act its relation of directedness toward its object:
". _. The content is the means, as it were, by which the object is presented"
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 111

(p. 16). Twardowski is not very precise about just how the content of an act
achieves this task, though he does articulate several important theses about
the relation of content to object. (l) He makes it clear that the analogy with
picturing is just an analogy, and that he does not think that the content "is
simply a mental picture of the object" or that "there is a kind of photographic
resemblance between content and object" (p. 64). Rather, he cites approvingly
the predominant view of his day that "the relationship between the presenta-
tion and its object is an irreducible, primary relationship" (p. 64). (2) An
act's content is a complex structure having component parts or constituents;
and the relation between an act and its object is due, at least in part, to rela-
tions obtaining between the structure and constituents of the act's content,
on the one hand, and the corresponding structure and constituents of its
object, on the other (pp. 65ft). (3) Because of its content, every act can be
said to present (or intend) an object; but the presentation of an object,
through a content, does not require that there exist any such presented object
(or, presumably, that the object have any other "mode" of being) (p. 22).
Hence, the presentation (or intention) of an object does not entail the exist-
ence of a presented object. (4) The same object can be presented through
different contents (p. 29), and so different acts can intend the same object.
(5) In general, the content of an act yields only an "inadequate" presentation
of the object; that is, the object "has constituents to which there correspond
no constituents in the content of the presentation" (p. 78). Note that with
this view Twardowski differs importantly from Meinong (cf. Chapter II,
Section 2.3, above): a presentation is "inadequate", not because it intends
an incomplete object, but because its object transcends (in Husserl's sense of
the term) what the act's content explicitly presents of it (cf. p. 82). (6) The
content of a given act, through which the act's object is presented, is not
itself intended in that act; but it can become the object of a different act of
a special sort (what Twardowski calls a "presentation of a presentation" and
Husserl calls an act of "reflection"): " ... The content of a presentation ...
can also be presented through a different act, and this in such a way that the
content of the earlier act is now the object of the new act of presentation"
(p. 60). (7) The relation of an act to its object, achieved by means of the
act's content, is analogous to the relation of a name to its referent, achieved
through the name's meaning, or sense (pp. 8-10). Indeed, Twardowski says
that the meaning of a name just is the content of a presentation underlying
the use of the name (p. 9) and that "the object of a presentation is what is
designated by the name which means the content of the presentation" (p. 91).
All these views of Twardowski's have counterparts that we shall see in
112 CHAPTER III'

Husserl's theory of intentionality (cf. Part 3 below). Nonetheless, in his review

of Twardowski's book Husserl criticizes Twardowski's way of developing
some of these theses. In particular, Husserl objects to Twardowski's handling
of thesis (3) above. Like Meinong, Twardowski holds that no act is "object-
less", although some acts inteild objects that do not exist; whereas Husserl
takes talk of non-existent objects to be merely "figurative" and so rejects the
view that for every act there must be a corresponding object. 6 But Husserl's
main criticism is that Twardowski's notion of content is too "psychological".
Assuming a psychological interpretation of content, he objects to Twar-
dowski's identification of linguistic meaning with content (thesis (7) above):

Content as such is an individual, psychical datum, an existent here and now. Meaning
[Bedeutung], however, is not something individual, not something real [Reales] , never a
psychological datum. For it is identically the same "in" a limitless manifold of individ-
ually and really distinct acts .... It would be absurd to take it as a real part of the
presentation. 7

Husserl's response, we shall see, is not to reject the identification of meaning

with content but to distinguish two very different notions of content, only
one of which can properly be characterized as "meaning". He writes in Logi-
cal Investigations:

...A mere distinction between content and object of presentation [Vorstellung], like
the one recommended by Twardowski following Zimmermann, will not remotely suffice.
. . . There is not one thing which can be distinguished as 'content' from the object named
[or presented] ; there are several things which can and must be so distinguished. Above
all, we can mean by 'content', in the case, e.g., of a nominal presentation, its meaning
[Bedeutung] as an ideal unity .... To this corresponds ... the real [reellen] content
of the presentative act .... (V, §45, p. 657; with spelling of 'Zimmermann' corrected
and with our emphasis. Cf.ldeas, §129, pp. 316-17.)

In fairness to Twardowski, it is not clear from his text that he either ignored
or could not have accommodated Husserl's notion of "ideal" content. 8 But
be that as it may, the distinction between "real content" and "ideal content"
(or "intentional content", as Husserl also calls it), and the identification of
ideal contents with meanings, are key ingredients in Husserl's own conception
of content and, hence, in his theory of intentionality as well.

2.2. Husserl's Conception o[Content in 'Logical Investigations'

The fifth of Husserl's Logical Investigations, entitled 'On Intentional Ex-
periences [Erlebnisse] and their "Contents"', lays out Husserl's notion of
phenomenological content as he conceived it in 1900. At that time Husserl
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 113

had not yet developed the thorough-going phenomenological position that

he adopts in Ideas (1913), but we shall find the early conception to be a clear
precursor of the later phenomenological notions of "noesis" and "noema".
like Twardowski, Husserl attempts, in the fifth Investigation, to disam-
biguate the terminology then in vogue in discussions of intentionality, turning
his attention in § § 15-22 to the term 'content' itself. He notes, in § 17, that
the term 'content' has sometimes been used to refer to the object of an inten-
tional experience, but he emphasizes that he himself will never use the word
in that sense (p. 580). For Husser! the content of an act includes only what is
in the act that makes the act the intentional experience it is; and, as he says,
"the object is, properly speaking, nothing at all 'in' a presentation" (§25,
p. 603). The content of an act, then, in every sense in which Husserl uses
'content', is always something distinct from the act's object. But there are
still further distinctions to be made. First, within an act itself there are dif-
ferent components, or "phases" (!I1omente), that the term 'content' may
properly refer to. The chief of these Husserl calls the "quality" and the
"matter" of an act. And, second, there are ontologically different kinds of
content, corresponding to two different senses in which contents may be
said to be "in" consciousness. These Husserl calls "real" (reell) content and
"intentional", or "ideal" (ideal), content. Let us examine these distinctions
in order.
Every act is an act of a certain kind - a perception, a wish, a judgment,
etc. Accordingly, Husserl says, there must be some ''inner constituent" of
an act, some component of its content, that determines what kind of act it is:

If, e.g., we call an experience one of 'judgement', there must be some inner determina-
tion, not some mere outwardly attached mark, that distinguishes it as a judgment from
wishes, hopes and other sorts of acts. This determination it shares with all judgements
.... (§ 22, p. 597.)

This "inner determination" is what Husserl calls the "quality" of an act

(§ §20-22). The quality of an act, then, is that component of an act's con-
tent that differentiates the act according to kind. (N.b.: in later writings
Husserl calls an act's quality the "thetic character" of the act. Cf. Ideas,
§ § 117, 133.) My act of seeing the cat on the mat and Smith's act of seeing
the Prime Minister of England, for example, have contents that include the
same quality-component (since both acts are perceptual), even though they
are directed toward different objects. And my act of judging that the Demo-
cratic candidate will be elected President and Smith's act of hoping that the
Democratic candidate will be elected President have contents with different
114 CHAPTER III

quality-components (since one is a judgment and the other is a hope), even

though they intend the same state of affairs.
The content of any act must necessarily include some quality-component.
But, as the examples just cited show, acts with the same quality may differ
radically in the intentional relations they achieve, while acts with different
qualities may otherwise be quite similar in their intentionality. Accordingly,
there must be some further element of content, distinguishable from the
quality of an act, that determines the specific intention achieved in an act.
This component of an act's content is what Husserl calls the "matter"
(Materie) of an act. There are, then,
two sides [Seiten) in every act: quality, which characterizes the act as, e.g., presentation
or judgement, and matter, which confers on it its determinate direction to an object
[Gegenstiindliches) , which makes the presentation, e.g., present just this [object) and
no other. (§20, p. 588; with trans. changes.)

Matter, rather than quality, is the crucial element of content insofar as an

act's intentionality is concerned, and Husserl sometimes uses the term 'con-
tent' to refer to matter alone.
Clearly, acts with the same matter must be directed toward the same
object. So acts with different objects (e.g., my act of seeing the cat and
Smith's act of seeing the Prime Minister) will have different matters, and so
will differ in content even if they agree in quality. But acts directed toward
the same object do not always have the same matter. Intentions are "con-
ception-dependent": the specific relation of intending achieved in an act
depends, not just on which object is intended, but also on how the object
is conceived in the act, on what the object is intended "as". Thus, even if
acts are of the same kind and have the same subject and the same object,
they differ in intentionality if they intend their common object in different
"ways". Such differences in "ways" of intending an object Husserl attributes
to differences in the matter of acts. An act of intending the Emperor of
Germany in 1900 and an act of intending the eldest grandson of Queen
Victoria then have different matters, and thus differ in content, although
directed toward the same object. Says Husserl:
The matter ... must be counted as that in an act that first gives it its relation to an
object [Gegenstandliches) , and a relation so completely definite that the matter not
merely determines in some general fashion the object meant [meint) in the act but also
determines precisely the way [Weise) in which it is meant. The matter ... is the pecu-
liarity in the phenomenological content of the act that determines not only that the act
apprehel\ds [auffasst) the object but also as what it apprehends it, which properties,
relations, categorial forms it in itself attributes to it. (§ 20, p. 589; with trans. changes.)
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 115

Briefly, then, the matter of an act is that component of an act's content that
determines which object is intended in the act and also how the object is
intended, i.e., what it is intended "as". (Cf. §21, pp. 591-92; §44, p. 652;
VI, §25, p. 737.)
Some acts include further elements of content in addition to their quality
and matter. In particular, perceptual acts differ from others by also including
a sensory phase, or "sensation-content" (Emp!indungsinhalt) (cf. § 14; §21,
p. 591). The sensory content of perception is epistemologically important,
for it is what gives perception its special evidential status (the sixth Investi-
gation is largely devoted to this topic). Even so, Husser! stresses that it is the
matter of a perceptual act, and not its sensory content, that gives a percep-
tion its intentional directedness. We shall return to perception and its sensory
phase in Section 2.6 below, but for now let us take the content of an act to
include just its quality and matter. It is quality and matter that are necessarily
present in the content of every intentional experience, and Husser! accord-
ingly calls the "union" of these two elements of content the "intentional
essence" of an act (§ 21).
Turning now to ontological basics, we ask, What sort of entity is the
content of an act? This question points up what becomes for Husser! the most
important ambiguity in the notion of content. According to Husser!, there are
two quite different kinds of entities that can legitimately be called "content";
and, as we have noted, he criticized Twardowski for failing to distinguish
them. Where Twardowski distinguished content and object, Husser! would
further distinguish "the real (reellen) and the intentional content of an act"
(§ 16, p. 576), both of which are distinct from an act's object.
The real content of an act, Hussed holds, consists of "real" (reellen)
constituent parts or phases of the act. "By the real phenomenological content
of an act", he says, "we mean the sum total of its concrete or abstract parts,
in other words, the sum total of the partial experiences [Teilerlebnisse] that
really constitute it" (§ 16, p. 576). (Note that by an "abstract part" Husser!
means not an abstract entity that is a part but a non-independent part, or
phase, what he calls a "Moment": cf. LI, III, § 17.) In characterizing an act's
"real" content Husser! uses the word 'reell' rather than 'real', although the
latter would be more customary German: the reason, he says, is to connote
only "real (reelle) immanence in experience" and to avoid the suggestion of
"thinglike transcendence" conveyed by 'real' (§ 16, p. 577, n. 2). An act
itself is an experience (Erlebnis), a "real" temporal event of consciousness in
the sense intended by 'reell'; and its real content, comprising phases or "parts"
that go to make up this experience, is likewise.a "real" event, occurring in
116 CHAPTER III

inner time and in the stream of consciousness. Real content, then, is some-
thing "real", i.e., itis not an abstract, or "ideal", entity or simply a theoretical
construction; but itis "real" in the temporal sense appropriate to constituents
of consciousness rather than in the spatiotemporal sense appropriate to physi-
cal objects.
Specifically, as should be evident from our previous discussion, real content
consists of two essential parts or phases of an intentional experience: the
"part" of an experience that makes it an act of a certain kind (the act's "real"
quality) and the "part" that gives it directedness toward a particular object
in a specific way (the act's "real" matter) (cf. §45, p. 657). Quality and
matter are "parts" of an experience, Husserl says, in the same sense that
direction and acceleration are "parts" of motion. They are not independent
elements that can be separated from the experience or from each other but
are distinguishable within an act as its "phases" (Momente) or "sides" (Seiten)
(§32, p. 621). Real content simply coincides with a complete act itself if
there are no other constituents of the act. But, as we have noted, some acts
(e.g., perceptions) include further phases as well.
In contrast with the real content, the intentional content of an act is an
"ideal", or abstract, entity that can occur in different acts of consciousness.
The real content of an act is necessarily unique to that particular act alone:
just as it makes no sense to speak of numerically the same thought processes
occurring in different persons' consciousnesses, so it makes no sense to speak
of the same real content occurring in different acts. Nonetheless, there is a
sense in which two persons can be said to have the same intention and their
acts to have the same content. In fact, we have ourselves already spoken in
this fashion in characterizing the quality and matter of acts: according to
what we have said, acts of the same kind have the same quality and acts that
intend the same object in the same way have the same matter. But that can-
not be true of quality and matter as components of an act's real content, as
"real" constituents of distinct streams of consciousness. Rather, what are
properly characterized in those terms are quality and matter as components
of what Husserl calls ''intentional content". The real content of an act,
Husserl believes, is in every case the realization in that particular act of an
''ideal'', or abstract, intentional structure that can also be realized in other
acts of the same phenomenological type. This ideal, shareable intentional
structure is the act's intentional content. (See § 21, pp. 590-91.)
In the Investigations Husserl simply identifies the intentional content of
an act with its phenomenological type or species. Thus, he takes intentional
contents to be ''ideal Species of experiencing [ErlebnisspeziesJ" (§ 16, p. 577)
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 117

and terms the intentional content of an act its "intentional essence" (p. 578).
Essences, or species, he conceives as "ideal", shareable entities in a largely
Platonistic sense: i.e., as independently existing, atemporal universals (or
"types") that can be instantiated in distinct temporal or spatiotemporal
particulars (or "tokens"). The real content of an act is then that part of the
act that literally instantiates, is a concrete instance of, the intentional content
of the act as its intentional essence. And when two people have the same
intention (e.g., they make the same wish) the distinct real contents of their
respective acts are related to their acts' common intentional content as tem-
poral tokens of the same intentional, or phenomenological, type. It should be
clear, then, that intentional content is not "in" an act in the same way that
real content is. Real content is "in" an act in a nearly literal sense: it is a
constituent part of the act and exists only as a part of the act. Intentional
content is "in" an act in a less direct way: as an ideal entity it exists inde-
pendently of the act and is no "real" constituent of it, but it is instantiated
in the real content that is a constituent of the act. And it should also be clear
that neither real nor intentional content is itself intended in an act: what is
intended in an act is the act's object, which is neither a part of the act (as
real content is) nor instantiated in the act (as intentional content is). We
should note, however, that by the time of Ideas Husserl had changed his mind
about the ontological category of intentional contents and the relation of
real to intentional contents. As we shall soon see, Husserl no longer took
intentional contents to be essences or types but a special category of ideal
entities, which are "correlates" of real contents in an appropriately different
way (see Sections 2.3 and 3.1 below). With either view, though, Husserl took
an act to be directed toward its object by virtue of its intentional content.
Despite important changes in his conception of intentional content, with
accompanying changes in terminology, Husserl has one way of characterizing
intentional content that recurs throughout his writings: the intentional con-
tent of an act is a meaning (Bedeutung) or sense (Sinn) (cf. LI, I, § § 14,30,
31; V, §§20, 21,45). For Husserl, the ideal phenomenological content of
an act is a conceptual entity, a meaning, of the same sort that we grasp when
we understand language. Thus, we may think of an act's intentional content
as the "meaning", or "sense", of the act, by virtue of which the act intends
its object - much as the sense of an expression is that by virtue of which
the expression relates to its referent (cf. Chapter IV, Part 2, below). In
particular, Husserl calls an act's ideal matter - the specific element of inten-
tional content that determines the "way" in which the act's object is con-
ceived or "apprehended" (auffasst) in the act - the act's "interpretive sense"
118 CHAPTER III

(Auffassungssinn) , the "sense of the objective interpretation [or apprehen-

sion]" (Sinn der gegenstandlichen Auffassung) (§20, p. 589; with trans.
changes). So it may also be suggestive to think of the intentional matter of
an act as the sense that the object has for the subject in the act, or the sense
of the object "as" conceived by the act's subject. Says Husserl: "The matter
tells us, as it were, what object is meant [or intended: gemeint] in the act,
and in what sense [Sinne] it is there meant" ( §44, p. 652).
We shall stress this conception of intentional content as "meaning" in
Chapter IV. There we shall see that underlying it is a certain view of language
and its relation to consciousness: according to Husserl, language "expresses
thought" in that the meanings expressed in language are the ideal intentional
contents of judgments and other acts of consciousness. Now, this view is one
that Husserl shares with such thinkers as Frege and Bolzano, and we saw that
Twardowski also identifies meanings with act-contents. Where Husserl, in his
own eyes at least, parts with Twardowski and sides with Frege and Bolzano
is in urging that meanings are not "subjective" but "objective", or ideal, con-
tents of thoughts or judgments. In fact, Husserl's criticism of Twardowski
mirrors an earlier criticism of Husserl by Frege. In 1894 Frege had reviewed
Husserl's first published work in philosophy, Philo sophie der Arithmetik
(1891). In that review Frege criticized Husserl for failing to distinguish, in
effect, real and intentional content, so that "everything is transformed into
something subjective".9 And, of course, in 'On Sense and Reference' (1892)
Frege had distinguished "sense" (Sinn) from "presentation" (Vorstellung,
sometimes translated as 'idea'). A presentation, or idea, is subjective and
confined to one person's consciousness. But a sense is an objective entity,
which includes "the mode of presentation (Art des Gegebenseins; literally,
mode of being given] of that which is designated", and which can be shared
by, or associated with, different presentations. 1O In these respects, Husserl's
distinction between real and intentional content is very similar to Frege's
distinction between presentation and sense. However, Husserl seems to have
been influenced more strongly by Bolzano. Earlier in the Nineteenth Century
Bolzano had drawn essentially the same distinction, with essentially the same
motivations as Frege, in his innovative treatise on logic and epistemology,
Theory of Science (1837). There Bolzano distinguished "subjective" or
"mental" ideas (or presentations: Vorstellungen) - ideas "which someone
has" - from "objective" ideas, or ideas "in themselves".u While the Investi-
gations contains but one, quite perfunctory, reference to Frege, Husserl's
many references to Bolzano acknowledge a significant debt to this earlier
philosopher. Though not noted for generosity in his assessment of the work
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 119

of others, Husserl calls Bolzano "one of the greatest logicians of all time"
(LJ, Prolegomena, p. 223) and acknowledges that the Investigations "have
been crucially stimulated by Bolzano" (p. 224).
Though our discussion of historical influences on Husserl is far from com-
plete, we can see that Husserl's notion of phenomenological content belongs
to a family of views about content and object of consciousness and that the
family resemblances are often striking. A fundamental distinction among act,
content, and object is found, under differing terminologies, in Twardowski,
Meinong, Bolzano, Frege, and Husserl. And a distinction between real and
intentional, or subjective and objective, content is clearly found in Bolzano,
Frege, and Husserl, who also share similar views about language and mean-
ing. There are differences of detail among these thinkers, differences it is
ultimately important to observe. But it is no less important to see that the
foundation of Husserl's theory of intentionality and hence of his developing
phenomenology lies within a tradition of theory concerning consciousness
and its relation to its objects.

2.3. Husserl's Mature Conception of Content: Noesis dnd Noema

To understand Hussert's theory of intentionality one must understand his
notions of "noesis" and "noema" in Ideas. For, according to Husserl, the
noesis of an act is what "brings in the specific character of intentionality"
(Ideas, §85, p. 210), and every act's having a noema, or "sense", as he also
calls it, is "the foundation of all intentionality" (§90, p. 223). Important as
these notions are, it is unfortunate that Husserl's direct exposition of them
is rather brief and far from transparent. (The main discussion is found in
§ §84-99, with important elaboration in § 124 and § § 128-33.) The notion
of noema, in particular, is easily misunderstood if one goes on the basis of
Ideas alone. But both noesis and noema are much less mysterious when seen
against the background of Logical Investigations. §88 of Ideas, in which
Husserl first distinguishes noema from noesis, is entitled 'Real [Reelle] and
Intentional Components of Experience [Erlebniskomponenten]. The Noema';
and §97 is entitled 'The Hyletic and Noetic Phases as Real [reelle] , the Noe-
matic as Npn-Real, Phases of Experience [Erlebnismomente] '. So both noesis
and noema are "components", or "phases", of experience; noesis is a "real"
phase, while noema is an "intentional", a "non-real", phase. In short, Husserl
is again drawing the distinction between real and intentional content, but with
a new terminology - and with some substantive changes that we shall be
noting. Noesis is Husserl's mature version of an act's real phenomenological
content, and noerna is his mature version of intentional, or ideal, content.
120 CHAPTER III

Husserl introduces the term 'noesis', or 'noetic phase' (noetischen Mo-

ment) of experience, in §85. ('Noesis' is the Greek word for intelligence
or understanding. It derives from 'noein', meaning to perceive or to think,.
which derives from 'nous', meaning mind or intellect.)12 An act's noetic
phase includes just "the experiences, or phases of experience [Erlebnismo-
mente], that bear in themselves the specific character of intentionality"
(p. 208); it excludes any phases in the act that are not, in themselves, inten-
tional (in particular, the "sensory contents", or "hyletic phases", of percep-
tual acts: see Section 2.6 below). The noesis of an act, then, is that phase or
complex of phases whose presence in an experience makes the experience
intentional.
Like the real content of an act as described in the Investigations, an act's
noesis is a real (reel/e) constituent part of an act. It is found "through a
real [reel/e] analysis of the experience, in which we ... inquire after its
elements [Stucken J or the dependent phases [Momenten] of which it is
really composed" (§88, p. 218). Husserl himself calls it the "real, noetic
content [Geha/t]" of an act (p. 219). But the notion of noesis in Ideas incor-
porates two important changes in Husserl's earlier conception of real content.
First, in the first edition of the Investigations real content is allowed to be the
subject of "pure descriptive analysis operating from an empirical, natural-
scientific point of view" (LI, Y, §16, p. 576). By the time of Ideas (and
the slightly modified second edition of the Investigations, also published in
1913), noesis or real content is (like noema) studied only in the "pure phe-
nomenological" or "transcendental" attitude, which sets aside the empirical-
psychological view that considers consciousness as occurring in the world of
nature (Ideas, §86; §88, p. 210; cf. LI, Y, §16, p. 576, n. 1, and the middle
paragraph on p. 577, added in the second edition). Thus, Husserl stresses in
Ideas that the notion of noesis is not to be confused with empirical notions
of the "psychical" (Ideas, §85, pp. 210-12). Second, in the Investigations an
act's real content is simply the instantiation of the act's intentional essence,
which Husserl there identifies with the intentional content of the act. In
Ideas, however, noesis does not simply instantiate intentional content and so
has a more complicated role to play. Husserl characterizes the fundamental
role of noeSis, by virtue of which its presence in an act renders the act inten-
tional, as the "giving of sense" (''Sinngebung'') to an experience (Ideas, §85,
p. 210). The "sense", or "Sinn", that it "gives" is the main constituent of
the intentional content of the act, the act's noema. But the noesis does not
"give" this sense by literally instantiating it, for, as we shall see, Husserl no
longer conceives intentional content as an essence. Consequently, we shall
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 121

also find that there is a new kind of "correlation" between real and inten-
tional content in Ideas (cf. Section 3.1 below).
Having characterized noesis as a "real" phase of experience, especially its
"sense-giving" phase, in §88 Husserl again, as in the Investigations, distin-
guishes "the real [reel/en] components of intentional experiences and their
intentional co"elates" (p. 218), and again he characterizes the latter as a kind
of sense, or Sinn. Thus is introduced the notion of noema:

Every intentional experience [Erlebnis], thanks to its noetic phases [Momente], is

noetic; that is to say, its essence is to harbor in itself something like a "Sinn" and per-
haps many Sinne .... Now, just as this series of [noetic] phases indicates real [reel/e]
components of experiences, so it also indicates, through the title "Sinn", components
that are not real.
Corresponding at all points to the manifold data of the real, noetic content, there is
a manifold of data, which can be brought to light in really [wirklich] pure intuition, in a
correlative "noematic content", or simply in the "noema" ....
Perception, for example, has its noema, at base its perceptual Sinn .... The noematic
correlate, which here is called "Sinn" (in a very extended sense), is to be taken precisely
as it lies "immanently" in the experience [Erlebnis] ... , i.e., as it is offered to us by
the experience when we purely question this experience itself. (§ 88, pp. 218-19.)

The noema, then, is the Ideas version of an act's intentional content. It is

called a "content" because it is found among an act's "immanent" experien-
tial features and is brought to light only in reflection on the act. Like inten-
tional content in the Investigations, the noema is not literally a part, or
temporal phase, of the act but is present in the act as the "intentional corre-
late" of the act's real content (now called its "noesis"). Also like the earlier
version of intentional content, the noema is not itself a "real", temporal
entity but is a kind of "sense" or "Sinn". As the last quotation suggests,
however, Hussed prefers to use the term 'Sinn' for a specific component of
the noema rather than for the noema as a whole. We shall see in the next
section that the basic structure of an act's noema in Ideas remains the same
as that of an act's intentional content in the Investigations and that the noe-
matic component corresponding to ideal "matter" is what Hussed especially
singles out as the "Sinn", or "noematic Sinn", of an act. But this complica-
tion need not worry us now, for the whole noema and its various constituents
are all entities of the same ontological type and enjoy the same epistemologi-
cal and phenomenolOgical status.
As real and intentional content, the noesis and the noema of an act are not
entities that are intended in the act. Obviously the noesis is not intended,
since it is a real constituent of the act and the object that the act intends is
122 CHAPTER III

not (cf. Ideas, §90, pp. 223-24; and Section 1.1 above): the noesis is the
intending phase of an experience rather than its intended object. 13 Nor is the
noema intended in the act whose noema it is, although Husserl sometimes
uses a terminology that might suggest otherwise. He sometimes calls the Sinn-
component of an act's noema "the intended as such"; more specifically, he
calls the noematic Sinn of a perception "the perceived as such", the noematic
Sinn of a memory "the remembered as such", and so on (see, e.g., §88, p.
219). If there were nothing more to go on, this terminology might lead us to
think that the noema of an act is in some sense an object of that act, some-
thing that is itself perceived in a perception, remembered in a memory, etc.
(We discuss the terminology, and the kind of interpretation sometimes drawn
from it, in Chapter IV, Sections 1.2 and 1.3, below.) But Husserl makes it
quite clear that noemata are entities of which we are not conscious except
in special acts of reflection. The object intended in an act is what is presented
to us when we "perform" (or "live through", as Husserl says) that act itself,
when we undergo the experience that is directed toward that object. But an
act's noema is not something of which we are conscious when we undergo
or live through the act; and precisely because it is not, we must explicitly
adopt the "phenomenological attitude", in which we reflect on the experi-
ence that we normally live through, in order to become aware of its noema.
To become acquainted with the noema of a perception, for example, we must
explicitly turn our attention away from that which is perceived and, in a dis-
tinct act of phenomenological reflection, redirect our attention toward the
experience of perceiving and its phenomenological structure (see esp. Ideas,
§87, p. 217; § 150, p. 369). Thus, Husserl says, "A unique kind of reflection
can at any time be directed toward this Sinn [or noema], as it is immanent
in the perception, and the phenomenological judgment ... must conform
with what is grasped in the reflection alone" (§89, p. 222; cf. FTL, §50).14
As entities open to phenomenological reflection, noemata (and noeses)
have a privileged epistemological or phenomenological status that further
distinguishes them from the objects of our ordinary intentional experiences.
Phenomenological reflection is directed toward the "transcendental" features
of an experience, i.e., those features that remain when all that is not imma-
nent in the experience itself has been "bracketed" in "phenomenological
reduction". Now, the object intended in an act is bracketed in this reduc-
tion: the existence, or reality, of the act's object is not entailed by the act
of intending it, and the phenomenological reduction therefore "suspends"
judgments concerning its existence. But the noema and the noesis of the act
survive this reduction. Husserl says of an act of perceiving a tree:
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 123

We must now describe what remains as phenomenological residue when we make the
reduction to the "purely immanent", and what should then count as a real [reelles)
constituent of the pure experience and what should not. And here it must be made
completely clear that the . .. noema, which is not affected by the suspension of the
reality [Wirklichkeit) of the tree itself and of the whole world, does indeed belong to
the essence of the perceptual experience in itself, but that, on the other hand, this
noema ... is as little really [reell) contained in the perception as is the tree of natural
reality [Wirklichkeit) . (§ 97, p. 242; our emphasis.)

And a few pages later he says:

The "transcendental" reduction practices epoche with regard to reality [Wirklichkeit) ;

but to that which is left over from this [reduction) belong the noemata ... and with
them the manner in which what is real is precisely intended [bewusst) and specifically
given in consciousness itself. (P. 245; cf. Ideas, III, § 13.)

Hence, whereas the objects of our perceptions, memories, and the like are
"transcendent" objects, i.e., objects "transcendent" of our ordinary experi-
ences, the noemata and noeses of these intentions are "transcendental"
entities, i.e., entities that are "immanent" to the experiences and essential
to their being the intentional experiences they are.
like the intentional contents of Logical Investigations, noemata are
abstract ,entities, i.e., entities that do not have a location in space and time.
Husserl characterizes noemata and their various constituents as "ideal"
(ideell) in Ideas (§99, p. 250), and he calls Sinne "ideal" (ideal) or "irreal"
in Formal and Transcendental Logic (cf. § §48-50, 57b; also cf.EJ, § §64-
65). The ideality of noemata, or Sinne, marks yet another way in which they
differ from the objects of many of our everyday intentions. In particular, it
distinguishes the noema of a perception from the object perceived, since ab-
stract entities cannot be perceived. In §89 ofldeas Husserl himself contrasts
the noema, or Sinn, of a perception with its object (again, a tree), by stressing
the abstract character of the Sinn:
The tree simpliciter, the thing in nature, is anything but this perceived tree as such,
which as perceptual Sinn belongs inseparably to the perception. The tree can burn, can
break down into its chemical elements, etc. The Sinn, however - the Sinn of this percep-
tion, which belongs by necessity to its essence - cannot burn, it has no chemical ele-
ments, no powers, no real [realen) properties. (P. 222.)

In Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl says that "thoughts" (as opposed
to the "real psychic processes" of thinking, judging, and the like) "are not
.
real [realen] objects, not spatial objects, but irreal entities shaped by the
mind [irreale Geistesgebilde]; and their peculiar essence excludes spatial
124 CHAPTER III

extension, original locality, and mobility" (§57b, p. 155; with trans. changes).
"An irreal object", he says, "is not individuated in consequence of a tem-
porality belonging to it originally" (FTL, § 58, p. 156). In an unpublished
manuscript, 'Noema und Sinn', Husserl says: "Sinne are nonreal objects, they
are not objects that exist in time", and "A Sinn ... is related to a temporal
interval through the act in which it occurs, but it does not itself have reality
[Dasein], an individual connection with time and duration". IS Husserl is
especially clear about the abstract character of linguistic meanings, particu-
larly the propositions expressed in judgments, in Logical Investigations, I
(§ § 11, 29-35), and Experience and Judgment (§ § 64-65). These views,
too, are relevant to noemata, since Husserl holds that noemata and other
meanings are entities of the same kind: "All ... Sinne and all ... noemata,
however different they may otherwise be, are fundamentally of one unique
supreme genus," he says in Ideas (§128, p. 314; cf. Chapter IV, Part 2,
below).
In both Logical Investigations and Ideas, then, intentional contents are
abstract, or ideal, meaning entities. However, in the time between these two
works Husserl's conception of the ideality of meanings, or intentional con-
tents, underwent an important change. As we have already mentioned, this
change is reflected in the notion of noema in Ideas. In the Investigations the
intentional content of an act is the act's "intentional essence". Intentional
contents are then a kind of universals, ideal species or types of consciousness
instantiated in acts, just as redness is a property instantiated in red things.
In Ideas, however, noemata are not act-essences, or universals, but abstract
entities of a different sort. As we shall see later, Husserl's description of the
inner structure of the specific Sinn-component of the noema seems to indicate
that Sinne are a kind of abstract particulars; in particular, the Sinn of a direct-
object act is quite like the sense of a defmite description on a Fregean theory
of meaning (see Chapter IV, Sections 3.l-3.2;cf.Ideas, §§130-3l). This
change in the ontological status of intentional contents has been traced to
unpublished texts of Husserl's from the year 1908 concerning the ideality of
meanings generally, 16 and it is explicit in Husserl's later published writings. In
Formal and Transcendental Logic (I929), for example, he speaks of "the
ideality of meanings [Bedeutungen] and the different ideality of universal
essences or species ... " (§ 57b, p. 155; with trans. changes and our emphasis).
And in Experience and Judgment (posthumous), he says:

The irreality of objectivities of understanding must not be confused with generic univer-
sality. Since, in particular, any number of affirming acts ... affinn ... one and the same
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 125

proposition, ... it is a great temptation to think that the proposition belongs to the
various acts of which it is the Sinn as a generic universal, perhaps as the generic essence
"redness" belongs to many red things ....
But one must say in opposition to this: ... the proposition ... is not general in the
sense of generic universality, i.e., the generality of an "extension" ... ; it is, therefore,
not general in the manner of essences .... (§64d, p. 262; with trans. changes.)
... The generic universal ... has particulars under it; but the Sinn does not have
particulars under it. (P. 263; with trans. changes.)

This change in ontological type for intentional contents is important, and

we return to it in Section 3.1. We would emphasize, however, that certain
fundamental views of HusserI's are not affected by this change. An act's
noema remains, like its intentional content, distinct from its object; and an
act remains directed toward its object by virtue of its noema, as by virtue of
its intentional content (see Part 3 below). Further, an act's noema remains,
like its intentional content, a kind of sense or meaning; and so intentional
contents remain the kind of entities that are expressed in language (see
Chapter IV, Part 2). An act's noema in Ideas also retains the same basic struc-
ture as that of an act's intentional content in the Investigations; we turn to
this topic now.

2.4. The Structure of an Act's Noema: Its "Sinn" and "Thetic" Components
For HusserI, an act's noesis and noema are complex, or structured, entities.
And the structure of an act's noema exactly parallels the structure of the act's
noesis: "No noetic phase [Moment] without a noematic phase that belongs
specifically to it", HusserI says (Ideas, §93, p. 232; cf. §98 and especially
§ 128). This parallel structuring of noesis and noema should not be a surprise
since noesis and noema are just HusserI's refined versions of real and inten-
tional content, which the Investigations found to be structured in a similar
fashion. There HusserI distinguished two components or phases in both the
real and intentional contents of an act: one component, called the "quality"
of the act, simply differentiates the act according to generic kind (e.g., per-
ception or desire); the other component, called "matter", differentiates the
act more closely as it determines which object is intended in the act and what
this object is there intended "as" (cf. Section 2.2 above). In Ideas, both noesis
and noerna have basically this same bipartite structure, though HusserI is now
more careful to emphasize the difference between real components of con-
tent, which belong to the noesis, and their ideal correlates, which belong to
the noema (cf. Ideas, §94 and §129, pp. 316-17). Our focus, like HusserI's,
will be mainly on the structure of an act's noema.
126 CHAPTER III

Sinn versus Thetic Component

The fundamental component of the noesis, as we emphasized in the last
section, is what Husserl calls the "Sinn-giving" phase of an experience. The
intentional, or ideal, correlate of this real, Sinn-giving phase of an act's noesis
is the "Sinn" that it "gives". This Sinn is the fundamental component of the
act's noema. The Sinn-giving phase of the noesis and the Sinn in the noema,
we shall see, take over the role played by real and ideal "matter" in the
Investigations. But there is more to both noesis and noema, Husserl says:
... What has stood out ... as "Sinn" does not exhaust the complete noema; correspond-
ingly, the noetic side of the intentional experience [Erlebnisses J does not consist merely
of the strictly "Sinn-giving" phase [Momente J to which the "Sinn" specifically belongs
as correlate .... The complete noema consists in a complex of noematic phases; ... the
specific Sinn-phase only makes up a kind of necessary nuclear stratum [KemschichtJ
therein on which are essentially founded further phases, which for that reason alone we
may likewise designate as Sinn-phases, though in an extended sense. (Ideas, §90, p. 223.)

What Husserl strictly calls the "Sinn" of an act, then, is only a central "nu-
cleus" or "core" (Kern) in the complete noema; the noema's further phases,
and the noema as a whole, are "Sinne" in a more extended sense. The further
phases, or components, of the noema are ideal correlates of what Husserl
calls "thetic" phases of the noesis. The most prominent thetic phase of the
noesis and its thetic correlate iIi the noema, we shall find, correspond to real
and ideal "quality" in the Investigations.
The Sinn-component of the noema receives most of Husserl's attention,
and it is the component that bears most importantly on the problems of
intentionality that concern us. Husserl has several names for it: 'Sinn', which
he also sometimes uses to refer to the whole noema; 'noematic Sinn'; 'objec-
tive Sinn', so-called because the Sinn-component is what relates the act to
its object; and other less obvious names, including 'the intended [perceived,
remembered, etc.] as such' (cf. Chapter IV, Section 1.2, below) and 'the
cogitatum qua cogitatum ' (especially used in Cartesian Meditations). By what-
ever name, however, the role of the Sinn in the noema is to account for an
act's intentional relation to its object.

The phenomenological problem of the relation of consciousness to an objectivity has

above all its noematic side. The noema in itself has objective relation, specifically through
the "Sinn" peculiar to it. (Ideas, § 128, p. 315. See also § 129 and § 135, p. 329.)

More particularly, the Sinn is the component of an act's noema by virtue

of which the act intends a certain object in a specific "way", i.e., as having
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 127

certain properties or (as Hussed says) "determinations" (Bestimmtheiten).

The noemata of acts that intend different objects have different Sinn-com-
ponents. And even if acts intend the same object, their noemata have different
Sinn-components unless the object is intended under exactly the same "con-
ception" and so as having exactly the same properties. Conversely, Hussed
says, even where acts are of different types (perceptual, recollective, etc.),
their noemata will have the same Sinn if the object is "completely the same
fgleicher] , in the same orientation, apprehended in the same way in every
respect ... " (Ideas, §99, p. 250). Thus, he says:
... The "Sinn" is a fundamental part [Grundstiick) of the noema. Generally it is a part
that changes from noema to noema, but under certain circumstances it is absolutely
similar and may even be characterized as "identical"; just in case the "object in the man-
ner of its determinations" ["Gegenstand im Wie der Bestimmtheiten") stands forth to
be described both as the same one [derselbe) and as absolutely similar [gleich). (Ideas,
§ 131, p. 322.)

Husserl makes the same point in the manuscript 'Noema und Sinn': "Same-
ness of Sinn occurs only where the object, besides being identically the same,
is meant 'in the same Sinn', that is, from the same side, with the same prop-
erties etc." 17
These comments about Sinne, as components of noemata, are of course
but echoes of what Husserl said about "matter" in the Investigations:
We have the same presentation of a thing [Sache) when we have presentations in which
the thing is not merely presented, but presented as exactly the same; i.e., ... in the same
"interpretive Sinn" ["Auffassungssinne") or on the basis of the same matter. ... Two
presentations are in essence the same when, on the basis of either, exactly the same and
nothing else can be said about the presented thing. (Ll, V, §21, p. 591; with trans.
changes.)

We may, accordingly, think of the Sinn in an act's noema as we earlier thought

of the matter in an act's intentional content: the Sinn in an act's noema is
the subject's "sense", or "conception", of the object intended in the act, the
sense of the object "as" it is conceived by the act's subject. Thus, as the
subject's "sense" of an object, the Sinn prescribes that object as what is
intended in the act and it attributes to that object just those properties or
"determinations" that the subject - by virtue of having precisely that sense
or conception of the object - intends it as having.

Noematic Sinn: Some Examples

Our characterization of the Sinn in an act's noema as the subject's "sense" of
128 CHAPTER III

the intended object will be rendered technically precise in Chapter IV. But
our intuitive grasp of the notion can be sharpened now through a few exam-
ples. These examples will also begin to distinguish those features of an act
that are due to the Sinn in the noema from those that are due to other noema-
components.
(1) My act of seeing my dog and my act of seeing my cat are acts whose
noemata have different Sinn-components. In the first case the Sinn is (or
includes) my sense of a particular object (the object I see) as "my dog"; in
the second, my sense of an object as "my cat". These are different senses,
which determine different objects for the two acts.
(2) The noema of my act of remembering a certain Freddie McAlister as
the center on my high school basketball team and the noema of Smith's act
of remembering Freddie as the boy who wanted to go to embalming school
have different Sinne. The Sinn of my act's noema is my sense, or conception,
of Freddie as "the center on my high school basketball team"; the Sinn of
Smith's act's noema is his sense of Freddie as "the boy who wanted to go to
embalming school". These are different senses, but in this case they are senses
of the same object (Freddie McAlister) and so they determine my act and
Smith's as directed, through different noemata, toward the same object.
(3) The noema of my act of seeing a house from the front and the noema
of my act of seeing that same house from the rear will almost surely have
different Sinne. Seeing a house from different perspectives will very likely
reveal different features and so give me a different sense, or conception, of
what the house is like: from the front, I may see the house as having a large
bay window but be unaware of the small veranda in the rear; from the rear,
I may be unaware of the bay window but see the house as having the small
veranda. Thus, the Sinn of each act's noema will likely include senses of the
object that are not present in the Sinn of the other's. Nonetheless, if I see the
house as the same one in each case, the complex of senses making up these
different Sinne will determine the same object; the acts will then intend the
same house but from different perspectives. Only in the unlikely event that
the house looks exactly the same to me from the front and the rear may my
acts have noemata with the same Sinn. And even if the front and the rear of
the house are perfectly similar, there may still be a difference in Sinn if I am
aware of being differently oriented to the house in each case.
(4) My act of seeing a certain house from the front and my later act of
remembering that same house exactly as I saw it from that particular perspec-
tive have different noemata with the same Sinn. Although these are different
acts, and acts of different kinds, the Sinn in their noemata is the same since
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 129

my sense of the object is exactly the same. Of course, if I have later forgotten
some feature that I saw the house as having, or if I saw the house as having
a bay window to the left of the front door and later remember it as having
a bay window to the right of the front door, my sense of the house will have
changed just so and the noemata of my acts will have Sinne that differ in just
that respect.
(5) My act of judging that inflation will worsen in the next year and
Smith's act of fearing that inflation will worsen in the next year are also acts
of different kinds whose noemata contain the same Sinn. But there is an
important difference between these acts and the acts considered in the pre-
ceding example. My act of judging and Smith's act of fearing are propositional
acts and, according to Husser!, the object of a propositional act is a state of
affairs rather than an individual (cf. Chapter I, Sections 1.4-1.5, above). The
Sinn in the noema of these acts, accordingly, is not a sense of an individual,
not a sense that prescribes or determines an individual as the object ~ntended
in the act, but a sense of the state of affairs that is judged or feared. A sense
or Sinn of this sort Husser! calls a "proposition" (Satz) (see Ideas, §94).18
Hence, the Sinn in the noema of my judgment is the proposition that infla-
tion will worsen in the next year. The noema of Smith's fear contains that
same Sinn, and through it we intend the same state of affairs - the state of
affairs that obtains just in case inflation does worsen in the next year.
(6) My act of hoping that the center on my high school basketball team
became a wealthy man and Smith's act of believing that the boy who wanted
to go to embalming school became a wealthy man have different noemata
with different Sinne. As the previous two examples should suggest, the differ-
ence in Sinne here is not due to my act's being an act of hoping and Smith's
being an act of believing. Rather, as in example (2), the Sinne are different
because the Sinn in my act's noema includes one sense of Freddie McAlister
(the sense "the center on my high school basketball team") whereas the
Sinn in Smith's includes another ("the boy who wanted to go to embalming
school"). However, like the acts in the preceding example, my hope and
Smith's belief are propositional acts, directed toward states of affairs through
propositional Sinne. For each of these acts, then, the sense of Freddie
McAlister is not the complete Sinn in the noema but only the part of the
Sinn that determines Freddie as the object the act is about (cf. Chapter I,
Section 1.5, above). The complete Sinn of my hope is the proposition that
the center on my high school basketball team became a wealthy man, while
the complete Sinn of Smith's belief is the proposition that the boy who
wanted to go to embalming school became a wealthy man. Included in each
130 CHAPTER III

proposition is a "sense" of the object the act is about, and each proposition
is a "sense" of the state of affairs the act is primarily directed toward. Since
the constituent senses are different in each case, so are the propositions and
hence the Sinne. Nonetheless, the acts are about the same object - Freddie
McAlister - though they intend him through different propositional Sinne
in the acts' noemata.
As our examples show, the Sinn-component of a noema can itself be
complex and can have a quite defmite structure. Such complexity is only to
be expected, since Husser! sees the Sinn as the main determinant of the inten-
tion achieved in an act and intention itself exhibits various kinds of complex-
ity. Propositional acts, for example, intend their objects as structured into
states of affairs in a way that direct-object acts do not. This difference, we
have just seen, is reflected in the Sinne of acts of these different kinds: the
Sinn in a propositional act's noema has a propositional structure, while the
Sinn in a direct-object act's noema has a simpler structure that was more
appropriately characterized as the "sense of an object" - an ''individual
sense", if you will. But even in the latter case, as our third example especially
shows, the Sinn is usually a complex sense formed from a pattern of consti-
tuent senses, inasmuch as the subject's conception of the intended object is
often quite rich and detailed. Thus, when I see a house, my conception of
what I see includes far more than my sense of it as "a house": I see it as a
particular house, as a house built in a certain style, painted a certain color,
having various prominent features, perhaps even as the house in which my
friend lives, and so on. Not everything I know or could be brought to notice
about the house belongs in my present conception of it, but whatever does
characterize the house just as I now see it is reflected as a constituent sense
in the Sinn-component of my act's noema. Such complexities of structure
within the Sinn itself will receive our closer attention at later points, as we
get into finer details of Husserl's theory of intentionality (see Chapter IV,
Section 3.1, below). But let us return now to the structure of the full noema,
of which the Sinn is only one, though a centrally important, component.

Noema-Co"e/ates of Thetic Characters, or Ways of Givenness

We have seen that when acts of different kinds are directed toward the same
object, conceived in exactly the same way, their noemata have exactly the
same Sinn-component. Nonetheless, Husser! says, acts of different kinds have
different noemata (and different noeses). The phenomenological character
of an act that is characteristic of its kind or species is thus embodied in
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 131

a component, or "character", in the noema distinct from the Sinn (and,

correlatively, in a component in the noesis distinct from the Sinn-giving
phase). Hussed says:

A blossoming tree may be under consideration throughout, and this tree may appear
throughout in such a way that the accurate description of that which appears as such
necessarily proceeds with the same expressions. But the noematic correlates are yet ...
essentially different for perception, phantasy, pictorial representation, memory, etc.
That which appears is characterized at one time as an "embodied reality", the other
time as a fiction, then again as a memory representation, etc.
These are characters that we find with the perceived, phantasied, remembered, etc.,
as such - with the Sinn of perception, with the Sinn of phantasy, Sinn of memory -
as something inseparable and as necessarily belonging to them in co"eiation with the
respective kinds of noetic experiences. (Ideas, § 91, p. 227.)

Thus, in addition to its Sinn, each noema includes an ideal correlate of the
generic "way" in which the subject is conscious in the act - perceptually,
recollectively, etc. This "way" of being conscious in an act is part of what
Hussed calls the "thetic character", or the "positing character" (Setzungs-
charakter), of the act (see Ideas, § 117). Strictly speaking, the thetic charac-
ter of an act is a real phase of the act's noesis; the corresponding "character"
in the noemais then not the act's the tic character per se but its ideal correlate.
Husser! is himself clear on this point: "It is not 'ways [Weisen] of conscious-
ness' in the sense of noetic phases that are expressed therewith", he says. "As
characters of the, so to speak, 'ideal' ['Ideellen'] , they are themselves 'idea1'
['ideell'] and not real [reell] " (Ideas, §99, p. 250).
Insofar as the thetic character of an act coincides with the act's generic
kind, the thetic phase in an act's noesis corresponds to what in the Investi-
gations Husserl called the "quality" in an act's real content. Similarly, the
ideal thetic component in an act's noema, correlated with this noetic phase,
corresponds to what ~as earlier called "quality" as a component of inten-
tional content. In Ideas, however, Husserl sees an act's kind, or quality, as
but one of several act-"characters", or thetic characters, that can change from
one act to another without necessarily effecting a change in the conception
under which a given object is intended. All these act-characters, which to-
gether make up what Husserl calls the "way of givenness" (Gegebenheitsweise)
of the object, are reflected in the extra-Sinn component of the act's noema
(see Ideas, §99, p. 250). The ideal correlate of an act's quality is then only a
part - though the most prominent part - of a broader thetic component in
the noema that correlates with the entire "way of givenness" of the object
intended in the act (cf. Ideas, § 114, p. 278; § 117; § 120, p. 296).
132 CHAPTER III

In addition to the kind, or quality, of an act, Husserl specifically mentions

several other characters of the "way of givenness" of an object that have their
correlates in the thetic, or Gegebenheitsweise, component of the noema. For
each such act-character, Husserl's argument for locating the noematic corre-
late in the extra-Sinn part of the noema is the same argument that applied
to quality. Consider, for example, what he calls the "mode of attention" in
which an object is given. Two perceptions may intend the same object, and
each may intend it as having exactly the same objective properties; their
noemata then contain the same Sinn. But the perceptions may nonetheless
differ in their modes of attention: the degree of attention the subject bestows
on the object prescribed by the Sinn, or the features of the object to which
the subject pays special heed, may be different in each case. Hence, Husser!
concludes, the attentional "way of givenness" is reflected in an act's noema,
not as a constituent of the Sinn, but as a constituent of the thetic component
(Ideas. §92; cf. § §35, 132). Husserl argues similarly for a the tic component
correlated with the degree of belief with which the object is posited as exist-
ing - whether its existence is posited as "certain", "probable", "possible",
"doubtful", etc. This component of the "way of givenness" he calls the doxic
character, or the "Being-character" (Seinscharakter), of an act (§ § 103-104).
And there are still further thetic components correlated with further differ-
ences in the "way of givenness" of an object: the clarity of presentation of
the object (§ §68, 132); the object's orientation with respect to the subject
in perception, especially the orientation of a given side or shape (§98, pp.
248-49); the "intuitional fullness" of presentation, where the act involves
"intuition" (§68; §97, pp. 243-44; §§132, 136; cf. Section 2.6 below);
the evidential status of the experience in which the object is given (§ 136);
and apparently also the subject's awareness of himself as the subject of the
act (§80) and of the act's position in internal time, its temporal position in
the stream of consciousness (§8l).
Thus, the complete noema of an act resolves into two fundamental com-
ponents, each with its own further structure: the Sinn and the Gegebenheits-
weise-component (the the tic component in the broadest sense). And since
each component of the noema is the correlate of a corresponding component
of the noesis, the complete noesis of an act also resolves into two fundamental
components: the Sinn-giving phase and the Gegebenheitsweise itself (the
thetic phase in the broadest sense).
Husserl's use of the term 'Gegebenheitsweise', or 'way of givenness', in
connection with the thetic component of the noema is a bit awkward, since
the Sinn and the thetic component each corresponds to a certain "manner"
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 133

(Wie) or "way" (Weise) of intending an object. However, it should be clear

that there is an important difference in the "manner" in which an object is
intended by virtue of each of these noematic components. By virtue of the
Sinn, a particular object is intended as having certain properties, or "deter-
minations"; a different Sinn would prescribe a different object or prescribe
the same object with different properties. Hence, Hussed says, the Sinn
prescribes the object in the "manner" of its determinations (im Wie seiner
Bestimmtheiten) (Ideas, § 131, p. 321). By virtue of the the tic component,
this object along with its "determinations", as prescribed by the Sinn, is given
to the subject in various "ways" - perceptually or otherwise, attentively
or inattentively, clearly or indistinctly, etc. Hence, the thetic component
prescribes the object in the "manner" of its ways of givenness:

If we hold fixed the Sinn, hence the "intended" ["Vermeinte"j exactly with the content
of determinations in which it is the intended, then there clearly emerges a second con-
cept of the "object in the manner [Wiej" - in the manner of its ways of given ness lim
Wie seiner Gegebenheitsweisenj. (§ 132, p. 323.)

The thetic, or Gegebenheitsweise, component is then the more "subjectively"

oriented component of the noema, Hussed says: its role does not concern
"the objective, that of which one is conscious [dem Gegenstiindlichen, das
bewusst]" but "the way in which one is conscious of it [der Weise, wie es
bewusst ist]" (§130, p. 319).

'Ideas' vis-a-vis 'Logical Investigations'

The structuring of an act's noema into a Sinn and a thetic component (and
the parallel structuring of the noesis) mirrors the structuring of content into
matter and quality in Logical Investigations. Now, we have argued that the
notions of noesis and noema, as Hussed himself understood them, are refmed
versions of the notions of real and intentional content in the Investigations.
The results of this section provide strong confirmation of this view: not only
do noesis and noema correspond as a whole to real and ideal content; the
components that make up the noesis and the noema also correspond to the
components that make up an act's real and intentional content.
Hussed notes this correspondence at several points in Ideas, most explicitly
in § § 129 and 133 (see also §88, p. 219, n. 1; §94; Beilage XVII). In § 129
Hussed assesses his earlier distinction between matter and quality as a neces-
sary fust step toward refining Twardowski's notion of content, though he
says the distinction fell short by being primarily "noetic". He continues:
134 CHAPTER III

The one-sidedness ... is easily overcome through consideration of the noematic parallels.
We can understand the concepts noematically thus: "quality" (judgment-quality, wish-
quality, etc.) is nothing other than what we have hitherto treated as "positing" character,
"thetic" character in the broadest sense .... Obviously, "matter" ... now corresponds
to the "noematic nucleus". (P. 317.)

§ 133 makes it clear that the "noematic nucleus" that corresponds to "mat-
ter" is the Sinn in the noema. Recalling that intentional content as a whole
(quality plus matter) was called "Sinn" in the Investigations, he says:
... The thetic phases ... have a special relation to the Sinn as noematic. In the Logical
Investigations they (under the title "quality") were included from the outset in the
concept of Sinn ... , and, accordingly, within this unit the two components "matter"
(Sinn, on the present conception) and quality were distinguished. Yet it seems more
appropriate to define the term 'Sinn' only as that "matter" .... (P. 324.)

The correspondence is not quite identity, of course. Thetic character in Ideas

comprises more than the strictly qualitative character of an act; this differ-
ence is not essential, Husser! observes in the second edition of the Investiga-
tions, and can be overcome simply by broadening the notion of act-quality
(L/, V, §31, p. 619, n. 1). And there is a difference in ontolOgical type
between intentional content (and matter), taken as essence in the Investiga-
tions, and noema (and Sinn), taken as abstract particular in Ideas; this differ-
ence is essential and will require our further attention. These differences
notwithstanding, it is evident that Husser! sees the doctrine of noesis and
noema in Ideas as the culmination of the attempt to clarify the notion of
content that he began in the fifth Investigation. We shall continue to urge,
accordingly, that the noema of an act (including the Sinn) is not the object
but the ideal content of the act: the noema, and in particular the Sinn, is not
that toward which the act is directed but that through which the act intends
its object.
We should note in passing that the preceding quotation continues with an
interesting point of terminology:
... it seems more appropriate to define the term 'Sinn' only as that "matter", and then
to designate the unity of Sinn and thetic character as proposition [Sotz J . (P. 324.)

We presume Husser! here means by 'thetic character' the thetic component

of the noema, probably in the wide sense as the whole way-of-givenness com-
ponent. Then the unity of Sinn and thetic component is just the noema as
a structured whole. And then it is the whole noema he is calling a "proposi-
tion". The significance of this characterization of the noema as a whole we
shall take up in Chapter IV, Section 2.7.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 135

2.5. Content, Noesis, and Noema in Review

It may be helpful now to review succinctly the structure of an act's noema

in terms of a simple example. Suppose I have an experience for which in
phenomenological reflection I would give the following (at least partial)
phenomenological description:

I now clearly see this blooming pear tree.

The noema of this perception is the full ideal phenomenological content of

the perception. It divides into two components. The Sinn-component is
embodied in the abstract form of the "manner of determination" of the
object as given in the experience: the form of my experience such that it is
a presentation of "this blooming pear tree". The thetic component is em-
bodied in the abstract form of the thetic character of the presentation, the
"way of givenness" of the object so presented: the form of the presentation
as perceptual and further as clear and indeed as current and of course as ego-
bound (as had by "me", or "I"); that is, the form of my experience such that
"I now clearly see [such and such]". These two components, the Sinn and
thetic components, fit together to make up the whole noema, the abstract
form of my experience such that "I now clearly see this blooming pear tree".
Such is the noematic structure of the exampled experience.
The many distinctions involved in Husserl's account of phenomenological
content, and the relationships between the various notions he introduces,
may be enough to discourage even the most patient of readers. Fortunately,
after the next section our own discussion will focus almost exclusively on the
role of the Sinn-component in the noema. Before continuing, we conclude
the discussion of phenomenological content with a brief summary, which is
most easily read in conjunction with Figure I that follows it.
The phenomenological content of an act takes two forms: a noesis and a
noema. The noesis, which corresponds to what was earlier called real content,
is a "real", temporal constituent of the act. Indeed, the noesis exhausts the
real constituents of the act, and so coincides with the act, unless the act in-
cludes some other kind of real constituent, as a perception includes a sensory
phase as well as a noetic phase (cf. the next section below). The noema, which
corresponds to what was earlier called intentional content, is an ideal, or
abstract, entity correlated with the act's noesis. Noesis and noema are parallel
in structure. The noesis of an act has two main constituents: a thetic phase
and a Sinn-giving phase, which correspond respectively to what were earlier
called quality and matter, taken as constituents of real content. Similarly, the
136 CHAPTER III

noema of an act has two main constituents: a thetic component and a Sinn,
which correspond respectively to what were earlier called quality and matter
as ideal constituents of intentional content. The thetic component of the
noema is the ideal correlate of the the tic phase of the noesis, and the Sinn in
the noema is the ideal correlate of the Sinn-giving phase of the noesis. The
Sinn determines the specific intentional relation that obtains between the
act and its object and is therefore the key notion of content for a theory of
intentionality.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL
CONTENT

NOESIS NOEMA
(Real Content) (Intentional Content)

THETIC PHASE SINN-GIVING THETIC SINN

(Real Quality) PHASE COMPONENT (Ideal Matter)
(Real Matter) (Ideal Quality)

Fig. 1. Different notions of content.

2.6. The Content of Perception: its Sensory (or Hyletic) and Noetic Phases
The doctrine of noesis and noema is offered by Hussed as a completely
general account of an act's phenomenological content, and the distinctions
drawn within that account apply to all acts of every kind - acts of perceiv-
ing, remembering, imagining, desiring, judging, and so on. But the case of
perception complicates this account of phenomenological content. It is one
thing merely to entertain an object in thought and quite another to see it.
For seeing is a sensory experience, an experience that essentially involves
visual sensation. Thereby its object is presented with direct sensory support
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 137

and so is given intuitionally or self-evidently. Thus, Hussed holds, in addition

to their noetic and noematic contents, seeing and other perceptual experiences
also include sensory contents. In this section we sketch briefly Hussed's
account of the contents of perception.
We find in Ideas that the "real" make-up of a perceptual experience con-
sists of two fundamental constituent phases (cf. § §85, 97). like every
other act, a perception has a noetic phase, or noesis, which gives the act its
intentional character. But, unlike other acts, a perception also has a sensory
(sinnlich) phase, which gives the act its sensory character. Both phases are
"real" (reell) constituents of the act, literally parts of the flow of conscious-
ness, as opposed to the "intentional" noematic elements that belong to the
act as ideal correlates of the noetic phase. Putting Aristotle's matter-form
distinction to a novel use, Husserl calls the sensory phase of a perception its
hyle ("matter") - or its hyletic phase, or hyletic data - and the noetic phase
its morphe ("form"). Husserl thus conceives the sensory phase as a "formless
stuff [Stoffl" and the noetic phase as a "stuffless form" (§85, p. 209). (Note
that the English term 'matter' translates the German 'Stoff' in reference to
hyle in Ideas but also translates the German 'Materie' in reference to the
"matter" as opposed to the "quality" of an act in LI. Of course, these two
notions are very different.)
A perceptual act involves an interplay, then, between two distinct phases
in the experience - one purely "sensory" and the other purely "interpretive",
we might say. However, we shall see that Husserl's view here differs from that
of other philosophers who have made a similar distinction: the sensory phase
of a perception is not itself an act of perceiving or sensing something. Rather,
the sensory phase is an undifferentiated barrage of sensation to which the
noetic phase gives form by "animating" (beseelen) it with sense, or Sinn
(§85; §97, p. 244). Only together do the two phases constitute the perceiving
of something, say, seeing a red, bulging tomato. This basic analysis of percep-
tual acts is an enduring part of Husserl's philosophy: it is already present, in
somewhat different terms, in Logical Investigations (see especially V, § 14)
and is reaffrrmed as well in works long after Ideas (see, e.g., FTL, § l07c;PP,
§37).19
Husserlleaves it an open question whether sensory hyle, or sensation, can
occur alone without any overlying interpretive noesis, and also whether a
conscious life of pure noesis is possible without being founded, at least in-
directly, on a bed of past or present hyle (cf. Ideas, §85, p. 208). But he
makes it clear that merely having sensations, or hyle, would not be sufficient
for perceiving anything, not even for perceiving merely sensible qualities such
138 CHAPTER III

as colors and shapes, much less physical objects such as trees or tomatoes.
For the sensory phase "in itself has nothing of intentionality" (p. 208) .

. . . Not every real phase in the concrete unity of an intentional experience [Erlebnisses)
has itself the fundamental character of intentionality, the property "consciousness of
something". This applies, e.g., to all sensotion-data, which play so large a role in percep-
tive intuitions of things .... the "exhibiting" ["darstellender") content for the appearing
whiteness of the paper ... is the bearer of an intentionality, but is not itself a conscious-
ness of something. (Ideas, § 36, p. 81.)

To be intentional an experience must have meaning, or Sinn. But, Husser!

says, "sensations" are "meaningless [sinnlos] in themselves" and "could give
forth no 'Sinn', however they might be aggregated" (§86, p. 213; cf. LI, V,
§ 14, p. 565). Consequently, if a subject were merely undergoing sensations,
he would have no sense (Sinn) or conception of anything, and so his sensory
experience would not be of or about any thing or even any sensible qUality.
The function of providing a conception or sense of an object, an "inter-
pretation" that would fit an occurrent barrage of sensation, lies exclusively
with the noetic phase of perception. Through its "Sinn-giving" function (§85,
p. 208), Husser! says, the noesis "forms the [sensory] stuffs into intentional
experiences and brings in the specific character of intentionality" (p. 210).
Sensation becomes the perception of something only when "the stuffs are
'animated' by noetic phases", whereby "they undergo ... 'apprehensions'
['Auffassungen'] , 'bestowals of Sinn' ['Sinngebungen'] ": it is "both [phases]
in union [beides in eins] " that constitute "the appearing [Erscheinen] of the
color, the sound, and so every quality of the object" (§97, p. 244;cf. §41,
p. 94;LI, VI, Appendix §8, pp. 868-69, n. 1). Thus, for Husser! there is no
non-noetic, or non-interpretive, act of perceiving or sensing: perception, like
any act, is rendered intentional only by the Sinn in the noema correlated
with the act's noesis. And so the perceiving of something is essentially noetic,
whether it be the seeing of a physical object or merely the seeing of a color.
Hussed sometimes calls hyle "hyletic data", "sensory data" (sinnliche
Daten), or "sensation-data" (Emp[indungsdaten). This terminology might
suggest the traditional notions of "sense-data" and "sense-impressions". On
the traditional sense-data view of perception, the perception of physical ob-
jects is founded on elementary perceptions, or "sensings", of pure sense-data,
i.e., patterns of color, sound, etc. But Husserl's view of hyle is very unlike this
view. "Sensation-data", he says, "are in principle completely different from
color, smoothness, shape, Simpliciter, in short from all types of phases of
things" (Ideas, §41, p. 94; cf. §85, p. 208;LI, VI, Appendix §5, p. 861).
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 139

Color, shape, etc., are, on Husser!'s account, qualities of physical objects, or

"things". But hyle, or sensation-data, are completely different, since they are
phases of perceptual experiences. Nor are hyle sense-impressions, i.e., percep-
tions of pure sensible qualities such as colors, shapes, etc. For, as we have
already observed, hyle are not in themselves acts of perceiving anything.
Thus, hyle .are neither "sense-data" nor "sense-impressions". Moreover,
Husser!'s account of sensible qualities and perceptions of them is quite differ-
ent from the traditional notions of sense-data and sense-impressions. Husser!
takes sensible qualities to be "transcendent", like physical objects: the same
shape can be perceptually given from many different perspectives, the same
color under different lighting, and so forth. (See Ideas, §41, p. 94; PP,
§ §28-29, pp. 122-25.) And, Husser! holds, there is no such thing as merely
seeing (say) a red circular patch; there is only the experience of seeing a red
circular patch from a certain perspective. Thus, the most elementary percep-
tual awareness, the "appearing" (Erscheinung) of a sensible quality, is always
a perceptual "adumbration" (Abschattung), or perspectival presentation, of
a transcendent sensible quality. (See Ideas, Beilage XXIV, p. 412.) Every
perception essentially includes appearings, or adumbrations, of sensible
qualities, which consist in the union of hyle, or sensation-data, with noetic
apprehensions (see Ideas, §41, p. 94). But such appearings are very different
from what other philosophers have called sensings or sense-impressions of
sense-data.
If sensation, or hyle, alone is not intentional, what is its role in intentional
perception? A perceptual act, say, an act of seeing a penny, is directed toward
a physical object given as having various properties. Some of these properties
are sensible, or visible, qualities such as shape and color, while others may be
non-"observable" properties, say, theoretical properties such as being com-
posed of copper or cultural properties such as having been minted in the
United States of America. Of the sensible qualities given in the perception,
some are actually appearing while others may be hidden: the round shape and
the coppery brown color of the front side of the penny are visually appearing,
while the color and shape of the back side, though at least implicitly pre-
sented, are not appearing and remain out of view. (Cf. Ideas, § 27; § 120,
pp. 318-19; eM, §43, p. 92; also see Chapter VI, Section 2.4, below.) Now,
sensation, or hyle, is the evidential basis on which some of these properties
are posited of the object in the perception - specifically, the sensible qualities
appearing in the perception. But sensation alone does not present any prop-
erties. Rather, sensory phases of the perception combine with noetic phases
of the perception to form appearings of, say, the roood shape and the coppery
140 CHAPTER III

brown color of the penny. (ef. Ideas, §41, p. 94; PP, §29, p. 125, and
§ §30-31.) These appearings are sensory-and-intentional parts or phases of
the perception. (Where I see this round, coppery brown penny, the appearing
of its roundness to me is a partial intention that is a proper constituent of the
perception as a whole: cf.LI, § 10, p. 701.) Thus, the role of sensation in per-
ception is that of joining with appropriate noetic phases to form appearings
of sensible qualities and thereby to give perception its sensory and evidential
characters.
The sensory phase in a perception gives intuitive evidential support to
appropriate parts of the noetic phase in the perception. Where the noetic
phase "animates" the sensory phase, the sensory phase "fills" that noetic
phase. And the corresponding components of sense in the act's noematic
Sinn, Hussed says, are filled, or intuitionally (ful)filled, by the appropriate
hyletic experiences. (Their character of being filled is not part of the Sinn
itself but part of the thetic, or way-of-givenness, component of the noema:
cf. Ideas, §99.) (See LI, VI, § § 14(b), 17,21-29; Ideas, § 135, pp. 329-30,
and §136.) Perception is thereby an evident, or self-evident, experience, a
presentation carrying evidence for what it posits. The character of evidence
in a perceptual experience lies in the "intuitional fullness" of its noetic phase,
which consists in the noetic phase's being fIlled by a hyletic phase. Thus, the
sensory phase provides sensory evidence for what the noetic phase posits -
say, a certain object having certain properties. In particular, the appearings
of colors and shapes that are parts of a visual perception embody a sensory
evidence owing to its hyletic phase: the colors and shapes that are appearing
are presented with sensory evidence thanks to the hyletic phases in the
appearings. Other properties too may be supported to some degree by the
ingredient hyle, of course: in seeing a penny, the presentation of the object's
property of being a penny surely receives some evidential support from
appropriate hyletic phases in the perception. But the sensory phase never
provides complete evidence for what is posited by the noetic phase: the
noema of a perception of a physical object always includes "unfilled" com-
ponents of sense (see Ideas, §44).
We have observed Husserl's account of the hyletic content of perception
here in order to complete our presentation of his account of phenomenologi-
cal content. However, as we have noted, the intentionality of a perception -
its being of or about an object - is due entirely to its noematic Sinn, or the
corresponding Sinn-giving phase of its noesis. Intentionality is our primary
concern, and we return now to the story of Sinn and intention.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 141

3. HUSSERL'S BASIC THEORY: INTENTION VIA SINN

We have now studied in detail Hussed's doctrine of content and the many
distinctions it involves. A statement of the relations among act, content, and
object is very neadya statement of Hussed's mature theory of intentionality.
In this part of the chapter, we pull together the main themes of this theory.
We begin with an appraisal of how, on Hussed's account, intention is achieved
via noematic Sinn. Then we gather together the basic principles of the theory
and show how it deals with the traditional problems of intentionality.

3.1. Noematic Sinne as Mediators

The basic principle of Hussed's theory of intentionality, we have said, is that
an act is directed toward its object "by virtue of" its content. But exactly
how does content confer intentionality? What exactly is Hussed's theory?
That depends on exactly what contents are and how they relate to acts and
objects. We have seen how Hussed's doctrine of contents changed from
Logical Investigations to Ideas: in the Investigations the "ideal" intentional
content of an act is taken to be its species or type, while in Ideas it is taken
to be a noema, which is a kind of abstract particular rather than a type. By
scrutinizing this change and its implications for his evolving theory, we can
bring Hussed's mature theory of intentionality into a sharp focus.
In Logical Investigations, we know, the ideal content of an act is an es-
sence, a species or type, which Hussed calls the intentional essence of the
act. Now, the intentionality of an act is its property of being directed in a
certain way, that is, having a certain intentional "quality" and presenting a
certain sort of object. And this property just is, or defmes, the intentional
essence of the act, the essence of the act qua intentional experience. For
instance, the intentional essence of my seeing this black crow is simply the
phenomenological type of the experience, its property of being a seeing of a
black crow, its being directed in a certain way. This type or property, then, is
what Hussed identifies with the ideal content of an act in the Investigations.
And this identification yields a certain kind of "content-theory" of inten-
tionality: to say that an act is intentional "by virtue of" its content is just to
say thai the act's being intentional consists in its having a certain intentional
essence or type. The relation of an act (or its "real" content) to its ideal, or
intentional, content is simply that of exemplification or instantiation: an
act exemplifies, or instantiates, its intentional essence or type, which is its
intentional content. And an act's being intentionally related to a certain ob-
ject just consists in its having the property of being directed in a certain way,
142 CHAPTER III

that is, its having a certain intentional essence (and, if the intention is success-
ful, there being a corresponding object). (Note that there is no interesting
relation between the ideal content, or essence, and the object of an act.)
Hussed's theory of intentionality in the Investigations, so far as it goes, is
the sort of theory that today would be called an "adverbial" theory: to see
this black crow is to intend "(seeing this black crow)-ly", and so to have an
experience of a certain type, a "seeing-this-black-crow"-type of experience.
On such a theory, intentionality is a non-relational property of an act, a
complex quality or type that receives no further ontological analysis. If you
will, to say that an act is directed by virtue of its content is to say no more
than that it is directed in a certain way by virtue of its having the property,
or essence, of being directed in a certain way. For the strict adverbialist, this
is not as unilluminating as it appears; for the point of his theory is that inten-
tionality is not analyzable in relational terms. However, if in the Investigations
Husser! holds that intentionality is in some sense relational insofar as con-
sciousness is "of" or "about" something, then the analysis he has offered is
simply incomplete. Ideas, in fact, offers a further analysis.
In Ideas, we have seen, Husserl proposes a different entity to play the role
of ideal, intentional content. There is no reason to suppose he has ceased to
believe an act has an intentional essence, or type, but he no longer simply
identifies an act's intentional content with its intentional essence. The ideal
content he now calls the act's noema, and he conceives it as a kind of mean-
ing, a kind of abstract particular rather than an experience type. In §88 he
says, "Every intentional experience ... is noetic; that is to say, its essence is
to harbor in itself something like a 'Sinn''', that is, a noema (pp. 218-19).
The essence of which he speaks is clearly in effect the act's "intentional
essence" - he is saying as much. Thus, he is offering a further analysis or
explication of intentional essence: an experience is intentional, or has an
intentional essence, just insofar as it "harbors" a noema. And so my experi-
ence of seeing this black crow has a certain intentional essence or type, i.e.,
is an intentional experience, just because it has a certain noema.
The highlights of Husserl's mature theory of intentionality in Ideas we
might summarize as follows. Intentionality is analyzed in terms of an act's
real and ideal content: the real content of an act includes the act's noesis;
the ideal content is the act's noema, which centrally includes a Sinn. By
virtue of its noesis, each act bears a characteristic relation to a unique noema,
and so to the Sinn in its noema. Husserl says the noema is the "correlate" of
the noesis; and of the relation between the noesis and the Sinn he says that
the noesis "gives" the Sinn, or that the noesis "bestows" the Sinn on the act.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 143

Let us say instead, using a neutral term, that the act entertains its noema, and
specifically its Sinn. Further, a Sinn bears a characteristic relation to an object
(to at most one existing object), inasmuch as it is the Sinn's intrinsic nature
to "point to", to "represent", to "present" that object; let us say a Sinn
prescribes an object. The intentional relation of act to object is then analyzed
as the composition of two relations, the relation of act, or noesis, to noematic
Sinn (the "entertaining" relation) and the relation of Sinn to object (the
"prescribing" relation):
an act intends ( is directed toward or is intentionally related to) an object
if and only if the act (or its noesis) entertains a certain noematic Sinn and
that Sinn prescribes that object.
Schematically:
act (noesis) noema (Sinn) - - -..., [object]
entertains prescribes
intends
In this way, noematic Sinn mediates intention, and thus an act is directed
toward its object "by virtue of" its Sinn.
Hussed's basic ontological analysis of intentionality, then, is in terms of
two "entities" - a noesis, which is a temporal phase of an experience, and a
noema, which is an abstract entity correlated with the experience - and two
relations - the relations of "entertaining" and "prescribing". (The object
intended in an act is not part of this ontological analysis, we know, since
Hussed holds that its existence is not necessary to an intentional relation;
hence the brackets in the schema above.) To derive further details of Husserl's
theory of intentionality, one must pursue several questions concerning this
basic analysis. If we assume Husserl's ontology, what explanations of the tradi-
tional problems of intentionality does his analysis provide? We pursue this
question in the next section below. Concerning the ontology itself, precisely
what are noeses and noemata, and just what are these relations we have called
"entertaining" and "prescribing"? Now, except for noting more explicitly the
role of noesis and noema in intentionality, we have already said (in Part 2
above) much of what Husserl tells us about these entities. In fact, we have
nothing further to add on noesis. On the noema (and especially the noematic
Sinn), however, we shall pursue further Hussed's characterization of it as
"meaning" or "sense" and we shall find that Husserl does have more to say
about the inner structure of noematic Sinne. These further discussions of noe-
mata will also allow us to give some further analysis of the relation between
Sinne and the objects they prescribe. (These are the topics of Chapter N.)
144 CHAPTER III

The relation between an act, or its noesis, and its noema - what we call
"entertaining" - remains unanalyzed by Husserl, except for his claim that
for each phase in the noesis there is a corresponding phase in the noema.
However, to guard against a possible misunderstanding of Husserl's theory of
intentionality we must say something about what this relation is not: it is not
a species of intending, not an "intentional relation". On Husserl's theory,
noematic Sinne carry out the inner work of achieving intentional relations
and in this way are "mediators" of intention. But this does not mean that
noemata, or Sinne, stand between consciousness and its objects. Husserl does
not hold that Sinne are the proper or direct objects of consciousness and
"represent" external objects somewhat as words or pictures represent things.
His theory is not a species of "representationalism" in that sense, akin to
theories holding that we are properly or directly aware only of our own
"ideas", which in tum stand for or represent external objects. Indeed, Husserl
adamantly opposes all versions of what he calls the "fundamentally perverse
image- and sign-theories" (Ideas, §52, pp. 126-27; see also §43, §90, pp.
224-25, and LI, V, Appendix to §ll and §20, pp. 593-95). On Husserl's
theory, the noema - in particular, the Sinn - of an act is in no wise an object
intended in the act (nor is the noesis): the subject consciously intends the
object but not the noematic (or the noetic) content of the act; in fact, he
becomes explicitly aware of the content only in phenomenological reflection.
Indeed, if Husserl had explained the intention of one object in terms of the
apprehension or intention of another his theory would face an infmite regress:
if intending an object required intending a Sinn that represents that object,
then intending that Sinn would require yet another Sinn that represented the
first Sinn, and so on ad infinitum. 20 Husserl himself offers this very criticism
against "image- and sign-theories" and so rejects the view that the intention
of an object consists in the intention of some other entity that in turn repre-
sents that object (Ideas, §90, pp. 224-25;LI, V, Appendix to § 11 and §20,
p. 594). Thus, whatever "entertaining" a noema or Sinn may be, to entertain
a Sinn is not to intend it in any way and does not require any explicit aware-
ness of the Sinn by the subject who so entertains it.
To admit that there are limits to Husserl's analysis of the fundamental
notions underlying his theory of intentionality is not in itself a criticism of
Husserl. Ultimately, analysis must always stop somewhere, and every theory
must at that point simply accept some notions as primitive. The important
question is whether what Husserl says about his basic notions is enough to
enable us to understand them and the way they work. We have tried in this
chapter to make it clear what these basic notions are and, in the case of noesis
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 145

and noema, to say as much as we can about what kinds of entities they are,
what components they comprise, and what roles they play in intentionality.
In Chapter IV we shall continue this endeavor with respect to the Sinn-
component of the noema, the component that plays most prominantly in
Husserl's theory of intentionality. The basic structure of Husserl's theory of
intention via noematic Sinn should at any rate now be clear. As with any
theory, much of its acceptability turns on its success in handling the problems
that prompted the need for a theory in the first place. With this in mind, we
turn now to the application of Husserl's theory to the fundamental problems
of intentionality that we have detailed from the beginning of the book. We
may thereby begin to see how the theory works, although our final assess-
ment must await the further developments of Chapter IV.

3.2. The Theory and Its Account of the Peculiarities of Intention

An adequate theory of intentionality must account for those peculiarities of
intentional experiences that we have noted from the beginning: the directed-
ness, or relation-like character, of acts of consciousness; the existence-inde-
pendence of intentional "relations"; the conception-dependence of intentional
"relations"; and the transcendence of what is intended. A "content"-theory,
as opposed to an "object"-theory, would account for these phenomena by
appeal to the contents, as distinguished from the objects, of intentional
experiences. Husserl, we have said, proposed a content-theory. In Logical
Investigations, he required that the contents of experiences be non-"psycho-
logical", so that principles concerning them - including the laws of logic -
lie outside the domain of empirical psychology. In Ideas, he stiffened the
requirement; he required that contents survive the transcendental reduction,
so that a theory of contents make no assumptions at all concerning the
natural world. The theory of intentionality in Ideas meets all these require-
ments while extending the minimal explanatory power of the theory in the
Investigations. As we discussed in the preceding section, Husserl's mature
solution to the problems of intentionality lies with his conception of noe-
matic Sinn and its role in intention. We should like now to draw together the
fundamental principles of Husserl's theory in Ideas and indicate how they
account for the problems of intentionality.
We have stressed the following principles, which replicate doctrines of the
Investigations:

(1) Every act includes as a constituent part a noesis, which consists

of a thetic part and a meaning-giving part.
146 CHAPTER III

(2) The noesis in an act entertains exactly one noema, which consists
of a the tic part and a Sinn.

So every act, by virtue of its noesis, entertains a noema and hence a Sinn.
And this relation of entertaining is a many-one, or functional, relation:

(3) Different noeses, and hence different acts, may entertain the
same noema.

Thus, different experiences may share the same ideal content (whether ideal
content be type, as in the Investigations, or noema, as in the Ideas theory).
The anti-psychologistic status and the transcendental status of noemata
and Sinne are secured respectively by these two further principles:

(4) Noemata and Sinne are abstract entities.

(5) The noema of an act and the Sinn in the noema are grasped by
the subject in transcendental-phenomenological reflection.

In the next chapter we shall see that Hussed conceived noemata, or Sinne,
as abstract meaningo{:ntities of the sort that can in principle be expressed in
language.
We have emphasized Husserl's distinction between the content and the
object of an act, and identified noesis and noerna with real and ideal content.
Thus:

(6) The noesis and the noema (and hence the Sinn) of an act are
distinct from the object intended in the act.

Yet there is an intimate relation between an act's noema and its object,
owing to the "presentative" or "prescriptive" character of noematic Sinne.

(7) Each Sinn prescribes exactly, or at most, one object.

(We shall explain the "or"-part in a moment.) Further, the relation of pre-
scribing is a many-one, or functional, relation:

(8) Different Sinne may prescribe the same object.

For instance, the concepts "the morning star" and "the evening star" are
concepts of the same planet, Venus.
It is through the prescriptive character of an act's Sinn that the act is
intentionally related to its object:
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 147

(9) The object of an act is the object prescribed by the act's Sinn.

More fully:

(9*) An act intends - or is intentionally related to or directed toward

- an object if and only if the act entertains a certain Sinn and
that Sinn prescribes that object.

This principle, which we discussed in the preceding section, articulates

Husserl's basic analysis of intentionality.
As we have stressed, the "intentional relation" of act to object is peculiar
in three salient respects, which we have called existence-independence, con-
ception-dependence, and transcendence. These peculiarities of intention are
explained in Husserl's theory in terms of Sinn, in ways we can now state.
The intentionality of an act is not affected if its Sinn does not successfully
reach, or prescribe, any existing object. For:

(10) An experience is intentional if and only if it entertains a Sinn.

Thus:

(11) An act is intentional even if it has no object, i.e., there exists no

object prescribed by its Sinn.

In this way intention is independent of the existence of what is intended.

This point requires some further interpretation, however. As we have
stated principle 11, an act "has" an object only if the Sinn of the experience
prescribes or points toward something that exists. Yet, even if an act has no
object in that sense, i.e., there is no existing object corresponding to what
the Sinn prescribes, it still seems appropriate to say that the act is "directed
toward something", that it "presents an object", inasmuch as the act is inten-
tional. When an act has no object, we might say, the prescriptive character
of the act's Sinn nonetheless makes the act presentative, just as if it had a
corresponding object. Whether successfully directed to an (existing) object
or not, an act has a Sinn and so is itself just as it would be if it were success-
fully directed. But there still remains a problem: when there is no existing
object to which an act is actually directed, to what object is it "as if" di-
rected? What does the act then present or intend? Perhaps we should say in
that case that the act not only fails to ''have'' a corresponding object but, as
F~llesdal does, that it also fails to be directed, fails to intend any thing. 21 The
presentative character of the act, its being "as if" directed, then becomes
148 CHAPTER III

purely an internal feature of the act and its Sinn, and not a true relation at
all. Where an act's Sinn correlates with an existing object, that object is what
is intended in the act; but where it does not, talk about the act's "object"
is simply improper. This view was certainly attractive to Husserl. He seems to
have affirmed it in the Investigations, where his theory of intentionality had
not itself developed beyond the "adverbial" phase (see Section 3.1 above):
The sentences 'The ego presents an object to itself', 'The ego is related in a presenting
way to an object', 'The ego has something as an intentional object of its presentation'
... mean the same as 'In the phenomenological ego ... a certain experience, which in
virtue of its specific nature is said to be a "presentation of the object", is really present'.
Just so, the sentence 'The ego judges about the object' means the same as 'Such and
such an experience of judging is present in the ego', etc. (LI, V, § 12, p. 561; with trans.
changes. Cf. § 11.)

In two of his eadier writings, his 1894 essay on 'Intentional Objects' and his
1896 review of Twardowski, Hussed took the same position. There he argued
that all talk of "merely intentional objects" should be understood as "figura-
tive" or "improper" (uneigentlich), serving merely to "mark off a certain
function in all presentations, ... one that typically remains the same whether
the related existential judgment is in addition valid or not". 22 However, in
later writings Hussed sometimes appears more sympathetic to the notion
of non-actual objects. In Ideas he says: "In the broader sense an object -
'whether it is actual or not' - is 'constituted' in certain connections of con-
sciousness ..." (§ 135, p. 332). And in Experience and Judgment he says:
" 'The same' object which I just now imagine could also be given in experience
[Erfahrung, i.e., perception] : this same merely possible object ... could also
be an actual object" (Appendix I, to §§40 and 43, p. 381). In Chapter VI
below, we shall see how a view of this kind might be developed in Husserlian
terms; however, we shall conclude that Hussed's commitments in this direc-
tion are unclear and perhaps remain consonant with his attitude up to the
time of the Investigations. Accordingly, we leave Husserl's position on this
point unsettled, and we leave principle 7 in a form that takes no stand on this
point.
The conception-dependence of intention is explained by the role of Sinn
in mediating intention. From principles (9*) and (8) it follows that acts may
intend the same object through different Sinne. So intention is relative to a
particular Sinn. But a Sinn just is a "sense" or "conception" of an object,
understood in Hussed's non-psychologistic way. In Hussed's terms, a Sinn
reflects a particular aspect of the object it prescribes, a particular "way" in
which the object is "determined", or propertied - if you will, a mode of
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 149

presentation of the object. (We shall discuss this point more fully in Chapter
IV, Section 3.1, below.) Thus, intention is relative to a conception of the
object intended, that is, relative to a Sinn. And so different intentional rela-
tions are achieved in acts that intend the same object through different Sinne.
Husserl's theory also accommodates the fact that many objects "transcend"
the experiences in which they are intended, in that they outrun the content
of these experiences. A Sinn that prescribes a transcendent object, especially
a natural object, reflects only a limited and finite "way of being determined",
or aspect, of the object prescribed. Moreover, the content of an act intending
a natural object such as a tree entails that the object itself transcends this
limited aspect. When I see a tree, some properties or aspects of the tree are
explicitly presented in the perception ~ some with intuitional fullness (such
as the color of the leaves on the front side) and some without (say, the color
of the leaves on the back side). But my experience also presents the tree as
having other aspects or properties that are not specified at all; these might
include some visible qualities of its back side and properties such as having
taken seed or been planted at a certain time. "A thing [Ding: material thing]",
Husser! says, "can in principle be given only 'in one aspect' ['einseitig': 'one-
sidedly']" (Ideas, §44, p. 100). Moreover, this transcendence is intended in
the act, prescribed by the Sinn of the act (see Chapter IV, Section 3.1, below).
I see "this tree with green leaves on this side and so forth". "The 'and so
forth''', Husserl observes, "is an ... absolutely indispensable element in the
thing-noema" (Ideas, § 149, p. 367). Not only physical objects but also per-
sons and, of course, the natural world as a whole are transcendent of con-
sciousness (cf. Ideas, § §44, 47, 53, 149). So the principle of intended tran-
scendence will extend to this whole range of transcendent entities. This
principle will loom important and receive further explanation in our study
of Husserl's intriguing notion of "horizon" in Chapter V.
That natural objects are intended as transcendent is a vital part of their
being intended as objective. Another part is their being intended as experi-
enceable in other acts. Where I see an object as "the same object" throughout
a continuous series of perceptions, the object is given at one moment as being
the same object that I saw a moment earlier. Such "identification" Husserl
deems "the fundamental form of synthesis" (eM, § 18); through such iden-
tification, a particular object is "constituted" in one's consciousness. I may
also see an object as "the same object" you are seeing, or as an object "ex-
perienceable" by others (a main theme in eM, Fifth Meditation). Thereby,
an object is presented as intersubjective, and intersubjectivity is a large part
of objectivity (cf. eM, § §55ff.). Acts directed toward, or intending, the same
150 CHAPTER III

object we may say are co-directed. It is, of course, in virtue of their Sinne
that two acts may be co-directed. According to principle 8, different noematic
Sinne may prescribe the same object. And from this and principle 9 it follows
that acts may be co-directed: different acts - performed by the same or by
different subjects and having the same or different Sinne - may intend, or be
intentionally related to, the same object.
This principle of Husserl's theory will be a pivotal point for the last four
chapters of the book. In Chapter IV, Section 3.1, we shall study the internal
structure of a Sinn that allows for co-directedness of acts.
The preceding principles articulate Husserl's basic theory of intentionality,
a theory of intention mediated by noematic Sinn. It is worth recalling that
Husser! meant the theory to apply to both direct-object acts and propositional
acts. A direct-object act, e.g., my seeing this toad here on the ground, is
directed via an "individual" sense to an individual object. (Cf. Ideas, § §88,
103, 131.) A propositional act, e.g., my judging that this toad is sleeping, is
directed via a propositional Sinn to a state of affairs. The noematic Sinn of
a judgment, Husser! says, is what has been traditionally called "a 'judgment',
or a proposition in the sense of pure logic" (das "Urteil", bzw. der Satz im
reinlogischen Sinne) (Ideas, §94, p. 235). In this case, my judging is "about"
the toad and is "of" a state of affairs, the toad's being asleep.
There remains an important problem of intentionality that we have not
addressed in this chapter: the problem of explaining the difference between
definite and indefinite (Le., de re and de dicto) intentions. A discussion of
Husser!'s theory vis-a-vis this problem will be a major concern in Part 3 of
the next chapter, however.

NOTES

1 Izchak Miller has treated these matters quite clearly in his dissertation, 'The Phe-
nomenology of Perception: Husserl's Account of Our Temporal Awareness', UCLA,
1979, pp. 38-73.
2 Husserl's view of the ego changed radically from the Investigations to Ideas. In the
earlier work he had written: "I must frankly confess ... that I am quite unable to find
this ego .... The only thing I can take note of ... are the empirical ego and its empirical
relations to its own experiences ... " (LI, V, § 8, p. 549). But a footnote added to this
passage in the second edition of the Investigations notes the change: "I have since
managed to find it", Husserl says. Cf. Ideas, § §57, 80.
3 Kasimir Twardowski, On the Content and Object of Presentations, trans. by Reinhardt
Grossmann (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1977); first published in German as Zur Lehre
vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (Wien, 1894). Parenthetic page references
in this section are to the English translation.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY 151

4 Husserl's review, 'Besprechung von K. Twardowski .. .', is reprinted in Edmund

Husser!, Aufsiitze und Rezensionen (1890-1910), ed. by Bernhard Rang, Husserliana,
XXII (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1979), pp. 349-56.
5 See Aufsiitze und Rezensionen (1890-1910) (Note 4 above), especially Husser!'s
1894 essay, 'Intentionale Gegenstande', pp. 303-48.
6 See Husser!'s review of Twardowski (Note 4 above), pp. 352-53, Note *; and 'Inten-
tionale Gegenstande' (Note 5 above), esp. §4 and § 12.
7 'Besprechung von K. Twardowski' (Note 4 above), p. 350, Note *.
8 See Twardowski (Note 3 above), p. 15, Note 5, where he identifies his notion of con-
tent with Bolzano's notion of objective presentation.
9 Frege's review appeared in Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 103
(1894), 313-32. Excerpts are translated in Geach and Black (Note 44, Ch. II above),
pp. 79-85; the quoted phrase is on p. 79. For a translation of the complete review, see
Gottlob Frege, 'Review of Dr. E. Husser!'s Philosophy of Arithmetic', trans. by E. W.
Kluge,Mind 81 (1972),321-37.
10 Frege, 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44, Ch. II above), pp. 57,59. (Cf. Chapter II,
Section 3.2, above.) For more on the philosophical and historical relations between
Husser! and Frege, see: Dagfinn F~llesdal, Husserl und Frege (I Kommisjon Hos H.
Aschehong & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo, 1958); F~llesdal, 'An Introduction to Phenomen-
ology for Analytic Philosophers', in Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia, ed. by
Raymond E. Olson and Anthony M. Paul (The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1972),
pp. 417-29; J. N. Mohanty, 'Husserl and Frege: A New Look at their Relationship',
Research in Phenomenology 4 (1974), 51-62, reprinted in Husserl, Intentionality and
Cognitive Science, ed. by Hubert L. Dreyfus (The MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge,
1982); and Mohanty, 'Frege-Husserl Correspondence', trans. with notes, Southwestern
Journal of Philosophy 5 (1974), 83-96. Also see Chapter IV, Part 2, below.
11 Bernard Bolzano, Theory of Science, ed. and trans. by Rolf George (University of
California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), esp. pp. 61-62; first published in
German as Wissenschaftslehre (Salzbach, 1837).
12 See the entry for 'noesis' in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Lan·
guage, ed. by William Morris (American Heritage Publishing Co. Inc. and Houghton
Mifflin Co., Boston, 1973).
13 This is not to say that the subject of an experience is completely unaware of the
experience as he undergoes it. "Every lived experience is 'sensed', is immanently 'per-
ceived' ... although naturally it is not posited or meant ('to perceive' here does not
mean intentionally to be directed toward and to apprehend)", Husser! says (Time,
App. XII, p. 175; cf. § 39 and App. VIII). See Miller (Note 1 abnve), pp. 162-76. Also
cf. Sartre's discussion of what he calls the "non-positional", or "non-thetic", or "pre-
reflective", consciousness of being conscious that accompanies every act: Jean-Paul
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes (Philosophical Library, New
York, 1956), pp. I-Ivi; and Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, trans. by Forrest
Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (Noonday Press, New York, 1957), pp. 32-49. Further,
according to Husser! (but not Sartre), the ego is similarly aware of itself in an act as the
act's subject, without explicitly reflecting: see Ideas, § 80; CM, § 31; cf. Miller (Note 1
above), pp. 66-68.
14 In the Investigations Husser! held that meanings, which he identified with intentional
contents, are grasped in logical reflection. He says, for example, that the meaning of a
152 CHAPTER III

statement "becomes objective to us in a reflex act of thought .... This logical reflection
is not an act that takes place only under exceptional, artificial conditions: it is a normal
component of logical thinking" (L/, I, § 34, p. 332). Of course, Husser! had not yet fully
developed his conception of phenomenological reflection in the Investigations. But even
long after Ideas, in Formal and Transcendental Logic, logical and phenomenological
reflection seem to coincide for Husser!, each being reflection on sense or meaning and
the former particular!y on senses of judgments.
15 Cited by F¢llesdal in Dagfinn F¢llesdal, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema', Journal of
Philosophy 66 (1969),684, reprinted in Dreyfus (Note 10 above).
16 Guido Kling cites a lecture of Husser!'s on "Bedeutungslehre" from the summer
semester of 1908 and also the manuscript 'Noema und Sinn', as well as a later letter to
Roman Ingarden that comments on the change: see Guido Kling, 'Husser! on Pictures
and Intentional Objects', Review of Metaphysics 26 (1973), 676, Note 11. Cf. 1. N.
Mohanty, 'On Husserl's Theory of Meaning', Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5
(1974),229-33.
17 Cited by F¢llesdal (Note 15 above), p. 683.
18 A "Satz", in this usage of the term, is a noematic Sinn whose structure is proposi-
tional. Husser! also has a more special usage for the term, according to which the com-
plete noema of an act (whether the act is propositional or not) - the act's noematic
Sinn plus its thetic noema-component - is called a "Satz". See Ideas, § 133, p. 324, and
Dei/age XXV, p. 413; cf. Chapter IV, Section 2.7, below.
19 Husserl's basic analysis of perception is explained clearly in Dagfinn F¢llesdal, 'Phe-
nomenology', in Handbook of Perception. Vol. I, ed. by Edward C. Carterette and
Morton P. Friedman (Academic Press, Inc., New York, 1974), pp. 377-86.
20 Richard E. Aquila, in an otherwise illuminating paper contrasting Husserl's theory of
meaning and intention in the Investigations with that in Ideas, takes this criticism as
decisive in favor of the Investigations theory: see his 'Husser! and Frege on Meaning',
Journal of the History of Philosophy 12 (1974), 377-83.
21 See, for example, F¢llesdal's 'Phenomenology' (Note 19 above), p. 378.
22 'Besprechung von K. Twardowski' (Note 4 above), p. 353, Note *.
 CHAPTER IV

HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN

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?
Husserl's chuice of the term 'Sinn' for the main component of the noema
(and sometimes for the noema as a whole) is anything but capricious. 'Sinn'
is ordinary German for 'sense' or 'meaning', and in semantic theory it is the
term that Frege and others use for linguistic meaning, Le., the sense or mean-
ing of a linguistic expression. For Husserl, the noema and its Sinn are abstract
meaning entities, like Frege's Sinne. Indeed, he holds, the meanings expressed
in speech or writing are the noematic Sinne of the speaker's judgments or
other underlying intentions; the words express these Sinne publicly and thus
enable the speaker to communicate them to others. The claim that noemata
are meanings in this sense is the central contention of the present chapter.
Part 1 relates it to our characterization of noemata as contents of acts, as
presented in Chapter III, and contrasts the ensuing interpretation with some
opposing views about the nature and role of noemata. Part 2 argues for the
claim, drawing on the theory of linguistic sense and reference that Husserl
himself articulates in Logical Investigations and on his later claims about the
"expressibility" of noematic Sinne. We find in Hussed a remarkably clear
and detailed view of the nature of noematic Sinne, their relation to language,
and the connections between intention and reference.
Part 3 addresses the question, "How is intention achieved via Sinn?" In
Ideas Hussed offers a quite suggestive analysis of the internal structure of a
noematic Sinn, factoring the Sinn into two fundamental components of sense.
One component consists of "descriptive" senses, Le., senses of predicates
that characterize an object as intended in an act; the other component is a
sense of a different sort, prescribing the intended object "directly", inde-
pendent of the particular properties attributed it in the act. After discussing
this analysis of Sinn structure, we try to find in it a plausible account of how
153
154 CHAPTER IV

a Sinn relates an act to its object. Exploiting the connections between inten-
tion and linguistic reference, we here draw in part on contemporary theories
of linguistic reference. We find, however, that some aspects of intention
depend partly on the context in which an act takes place and so seem not
to be accounted for by an act's Sinn alone. Inasmuch as contextual factors
influence intention, we see serious problems for Husserl's basic theory of
intention via Sinn and, more generally, for his commitment to a purely
phenomenological analysis of intention.

1. INTERPRETING NOEMATIC SINN

Our interpretation of Husserl's notion of the noematic Sinn of an act differs

from some influential interpretations that have been offered. We shall now
contrast our interpretation with others, especially Aron Gurwitsch's, indicating
how and why we differ and observing some consequences of the differences
for an account of Husserl's phenomenology and his theory of intentionality.
We begin with a summary statement of the distinguishing features of our
interpretation, which is in essential agreement with that of Dagfmn F~llesdal.

1.1. Noema as Content and as Meaning

OUf interpretation of Husserl's notions of noema and noematic Sinn features
two principal claims. (1) Husserl takes noemata and their Sinne to be contents
of consciousness: the noema of an act is the act's ideal content, and the Sinn
is the component of this content that specifically determines the act's inten-
tional relation to an object. We have detailed our arguments for this claim
in Chapter III. (2) Husserl conceives noematic Sinne - and, by extension,
noemata - as meanings; specifically, he identifies noematic Sirme with the
meanings that are expressed in language, which he characterizes basically as
Frege did. Thus, noematic Sinne are meanings of the same sort as Frege's
Sinne: they are "intensional entities" that can be expressed in language as
the meanings or senses of linguistic expressions; they embody modes or
manners of presentation of an object before consciousness; and, as expressed
in language, they mediate the relation of words to referents in the same way
that, as contents of consciousness, they mediate the relation of acts to ob-
jects. We present our arguments for this second claim in Part 2 of the present
chapter.
Our interpretation, especially its second claim, derives from the insightful
and innovative interpretation of Husserl originated by F~llesdal. F~llesdal
has persuasively argued that Husserl's notion of noematic Sinn is basically
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 155

the same as Frege's notion of meaning or sense (Sinn), and that noematic
Sinne play essentially the same role in Husserl's theory of intentionality that
senses play in Frege's theory of reference. l F~l1esdal's perspective on Husser!
connects Husserl's concerns with those of Frege and others in the analytic
tradition, but we shall attempt to show that this perspective comes straight
from Husser! himself and is integral to his phenomenological approach to
the theory of intentionality. Accordingly, the focus of our discussion of the
relation between noematic Sinn and linguistic meaning (in Part 2 below) will
not be on Frege per se but on Husserl's own theory of linguistic meaning and
reference and on his account of the relation between language use and the
intentional mental activities that underlie it. Further, our interpretation
stresses the point that noemata and Sinne are phenomenological contents of
consciousness at least as heavily as it stresses F~l1esdal's main point of em·
phasis, that they are meanings.
Let us be clear, then, about the relation between our two interpretive
claims, as we see it. First, the legitimacy of the first claim is in no way de-
pendent on the second, although each is reinforced by the other. The his-
torical and textual grounds on which we have argued that Husserl takes
noemata and Sinne to be contents, not objects, of consciousness stand on
their own, no matter what the relation of these contents to language and
linguistiC meaning might be. Second, the first claim alone is sufficient to
distinguish our interpretation of Husserl's notion of noema, and its role in
intentionality, from the alternatives with which we are familiar. If noemata
and Sinne are contents, rather than objects, of consciousness, then they are
not intermediate objects that we intend in place of ordinary entities (not,
for example, sense-data or Meinongian incomplete objects) nor are they
parts or aspects or essences of the objects that we do intend. Third, a cor-
rect understanding of our second interpretive claim is very much dependent
on having accepted the first. Indeed, it is absolutely crucial to our inter-
pretation of Husserl that the claim that noemata and Sinne are meanings
be understood only in conjunction with the claim that they are contents,
not objects, of acts. We do not claim - nor does F~llesdal - that Husserl
takes linguistic meanings, or any other kinds of intensional entities, to be
in any sense the objects of first-order (Le., non-reflective) acts of conscious-
ness - whether these be propositional acts or attitudes, such as judgments
or beliefs, or direct-object acts of perception, memory, etc. Thus, we take
Husserl to disagree with those philosophers of language who have postulated
propositional senses as objects of the propositional attitudes, and it is surely
not our view or Husserl's that abstract meaning entities are the objects that
156 CHAPTER IV

we perceive, remember, desire, etc. in non-propositional acts. What we

claim, rather, is that Hussed in all cases invoked meanings - noematic Sinne
- in phenomenological description and explication of the "internal" work-
ings of consciousness whereby experiences are intentional. We hold, in
agreement with F¢llesdal, that noematic Sinne are "mediators" of intention,
by means of which acts relate to whatever objects they do intend.
To see noemata as contents is already to see Husserl as abandoning the
object-approach to intentionality. But to recognize further that Husserl's noe-
matic Sinne are specifically linguistic meanings of a Fregean sort is helpful in
additional ways. First, this conception of noematic Sinne as abstract particulars
is a change from his conception of contents as act-essences in the Investiga-
tions. This change, we have argued, is the decisive step that moves Husserl from
a strictly adverbial theory to a mediator-theory of intentionality (see Chapter
III, Section 3.1 , above). Second, Frege held, as Bolzano had earlier, that mean-
ings are abstract entities ontologically independent of particular acts of think-
ing. This view was integral to Husserl's anti-psychologism, from which was
born his phenomenology. That Husserl's phenomenology is a study of meanings
of this sort is one important way in which it differs from empirical psychology.
(Cf. Chapter III, Section 1.2, above; Section 2.1 below.) Third, in semantic
theories that view meanings as complex abstract entities, an important part of
semantic analysis is the analysis of the structure and components of meanings,
especially the propositional meanings expressed by complete sentences.
Hussed views noemata and noematic Sinne as similarly complex, and an im-
portant part of phenomenological analysis is the analysis of the structure and
components of noemata. In Section 3.1 below we consider Husserl's analysis
of an act's noematic Sinn into further constituent components of sense; this
analysis adds important detail to his account of the relation between the Sinn
and the object of an act. Fourth, if noematic Sinne are linguistic meanings,
then phenomenological analyses of Sinne and semantic analyses of meanings
should be able to be brought together in fruitful ways. We draw conSiderably
on this point in Part 3 below, and often in later parts of the book, where
results of semantic analyses are transferred to phenomenological analyses of
Sinn and intention. Finally, the familiarity of Frege's theory of reference via
sense may serve to heighten our intuitive understanding of the intentional
relation of act to object on Husserl's theory. If we understand intention in
terms of the relation of a meaning to an object, then intentionality is, in that
sense, a "semantic" relation for Husserl. There should then be no temptation
to see an act's content as somehow "picturing" the object or to see the rela-
tion between content and object as one of "representation" in the usual sense.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 157

1.2. What is the "Intended as Such"?

As we have observed, Husserl sometimes calls the Sinn of an act the "intended
[or meant: Venneinte] as such" (Ideas, §128, p. 315; §129, p. 318) or the
"intended objective just as it is intended" ("venneinten Gegenstiindlichen, so
wie es venneint ist") (§ 130, p. 319). Having just introduced the term 'noema'
in Ideas, he says similarly:
Perception, for example, has its noema, at base its perceptual Sinn, that is, the perceived
as such. Similarly, memory, when it occurs, has its remembered as such exactly as it is
''intended'' ["Gemeintes") , "consciously grasped" ["Bewusstes") in it; so again judging
has the judged as such, pleasure the pleasing as such, and so forth. (§ 88, p. 219.)

This terminology poses a problem for our interpretation of noematic Sinn,

for it seems to suggest that the Sinn of an act is something intended in that
act. This suggestion leads away from our interpretation and toward a widely
accepted interpretation articulated by Aron Gurwitsch and others.
Although our interpretation and Gurwitsch's coincide on many points,
they diverge on what precisely the noema or Sinn of an act is and how it re-
lates to the object of the act. We take the Sinn to be the ideal content of the
act and so completely distinct from the object of the act. But Gurwitsch
takes the noema to be the act's object, though only "as intended". In the case
of perception, Gurwitsch says: "Following Hussed, a perceptual noema is
the perceived material thing as it presents itself through a given act of percep-
tion". 2 The central problem in addressing Gurwitsch's interpretation is to
understand what he means by the "object as intended" and how he takes it to
relate to the object itself. Although we shall not study the interpretation in
depth, we should like in this section to outline the interpretation, to indicate
some difficulties we think it faces, and to address Hussed's use of terms like
'intended as such' and 'object as intended'.
Let us first highlight some of the main features of Gurwitsch's interpreta-
tion of Husserl's notion of noematic Sinn. Gurwitsch and we agree that the
noema or Sinn of an act is not a real part of the act, that it is an ideal or
abstract entity, and that it is in some sense a "meaning". We further agree
with Gurwitsch that the noema is not the same as the object, that the object
is what is ordinarily intended in an act,and that we become aware of the
noema only by means of phenomenological reduction. However, Gurwitsch's
understanding of these key points differs from ours in several important ways.
First, for Gurwitsch the noema or Sinn of an act is the object intended as it
is intended: "a certain person, object, event, state of affairs which presents
itself, taken exactly as it presents itself or as it is intended".3 In particular,
158 CHAPTER IV

"the noema of perception", he says, is "the object such, exactly such and
only such, as the perceiving subject is aware of it, as he intends it in this
concrete experienced mental state".4 Second, while the object as intended is
not the same as the object itself, Gurwitsch maintains that it is still a part or
aspect of the object. Husserl emphasizes that the material object itself is
perceived, while Gurwitsch holds that the noematic Sinn is perceived, inas-
much as it is the "perceived as such". Gurwitsch resolves the apparent conflict
by concluding that the Sinn cannot be wholly separate from the object per-
ceived. He takes it to be that aspect of the object which "appears" in the
perception, from the perceiver's perspective. 5 Third, accordingly, Gurwitsch
takes the object itself to be nothing but a system of noemata, consisting of all
the noemata that could present that same object. In particular, the object of
a perception is the system of perceptual noemata, or "appearances", of "the
same" object from different sides. Gurwitsch says: "The thing perceived also
proves to have noematic status. As a noematic system it is a noema itself, but
a noema of a higher order, so to speak."6 So the relation between the Sinn
and the object of an act is a relation of part to whole, or of a member-noema
to a system of noemata. Fourth, for Gurwitsch, phenomenological reduction
effects a change in attitude toward what is intended: "The phenomenologist
is not concerned with objects as they really are, but as they appear through
acts of consciousness and present themselves to the experiencing subject's
mind". 7 Phenomenological reduction then does not effect a change in what
is intended in the way we have described: for instance, a change from perceiv-
ing a tree to reflecting on the perception and its content, which makes it that
perception of that tree.
The theory Gurwitsch ascribes to Husserl faces some internal conceptual
difficulties, especially in regard to the relation it imputes between the noema-
tic Sinn and the object of an act. For Husserl, of course, the Sinn will exist
even if the object does not. As he says of perceiving a tree: "The tree can
burn, can break down into its chemical elements, etc. The Sinn [the perceived
tree as such], however, ... cannot burn, it has no chemical elements, no
powers, no real [realen] properties" (Ideas, §89, p. 222). Gurwitsch readily
acknowledges this point, but the theory he imputes Husserl then confronts
two difficulties. First, how can the Sinn be the object as intended if this is a
part of the object intended? Can the "perceived material thing as it presents
itself", the thing's parts or aspects that appear to the perceiver, exist even
when there is no such thing? Second, how can the object itself - which may
be a concrete object like a tree, which can burn away - be identical with a
system of noemata or Sinne, or a higher-order noema or Sinn? If a Sinn cannot
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 159

burn away, how can a system of Sinne, or a higher-order Sinn, burn away?
By Hussed's own account, trees are concrete physical objects, composed of
chemical elements and having "real" properties, while Sinne are ideal or
abstract entities, having no chemical elements and no real properties; aren't
trees and noematic Sinne or systems of noematic Sinne thus entities of irre-
ducibly different ontological kinds?
A full discussion of these conceptual difficulties would involve the ques-
tion of whether and to what extent Hussed tended to idealism, and perhaps
they are not insuperable. But our interpretation of Hussed's account of the
relation between noematic Sinn and object does not encounter these prob-
lems. On our interpretation, the Sinn is in no way a part or aspect of the
object intended. And the object is neither a complex of Sinne nor a complex
or higher-order Sinn. Husserl does indeed describe a strict correlation between
any object and the set of noematic Sinne that present that same object in
different ways (cf. Ideas, § 135). But nowhere, to our knowledge, does he go
on to identify the object and the corresponding system of Sinne. The purpose
of the correlation, we hold, is not ontological reduction but a special sort of
phenomenological explication. (We study this kind of explication in Chapters
V and VI below on Hussed's notion of "horizon" or "manifold".)
In our view, though, the fundamental problem for Gurwitsch is that his
interpretation does not square with Husserl's own account of noema as ideal
content. We studied Husserl's distinction between content and object of
consciousness at length in the previous chapter. There we found that Husserl
contrasted two notions of content - real content, which he identified with
noesis, and ideal or intentional content, which he identified with noema or
Sinn - and he distinguished both from the object intended in an act. Gur-
witsch's interpretation, however, really offers one notion of content - real
content or noesis - and two notions of object - the object as intended,
which is identified with the noema or Sinn, and the object itself. For, we take
it, on Gurwitsch's understanding of the Sinn as the intended as such, the Sinn
is itself intended. The Sinn then lies on the object-side of intention, not on
the side of content in the sense in which we have studied it.
As a consequence, Gurwitsch's interpretation is difficult to square with
Husserl on other points as well. First, Husserl consistently characterizes the
Sinn, and indeed the whole noema, as a sense or meaning, which he takes to
be an abstract, or ideal, entity. So does Gurwitsch, but he must then take
meanings to be intended objects, just as they are given in acts of perception,
memory, judgment, and so on. Husserl's notion of meaning is quite different:
for him, meanings - including noematic Sinne - are primarily contents of
160 CHAPTER IV

thoughts and experiences, which in principle can be expressed in language

(see Part 2 below). Husserl's theory of meaning generally is explicitly in the
tradition of Bolzano and Frege, a tradition that simply does not connect with
the account of meaning to which Gurwitsch's interpretation leads. Second, by
construing the noema as a kind of object of intention, Gurwitsch's interpreta-
tion leaves Husserl's theory of intentionality essentially an object-theory. In-
deed, if it avoids idealism by clearly removing the noema from consciousness
and placing it on the object-side of intention, then it leaves Husserl's theory
looking essentially like Meinong's. Coherent theories can be drawn along
those lines, but Husserl's theory seems to us to be fundamentally different.
(We will discuss some of these differences in the following section.) Third,
with this drift toward an object-theory of intentionality, Gurwitsch's inter-
pretation tends to leave behind the phenomenological motivations of Husserl's
theory of intentionality (cf. Chapter III, Part 1 , above). Phenomenology, in
its most basic sense, is the study of experiences as a subject has them. Ac-
cordingly, the phenomenological content of an act includes only what is
"immanent" in the act, what lies "in" consciousness, making the experience
the act that it is. As ideal content, the Sinn must therefore itself be immanent
in a sense: though not literally a part of the act, it is the ideal structure of the
act and so fmds its embodiment in the experience rather than in the object.
The object intended, by contrast, is "transcendent" of the act; it lies "out-
side" the act and its phenomenological content. And if the Sinn were the
object as intended, a part or constituent of the object intended, then it, too,
would lie outside the act and, in fact, belong to the transcendent world. The
phenomenological method of epoch€:, as Husserl describes it, brackets the
object of consciousness and gains by inner reflection the content of conscious-
ness, the noesis and the noema and so the Sinn. But epoche takes on a dif-
ferent cast if bracketing leaves for reflection a part of the object, albeit that
part presented in the act. And phenomenology then no longer seems to be
what Husserl describes, namely a study of the inner life of consciousness.
In contrast with Gurwitsch, we have argued that the noematic Sinn is the
ideal content of an act, through which an object is intended as having certain
properties. If we are right, the Sinn is not the object of an act considered in
a special way, i.e., considered just as presented in the act. Thus, since Husserl
calls the Sinn "the intended as such", we also take this expression and its kin
to denote the ideal content of an act and so not to have the more or less
intuitive, descriptive meaning that Gurwitsch's interpretation assumes. Since
this is a central point of disagreement between our view and Gurwitsch's,
some further discussion of this terminology is called for.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 161

We would note, first, that Hussed does sometimes use such expressions as
'the intended as such' and 'the object, as it is intended' in what is evidently
just Gurwitsch's way, but in contexts that support our interpretation of the
Sinn. The clearest instance is in Logical Investigations, V, § 17, where Hussed
says:
We must distinguish, in relation to the intentional content taken as object of the act,
between the object, as it is intended [der Gegenstand, so wie er intendiert ist), and
simply the object which is intended [schlechthin der Gegenstand, welcher intendiert
istJ . ... E.g., the presentation "German Emperor" presents its object as an Emperor,
and as Germany's Emperor. The man himself is the son of the Emperor Frederick III,
the grandson of Queen Victoria, and has many other properties here neither named nor
presented. (Pp. 578-79; with trans. changes.)

Gurwitsch himself sometimes refers to this very passage when explaining his
characterization of the noematic Sinn as the object "as intended". When
viewed in context, however, the passage fails to support this characterization,
and what in fact emerges is a strong argument against Gurwitsch's interpreta-
tion. Investigation V, we recall from Chapter III above, is Hussed's discussion
of content; § 17 considers, in particular, the use of the term 'content' to refer
to the object intended in an act and the ambiguity in that usage. (Some of
Hussed's contemporaries - notably Brentano - had used the terms 'content'
and 'object' interchangeably.) But this object-notion of content - whether
taken to mean the object in itself or the object as intended - is not the notion
that Hussed embraces and later develops into the doctrine of noesis and
Roema. He closes § 17 by saying: "Since such talk is so highly ambiguous, we
shall do well never to speak of an intentional content where an intentional
object is meant, but to call the latter the intentional object of the act in
question" (p. 580). § 20 then proceeds with Husserl's notion of content,
analyzing content in terms of "quality" and "matter". But "matter", which
he later correlates with the noematic Sinn (see Ideas, § 133, p. 324), is not
the object or the object as intended. Rather, it is that in an act which pre-
scribes or determines the object as it is intended: "The matter ... is the
peculiarity in the phenomenological content of the act that determines not
only that the act apprehends the object but also as what it apprehends it ... "
(§20, p. 589; with trans. changes. See Chapter Ill, Section 2.2, above). In
short, Hussed distinguishes his notion of matter from the Gurwitschean no-
tion of the object as intended. And since in Ideas he identifies noematic Sinn
with (ideal) matter - as Gurwitsch agrees he does 8 - the Sinn is distinct
from the object as intended, if the latter is taken in Gurwitsch's sense. In
fact, Hussed had already made a distinction between Sinn and "object as
162 CHAPTER IV

meant" when discussing linguistic reference in the fust Investigation: "We

have, on the one hand, the object itself, and the object as meant [gemeinte]
in this or that manner. On the other hand ... we have the object's ideal corre-
late in the acts ... which constitute it, the fulfilling sense [Sinn]" (§ 14, p.
290). Thus, in distinguishing act from object in the Investigations, Husserl
placed the object as intended on the side of the object intended, opposing
both to the phenomenological content, or Sinn, of the act.
A closely related point concerns Gurwitsch's identification of perceptual
noemata with appearances, i.e., with that which appears just as it appears.
Husserl acknowledges this notion of appearance, too, in Logical Investiga-
tions, but again he distinguishes both it and the object itself from the phe-
nomenological content of an act:

It is phenomenologically false to say that the difference between the consciously grasped
content in perception, and the external object perceived (or perceptually intended) in it,
is a mere difference in the mode of consideration, the same appearance being considered
at one time in a subjective nexus (in the nexus of appearances related to the ego) and at
another time in an objective nexus (in the nexus of the things themselves). We cannot
stress sharply enough the equivocation which permits 'appearance' to refer not only to
the experience in which the appearing of the object consists (e.g., the concrete percep-
tual experience, in which the object itself seems present to us) but also to the appearing
object as such. The deceptive spell of this equivocation vanishes as soon as one takes
phenomenological account of how little of the appearing object as such is really to be
found in the experience of appearing. The thing-appearance (the experience) is not the
appearing thing (that which seems to "stand before" us in embodied selfhood). As
belonging to the nexus of consciousness, appearances are lived through by us, as belong-
ing to the phenomenal world, things appear to us. Appearances themselves do not
appear, they are lived through [erlebt). (LI, V, § 2, p. 538; with trans. changes.)

Hussed says several interesting things in this passage. First, one does not grasp
the content of an act merely by conSidering the act's object in a special way
- i.e., by considering it "as intended" or "as it appears". Second, Husserl
distinguishes two notions of "appearance": the appearing object as such
(Gurwitsch's notion) and the inner experience of appearing. The former be-
longs with the object intended, in the "objective nexus"; the latter belongs
to consciousness. Thus, Hussed here identifies a phenomenological sense of
'appearance' - appearance as content - and explicitly distinguishes it from
Gurwitsch's notion. Third, as the content of a perceptual experience, an ap-
pearance is not something that appears. This point does not transfer directly
to our view of perceptual noemata or Sinne as contents, since Husserl is here
focusing on real content (the experience of perceiving - in effect, the noesis)
rather than ideal content. Nonetheless, if Husserl's later use of 'the perceived
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 163

as such' in reference to the noema denotes ideal content, it should not seem
strange that the perceived as such, in that sense, is not itself something that
is perceived.
Evidently, when Husserl calls the noema or Sinn the "intended as such"
in Ideas, he is either not using the term 'intended as such' and kindred expres-
sions in the way he used them in Logical Investigations or he has radically
changed his view of content - so much so that ideal content and object have
now virtually coalesced. Now, we have already argued against the second
alternative in Chapter III. Although we discovered some important differences
between Husserl's earlier theory of content and his later theory of noesis and
noema, we argued that his basic distinction between content and object re-
mains unchanged; indeed, we saw that Husserl himself says that, except for
his failure to stress the distinction between real and ideal content in the
Investigations, noematic distinctions in Ideas correspond to content distinc-
tions in Logical Investigations. So we believe a systematic study of the theory
of content in the Investigations, coupled with the account of phenomenologi-
cal method, the noesis-noema doctrine, and the theory of intentionality in
Ideas, already tells us that the noematic Sinn is an immanent, ideal meaning-
content. Accordingly, Husserl's identification of the Sinn with the intended as
such is not the key to discovering what the Sinn is; in fact, the identification
is less informative about the Sinn than about Husserl's use of the expression
'the intended as such': 'the intended as such' denotes the noema and, hence,
the ideal content of an act.
This way of understanding Husserl's use of expressions like 'the intended
as such' in Ideas is not at all implausible. For one thing, in On the Content
and Object of Presentations Twardowski notes that such expressions had
already been used by other philosophers to denote the content as opposed
to the object of an experience. Expressions like 'the presented' or 'what is
presented' are ambiguous, Twardowski says, sometimes referring to the object
that is presented and sometimes to the content through which it is presented.
He then says, citing a publication from 1891: "Kerry tries to avoid the mis-
understandings which occur if one speaks of a 'presented' object without any
further explanation by distinguishing between the 'presented as such' and the
'presented plain and simple' ".9 Husserl's terminology is often just this. And
he would undoubtedly have been aware of its use in distinguishing content
from object, since he reviewed Twardowski's book in 1896. Twardowski's
commentary on the terminology also helps explain how Husserl could have
used the same terms for different notions in Logical Investigations and Ideas.
Since 'the presented' is already ambiguous, Twardowski says, to speak of
164 CHAPTER IV

"something as presented" will also be ambiguous. If 'as presented' is used

attributively, then the whole expression refers to the object that is presented
and attributes to it the property of being presented in a certain way. But
'as presented' may also be used in another way, he says, not to make an
attribution of the object, but to create a new expression with a completely
new meaning; in that case, to speak of "something as presented" is to refer to
something other than the object, namely, the act's content. 10 The resulting
ambiguity seems to be just that which distinguishes Gurwitsch's use of 'the
object as intended' - the use found in the Investigations - from the use
that we attribute Hussed in Ideas. For Gurwitsch takes it to be a delimited
description of the object, referring to the object under a certain aspect, while
we take it to refer to content.
A close reading of Hussed's introduction of the terminology 'the intended
as such' in Ideas also supports our interpretation rather than Gurwitsch's. In
§88 Husserl ftrst distinguishes the "real" (reellen) from the "intentional"
(intentionalen) "components of experience"; the former is the "noetic con-
tent" (noetischen Gehalt) and the later the "correlative noematic content"
(noematischen Gehalt), or "noema", of an act (pp. 218-19). Then comes the
passage we quoted at the beginning of this section: "Perception, for example,
has its noema, at base its perceptual Sinn, that is, the perceived as such .. ."
(p. 219). This is Husserl's ftrst use of the 'as such' terminology in Ideas, and
at just this point he attaches a footnote to the term 'perceptual Sinn' referring
the reader to LogicalInvestigations. Evidently, the point of the footnote is to
help us understand what the Sinn is, and in that regard the passages referred
to are extremely revealing. They do not include § 17 of Investigation V,
where (as we saw above) he makes Gurwitsch's distinction between "the
object" and "the object, as it is intended". Indeed, his first reference is to
Investigation I, § 14, p. 290, "on the 'fulfilling sense [Sinn]'''. And this is the
passage we cited above, wherein he distinguishes the Sinn from both "the
object itself" and "the object as meant in this or that manner". Cleady, then,
'the perceived [remembered, judged, etc.] as such', which is now used as
equivalent to 'Sinn', cannot refer to what Hussed called "the object as meant"
in the Investigations. But in the same footnote Husserl tells us what it does
refer to: he cites Investigations V, §20f, and VI, §§25-29, "on the 'matter'
of an act". Evidently, then, Hussed's notion of noema in Ideas presupposes
the theory of content already offered in the Investigations (the theory we
studied in Chapter III, Part 2, above), a theory that equates Sinn with ideal
content and distinguishes it both from the object intended and from what
Gurwitsch ca~s "the object as intended".
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 165

Given the background Husserl cites from the Investigations, we already

know a great deal about the noematic Sinn of a perception when he intro-
duces the 'as such' terminology in Ideas. But all we know about the "perceived
as such" is that it is the Sinn and thus is part of the ideal phenomenological
content of a perception. Accordingly, Husserl asks at the end of § 88: "What
is the 'perceived as such', what essential phases does it harbor in itself as this
perception's noema?" (p. 221). And he replies: "We obtain the answer in pure
surrender to the essentially given; we can describe the 'appearing as such' ....
Just another expression for this is: 'describing the perception in noematic
respect' " (p. 221). In describing the "perceived as such" we are describing
the perception, in "noematic" respect; we are not describing the object itself
or as presented in a certain way. Husserl then proceeds, in §89, to distinguish
"noematic" descriptions from "statements of reality". This discussion is very
important, and we shall devote a section to it later in this chapter (Section
2.6). We shall find that a "noematic description", although closely related to
a description of what Gurwitsch would call "the object as it is intended", in
fact denotes something completely different. If the object is intended as a
tree, as blooming, and so on, then a description of the noematic Sinn - the
intended or perceived tree as such - will include the expressions' "tree" ,
and '''blooming''', Husserl says. The quotation marks around 'tree' and
'blooming' are supplied by Husserl, however, and he says that they effect a
"radical modification of meaning of the words" (p. 222). Accordingly, when
such expressions are used in noematic description, they no longer denote
"real" properties that the object is intended as having but instead denote
"ideal" components of the Sinn. Thus, with the addition of the quotation
marks, expressions that describe the "perceived as such" do not describe the
object as it is intended in the act; rather, they describe the Sinn, which pre-
scribes the object and prescribes it as intended.
There may yet be room for debate on what is the proper interpretation of
Husserl's theory of noematic Sinn. But we would urge that an understanding
of Husserl's theory can only be gained through a systematic study, both of
his texts and of his thought as a whole.

1.3. Sinne versus Meinongian "Incomplete" Objects

On Gurwitsch's interpretation of Husserl, we observed, the Sinn of an act is
the act's object, taken just "as" it is intended in the act. And that would
seem to be an aspect-part of the object that is intended, the object some-
how restricted in its nature to the aspect it is intended as having. We have
argued against the Gurwitsch interpretation and for another. However, it is
166 CHAPTER IV

illuminating to contrast the theory we have attributed Husserl with the theory
Gurwitsch attributed him. The natural development of the Gurwitschian read-
ing would seem to be a theory of the kind found in Meinong, for Meinong's
'incomplete' objects are objects restricted in their nature to a limited group
of properties (cf. Chapter II, Section 2.3). Indeed, the approaches of Meinong
and Husserl are the two principal approaches to intentionality we have dis-
cussed, the "object"-approach and the "content"-approach. It is important
to see both the parallels and the differences, and the principal point of com-
parison and contrast is that between Meinong's "incomplete" objects and
Husserl's "Sinne".n
For Meinong, we would recall, some objects are "complete", or "com-
pletely determined", while others are "incomplete". According to Meinong,
complete objects, including everyday physical objects, lie beyond human
grasp because we can grasp only a finite and partial aspect of any such ob-
jects. We can intend physical objects only indirectly insofar as we intend
incomplete objects that are "embedded" in them. Thus, what we directly
intend is an object with only a limited nature. This object is embedded in a
complete physical object, from which it differs only in having a finite subset
of the latter's properties. Indeed, we might say in extension of Meinong that
the incomplete object is itself the complete object "as" having just the prop-
erties or aspect we grasp of it: the incomplete object is then the complete
object "as" intended. By virtue of intending this incomplete object, and
its embedment in the complete physical object, we indirectly intend the
complete object. And so we might say that, in this sense, the physical object
is intended through the incomplete object.
There is, then, a certain structural resemblance between the Meinongian
and the Husserlian theories, inasmuch as each analyzes the intention of a
physical object in terms of two relations and an intermediary entity. For
Meinong, awareness of a physical object consists in intending an incomplete
object, which is embedded in the physical object; for Husserl, it consists in
entertaining a Sinn, which prescribes the physical object. There are important
differences, however, in the intermediary entities and in the relations involving
them.
First, an act's Sinn is the ideal content of the act and so, in an important
sense, is mental or "immanent" in consciousness, whereas an incomplete
object is in no way mental or immanent. The Sinn is, as it were, a part of the
act, while the incomplete object is a part of the intended object. Second, the
Sinn genuinely mediates an intentional relation between act (or subject) and
object, inasmuch as the Sinn prescribes the object and, so to say, "points"
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 167

the act toward that object. The embedment of an incomplete object in a

complete object is a relation of a quite different order, the relation of part to
whole. Third, for Husserl the Sinn is in no wayan object intended in the act.
The act "entertains" the Sinn, which is thereby embodied in the structure of
the act, but the act is not directed toward its Sinn. For Meinong, though, the
incomplete object is intended in the act. Indeed, it is the only object of which
the subject is strictly aware. Finally, it follows that physical objects are not
objects of intention at all, properly speaking, for Meinong. We have suggested
that the Meinongian might say they are "indirectly" intended. But "indirect
intention" is then not a species of intention proper; rather, it consists in the
complex relation composed of intention proper and the quite different rela-
tion of embedment. And so our intentions never reach physical objects, for
Meinong, but reach other quite different objects that are at best related to
physical objects in some further way. For Husserl, on the other hand, the
only relation of intention is the composite relation of act to Sinn to object
and, in acts such as perception, the physical object or state of affairs is the
object of this relation. (A possible further point of difference concerns
Meinong's doctrine that objects are "indifferent" to being, or "beyond"
being - i.e., that objects mayor may not exist, without prejudice to their
status as objects. Husserl often seems to differ on this point, although we
have observed that he also sometimes speaks as though he would allow pos-
sible objects that lack actual being. See Chapter III, Section 3.2, above; and
cf. Chapter VI, Part 3, below.)
These differences contrast Husserl's content-approach with Meinong's
object-approach to intentionality. Husserl's Sinne, as ideal contents of con-
sciousness, are different in ontolOgical kind from Meinong's incomplete
objects and Gurwitsch's objects-as-intended. And these differences bring
differences in the analysis of intentionality. Although a Meinongian theory
of intentionality may be perfectly coherent, it is not Husserl's theory. Indeed,
the Meinongian approach to intentionality is not "phenomenological" in the
sense that Husserl's is, for its proposed analysis of intentionality focuses on
the objects of intention rather than on the inner, phenomenological, struc-
tures of intentional experiences.

1.4. Noema versus Essence

It has sometimes been thought that on Husserl's conception noemata or
noematic Sinne are essences, either essences of acts or essences of objects
intended in acts. But neither interpretation is correct.
We have already discussed the relation between the noema of an act and
168 CHAPTER IV

the act's intentional essence, its essence or type qua intentional experience.
In the Investigations, we saw, the ideal or intentional content of an act is
identified with the intentional essence of the act. But in Ideas this notion of
content as act-essence is replaced by the notion of content as noema. As an
intentional experience, an act still has an intentional essence, which now
includes the property of "entertaining" a noema as ideal content. But the
noema itself is a kind of abstract particular correlated with the act and not
an essence or property instantiated in the act. (See Chapter III, Sections 2.3
and 3.1 , above.)
That noemata are not essences of acts still leaves open the possibility that
they are, or include, essences or properties of the objects that acts intend.
After all, noemata and essences are both abstract entities for Husserl, and
both are ontologically independent of the objects to which they relate. If
I think of Pegasus, for example, the noema of my act exists and so does the
essence "flying horse", even though Pegasus himself does not. Nonetheless,
according to Husserl, the noema and the meanings or senses it comprises are
distinct from any essences of the object and from the properties that defme
these essences. In the third volume of Ideas he explicitly warns against iden-
tifying noemata with the essences of intended objects:

Noema (correlate) and essence are not to be confused. Even the noema of a clear thing-
intuition, or of a continuous harmonious connection of intuition directed upon one and
the same thing, is not and also does not contain the essence of the thing. The grasping
of the one is not that of the other, although here a change of attitude and direction of
grasp is essentially possible, through which the grasping of the noema can at any given
time change into that of the corresponding ontic essence. But we have a different kind
of intuition in the latter case than in the former .
. . . Just as the meant simpliciter [Bedeutete schlechthin) ... is something other than
the meaning [Bedeutung), so also the essence of the meant is something other than the
meaning. (Ideas, III, § 16, p. 85.)

Thus, Husserl says, the noema of a thing-intuition - i.e., the perception of

a material thing - is not the same as and does not contain the essence, or
properties, of the object. Moreover, the noema and the essence are grasped
in different kinds of intuition. As we know from Ideas (Le.,ldeas, I), noemata
are grasped intuitionally by transcendental reduction and phenomenological
reflection, whereas essences are grasped intuitionally by eidetic reduction and
eidetic insight (see Chapter III, Section 1.2, above).
There are, in fact, a number of Husserlian grounds for distinguishing noe-
mata and essences. (1) The relation between the noema and the object of an
act is quite different from the relation of an essence to the object that has it.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 169

The noema, through the constituent senses in its Sinn, prescribes the object
as having certain essences or properties, while the essences or properties them-
selves are instantiated, or exemplified, by the object. Thus, when I see a red
ball the noematic Sinn of the act includes the senses "red" and "ball", which
prescribe the object as having the properties of being red and being a ball.
But the senses and the corresponding properties are not the same, and they
do not -stand in the same relation to the object. (2) As Husserl notes in the
passage cited above, noemata and essences are grasped in different kinds of
intuition. (3) The study of noemata and the study of the essences of material
objects are distinct disciplines, according to Husserl. Noemata are subject
matter for transcendental phenomenology, while the essences of material
objects are subject matter for "eidetic ontologies". Indeed, we saw earlier,
these essences and their ontologies are "bracketed" in phenomenological re-
duction. (See Chapter III, Section 1.2.) (4) As evidenced by all three of these
points, noemata and essences are different kinds of entities for Husserl. Noe-
mata are ideal contents of intentional experiences, grasped in phenomenologi-
cal reflection, and so are immanent, transcendental entities. By contrast, the
essences or properties of physical objects are transcendent, just as physical
things themselves are transcendent. From the highest genus "Thing" all the
way down to the most specific type or kind to which a thing belongs, Husserl
holds, the species of a material thing is transcendent (Ideas, § 149). Thus,
while the noema of an act belongs to the experience as part of its transcen-
dental structure, the essences or properties of the act's object belong to the
thing intended and are in no way a part of the experience itself. (5) An es-
sence, like an individual, can be the object of an act, intended via a noematic
Sinn that prescribes it. But transcendent essences, like transcendent individ-
uals, cannot be completely grasped in a single act of consciousness. Accord-
ingly, one and the same essence can be intended in different acts through
different noemata with different Sinne, each Sinn prescribing the essence in
a somewhat different way. (Ideas, § 149; cf. EI, § 83.) And so the essence
itself cannot be identical with any of the various Sinne that prescribe it.
Finally, (6) Husserl holds that there are "contradictory" (''widersinnig'')
noemata to which no essences correspond. If one thinks of the round square,
he says, the "thought-meaning" (Denkbedeutung) "round square" exists as
an entity in the realm of noemata, although "there is no essence 'round
square'" (Ideas, III, § 16, pp. 85-86).
It is noteworthy that Husserl's sharp distinction between meanings and
properties diverges from common practice in contemporary semantic the-
ory. At least since Carnap's Meaning and Necessity (1947), the meaning, or
170 CHAPTER IV

intension, of a predicate has commonly been identified with the property

ascribed by the predicate, rather than with a sense in the tradition of Frege
and Husserl. Frege's position on this point is less clear than Husserl's, but
he would seem to be closer to Husserl than to Camap. The sense of a pre-
dicate is a component of a "thought" for Frege, and Frege'snotion of
thought seems to align with the general notion of content shared by his
contemporaries, including Twardowski, Meinong, and Husserl (see Chapter
II, Section 3.2, above; cf. Chapter VI, Section 2.5, below). Husserl's position,
at any rate, is unequivocal: in Experience and Judgment he says, "Predicates
[or properties] of the object are no more sense [Sinn] than the object itself"
(§65, p. 267).

2. HUSSERL'S IDENTIFICATION OF LINGUISTIC MEANING

AND NOEMATIC SINN

Our purpose in this part of the chapter is to establish, and to render more
precise, our claim that Husserl identifies intentional contents, or noemata,
with the meanings that are expressed in language. 12 In the first section we
focus on his conception of linguistic meanings as "ideal", or abstract, entities.
This ideality is the same notion, and undergoes the same changes, that we
earlier found in Husserl's characterization of intentional contents: his concep-
tion of the ideality of meanings, like that of intentional contents, changes
from the notion of act-essence or type to the Frege-like notion of abstract
particular. The second section discusses Husserl's views on the relation of
linguistic meanings to referents, comparing and contrasting them with Frege's.
Importantly, Husserl's views on this semantic relation are exactly the same
as his views on the relation of noematic Sinne to objects of intention. In the
third and fourth sections we discover the basis for these parallels between
meaning and reference, on the one hand, and Sinn and intention, on the
other: linguistic meanings and noematic Sinne are in fact the very same
entities for Husserl. Specifically, Husserl holds two important principles: (1)
that language is the expression of "thought", so that linguistic meanings are
just the noematic Sinne of underlying intentional acts or attitudes; and (2)
that every noematic Sinn is in principle capable of being expressed in lan-
guage, expressed as the meaning of some appropriate linguistic expression.
The last three sections discuss some refmements and applications of this
notion of the expressibility of noematic Sinne and also consider its applic-
ability to other noematic components.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 171

2.l. Husserl's Conception of Linguistic Meaning

In the first of his Logical Investigations Husserl explicitly discusses linguistic,

or semantic, meaning. He uses the German word 'Bedeutung' for this notion,
deliberately choosing to depart from Frege's terminology (see LJ, I, § 15,
where Husserl comments on Frege's usage). In everyday German 'Bedeutung'
means 'meaning' or 'significance', as does 'Sinn' in one of its senses. Frege,
however, had used 'Bedeutung' somewhat unusually for the referent of an
expression, reserving 'Sinn' for meaning or sense. Husserl uses 'Bedeutung'
where Frege used 'Sinn', for specifically linguistic or expressed meaning.
For objects of reference (and objects of consciousness) Hussed then uses
'Gegenstand' ('object'), 'Gegenstandlich' ('objective'), or 'Gegenstandlichkeit'
('objectivity'). And he uses 'Sinn' for the meaning, or ideal content, of an act;
in Ideas 'Sinn' refers to the act's noema or, more specifically, to its noematic
Sinn. Husserl sees Sinn, or act-meaning, as a more general notion than Bedeu-
tung, or linguistic meaning (see Section 2.4 below).
These terminological differences aside, Hussed begins, as Frege did, by
distinguishing the meaning of a linguistic expression from the object to which
the expression refers. "The distinction between meaning [Bedeutung] and
object [Gegenstand]", he says, is "well-established" (LJ, I, § 13, p. 289).
Now this distinction is important because it marks a break with attempts to
account for problems of meaning and reference by appeal to the objects of
reference alone. And the distinction, for Husserl as for Frege, is not between
subjective contents or processes, occurring in the minds of language users,
and objective entities, existing independently of consciousness. Rather,
Husserl supports a three-fold distinction between subjective mental contents
(what Frege called "ideas" or "images"); the objective entities, including
concrete physical things, to which words customarily refer; and the equally
objective, but abstract, entities that words express as their meanings (cf. LI,
I, §6, p. 276).
In distinguishing meanings from psychological entities Hussed is opposing
a view that in logical or semantic theory he calls "psychologism". It is a view
he himself had adopted earlier in hisPhilosophie der Arithmetik (l891). In
that earlier work Husserl had tried to explicate arithmetical concepts and
logical principles in terms of a psychological analysis of their origin and use.
But Frege had already published work in the foundations of logic and mathe-
matics based on a repudiation of psychologism, and he took opposition to
Husserl's use of the view. Reviewing Husserl's Philosop'hie der Arithmetik,
Frege criticized Hussed for "a blurring of the diStinction between image and
172 CHAPTER IV

concept, between imagination and thought". 13 Subjective ideas, Frege argued,

are peculiar to particular thinkers or speakers; as such, psychological contents
are distinct from the objective contents of thought or speech (senses or
meanings), which can be common to many. In his review of HusserI he thus
said:

A man never has somebody else's mental image, but only his own .... It is quite other-
wise for thoughts [Gedanken; propositions 1; one and the sante thought can be grasped
by many men. The constituents of the thought ... must be distinguished from the
images that accompany in some mind the act of grasping the thought - images that each
man forms of things. 14

Such arguments were also familiar to HusserI through the works of Bolzano,
who even before Frege had made much of a distinction between "subjective
ideas" and "objective ideas" in semantic theory. IS HusserI came to recognize,
as he says in the foreword to the fIrst edition of Logical Investigations, that
psychologism cannot account for the objectivity, i.e., the intersubjectivity,
of logic and mathematics or of knowledge in general. Thus, HusserI rejects
a psychologistic view of meaning in Logical Investigations and in all his sub-
sequent writings, and in the Investigations he begins to seek a better account
than psychologism can provide of "the relationship ... between the subjec-
tivity of knowing and the objectivity of the content known" (LJ, p. 42).
It is also in Logical Investigations that HusserI begins to develop phenom-
enology as a study of objective meaning entities. Logic and semantics - as
part of phenomenology - are to study propositions and other meanings
rather than, as psychologism would have it, subjective psychological pro-
cesses. Part of the signifIcance of this de-psychologizing, HusserI believes, is
a change in the status of logical and phenomenological results. Unlike empiri-
cal psychology, phenomenology and logic are to be a priori studies of non-
contingent truths about certain abstract entities associated with the processes
of consciousness. HusserI's insistence that phenomenology, as a study of
meanings, should not be confused with introspective psychology is thus of a
piece with his anti-psychologistic approach to logic and semantics.
Hussed's own account of the objective nature of linguistic meanings, in
the fIrst of the Logical Investigations, is largely an exposition of a Bolzano-
Frege line. Meanings must be intersubjective entities, he argues, because
successful linguistic communication requires that different people express
and understand the same meanings - strictly, numerically, the same. The
meaning of an expression is thus "shared" by different speakers who utter
an expression and by various hearers who understand it. Hussed says:
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 173

If we or others repeat the same sentence [Satz) with like intention [Intention], each
of us has his own phenomena, his own words and his own instances of understanding
[ Verstandnismomente). Over against this unbounded multiplicity of individual experi-
ences, is an identical element expressed in them all; it is the same in the very strictest
sense of the word. Multiplication of persons and acts does not multiply sentence-meaning
[Satzbedeutung); the judgement in the ideal, logical sense remains single. (LI, I, §31,
p. 329; with trans. changes.)

And if meanings are intersubjective, "shareable" entities then, as Frege had

noted, the meaning of an expression must be quite different from the sub-
jective experience going on in the mind of a speaker or a hearer; for such
experiences are private and particular to each person.
linguistic meanings are then not events of consciousness, according to
Husserl. But the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions, he believes, is none-
theless integrally related to intentional experiences. The use of sounds or
marks to express meaning is dependent on conscious activity. Still, the mean-
ings expressed by linguistic utterances or inscriptions are not literally a part
of any conscious activities. In contrast with the "real" events that actually
occur as temporal constituents of a stream of consciousness, meanings are
"ideal", "intentional" entities. This "ideality" is Husserl's version of the
objectivity Frege and Bolzano had sought for meanings. It is the heart of
Husserl's anti-psychologism and sets his objective meaning entities (ideal
contents) apart from the subjective mental events (psychological contents)
invoked by the psychologists of his day (including especially Twardowski,
as Husserl interprets him; cf. Chapter III, Section 2.1 , above). Thus:

The essence of meaning [Bedeutung] is seen by us, not in the meaning-lending experi-
ence [bedeutungverleihenden Erlebnis], but in its "content", the one identical inten-
tional unity set over against the ... multiplicity of ... experiences of speakers and
thinkers. The "content" of a meaning-experience, in this ideal [idealen] sense, is not at
all what psychology means by a content, i.e., any real [realer] part or side of an experi-
ence. If we understand a name ... [or) a statement ... the meaning ... is nothing
which could, in a real sense, count as part of our act of understanding. (LI, I, §30, p.
327; with trans. changes.)

The contrast Husserl is drawing here, between the "real" components of

conscious experiences and the "ideal" meaning entities associated with them,
marks meanings as abstract entities. Indeed, this is the very same contrast
that we earlier observed in Husserl's distinction between "real" and "ideal"
contents of acts (cf. Chapter III, Section 2.2, above). Husserl uses two differ-
ent terms that might translate as 'real', both of which carry implications of
temporality. 'Reell', which he uses to characterize events in the stream of
174 CHAPTER IV

consciousness, seems to mean "occurring in internal, or phenomenological,

time". His other term, 'real', he says, "keeps the notion of thinglike tran-
scendence which the reduction to reell immance in experience is meant to
exclude" (Ll, V, §16, p. 577, n. 2; with trans. changes): it thus seems to
mean "occurring in external, or objective, time". Yet a third term - 'wirklich'
- is used (not quite consistently) by Husserl to characterize physical individ-
uals occurring in both external time and external space. 16 To say that mean-
ings are "ideal" is just to say that they are not "real" in any of these senses;
and this characterization is also all that is meant by 'abstract'. " ... We may
simply define 'reality' in terms of temporality", Husserl says. "For the only
point of importance is to oppose it to the timeless 'being' of the ideal" (LI,
II, § 8, p. 352).
Husserl's characterization of meanings as "ideal", or abstract, entities thus
indicates that they are neither physical objects occurring in external space
and external time nor mental events occurring in internal time. And neither
are they in some way the products of conscious activities: they are ontologi-
cally independent of consciousness. Husserl says explicitly:

... What I mean [meine] by [a] sentence ... or (when I hear it) grasp as its meaning
[Bedeutung] is the same thing, whether I think and exist or not, and whether or not
there are any thinking persons and acts. The same holds of all types of meanings [Bedeu-
tungen 1, subject-meanings, predicate-meanings, relational and combinatory meanings,
etc. (LI, I, §31, pp. 329-30.)

It is thus clear that Husserl supports the view that Frege in 'The Thought'
puts as follows:

... Thoughts [Gedanken; propositions] are neither things of the outer world nor ideas.
A third realm must be recognized. What belongs to this corresponds with ideas, in
that it cannot be perceived by the senses, but with things, in that it needs no bearer to
the contertts of whose consciousness to belong. Thus the thought, for example, which
we expressed in the Pythagorean theorem is timelessly true, true independently of
whether anyone takes it to be true. It needs no bearer. It is not true for the fIrst time
when it is discovered, but is like a planet which, already before anyone has seen it, has
been in interaction with other planets. 17

Since Husserl considers different kinds of entities to be ideal, the recogni-

tion of meanings as ideal entities does not precisely determine their ontologi-
cal category. In fact, Husserl's own views changed about what category
meanings belong to - though, after Philosophie der Arithmetik, the question
was for him always what sort of ideal entities they are. In the first edition of
Logical Investigations (1900/1901), Husserl took the same view of meanings
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 175

that he there adopted for ideal act-contents (cf. Chapter III, Section 2.2,
above). He emphasized the "shared" character of meanings: the acts of con-
sciousness underlying a speaker's utterance and a hearer's understanding seem
to involve a common entity as meaning. Hussed thus assumed meanings to be
a kind of "species", or "universal objects", or "essences", which are instan-
tiated by such particular acts but which - in keeping with their ideality -
exist independently of their instantiations (cf. LI, I, §3l, p. 330). On this
view, meanings are properties or types shared by speakers' and hearers' acts
of intending the same object or the same kind of object, properties charac-
terizing them as directed toward these entities. But even at this point, Hussed
was careful to distinguish meanings, taken as universals instantiated by acts,
both from the objects of those acts and from related essences or properties
of objects. The property of being red, for example, is an essence of all red
objects; but the meaning "red", on this view, is a property of acts directed to
red things. IS
By the time of Ideas (1913), when Hussed had formulated his notion of
noema and thus refined the general notion of act-meaning (Sinn), he aban-
doned the view that meanings are act-essences, properties literally instantiated
by acts. There he adopted instead the view that meanings are abstract entities
correlated with acts and expressible by words but in no sense properties or
parts of ncts. Apparently he came to think of them as sui generis, perhaps
as a special sort of abstract particulars. (For documentation of this point see
Chapter III, Section 2.3, above.)
Since Carnap, meaning entities have come to be called "intensions" or
"intensional entities". Though various philosophers in the Fregean tradition
have chosen various entities to play the role of intensions, Frege's view that
meanings are abstract entities and that they mediate reference is paradigmatic.
And this paradigm provides good reason for our saying that Hussed also
considered meanings to be "intensions". For not only does Hussed share
Frege's view that meanings are abstract, "ideal", entities; as we shall see in a
moment, his view of their role in mediating the reference of expressions is
also basically Fregean.
The term 'intensional entity' is also suggestive of one of Hussed's own uses
of the term 'intentional object'. Hussed admits to using the word 'intentional'
in two quite different senses (vide LJ, I, §30, p. 327, n.l). Sometimes he uses
it so that 'intentional object' means the intended object, i.e., the object of
an act or the referent of an expression. At other times he uses it so that
'intentional object' means a meaning entity, specifically the noema or the
noematic Sinn of an act or the meaning of an expression. By the time of Ideas
176 CHAPTER IV

"intentional objects" are often (though not consistently) meaning entities,

specifically noematic Sinne (cf. Ideas, § §88-90). The term 'intensional
entity' has the advantage of avoiding the ambiguity of 'intentional object',
and its meaning seems to be just that of 'intentional object' as Husserl applies
it to meanings and to noematic Sinne. Noematic Sinne are also ideal entities,
we know, and their role in mediating intention is virtually the same as the
role of linguistic meaning in reference. So it is a happy point of terminology
that one of the two senses in which Husserl uses 'intentional' is just that of
'intensional'.

2.2. Husserl on Meaning and Reference

Husserl's view of the role of meanings in mediating the reference of expres-
sions is basically Fregean, we have said. In addition to his view that meanings
are abstract, or ideal, non-psychological entities, Husserl shares with Frege
several key theses about the relation between an expression's meaning and
referent (for Frege's theory, see Chapter II, Section 3.2, above). And these
theses exactly parallel key theses in Husserl's theory of intentionality, his
theses concerning the relation of noematic Sinne to objects of intention (cf.
Chapter III, Section 3.2, above). These parallels suggest a close correlation,
at the very least, between Husserl's conception of linguistic meaning and his
conception of noematic Sinn.
Husserl's views on meaning and reference coincide with Frege's on five
major points:

(1) The meaning and the referent of an expression are always distinct.

Husserl says: "Each expression ... not only has a meaning [Bedeutung] , but
refers to certain objects . ... But the object never coincides with the meaning"
(LI, I, § 12, p. 287).

(2) An expression's reference is determined by the meaning of the

expression: meaning mediates reference.

" ... An expression gains reference to something objective only because it

means [bedeutet], and it therefore can be rightly said to denote (name) the
object through its meaning [Bedeutung]" (LI, I, § 13, p. 289; with trans.
changes).

(3) Each meaning determines at most one referent: the referent of an

expression is a function of its meaning.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 177

"A word like 'Socrates' can only name different things by meaning [bedeutet]
different things, i.e., by becoming equivocal. Wherever the word has one
meaning [Bedeutung] , it also names one object" (LI, I, § 12, p. 288).19
(4) Different meanings may determine the same referent; thus, ex-
pressions with different meanings may refer to the same entity.
" ... The meaning [Bedeutung] itself can change while the objective reference
[Richtung ] remains fIxed" (LI, I, § 13, p. 289). "Names offer the clearest
examples of the separation of meaning [Bedeutung] and objective reference .
. . . Two names can mean [bedeuten] different things, but name the same
thing. Thus, for example, 'the victor at Jena' - 'the vanquished at Waterloo'
..."(§12,p. 287; with trans. changes).
(5) An expression is meaningful just in case it expresses a meaning,
even if there exists no entity to which the expression refers.
"Reference to the object is constituted in the meaning [Bedeutung]. To use
an expression meaningfully [mit Sinn] , and to refer expressively to an object
(to form a presentation [vorstellen] of an object), are thus one and the same.
It makes no difference whether the object exists or is fIctitious or even im-
possible .... One generally distinguishes objectlessness from meaninglessness"
(LI, I, § 15, p. 293; with trans. changes).
These points of agreement are both central and extensive enough to justify
our characterizing Husserl's semantic views as basically Fregean. But there
also ~eem to be some important differences between Husserl's and Frege's
views. (Since Husserl did not try to develop a formal semantic system his
position on some points is either unclear or unexpressed.) As we have already
noted, in Logical Investigations Husserl took meanings to be universals,
though his conception of their kind seems later to have become more like
Frege's. (And even the earlier view agrees with Frege that meanings are ab-
stract, non-psychological entities.) Husserl apparently does differ with Frege
about the sorts of entities that are to be taken as the referents of certain
kinds of expressions. There is some evidence that, at least early on, Hussed
took the referent of a predicate to be the objects that satisfy the predicate
rather than - as Frege would have it - the function, or "concept", that
determines that class of objects.20 And Husserl rather explicitly holds that
sentences stand for states of affairs rather than truth-values: 'that' -clauses
are used to name states of affairs, he says, while sentences used in ordinary
assertion, though not names of anything, are used to assert states of affairs
(LI, I, § 12, p. 288; V, §36, pp. 631-34).
178 CHAPTER IV

Another of Husserl's apparent differences with Frege is more fundamental.

This difference, which has an important counterpart in Hussed's theory of
intentionality, relates to thesis (5) above. Hussed and Frege agree on that
thesis, that an expression can be meaningful (Le., express a meaning) even
though there exists no entity to which the expression refers. But the words
we quoted from Hussed in support of that thesis say more: they say that, by
virtue of the meaning expressed, an expression can be used to refer to an
object, no matter what ontological status the object of reference may have.
So Hussed apparently holds the follOwing stronger version of thesis (5):
(5') An expression can be used to refer just in case it expresses a
meaning, even if the entity to which it refers does not exist.
Thesis (5') seems to commit Husser! to some notion of non-existent objects.
Whereas Frege held that a meaning does not always determine a referent and
that, consequently, an expression may have a meaning and no referent at
all, Hussed seems to hold that a meaning always does determine a referent,
though the entity referred to need not exist. Accordingly, instead of saying
(as Frege does) that a name may be meaningful without naming anything,
Husser! says that "the object named need not be taken to exist at all" (LI,
I, § 16, p. 297). And we noted earlier that Husser! often speaks in a similar
way about the intentionality of acts that fail to be directed toward existing
objects (see Chapter III, Section 3.2, above). We might choose to pass over
Husserl's references to non-existent objects as mere manners of speech, espe-
cially since Husser! sometimes says they are no more than that (see e.g., LI,
II, §8, p. 352). But, ifnot, we will also have to attribute to Husser! a stronger
version of thesis (3) than Frege held, viz.:
(3') Each meaning determines exactly one referent, which mayor
may not be an existing entity.
We would note, fmally, a difference of emphasis in Husserl's and Frege's
concerns with meaning and language. Frege's ultimate goal was to understand
mathematics and logic and to devise a formal system of language adequate to
their needs; Husserl's was to understand the nature of consciousness generally
and to elucidate the structures of consciousness that make it intentional.
Hussed's concern with language focuses primarily on language as expressive
of intentional activity - expressive of thought, as we commonly say. Al-
though Frege does not ignore this connection, Husserl is concerned more
directly with the way in which the use of language relates to - indeed is
fourided on - undedying intentional activity.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 179

We turn now to developing Husserl's account of this relation between

language and intentionality and especially his views on the relation of lin-
guistic meaning to noematic Sinn. This discussion will enable us to see why
intensions play basically the same role in Husserl's theory of intentionality
and his theory of linguistic reference.

2.3. Every Linguistic Meaning is a Noematic Sinn

linguistic meanings, as intensional entities, are ontologically independent of
consciousness. Yet, Husserl maintains, they stand in a close relation to con-
sciousness, for language is used to make public what is in our minds. Husserl
says:

All expressions in communicative speech function as indications. They serve the hearer
as signs of the "thoughts" of the speaker, i.e., of his meaning-giving [sinngebenden)
mental experiences [psychischen Erlebnisse). (LI, I, § 7, p. 277; with trans. changes.)

These "thoughts" or "meaning-giving" acts of the speaker are "intimated",

Husserl says, by the speaker's utterance of the expressions (p. 277); we
would say they are "expressed". We shall argue that for Husserl the meanings
(Bedeutungen) expressed by words are the noematic Sinne of the "meaning-
giving" acts of consciousness underlying and intimated by the utterings of
the words. So, on Husserl's view linguistic meanings are themselves act-
meanings.
linguistic behavior is complicated business. To express a meaning in words
is to perform an "action", a bit of bodily behavior related to underlying
intentional processes of consciousness. The bodily aspect of a "speech act"
(a term that Husserl does not use) consists of producing an expression, i.e.,
a sound pattern or written inscription (LI, V, § 19, p. 583). But a meaningful
utterance of an expression also has its intentional aspect. Husserl says:

The meaning-animated [sinnbelebten) expression breaks up, on the one hand, into the
physical phenomenon forming the physical side of the expression, and on the other
hand, into the acts which give it meaning [Bedeutung) ... (LI, I, §9, p. 280; with trans.
changes. Cf. also Ideas, § 124, pp. 303-304.)

linguistic behavior may, of course, be initiated by various volitions, depend-

ing on just what the speaker hopes to bring about by means of the behavior.
In assertion, for example, the speaker is typically trying to get the hearer to
believe or know what he says; in questioning, to elicit a relevantly informative
verbal response from the hearer, in command, to prompt a certain action of
the hearer. But in any case (except soliloquy), the"Speaker aims to achieve his
180 CHAPTER IV

end by conveying a certain meaning to the hearer by uttering certain words.

In every speech act (even soliloquy), HusserI says, the speaker must be acting
with the purpose of expressing a meaning by uttering the appropriate words.
Otherwise, he will merely be making sounds without really saying anything.
The articulated sound-complex (the written sign, etc.) first becomes a spoken word or
communicative bit of speech when the speaker produces it with the purpose [Absicht)
of "expressing himself about something" by its means, in other words, when in certain
mental acts he lends [verleiht) it a meaning [Sinn) which he wants to communicate with
the hearers. (L/, I, § 7, pp. 276-77; with trans. changes.)

Now, the passage just cited also tells us what it is for a person purposefully
to "express himself about something": certain of his acts of consciousness
"confer on" or "lend" (verleiht) his words their meaning (Sinn). These acts
Husserl variously calls meaning-giving acts (sinngebenden Akte; Akte welche
Bedeutung geben) or meaning-lending (sinnverleihenden, bedeutungverlei-
henden) acts (cf. LJ, I, § § 7, 9). "In virtue of such acts", he says, "the expres-
sion is more than a merely sounded word. It means [meint] something ... "
(LJ, I, §9, p. 280).
Husserl's metaphor of "giving meaning" is to be taken quite literally: the
meaning "given" the uttered expression in a speech act is just the noematic
Sinn of the "meaning-giving" act that "underlies" the speech act. In that
underlying act - as in acts of consciousness generally - we intend a certain
object or state of affairs, and we intend it via the act's noematic Sinn. This
intended object is what receives our primary attention in the speech act:

When we normally execute an expressing as such, we do not live in the acts which con-
stitute the expression as a physical object, our "interest" does not belong to this object;
rather, we live in the meaning~iving [sinngebenden) acts, we are exclusively turned
toward the objective (Gegenstiindlichen I that appears in them, we aim at it, we mean
[meinen: intend) it in the special, pregnant sense [i.e., attentively). (L/, V, § 19, p. 584;
with trans. changes.)

If we succeed in communicating with our hearer, we will convey to him a

meaning whereby he will come to intend this same object. Indeed, he will
intend it through the same noematic Sinn we do (barring, we might caution,
adjustments for demonstrative pronouns such as 'this', 'here', etc.). For,
according to Husserl, the meaning expressed as the Bedeutung of the words
is the meaning, the noematic Sinn, of the underlying act. This meaning is
what is communicated from speaker to hearer. And so the underlying act
quite literally "gives" or "lends" its meaning to the expression uttered in the
speech act.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 181

In Logical Investigations Husserl seems usually to presuppose rather than

explicitly to state this key point, that a Bedeutung expressed in language is
the noematic Sinn of an underlying, meaning-conferring act. 21 But opening
his later (1929) Formal and Transcendental Logic he is both explicit and
clear. In §3, on 'Language as an Expression of "Thinking"', Husserl says:

... In speaking we are continuously performing an internal act of meaning [act of mean-
ing = Meinen) , which fuses with the words and, as it were, animates them. The effect of
this animation is that the words and the entire locution, as it were, embody in themselves
a meaning [Meinung), and bear it embodied in them as their sense [Sinn). [Husser! here
footnotes L/, I.)
. .. [In) this act of meaning [Meinen) ... there is constituted ... the meaning
[Meinung) - that is, the Bedeutung, the Sinn - expressed in the locution. For example,
if we utter a judgment, we have effected, in union with the words of our assertive state-
ment, a unity of judging, of inwardly "thinking" asserting. No matter what other psychic
producings may also be effected, whereby the words themselves come about, ... we
shall pay attention only to what is fused on, namely the acts of judging that function as
meaning-giving [sinngebende I acts, i.e., that bear in themselves the judgment-meaning
[Urteilsmeinung) that finds its expression in the assertoric sentence. (Pp. 22-23; with
trans. changes. Our emphasis.)

So, Husserl says, the meaning expressed in an assertively uttered sentence is

the meaning (the noematic Sinn) of the speaker's underlying act of judging;
and it is this expressed meaning that the speaker communicates to his hearer.
Suppose, for example, that Holmes has just completed a bit of brilliant
"deduction", thus corning to believe that the murderer is in this very room.
This judgment is an act of consciousness; its object, on Husserl's view, is a
state of affairs - the murderer's being in this very room - and its noema
includes a Sinn, in virtue of which Holmes' judgment is directed to this state
of affairs. Now let us suppose that Holmes wishes to share this bit of infor-
mation with Watson: he turns to Watson and says, "The murderer is in this
very room". It is part of Holmes' purpose in uttering these words to express
the noematic Sinn of his act of judgment, so that Watson can also intend
the same state of affairs through that same Sinn. Holmes succeeds in com-
municating with Watson, in "sharing" that Sinn, only because the meaning
(Bedeutung) that his words express is the noematic Sinn of his judgment and
becomes the noematic Sinn of Watson's intention.
The simple kind of assertion represented by this example is a special case
of what Husserl takes as a more general account of the relation of expressed
meaning to acts. The acts whose meanings are expressed will be different
for different kinds of speech acts. In a question, for example, the meaning
expressed will not be the Sinn of a judgment but, perhaps, the Sinn of an act
182 CHAPTER IV

of wondering whether something is the case. In a command, it may be the

Sinn of a desire or expectation that the hearer do something. (Cf. LJ, VI,
§ §68-70.) And, we wo\lld suggest, the acts whose Sinne are expressed need
not in any case be actually occurrent: an assertion, for example, may be
accompanied, not by an occurrent act of judging, but by the disposition so
to judge, i.e., by a belief. Husserl's general view is that words used in speech
acts, of whatever kind, express as their meanings the noematic Sinne of acts
of consciousness: the meanings (Bedeutungen) expressed in words are them-
selves the meanings of acts, i.e., noematic Sinne. This view, which pervades
Logical Investigations (especially the sixth), is explicitly recapitulated in
Formal and Transcendental Logic:
What we have learned from the example of the assertive statement holds good universally.
When we utter a wish ... we have, united with the structurally articulated producing of
the words, a certain wishing, expressed in the verbal articulation and having, for its part,
a parallel articulated content. The like is true when we utter a command or a question .
. . . Thinking includes ... every experience [Erlebnig) in which the Sinn that is to be-
come expressed becomes constituted in the manner peculiar to consciousness - the Sinn
that, if it does become expressed, is called the Bedeutung of the expression, particularly
of the locution as used on the particular occasion. The process is called thinking, whether
it is a judging, a wishing, a willing, an asking, or an uncertain presuming. (§ 3, pp. 23-24;
with trans. changes.)

We need not go further here into a discussion of the phenomenology of

language. What is central to our concerns is the connection between linguistic
meaning and noematic Sinn. As we see that linguistic meanings are themselves
noematic Sinne expressed, we begin to see that Husserl takes the noematic
Sinne of acts and the linguistic meanings expressed in language to be the very
same entities. But the main argument for identifying noematic Sinne with
linguistic meanings lies with the thesis that the noematic Sinn of any act is
in principle expressible in language. So let us turn now to that thesis.

2.4. Every Noematic Sinn is Expressible as a Linguistic Meaning

Husserl, we have argued, sees linguistic meanings as the meanings, the noe-
matic Sinne, of acts. Linguistic expressions serve to express in publicly
observable behavior the Sinne of intentional acts of consciousness. In this
way language serves to make our intendings known to others. In this section
we consider Husserl's thesis that every noematic Sinn is in principle expres-
sible in language. This thesis is the basis of our claim that noematic Sinne are
"intensional entities".
In assertion we express in words the noematic Sinn of, say, a judgment.
 HUSSERL'S THEOR Y OF NOEMATIC SINN 183

This meaning, in virtue of its being expressed, is called a "linguistic" meaning

or "Bedeutung". But Husserl believes that acts and their meanings are not
intrinsically linguistic. One may judge about something without saying any-
thing at all. Indeed, every act, "publicized" or not, has a meaning, the same
meaning it would have if it were put to language. It is this general notion of
meaning, expressed or not and pertinent to all acts, that Hussed calls 'Sinn'.
He says:
Originally these words ['Bedeuten' and 'Bedeutung') relate only to the sphere of speech,
of "expression". But it is almost inevitable and at the same time an important advance
for knowledge to extend and suitably to modify the meaning of these words so that in
a certain way they apply to ... all acts, whether these involve expressive acts or not. So
we have continually spoken of 'Sinn' - a word which, for all that, is generally used as
equivalent with 'Bedeutung' - in connection with all intentional experiences [inten·
tionalen Erlebnissen). For the sake of distinctness we will favor the word 'Bedeutung'
for the old concept. ... We use the word 'Sinn' now as before in its wider application.
(Ideas, § 124, p. 304.)

Sinn is thus conceived as an extension of Bedeutung, so that meaning as

Sinn is no longer exclusively, intrinsically, or even primarily a linguistic
notion. (Strictly speaking, of course, the Sinn is the component of an act's
noema that accounts for the act's directedness toward its object. But the
whole noema, Hussed suggests, may also be thOUght of as a Sinn in a less
specific use of the term: cf. Ideas, §90, p. 223.) Acts such as hoping, remem-
bering, imagining, and perceiving have meanings in the general sense of Sinne.
And although there is nothing intrinsically linguistic about these acts and
their meanings, their Sinne are intensional entities of a kind with the meanings
expressed in language. We might not commonly think of a person "hoping
aloud", "imagining aloud", or (especially) "perceiving aloud", yet the Sinne
of all ~hese acts are expressible in language.
Indeed, any Sinn, the noematic Sinn of any (actual or possible) act what-
soever, is in principle expressible through language. And when the Sinn of
an act is expressed, we saw in Section 2.3, it is the Bedeutung of the words
that express it. Whether a Sinn actually is expressed or not, Hussed believes,
there is or in principle could be developed some linguistic expression whose
Bedeutung is that Sinn. This we may call the expressibility thesis. Husser!
asserts it explicitly in Ideas:

Whatever is "meant [Gemeinte) as such", every meaning [Meinung) in the noematic

Sinn ... of any act whatsoever is expressible through "linguistic meanings" ["Bedeutung-
en") .... "Expression" is a remarkable form, which allows itself to be adapted to all
"Sinne" ... and raises them to the realm of "Logos". (§ 124, p. 305.)
184 CHAPTER IV

The expressibility of noematic Sinne fmally makes good the claim that
they are intensions. Where we first saw that every Bedeutung is a Sinn ex-
pressed, we now see that every Sinn is expressible and hence (at least poten-
tially) a Bedeutung. In short, we have here just one class of meaning entities
- noematic Sinne - that playa role both in language and in acts of conscious-
ness generally. The intensional entities that get expressed in language and the
noematic entities that mediate the intentionality of acts are the very same
entities. And so HusserI himself can say, in Ideas, III: " ... The noema ... is
nothing more than the generalization of the idea of meaning [Bedeutung] to
the whole field of acts" (§ 16, p. 89).

2.5. Qualifications and Extensions of the Expressibility Thesis

The expressibility thesis is important for understanding Husserl's notions of
noema and noematic Sinn. But we should take care not to misconstrue the
claim it makes.
In the first place, Husserl does not claim that every Sinn has actually been
expressed in language. Nor does he claim that actually existing natural lan-
guages - or even humanly possible languages - are rich enough to express
every Sinn. Husserl says in Logical Investigations:
There is ... no intrinsic connection between the ideal unities which in fact operate as
meanings [Bedeutungen I, and the signs to which they are tied .... We cannot therefore
say that all ideal unities of this sort are expressed meanings. Wherever a new concept is
formed, we see how a meaning becomes realized that was previously unrealized. As
numbers - in the ideal sense that arithmetic presupposes - neither spring forth nor
vanish with the act of enumeration, ... so it is with ... meanings ... , to which being
thought or being expressed are alike contingent. There are therefore countless meanings
which ... are merely possible ones, since they are never expressed, and since they can,
owing to the limits of man's cognitive powers, never be expressed. (I, § 35, p. 333.)

The claim is thus merely that there is no theoretical or ontological difference

between expressed and unexpressed act-meanings, qua meanings: in principle,
if not in fact, every Sinn may be linguistically expressed.
A second point warranting care is that the thesis as formulated applies
specifically to the noematic Sinn of an act, rather than to the act's complete
noema. When an act is brought to expression, as the meaning-conferring act
underlying an expressive utterance, what is expressed is the Sinn of the act's
noema. But in addition to its Sinn the noema of an act includes other com-
ponents, correlated with what Husserl calls the "Gegebenheitsweise", or "way
of givenness", of the act (cf. Chapter III, Section 2.4, above). Husserl argues
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 185

that when an act is brought to expression these further components of the

act's noema are not part of the Bedeutung expressed.
The reason seems largely to be that the meanings we share when we com-
municate in language are - and are intended to be - invariant with respect
to the more particular aspects of their presence in particular acts. "Talk of
sameness of sense, of sameness of understanding of words and sentences",
HusserI says in Logical Investigations, "points to something which does not
vary in the varied acts thus brought to expression" (V, §30, p. 617). Insofar
as a Sinn is expressed, it is "conceptual" and thus "general", he says in Ideas
(§ 124, p. 305). And, because of this "generality" of expression,

never can all the particularities of the expressed be reflected in the expression.... Whole
dimensions of variability ... do not enter at all into the expressing Bedeuten; they, or
their correlates, do not at all "express themselves": so it is with the modifications of
relative clarity and distinctness, the attentional modifications, and so forth. (Ideas,
§ 126, p. 310.)

The clarity, distinctness, and attentiveness with which an object is given are
among the more particular and subjective features of acts, HusserI seems to
think, and apparently their noematic correlates are too idiosyncratic to be
expressed.
For roughly the same reason, any "intuitional" element in an act's noema
is not expressed when the act is brought to expression. The noema of an
intuitive act, such as visually preceiving an object, and the noema of a non-
intuitive presentation of the same object (merely thinking of it, for example)
may have the very same Sinn (see Ideas, §91; LI, V, §21). This Sinn-com-
ponent, in either case, will be expressible in language. But in the intuitive
act the object is sensuously given and so experienced with what HusserI calls
"intuitional fullness" (see Ll, VI, esp. § §21-29; cf. Chapter III, Section 2.6,
above). This "fullness" is reflected in the intuitive act's noema, but it is not a
part of the noema's expressible Sinn. That which is expressed when a percep-
tual act is brought to expression, Husserl says, includes only what is common
to the noema of the perception and the noema of a non-intuitive presentation
of the object: it is "the identical meaning [Bedeutung] that the hearer can
grasp even if he is not a perceiver" (Ll, I, § 14, p. 290; with trans. changes).
Thus, since the noema of a non-intuitive act has no "fullness" -component,
the Sinn, but not the fullness-component, of a perceptual noema is what is
expressed as a Bedeutung when expression is founded on an underlying
perception (cf. also Ll, VI, §28, p. 744).
Considerations of a different sort apply to the noematic correlate of an
186 CHAPTER IV

act's "thetic character" - that which varies with the kind or species of the
act, marking it as an act of perception, or memory, or whatever (cf. Chapter
III, Section 2.4, above). In Logical Investigations, VI, §2, Husserl effectively
maintains that when an act is brought to expression the thetic component
of its noema is not part of the meaning expressed. Husserl's point there has
nothing to do with "generality", however. It is simply that, for instance, in
expressing his judgment that the murderer is in this very room, what Holmes
expresses is the Bedeutung "The murderer is in this very room"; he does not
express the Bedeutung "I judge that the murderer is in this very room". For
the latter would be the Sinn of a different act, Holmes' act of reflecting on
his original judgment and judging that he had so judged.
So, for Husserl, only the Sinn of the act underlying an expressive utterance
is expressed. Noema-components corresponding to clarity, attentiveness,
intuitional fullness, thetic character, and any other ''ways of givenness" of
the act do not enter the meaning expressed.
Nonetheless, the thetic component (and perhaps others as well) does seem
to be expressible in a more indirect way. In Logical Investigations, VI, § § 2-
3, Husserl discusses different senses of "expressing" an act. When I judge that
p and I say "p", I express the Sinn but not the thetic component of the noema
of my judgment. When I say "I judge that p", though, I express the Sinn of
another judgment about my first judgment (cf. LI, VI, §2; Ideas, § 127, p.
313). Now, although Husserl does not explicitly say so, this second Sinn
includes both the Sinn and the thetic component of the noema of my first
judgment. And so my second utterance expresses, as a component of the
more complicated Sinn of my second judgment, the thetic component of my
first judgment's noema. In Husserl's primary sense of "expressing" an act,
my first utterance expresses my first judgment: it is this judgment that lends
its Sinn to the uttered words. And my second utterance expresses, in that
sense, my second judgment. But in Hussert's second sense of "expressing" an
act, my second utterance "expresses" my first judgment; and in this second
utterance both Sinn and the tic components of my first judgment's noema
appear in the Bedeutung of the uttered. words, for both are included in my
second judgment's Sinn, the Sinn that serves as that Bedeutung. In this way
the the tic component of my first judgment's noema is "expressed" as a
Bedeutung in my second utterance. Some further extra-Sinn noema-com-
ponents - e.g., attentiveness - probably ought also to be expressible in this
indirect way. If so, they along with the Sinn and thetic component would
be capable of serving as components of some Sinn and would be in that sense
expressible as linguistic Bedeutungen.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 187

This point, though Husserl does not formulate it himself, would assure
that some noematic components other than the Sinn are intensional entities.
Indeed, there is evidence that Husserl did conceive of the noema and all its
components - and not just the noematic Sinn - as meanings or intensions.
Of the Gegebenheitsweise-components Husserl says, "As characters of the,
so to speak, 'ideal' ['Ideellen'] , they are themselves 'ideal' and not real
[reell] " (Ideas, §99, p. 250). And Hussed sometimes uses the word 'Sinn'
to describe the complete noema. When, as is the rule, he reserves 'Sinn' for
the object-oriented component of the noema (strictly, the "objective Sinn"
or "noematic Sinn"), he suggests that the word 'Satz' ('proposition') would
appropriately describe the combination of the noema's Sinn and thetic com-
ponent (Ideas, § 133, p. 324). This terminology reinforces the interpretation
of the whole noema and its components as intensions, and we shall discuss
it further below (in Section 2.7). But we need not press this more extended
interpretation unduly, since our concern is mainly with the Sinn and its role
in intentionality.

2.6. Noematic Description

Husserl's expressibility thesis - his claim that Sinne and other noema-com-
ponents are expressible in language, either directly or indirectly - is closely
related to what he calls "noematic description".
Let us call an act-sentence that expresses the noema of the act it describes
a "phenomenological description" of that act. This terminology is natural
because a sentence of this kind will describe an experience from the subject's
point of view, just as he undergoes it. Such a description would normally be
very rich in detail, but a simplified and partial phenomenological description
of a perception might be:

I clearly see that hovering black crow.

Here the expression 'that hovering black crow' expresses as its meaning
(Bedeutung) the noematic Sinn of the perception, while 'I clearly see' ex-
presses the "way-of-givenness" component of the perception's noema (insofar
as this can be expressed). And so the act-sentence as a whole expresses the
act's whole noema. Of course, the sentence expresses the noema and its parts
only if the words chosen are appropriate to the experience. In particular, the
object-phrase 'that hovering black crow' must not merely describe the object
that is perceived but describe it exactly as it is perceived. Even if that hovering
black crow is in fact the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan, it would be inappropriate
188 CHAPTER IV

to say in phenomenological description, "I clearly see that hovering sorcerer",

for that would express the noema and Sinn of a different act.
A "noematic description", for Husser!, is an expression that describes the
noema of an act in a structure-revealing way (see Ideas, § § 130-31). There
is a close relation between such a noematic description and a phenomenologi-
cal description. However, while a phenomenological description expresses an
act's noema, it does not describe, or denote, that noema. What it describes is
the act. And the object-phrase in a phenomenological description does not
describe the noematic Sinn; it describes the act's object as intended in the act,
i.e., as given through that Sinn. How, then, might we turn an expression that
expresses a noema (a phenomenological description) into an expression that
describes that noema (a noematic description)? One way is to use the semantic
device of meaning quotation: to refer to the meaning of an expression, place
the expression in quotation marks. Thus, while the expression 'that hovering
black crow' refers to the crow, the expression' "that hovering black crow" ,
refers to the meaning of the original expression. And since the former expres-
sion was offered in phenomenological description of the object as perceived,
this meaning is the noematic Sinn of the perception under discussion. Simi-
larly, with the addition of meaning quotes our original phenomenological
description of the act becomes the noematic description:
"I clearly see that hovering black crow",
which denotes the meaning expressed by the original phenomenological
description, i.e., the act's noema.
Husserl himself uses quotation marks in essentially this way to form
noematic descriptions from phenomenological descriptions. Having just
introduced the notion of rioema, in § 88 of Ideas he says:

What is the "perceived as such", what essential phases does it harbor in itself as this
perception's noema? We obtain the answer in pure surrender to the essentially given;
we can describe the "appearing as such" .... Just another expression for this is: "de-
scribing the perception in noematic respect". (P. 22l.)

§89 continues the discussion immediately, distinguishing "noematic state-

ments and statements of reality" by a special use of quotation:

It is clear that all these descriptive statements, though they can sound like statements of
reality, have undergone a radical modification of sense; just as the described itself ... is
something radically different, by virtue, so to speak, of an inverting change of sign. "In"
the reduced perception (in the phenomenologically pure experience) we find, as belong-
ing irrevocably to its essence, the perceived as such [i.e., the noematic Sinn), to be
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 189

expressed as "material thing", "plant", "tree", "blooming", etc. The quotation marks
are obviously significant; they express that change of sign and the corresponding radical
modification of meaning of the words. The tree simpliciter, the thing in nature, is any-
thing but this perceived tree as such, which as perceptual Sinn belongs inseparably to the
perception. (Pp. 221-22.)

Thus, says Husserl, whereas expressions such as 'tree' and 'blooming' describe
the object perceived, which is a thing in nature, the addition of quotation
marks creates new signs - ' "tree" , and' "blooming" , - that have new mean-
ings and describe something radically different, namely, the noematic Sinn of
the act of perceiving this object.
A chief virtue of meaning quotation, as it has been used in contemporary
semantic theory, is that it reveals the structure of the meaning referred to.22
An expression enclosed in meaning quotes is taken to refer to the meaning
it customarily expresses. And if the expression is complex, the constituent
expressions are also taken to refer to their customary meanings, which are
the constituents of the complex meaning referred to by the whole expression.
Thus, '''the bard is inspired" , refers to the complex propositional meaning
that results from the composition of the nominal meaning "the bard" and
the predicative meaning "is inspired". Husserl's practice seems to conform
with this principle, although he does not himself formulate any precise
principles governing his special use of quotation. A noematic description for
the act of perception he discusses in § §88 and 89 of Ideas would presumably
include, in partial description of the noema's Sinn-component:

"this apple tree blooming in the garden".

Husserl evidently holds that the constituent terms occurring between the
quotation marks - 'tree', 'blooming', etc. - refer to their customary senses,
which are constituent senses in the Sinn that the whole expression refers to.
For what these senses prescribe are the properties of being a tree, being in
bloom, etc., and these are precisely the properties that the act, by virtue of
its Sinn, intends its object as having. In the cited passage Husserl thus allows
the quotation marks to migrate inward, so that' "tree"', ' "blooming" " etc.
refer to components of the noematic Sinn under description. Similarly, the
fuller noematic description,

"I see this apple tree blooming in the garden",

would reveal the structuring of the noema as a whole into its two main con-
stituents: the sense "I see", which belongs to the noema's thetic or ''way-of-
190 CHAPTER IV

giveness" component, the component that prescribes the act as being mine
and being an act of seeing; and the sense "this apple tree blooming in the
garden", which is the Sinn-component of the noema, the component that
prescribes the act's object as this apple tree blooming in the garden .•
Husserl frequently returns to this use of "noema quotation", as we might
call it, especially when distinguishing the structural components of noemata
and Sinne in Ideas. (It is noteworthy that he retains the device long after
Ideas as well. See, e.g., PP, §37, p. 145.) Thus, in §130 he distinguishes the
Sinn from the way-of-givenness component in a noema as follows:

... A living cogito ... has in a special sense "direction" upon an objectivity. In other
words, to its noema belongs an "objectivity" - in quotation marks - with a certain
noematic composition, which unfolds in a description with determined limits, namely in
one that as description of the "intended objective just as it is intended [vermeint] "
avoids all "subjective" expressions. [The expressions used there] all have their quotation
marks, and thus have the noematic-modified sense .... For the description of this in-
tended objective as such, expressions such as "perceptually", "recollectively", "cJearly-
intuitively", "in thought", "given" are excluded - they belong to another dimension
of description, not to the object that is consciously grasped [bewusst], but to the way
[Weise] in which it is consciously grasped. (Pp. 318-19.)

Here Husserl is using "noema quotes" to describe both Sinn-components and

thetic, or way-of-givenness, components of the noema. If in reflection I
describe the "intended as such" as a "tree", I am describing a constituent of
the Sinn of the experience, the constituent that prescribes the intended
object as a tree. And if I say the "intended as such" is given "recollectively",
I describe the noematic correlate of the way the object is given or consciously
grasped, Le., the thetic component of the noema. The use of quotation marks
is explicitly intended, then, to describe structural parts of the noema of an
experience, including not only Sinn but also thetic and other way-of-givenness
components. A noematic description thus describes a noema inasmuch as it
reveals the components and the structure of the noema to which it refers.
To summarize: Husserl uses quotation marks in a special way, which we
have called "noema quotation", for the purpose of forming noematic de-
scriptions. When he places an expression in noema quotes, the result is an
expression with a different meaning and reference from that of the unquoted
expression; what it refers to, or describes, is a noema or a noematic com-
ponent. More specifically, an expression in quotation marks refers to, or
describes, the noematic entity through which the referent of the original
expression was presented. This noematic entity, we know from Husserl's
semantics and his expressibility thesis, is the sense of the original expression.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 191

Accordingly, we have interpreted Husserl's device of noema quotation on the

model of meaning quotation in semantic theory: we take an expression in
noema quotes to denote, for Husserl, the sense that it customarily expresses.
Where the quoted expression is a complete phenomenological description of
an act, this sense will be the noema of the act, and the sense denoted by its
constituent expressions will be constituent senses in that noema. With this
interpretation, Husserl's special use of quotation marks in the service of
noematic description dovetails with his characterization of the noema and its
constituents as senses (Sinne).
There remains one use of noema quotes by Husserl that does not quite fit
this picture. (Of course, he uses quotation marks in all the more conventional
ways as well.) Husserl sometimes places category terms, such as 'predicate',
'object', and 'object in the manner of its determinations', in noema quotes.
Thus, he says, the noematic Sinn of any act contains "predicates" and an
"object" that bears them, so that the whole Sinn itself is this "object in the
manner of its determinations" (Ideas, § 131). It is clearly implausible to
suppose that these expressions denote the customary senses of their unquoted
counterparts: the sense of the term 'predicate' would not be a constituent of
most Sinne, for example, nor would the sense of the expression 'the object
in the manner of its determinations' be identical with an act's Sinn. Rather,
what enter the Sinn are senses of specific predicates, and the Sinn itself is the
sense of some specific description of an object as determined, or propertied.
It seems, then, that Husserl uses such terms as' "predicate'" and' "object" ,
as variables ranging over senses, or noema-components, of various categories.
(If 'predicate', for example, is used as a variable ranging over predicates, then
the result of enclosing this variable in meaning quotes does the work of a
variable ranging over predicate-senses.) Accordingly, a category expression
enclosed in noema quotes is used, not to denote a particular component of a
particular noema or Sinn, but to indicate a category of senses to which some
noema constituents belong. "Predicates" in the Sinn are then predicate-senses,
i.e., senses that prescribe properties an object is intended as having; the
"object" in the Sinn is an object-sense, i.e., a sense that prescribes the object
intended; and the "object in the manner of its determinations", or the "in-
tended objective just as it is intended", is the composition of these senses,
i.e., the noematic Sinn itself, which prescribes the object of an act just as it
is given in that act (cf. Section 3.1 below).
It is perhaps not very important whether Husserl's use of noema quotation
can be rendered technically precise (although we see no reason why it cannot
be). But a basic understanding of his use of this device is absolutely crucial to
192 CHAPTER IV

a correct reading of some of the most important passages in Ideas. When

f-Iusserl says that an act's noematic Sinn includes the "object", for example,
the quotation marks cannot simply be ignored. That would suggest that the
object intended in the act is in some sense a part of the act's noematic Sinn.
But with the quotation marks, '"object''' does not refer to the object, to
what is intended in the act, but to a component of sense in the noematic
Sinn of the act - specifically, the component of sense that prescribes the
object. The important point of noema quotation, in short, is simply that
expressions in noema quotes denote or describe noema-components, not
entities or events in objective reality.

2.7. Noemata as a Kind of Propositions ("Siitze")

On our account of Husserl's expressibility thesis and his notion of noematic
description, a noema should be a kind of proposition. For a noema is the
sense expressed by a sentence that describes an act just as the subject under-
goes it. Indeed, in § 133 of Ideas Husserl says: " ... It seems ... suitable to
... indicate the unity of Sinn and thetic character as proposition [Satz] "
(p. 324). If the thetic component of the noema is taken in the wide sense as
the whole way-of-givenness component, then the unity of Sinn and thetic
component is just the noema as a whole. And then it is the whole noema
Husserl is calling a proposition. (We assume Husserl means here by 'thetic
character' the thetic component of the noema rather than the corresponding
component of the noesis.)
However, Husserl's use here of the term 'proposition', or 'Satz', is unusual.
For Husserl, a "proposition" or "Satz" is usually not a complete noema but
a special type of Sinn or sense. In particular, he observes in §94 of Ideas, a
proposition is the Sinn or content of an act of judging, what is often called a
"judgment" or "proposition [Satz] in the sense of pure logic" (p. 325). For
instance, the Sinn of my judging that the bard is inspired is the proposition
"the bard is inspired". Husserl often uses the term 'Satz' in this way, so that
a Satz is just a Sinn of a special kind. A Satz is then what we have called a
propositi(;mal sense, what Bolzano called a "proposition in itself" (Satz an
sich), and what Frege called a "thought" (Gedanke). But here Hussed uses
'Satz' to mean, not the Sinn-component of the noema of a propositional act
such as judging, but rather the whole noema of an act. The Satz of an act thus
reflects the the tic character of the act, its positing or Setzung character. In
§69 of Experience and Judgment Husserl again distinguishes Sinn from Satz,
sense from proposition, as applied to judgment.' From the "sense [Sinn] as
'iudgment-matter' or 'iudgment-content' " he distinguishes "the full judicative
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 193

proposition [Satz] , i.e., the sense [Sinn] with its thetic character" (p. 286).
(He also acknowledges that the word 'proposition', or 'Satz', can mean the
actual state of affairs intended, as indeed many philosophers since Husserl
have used the term.) So Husserl uses the term 'proposition', or 'Satz', in two
different ways. In the narrow sense of the term, a proposition is the Sinn of
a propositional act, especially a judgment. In the extended sense, a proposi-
tion is- the Sinn plus the thetic noerna-component of any act, that is, the
whole noema of an act.
We can now pose an interesting question: If a noema is a proposition in
Husserl's extended sense, is it also a special type of proposition in the tradi-
tional sense? Consider an act whose phenomenological description, or descrip-
tion in phenomenological reflection, is:
I judge that the bard is inspired.
The Sinn ofthis act is the proposition

"the bard is inspired",

and the noerna of the act is

"I judge that the bard is inspired".
Consider further an act whose phenomenological description is:

I suppose that I judge that the bard is inspired.

This second act is a second-order act directed upon the first act of judging.
The Sinn of this second act is the proposition
"I judge that the bard is inspired".
Our question is whether this propositional Sinn is the same noematic entity as
the noerna of the prior act of judging, whether the full noema of the act of
judging is identical with the Sinn of this act of supposing. Husserl does not
seem to consider the possibility that a proposition in the extended sense is
a special type of proposition in the traditional sense. He seems to assume that
adding a thetic component to a Sinn produces not a special type of proposi-
tional Sinn but a "posited" Sinn, a noema, as opposed to a mere Sinn.
Let us assume that a noema is indeed a type of proposition in the tradi-
tional sense, namely, an act-proposition, a propositional Sinn prescribing an
act with a certain phenomenological structure. We know an act entertains its
noema. But if an act's noema is an act-proposition, then qua proposition it
194 CHAPTER IV

also prescribes the act itself. (Recall Chapter III, Part 3, on the relations of
entertaining and prescribing.) For example, the noema entertained by my
judging that the bard is inspired is the act-proposition "I judge that the bard
is inspired", and this proposition prescribes my act of judging. So an act's
noema both prescribes the act and is entertained by it. Now, Husserl is right
in observing a difference between noemataand propositional Sinne. But the
difference is a difference not in noematic entities but in the roles of the same
noematic entity in different acts. The noema of my judgment is indeed the
proposition "I judge that the bard is inspired", but that proposition prescribes
my judgment only insofar as it serves as the Sinn of another act directed upon
my judgment, such as an act of phenomenological reflection. And then that
proposition is joined with a further thetic component, such as that of reflec-
tion. The result is the full noema of my reflection, my reflecting that I judge
that the bard is inspired. This noema is then itself a more complex proposi-
tion, the proposition "I reflect that I judge that the bard is inspired", which
may serve as the Sinn of yet another, higher-order act. Thus, we may sayan
act's noema is a proposition, an act-proposition, but it properly functions as a
proposition, prescribing the act, only where it serves as the Sinn in another
act's noema.
The assumption that a noema is a type of proposition is helpful because we
are accustomed to working with propositional senses, especially in semantic
theory. Indeed, recalling the previous sections, we can observe that noemata
are act-propositions expressible by appropriate act-sentences such as 'I judge
that the bard is inspired'. But noemata are expressible only indirectly. Recall
that the thetic component of an act's noema is expressible only indirectly as
we express the Sinn of a higher-order act directed upon the first act. Indeed,
if I form a description of an act as given in phenomenological reflection, a
phenomenological description of the act, then I form an act-sentence whose
sense - the proposition it expresses - just is the noema of the act described
by that sentence. So the assumption that a noema is a type of proposition in
the traditional sense fits well with Husserl's other views. Husserl does not
himself make that assumption, but that he could have done so is further evi-
dence of the internal coherence of his various doctrines about noemata and
their relation to language.

3. HOW IS INTENTION ACHIEVED VIA SINN?

We have found that the noerna is a complex meaning-entity, whose main

component is the Sinn. But the Sinn itself is also complex, and we now turn
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 195

our attention to Husserl's account of its internal structure. Our purpose is

not only to learn more about the Sinn but also to understand more fully just
how an act's entertaining a Sinn is what makes the act intentional. Husserl's
description of the components of sense that make up the Sinn suggests that
the Sinn is the kind of sense that would be linguistically expressed by a
definite description; the Sinn would then prescribe an object in the way that
the sense of a definite description determines a referent. We discuss this
suggestion but find that it does not adequately account for various kinds of
intentions, including those that Husserl calls "defmite". Accordingly, we take
up a different account of intention that also seems to fit Husserl's description
of Sinn-structure, an account that models intention on the reference of
demonstrative expressions rather than defmite descriptions. We find that this
account conforms well with Husserl's views on perception and the kind of
defmiteness achieved in perception; however, it raises some interesting ques-
tions concerning the extent to which a theory of intentionality can be purely
"phenomenological" .

3.1. Husser/'s Account of the Structure of a Noematic Sinn: the "X" and the
"Predicate-Senses"
The Sinn-component of a noema is what determines an act's intentional rela-
tion to an object. Specifically, the Sinn determines which object the act is
directed toward, and it also determines what the object is intended "as". In
§ § 128-31 of Ideas Husserl offers an interesting analysis of the internal
structure of a noematic Sinn, an analysis that gives more detail about how
intention is achieved via Sinn.
Briefly, Husserl holds that each Sinn is a complex meaning-structure that
can be factored into two fundamental components: an aggregate of predicate-
senses, which prescribe the properties an object is given as having; and a com-
ponent of sense of a different sort, called an "X" or a "determinable X",
which prescribes the object to which those properties are ascribed in the act.
By virtue of its X, each Sinn relates to a specific object and so determines
what the act is directed toward; and by virtue of its predicate-senses, the Sinn
ascribes properties to this object and so determines what it is intended as.
Accordingly, through an act's noematic Sinn, a subject intends a specific
object as having certain properties or "determinations".
Husserl's discussion of the structure of a Sinn relies heavily on his notion
of noematic description and the special use of quotation marks it employs
(see Section 2.6 above). Indeed, the analysis emerges most clearly from a cer-
tain form that Husserl seems to presuppose for phenomenolOgical descriptions
196 CHAPTER IV

of acts and, hence, for noematic descriptions of Sinne. Evidently, a perspic-

uous act-description should indicate the specific object that the act intends
and also what properties are predicated of it in the act; for example:

I see an (Le., a specific) object as an apple tree and as blooming

and ....
But this description can be further regimented to reflect more clearly Husserl's
analysis of the structure of the Sinn:

I see object x as being such that x is an apple tree and x is bloom-

ing and x is ....
If this is a phenomenological description of the act of perception, then the
Sinn of the act is just the sense expressed by the expression following the
thetic operator 'I see'. Calling on Husserl's use of noema quotation, we obtain
an expression that denotes this Sinn (a "noematic description") by placing
the latter expression in quotation marks. Thus, the Sinn of the act is the sense
described or referred to by:
"object x as being such that x is an apple tree and x is blooming
andx is ... ".
Given this form for a noematic description of the Sinn, the Sinn will include
the senses "is an apple tree", "is blooming", and so forth - senses of the
predicates that characterize the object as given in the act, or "predicate-
noemata", as Husserl calls them (§131, p. 321). And further, the Sinn will
include another item of sense that picks out the object that is so characterized
by these predicates: this sense is what is expressed by the term 'object' and
the recurring 'x'in the phenomenological description of the act; hence, in the
noematic description of the Sinn it is denoted by the expressions' "object" ,
and' "x" '. It is not yet clear precisely what kind of sense this is, except that
it is not simply another descriptive, or predicative, sense. Without attempting
to elucidate it further at this point, let us simply call it, as Husserl does, the
sense "object" or the sense X. In general, then, we may take Husserl's canoni-
cal form for a noematic description of a Sinn to be:

"object x as being such that x is </>",

where' "object"', or' "x"', denotes the X in the Sinn and '''</>''', or '''is </>" "
denotes the aggregate of predicate-senses.
As the composition of these two components of sense, the whole Sinn is
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 197

a sense that prescribes a specific object and prescribes it as being propertied,

or "determined", in a certain way. Again using the device of noema quotation
to create an expression that refers to a sense (rather than to the entity that
the sense prescribes), Husserl accordingly calls the whole Sinn the' "object
in the manner of its determinations'" (Ideas, § l31,pp. 321-22).

The Predicate-Senses
The predicate-senses in a noematic Sinn make up what Husserl calls the
"content" of the Sinn .

. . . An entirely fixed content [Geholt) is marked off in every noema. Every conscious-
ness has its what [Was) and each intends [vermeint) "its" objective; it is evident that for
each [act of) consciousness we must in principle be able to carry out ... a noematic
description of this objective "exactly as it is intended"; through explication and concep-
tual grasping we obtain a complete aggregate of ... "predicates", and these in their
modified meaning determine the "content" ["Inhalt") of the object-nucleus of the
noema in question. (Ideas, § 130, pp. 319-20.)

What Husserl here calls the "object-nucleus" of a noema is just the Sinn-
component, i.e., the component that relates the act to its object (see Ideas,
§ §99, 129). The "predicates" in a Sinn are unfolded in a noematic descrip-
tion of the "intended objective just as it is intended" (cf. p. 319, two para-
graphs earlier). Husser! explicitly cites the modification of meaning brought
about by the quotation marks; they signify that it is noematic constituents,
or senses, that are being referred to or described. Specifically, the "predicates"
in a Sinn are the senses customarily expressed by the predicates that occur
within quotation marks in a noematic description appropriate to the act.
And so the predicative content of the Sinn does not consist of the predicates
themselves (which are linguistic entities) or of the properties they denote
(which are transcendent entities), but of predicate-senses, gained by "concep-
tual grasping" of the content in the Sinn.
The predicative content of a Sinn is itself quite complex, apparently in-
cluding everything in a subject's conception of an object that is relevant to
what the object is intended "as" in a given act. (Later we shall modify this
view somewhat, by relegating some of the relevant conceptual elements to
a background of meanings presupposed by, but not actually present in, the
Sinn of the act in question. See Chapter V, Part 3, below.) Of the expressions
that may occur in a noematic description of a Sinn Husserl says:

Formal-ontological expressions are used there, such as "object", "attribute", "state of

affairs"; material-ontological expressions such as "thing", "figure", "cause"; substantive
198 CHAPTER IV

[sachhaltige) determinations such as "rough", "hard", "colored" - all have their

quotation marks, and thus have the noematic-modified sense .... In the case of an
appearing thing-object it would again fall within the limits of the description in question
to say: its "front side" is so-and-so determined in color, shape, etc., its "back side" has
"a" color but one "not more precisely determined", in this and that respect it is generally
"undetermined" whether it is thus or so. (§ 130, p. 319.)

This complexity of Sinn-content reflects, and helps explain, some important

points about the objects of intention that we have previously emphasized,
especially Husserl's views on the objects of perception and, more generally,
on the "transcendence" of objects that are intended as material things.
Consider, for example, the Sinn of an act of perception. A perceptual Sinn
includes what Husserl calls "filled" senses, i.e., senses that ascribe currently
appearing sensible properties, such as color and shape, on the basis of sensory,
or "hyletic", evidence (see Chapter III, Section 2.7 , above). If no other
predicate-senses were present in the Sinn, the object perceived would present
itself as a mere sense-datum-like object, having only those sensible properties
that are apparent to the subject from one particular perspective. In fact,
however, perceptual Sinne include senses that are not correlated with sensa-
tion in the direct way sense-datum theories would require. Husserl explicitly
mentions such senses as "thing", "cause", and "tree", which ascribe proper-
ties that are not strictly sensible but at least partly theoretical. Further, he
says, the Sinn of the perception of a material thing includes senses ascribing
properties that are not currently appearing at all, for example, properties
pertaining to the back side of the object perceived. The object presented
through this complex of senses is given, not as a mere colored patch, say,
but as a physical thing of a particular biological kind, entering into causal
relations with other things and with the perceiver, and having further prop-
erties currently hidden from view and awaiting more precise specification
through the further course of experience. In this way, the object of a percep-
tion "transcends" its sensibly appearing properties and presents itself as a
full-blown physical object.
The senses pertaining to the back side of a perceived object are typically
"indeterminate" to some degree, Husserl says in the passage cited above. The
presence of indeterminate, or non-specific, predicate-senses in the Sinn indi-
cates a further important way in which material objects are intended as tran-
scendent, both in perceptions and in other kinds of acts. For, by virtue of
these indeterminate predicate-senses, the Sinn prescribes an object as having
more properties than the content of the Sinn explicitly prescribes. Suppose
the Sinn of an act includes the predicate-sense "is a tree", for example, so
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 199

that the object of the act is intended as being a tree. This property of being
a tree is a generic property that can only be exemplified by an object insofar
as the object is some specific kind of tree - an apple t'ree, an elm, etc. Such
is our conception of trees; and, insofar as the sense "tree" captures this
conception, it is part of this sense that trees come in specific varieties. Thus,
while the predicate-sense "is a tree" explicitly prescribes only the property
of being a tree, the object intended as having this property is thereby also
intended as having the more specific, though as yet unspecified, property of
being a tree of some particular kind. Indeed, insofar as an object is intended
as being a material thing of any kind, Husserl says, the sense that so charac-
terizes the object implies an infinite number of properties, most of which
are not even represented in a general way by the content of the Sinn (cf.
Ideas, §149, esp. p. 367). Properties that are in this way "implied", though
not explicitly prescribed, by the predicate-senses in a Sinn are said by Husserl
to be predelineated (vorgezeichnet) by the Sinn (see Ideas, § § 142,143, 149;
eM, § § 19, 20; EJ, § 21 c). Husser! cites as examples the properties pertaining
to the back, or "hidden", side of an object given in perception: these prop-
erties are by and large not explicitly represented by corresponding senses
in the Sinn but only predelineated by such "indeterminate" senses as "is
colored" or "has a shape" (cf. EJ, §21c). Any Sinn, whether perceptual or
not, that in this way pre delineates more than it actually prescribes presents
its object as transcending what can be predicated of it on the basis of that
Sinn alone. 23
Husserl's account of the predicative content of a Sinn makes it clear that
(except in very special cases of what he calls "adequate givenness": see Ideas,
§ § 138, 142) the object of an act is not presented in the act as a mere pro-
jection of the Sinn: if it were, the object itself would then typically be in-
determinate or incomplete, in the manner that Meinong envisioned. Rather,
the Sinn may be thought of as an indeterminate conceptual "frame", into
which the object is intended as fitting in completely determinate, but as yet
undetermined, ways. The term 'frame' is in fact one that Husser! himself uses
in connection with the "indeterminacies" of the Sinn:

... The general indeterminateness has a range of free variability; what falls within it is
... implicitly included but still not positively ... predelineated. It is a member of an
open range of more precise determinations which can be accommodated to this frame
[Rahmen] but which, beyond this, are completely uncertain. (EJ, §21c, p. 98; with
trans. changes.)

The further properties that an object could have, compatible with what the
200 CHAPTER IV

Sinn does prescribe, make up what Husserl calls the "horizon" of the object
as it is presented in an act. We will be returning to this important notion in
Chapter V.

The X
The Sinn of an act prescribes an object as having certain properties, we have
seen. Whereas the properties are prescribed by predicate-senses in the Sinn,
Husserl holds that the object presented as having these properties is prescribed
by a different kind of sense - the sense "object", or the X, in the Sinn.
Husserl discusses this further component of the Sinn in Ideas, § 131, titled
The "Object", the "Determinable X in the Noematic Sinn" '. There he offers
two main reasons for distinguishing the X from the predicate-senses in the
Sinn. (1) What is intended in an act, through its Sinn, is not a mere aggregate
of unrelated properties. Rather, the properties prescribed by the Sinn are
presented in the act as properties that some object - one and the same object
- has. The Sinn, accordingly, includes not only the subject's sense of certain
properties but also his sense of the object that bears these properties and so
relates them to one another. This sense of an object as bearer and unifier of
the properties attributed in an act is what Husserl calls the X. (2) The same
object can be given in different acts whose Sinne present it as having different
properties. The subject of these acts has a sense of the object as something
that is only partially determined by the properties he intends it as having and
so as something that can be distinguished from these properties. The X in the
Sinn is this sense of the object as that which remains identical throughout
changes in the properties it is intended as having. Thus Husserl says:
The predicates are, however, predicates of "something", and this "something" likewise
belongs with them, and clearly inseparably, to the nucleus [Le., the Sinn] in question:
it is the central point-of-unity .... It is the point-of-connection or "bearer" of the
predicates, but in no way their unity in the sense in which any complex, any binding,
of predicates would be called a unity .... We say that in the continuous or synthetic
course of consciousness the intentional object [Objekt] is persistently consciously
grasped [bewusst] , but is there again and again "differently given": it may be "the
same", it may only be given in other predicates with another determination-content,
"it" may only show itself from a different side whereby the predicates left undetermined
have been more precisely determined .... [In] the noematic description of what is
intended as such at the time ... the identical intentional "object" ["Gegenstand"]
evidently separates itself from the changing and shifting "predicates". It separates itself
out as the central noematic element [Moment]: the "object" [der "Gegenstand", das
"Objekt"] , the "identical", the "determinable subject of its possible predicates" - the
pure X in abstraction from all predicates - and it separates itself off from these predi-
cates or, more accurately, from the predicate-noemata. (Pp. 320-21.)
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 201

Half a page later we read:

Thus, in every noema there lies such a pure object-something as point-of-unity, and we
see at the same time how in noematic respect two different concepts of object are to
be distinguished: this pure point-of-unity, this noematic "object simpliciter", and the
"object in the manner of its determinations" . ... The "Sinn" ... is this noematic
"object in the manner" with all that the description characterized above was able to find
evident in it and to express conceptually. (Pp. 321-22.)

Husserl holds, then, that within any Sinn we find both an aggregate of
predicate-senses and an X. Both are essential components of a Sinn: "No
'Sinn' without the 'something', nor again without the 'determining content'"
(p. 322). Whereas the whole Sinn is a complex sense that presents an object
as being propertied in certain ways, the X is a primitive type of sense that
stands for the object "simpliciter" or "in abstraction from all predicates".
Apparently, then, the X is a fundamental and unique kind of sense that
presents an object directly, i.e., independently of any particular way of
conceiving or descriptively characterizing the object. We shall further discuss
this characterization of the X in Section 3.4 below.
The passages cited above all home in on one idea: an X is a sense that
presents an object as the bearer of certain properties, the identical subject
of various possible properties or determinations, the object itself abstracted
from any particular properties it has. It might seem that Husserl is saying that
the X presents a "bare particular", an object "bared" of all properties. But
this is not so. For one thing, an object is never presented by an X alone but
only by an X plus predicate-senses, i.e., a Sinn: the two components belong
together "inseparably", so that every Sinn must include them both, Husserl
says in the quoted passages. The presence of an X in the Sinn only requires
that objects are constituted in experience as being distinct from their prop-
erties and, in particular, not as simply "bundles" of properties: the X, he says
above, is a "point-of-connection" for the "predicates", giving them a unity
that a mere "complex of predicates" would not have. Husserl is evidently
drawing, not on a theory of bare particulars, but on his doctrine of categories
and syntactic formations, set forth in Ideas, § § 10-11. According to that
doctrine, objects fall under ontological categories such as those of individual,
quality, or state of affairs. Complex objects have a syntactic structure: for
instance, the state of affairs that General Sherman is ruthless consists of the
individual Sherman and the property of being ruthless joined together by the
syntactic formation of property-instantiation. The elements that enter into
syntactic formations are called "substrata"; objects of the lowest level, those
that have no syntactic structure, are called "ultimate substrata", and these
202 CHAPTER IV

include individuals. Husserl holds that these ontological categories and syntac-
tic forms are paralleled by semantic categories and syntactic forms, categories
and forms of meanings. Thus, when Husserl says a Sinn includes an X as
''bearer'' of various predicate-senses, evidently he is thinking of an X as a
substratum of predications on the semantic level. Hence, an X stands for an
object as substratum of syntactic formations - in particular, property-instan-
tiation - on the ontological level.
An important role of the X's in noematic Sinne is to mark the co-directed-
ness of acts, i.e., the directedness of different acts to one and the same object.
One way Husserl characterizes the X, we have seen, is as the component of
sense that presents an object as identical throughout changes in the properties
it is intended as having. Indeed, on Husserl's account, different acts of con-
sciousness are directed toward the same object if and only if their noematic
Sinne include the same X. He says:
We associate with the one object manifold ways of being conscious [Bewusstseinsweisen I,
acts, or act-noemata .... The object is consciously grasped [bewusstl as identical and
yet in a noematically different way: in a kind of way such that the characterized nucleus
[i.e., the Sinnl is changeable and the "object", the pure subject of the predicates, is
exactly identical. ... Various act-noemata have everywhere here different nuclei, yet so
that they nevertheless close together into unity-ofidentity, into a unity in which the
"something", the determinable that lies in every nucleus, is consciously grasped as iden-
tical. (§ 131, p. 321.)
. .. Not only has every Sinn its "object", but different Sinne relate to the SlIme
object just insofar as they are organized into Sinn-unities in which the determinable X's
of the united Sinne coincide [zur Deckung kommen I with one another and with the X
of the Sinn-unity's total-Sinn. (P. 322.)
(We must be careful in these passages to distinguish the "object", which is
the X-component in a noema, from the object, which is the external entity
that the X stands for.) If we ignore cases in which the intended object of an
act does not exist, Husserl is apparently saying that there is a one-to-one
correlation between X's and intended objects. For where different Sinne have
the same X, he says, they prescribe the same object. And since every Sinn
contains exactly one X, this means that for each Sinn there is at most one
object that can satisfy it. Accordingly, Husserl's claim that every Sinn includes
an X seems to suppose that every act is a definite, or de re, intention, an
intention of a defInite individual. If so, his account of Sinn-structure does
not extend to indefmite, or de dicto, intentions. That omission aside, our
further discussions of the Sinn will have to give careful heed to the fact that,
for Husserl, the X in a Sinn is considered a mark of defmiteness of intention.
(Cf. Chapter I, Section 2.6, above; Section 3.3 below.)
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 203

Some Questions about Sinn-Structure

Husserl's analysis of noematic Sinne as structured into X's and predicate-senses

seems most appropriate to definite intentions'directed toward individuals.
Yet, Husserl apparently intends it to be completely general: he claims that
both components are essential to any Sinn. And further, the predicate-senses
Husserl admits inc~ude those that prescribe such different ontological cate-
gories as individual, quality, and state of affairs. This means the analysis is to
cover propositional acts, directed to states of affairs, and "eidetic" acts, those
directed to qualities or essences, as well as acts directed toward individuals.
It is an interesting question how the analysis works for propositional acts and
for eidetic acts. When Smith judges that General Sherman is ruthless, for
example, how is this to be recast as an instance of intending (state of affairs)
x as being such that x is I/>? Just what is predicated of the state of affairs in
this act, and how does this predication serve to distinguish this act from
another that intends the same state of affairs (say, Smith's judging that the
man who burned Atlanta was ruthless)? The X in the Sinn would evidently
relate to the state of affairs itself, independently of any description; and
we might suppose the descriptive content of the Sinn to consist of such
predicate-senses as "is (identical with) the state of affairs that General Sher-
man was ruthless" and "is actual", but this regimentation seems rather forced
at best. We shall leave undecided the question of precisely how Husserl pro-
poses to analyze such Sinne into an X and predicate-senses; our focus will be
on acts directed to natural individuals, and we shall find problems enough
there. Indeed, we have already noted that Husserl's analysis seems to require
that such acts are definite; insofar as it does not apply to indefinite, or de
dicta, intentions of individuals it is already not completely general.
Even for an act directed toward a definite natural individual, say, a percep-
tion of a tree, there are important questions about how intention is achieved
via Sinn. How does the Sinn determine which object is intended in the act?
Here there seem to be two possibilities. First, we might suppose the work of
individuating an object be done just by the X alone, independent of the pre-
dicative content in the Sinn. But what kind of sense would the X then have
to be, and how would it determine the object intended? Obviously, it would
not be a sense of any description of the object, for that sort of sense would
belong to the Sinn's predicative content. And it would therefore not prescribe
an object in the way a deSCription does, by prescribing properties that the
object must satisfy. Rather, the relation of an X to the object it prescribes
would seem to be like that of a logically proper name or a demonstrative
204 CHAPTER IV

expression to its referent, for these expressions are commonly characterized

as "purely referential", picking out their referents in some way other than by
description. On this suggestion, then, we might take the X in a Sinn to be
the sense expressed by a logically proper name or a demonstrative - say,
'this' - and so recast Hussed's form for noematic descriptions of Sinne thus:

"this (object) x as being such that x is tP,".

This analysis raises a new line of questions. Can it plausibly be maintained

that demonstratives and other such purely referential expressions express
senses at all? Is there in fact any such thing as a purely referential - i.e., non-
descriptive - sense, such as the X is here supposed to be? And, again, precisely
how would such a sense prescribe the object intended in an act? We shall
later take up this proposal and the questions it raises (see Sections 3.4 and
3.5 below and also Chapter VIII, Part 2). But there is a second, and seemingly
less complicated, proposal that first deserves serious consideration: we might
play down the role of the X in individuation, letting that work be done by
the predicate-senses in the Sinn. On this proposal, it is the descriptive content
of the Sinn that determines which object the act is directed toward. The X
alone does not prescribe anything but only stands for the object determined
by the Sinn's predicative content; its role is merely to transform the aggregate
of predicate-senses into an individual sense, i.e., a Sinn prescribing an individ-
ual rather than a complex of properties. The X and the predicate-senses then
join together in a familiar form of sense, a sense expressible by a definite
description: "the 1/>", or "the x such that x is 1/>". We pursue this proposal,
and uncover some weaknesses in it, in the next two sections.

3.2. Some Problems for a "Definite-Description" Model of Intentionality

We propose now, and in the remaining sections of this chapter, to address
the question of precisely how intention is achieved by the Sinn in an act's
noema. 24 In doing so, we shall draw on the close relationship that Hussed
himself sees between his conception of intentionality via Sinn and the seman-
tic conception of reference via meaning, or sense. The latter problem has
received a great deal of attention from philosophers, perhaps overshadowing
in recent years the more fundamental problem of intentionality. But, given
Husserl's views, discussions of reference are directly relevant to the problem
of intentionality. According to Hussed, we have seen, the meanings we ex-
press publicly in language are the very same noematic entities that give struc-
ture and significance to our experiences; and both reference and intention are
 HUSSERL'S THEOR Y OF NOEMATIC SINN 205

determined by these senses or meanings. A plausible account of how the sense

of a linguistic expression can be said to determine a specific referent should
therefore shed considerable light on how the noematic Sinn of an act can give
it an intentional relation to a specific object. And, by the same token, we can
expect that whatever difficulties are inherent in the semantic theory of refer-
ence via sense will also pose problems for Husserl's theory of intention via
noematic Sinn.
How is it, then, that sense is supposed to determine reference? The classical
view that has developed from Frege takes the sense of any singular term to be
descriptive of the object referred to: the sense prescribes properties possessed
by at most one entity and thereby determines that entity (if there is one) as
the referent of the term. On this view, singular reference in general is con-
strued on the model of definite descriptions, i.e., expressions such as 'the
general who burned Atlanta', logically regimented as 'the x such that x is (or
was) a general and x burned Atlanta'. Other singular terms, such as proper
names, are then held to be synonymous with definite descriptions (or perhaps
clusters of definite descriptions), so that these expressions also expres~: de-
scriptive senses and thus refer to whatever individual uniquely satisfies the
appropriate description. This defmite~escription theory of reference main-
tains, then, that (a) each singular term expresses a "descriptive" sense, i.e.,
a sense prescribing properties that characterize at most one entity, and (b) a
singular term refers to a certain entity if and only if that entity is the one
and only one having (all or a sufficiently important subset of) the properties
prescribed by the sense of the term. Thus, 'the general who burned Atlanta'
(or 'William Tecumseh Sherman', if we take this name to be synonymous
with that description) refers to General Sherman just because he is the one
and only individual who both is a general and burned Atlanta. 25
Much of what Husserl says about noematic Sinne and their structure
suggests a theory of intentionality that works, for acts directed toward in-
dividuals, like the definite~escription theory of reference. (Let us not worry
at this point about other kinds of acts, such as those directed toward states
of affairs or toward essences.) Considered as a whole, the Sinn is a descriptive
sense: it consists of predicate-senses, which prescribe an aggregate of proper-
ties, and an X, which binds these predicate-senses together into a complex
sense that stands for an individual. Thus, Husserl's analysis of a Sinn suggests
that its structure is that of the sense of a definite description: "the x such
that x is cJ>". And if this is the structure of the Sinn in an act's noema, it is at
least plausible to suppose that a Sinn determines an object of intention in
much the same way that the sense of a definite description determines an
206 CHAPTER IV

object of reference. An account of intention modeled on the defmite-descrip-

tion theory of reference thus suggests itself: (a) the noematic Sinn of an
individual-directed act is a complex descriptive sense, of the sort that would
be expressed linguistically by use of a defmite description, and (b) an act is
intentionally related to a certain object if and only if that object is the one
and only entity having (all or a sufficiently important subset of) the proper-
ties prescribed by the predicative content of the act's Sinn.
This rather Fregean way of conceiving noematic Sinne and the intentional
relations they determine does yield an explanation of two of the features of
intentionality we have discussed. On the definite-description model of inten-
tion an act may have a noematic Sinn whose predicative content prescribes
properties that no object in fact possesses. In that case, the act will be inten-
tional even though it is not directed toward any existent object, just as an
expression may have meaning even though there is in fact no entity to which
it refers. And the defmite-description model allows that the Sinne of different
acts may have contents prescribing different properties that are in fact pos-
sessed by the very same object. In that case, different acts with different
noematic Sinne will intend the same object, just as different expressions with
different meanings may refer to the same referent.
Nonetheless, it seems quite clear that the defmite-description model does
not provide a completely general account of either intention or reference. As
a theory of reference, it has in fact recently come under heavy attack from
philosophers of language. In particular, it has been convincingly argued that
in many cases the theory fails to explain the relation of names to their refer-
ents.26 Here we shall take a look at two of these arguments, which show in
a rather straightforward way that there are serious problems for a theory of
intentionality that would take the defmite-description theory of reference
as its model. (We discuss yet a third problem in the next section.) What is at
issue is simply this: Is it, in every case, the descriptive content of an act's
noematic Sinn that determines which object the act is directed toward?
The frrst problem is that there are cases of both reference and intention in
which no defmite descriptions (or their senses) seem to be operative at all.
Names are often used, and used successfully, to refer to an individual of
whom the speaker (and perhaps the hearer as well) knows no defmite or iden-
tifying description. Many people who use the name 'Socrates', for example,
would be hard-pressed to say more about Socrates than that he was "a famous
Greek philosopher". But this description is not defmite, for it does not dis-
tinguish Socrates from, say, Plato or Aristotle. Yet, it seems implausible to
suppose that all these people, when they use the name 'Socrates', are referring
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 207

indiscriminately to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and everyone else who meets

this description. In fact, it seems that the name rather than the indefinite
description is used, not just for brevity, but to insure that it is Socrates him-
self and no one else who is being referred to. And if this is so, a name does
not always refer to its bearer by virtue of some descriptive sense prescribing
properties that only the bearer possesses. The same considerations apply to
the definite-description account of intentionality. If someone knows of
Socrates only that he was a famous Greek philosopher, then the predicative
content of his act's noematic Sinn will surely be too meager to pick out
Socrates uniquely. And yet such a person ought to be able to respect, admire,
wonder about, or otherwise intend Socrates. In this sort of case, then, it
seems that an act's directedness toward its object is not determined by the
descriptive, or predicative, content of the act's Sinn, or at least not by that
content alone.
The second problem is that the definite-description theory often yields
the wrong referent for a name or the wrong object for an act. The definite
description that most people associate with the name 'Columbus', to use one
of Saul Kripke's examples, is 'the discoverer of America'. But the sense of
that description would relate 'Columbus' to the person who in fact did dis-
cover America, and that almost certainly was not Columbus. The definite-
description theory would, then, yield the false conclusion that most people
who use the name 'Columbus' are not referring to Columbus but to Leif
Ericson, perhaps, or maybe even to someone whose name and deeds are still
unknown. As for intending, consider a modified version of Keith Donnellan's
well-known example. 27 Suppose at a wine-tasting party I am introduced to
Jones, who immediately impresses me as the only person I have seen there
who is drinking from a martini glass. Thereafter, every time I remember Jones
I fix on the description 'the woman who was drinking a martini at the wine-
tasting party', so that the content of my noematic Sinn is essentially just the
sense of this description. But now suppose further that Jones was actually
not drinking a martini at the party (her glass contained Perrier, say), though
some other woman, who spent the entire evening out of sight on the patio,
in fact was. In that case, if the definite-description model of intention were
correct, each time I thought myself to be remembering or otherwise intend-
ing Jones I would actually be intending this other person, whose presence
at the party is completely unknown to me. In general, this account of inten-
tion seems to force the absurd conclusion that if most (or perhaps only one)
of one's beliefs about an individual are false then one cannot be intending
that individual and, in fact, may quite unwittingly be intending some other
208 CHAPTER IV

individual whom one has never seen or even heard of. Contrary to the account
provided by the defmite-description model, though, what seems really to
happen in these cases is that the directedness of the act somehow "by-passes"
the predicative content of the act's Sinn, so that the act intends the appro-
priate object, not via this content, but despite it.
In sum, there are important and frequent cases in which an act's being
directed toward a particular object is largely independent of the descriptive
content in the act's noematic Sinn. It is certainly plausible to maintain that
some intentions work just as the definite-description account would have it,
but for a wide range of not very exceptional cases that theory is simply in-
adequate. In fact, as we shall now see, the definite-description model of
intention fails to explain the kinds of intentions that Husserl himself most
emphasized, those that we have characterized as "definite" or "de re".

3.3. The Problem of Definite, or De Re, Intentions

Husserl's discussion of the structure of noematic Sinne, and especially his
commentary on the X in the Sinn, seems to presuppose that intentions are
always definite - that is, directed toward some one specific object, whose
identity is determined by the act's noematic Sinn. Each Sinn includes exactly
one X, which prescribes the object "simpliciter"; and, Husserl says, Sinne
with the same X necessarily relate to the same object (Ideas, §131, p. 322;
cf. Section 3 .1 above). A presupposition of definiteness seems to be present
throughout Husserl's discussions of intentionality. In Logical Investigations
he says that intentionality is always "defmite" or "determinate" (bestimmt),
inasmuch as an act's directedness consists in the act's "being related to a
certain [gewisse] object and not another" (y, §20, p. 587; with trans.
changes). For Husser!, an act's phenomenological content does not merely
determine that the act is directed toward some object or other but it deter-
mines precisely which object the act is directed toward. He says: " ... The
act's matter [Le., its noematic Sinn] ... makes its object count as this one
and no other ... " (p. 589; with trans. changes). "The matter tells us, as it
were, what object is meant in the act, and in what sense [Sinne] it is there
meant" (y, §44, p. 652). The noematic Sinn of an act, Husser! seems to
believe, gives it an "intentional relation" to an object only because the Sinn
itself determines which object is intended in the act.
Our question in this section is whether the "defmite-description" model
of intention can adequately account for this feature of intentionality: if a
Sinn is the sort of sense that a definite-description expresses, does it then
insure that the act is definite? The answer may seem obvious, since the sense
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 209

of a definite description does prescribe at most one object. But we shall argue
that definiteness is a stronger notion than this, and that the stronger notion is
required by certain features of Husserl's theory of intentionality.
Whatever Husserl might have thought, there are various kinds of acts whose
Sinne do not uniquely determine an object of intention. One kind includes
such acts as my desire for a new car, although there is no particular one I
want, or my hearing someone at the door, when I have no idea who it is. The
Sinne of these acts - "a new car", "someone at the door" - can be satisfied
by any number of individuals, and the corresponding acts are for that reason
not directed toward anyone specific individual. Husserl does not completely
ignore these acts, although he apparently thought them to be too uninterest-
ing to deserve serious treatment. In one of perhaps only two mentio·ns of
them in Logical Investigations he cannot even decide whether they deserve
to be called "intentional". He says:

Desire does not always seem to require a conscious relation to what is desired, ... we are
often moved by obscure drives or pressures towards unrepresented goals .... One may
say: This'is a case of mere ... "desire~ensations" ... , i.e., of experiences really lacking
an intentional relation, and so also remote in kind from the essential character of inten-
tional desire. Alternatively one may say: Here we are dealing with intentional experi-
ences, but with such as are characterized by indeterminately [unbestimmt] directed
intention .... The idea we have when "something" stirs, when "it" rustles, when "some-
body" rings, etc .... is "indeterminately" directed; and this "indeterminateness" belongs
to the intention's essence, wherein it is determined as presenting an indeterminate
"something". (V, § 15, p. 575; with trans. changes. Cf. VI, § 10, p. 700. A possible third
mention is in V, § 20, p. 589, n. 1.)

If we were to choose the alternative of speaking of these experiences as

intentional, there would be instances of intentionality in which the noematic
Sinn does not, in any sense, prescribe the identity of the object intended in
an act. To handle these cases, Husserl would have to modify his analysis of
Sinne by admitting Sinne that do not consist of predicate-senses bound
together by an X that relates to some one specific object.
While Husserl might well be faulted for giving a too restricted account of
Sinn and intention, it seems clear that the account is meant to exclude these
"indeterminately" directed acts. And insofar as this is Husserl's goal, the
definite-description model of intention achieves it. The indeterminacy in
these acts is due to the very fact that Sinne such as "a new car" or "someone"
are not senses of definite descriptions. Accordingly, if we take the Sinne
Husserl does consider - those consisting of an X and predicate-senses - to
be senses of definite descriptions, then the intentions they determine will
210 CHAPTER IV

not be indefinite in this radical way. Nonetheless, we shall see, they will still
be indefinite in a more subtle way that Husser! seems not to have considered
explicitly.
This more subtle form of indefiniteness is the kind we earlier characterized
as "de dicta" (see Chapter I, Section 2.6). Consider, for example, the shop-
keeper's act of expecting the first customer of the day (whoever that may
be). We may suppose that the Sinn of this act is the sense of a definite de-
scription, "the first customer of the day", and since the description applies
to at most one person the act is not indeterminate in the way just described.
Yet, inasmuch as the shopkeeper has no opinion as to who her first customer
will be, the Sinn of her act leaves it open that any number of individuals
could be the one who satisfies it, depending on the circumstances: if Mr.
Black is the first to enter her shop, then he satisfies the Sinn; if Ms. White is,
then she does, and so on. In each of these circumstances the Sinn would
single out a unique object; but since the Sinn itself does not determine which
circumstance will be actual, just which object it singles out remains "in-
definite" or "indeterminate". By contrast, the shopkeeper's act of expecting
Professor Anscombe to enter her shop is definite in the sense we characterized
as "de re". The only circumstances in which the Sinn of this act will be
satisfied are those in which it is Professor Anscombe who walks through the
door; thus, in any circumstance, either the Sinn will not be satisfied at all or
it will be satisfied by the very same individual, G. E. M. Anscombe. But the
Sinn that determines an intention as definite in this de re way cannot be
simply the sense of a definite description.
What we have said about intention here has its counterpart in the theory
of reference as well. The problem in either case is that there are few descrip-
tions (or none, barring essentialism) that could not be satisfied by different
individuals given appropriately different states of affairs or courses of events.
'The husband of Xanthippe', for example, is a description actually satisfied
by Socrates; but Xanthippe might have married some other smooth-talking
Athenian, and in those circumstances some person other than Socrates meets
this description. Consequently, if the reference of 'Socrates' were determined
by the descriptive sense expressed by 'the husband of Xanthippe', then
'Socrates' would refer to different individuals under different possible cir-
cumstances. Indeed, any definite description (or the sense of any defmite
description) one is likely to use to secure a relation between 'Socrates' and its
referent will relate that name to individuals other than Socrates in some other
possible circumstances. And for this reason, it has been argued, the definite-
description theory fails to provide an adequate account of the reference of
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 211

names: F¢llesdal, Kripke, and others hold that, unlike definite descriptions,
names are used so as to refer to the same individual under any actual or
possible circumstances involving that individual. 28 When we say such things
as "If Socrates had taken Crito's advice, he would never have drunk the
hemlock" or "Socrates might not have married Xanthippe" we purport to
refer to Socrates and to say what would have been true of him if certain
non-actual but possible conditions had been realized. In such counter-factual
or modal contexts, the name 'Socrates' is used to single out Socrates, not
merely in the circumstances that were in fact actual, but in these other pos-
sible circumstances as well. But since definite descriptions may refer to
different individuals under different circumstances, the sense that determines
the reference of 'Socrates' cannot be merely that of a definite description. In
short, where either reference or intention is a definite, or de re, relation to
the same individual under different possible courses of events, it is a stronger
relation than that secured by the sense of a definite description.
Now, Husserl's analysis of Sinn and intention focuses on acts that are
definite in this very way. As we have seen, he holds that acts typically intend
their objects as transcending what is actually presented in the act. The Sinn
of such an act, we said earlier, may be thought of as an indeterminate con-
ceptual "frame", which the object is intended as fitting into in various pos-
sible ways compatible with what the Sinn prescribes (see Section 3.1 above).
Thus, the Sinn leaves open a "horizon" of possibilities concerning its object.
But just how much does the Sinn leave open? If the Sinn were merely the
sense of a definite description, then it would be possible for different objects
to satisfy it. The Sinn would then leave open which object is intended in the
act, and the act would accordingly be indefinite, or de dicta. There surely are
acts of that kind, we have stressed, and Husserl ought to have recognized Sinne
of a sort appropriate to them. But what he says about the Sinn and the pos-
sibilities it leaves open seems only to apply to definite, or de re, acts. For the
cases he discusses, the Sinn must single out a specific object in such a way
that only that object can satisfy the Sinn: the Sinn leaves open what further
properties the object has, but it somehow includes a sense of the identity of
the object it prescribes and so rules out the possibility that a different object
might satisfy the Sinn.
Husserl's most thorough discussion of this topic is in Cartesian Meditations,
where he takes perception as his paradigm. And here his commitment to a
de re form of definiteness, in fact unachievable by the sense of a defmite
description, is evident. When I see an object, the Sinn of my act does not
merely prescribe whatever object happens to satisfy- the Sinn's descriptive
212 CHAPTER IV

content; what I see is this object here before me. Thus, the Sinn of a percep-
tion prescribes the object, leaving open only further properties of this object
that are compatible with what one perceives of it. Husserl makes this point
in terms of possible perceptions compatible with what one perceives - per-
ceptions whose Sinne would determine in various possible ways what is left
open by the original act's Sinn. These further possibilities of perception, he
says, include only those acts that can be joined with the original act in a
"synthesis of identification" (eM, §18, pp. 41-42), whereby they are di-
rected toward one and the same object as their common "pole of identity"
(§ 19, p. 45). Indeed, "by virtue of [this "synthetic unity"] alone", Husserl
says, ''we have one intentional object, and always this definite one, continu-
ously meant" (§20, p. 47; cf. pp. 46, 48). Evidently, then, the Sinn of a
perception specifies an object in such a way that this very same object is
intended in any possible perception compatible with the Sinn. And that is to
say that under no possible circumstances left open by the Sinn can different
objects satisfy it. By Husserl's own account of perceiving a transcendent
object, we conclude, perception requires a different sort of Sinn than that
which the defmite-<iescription model of intention proposes. (We discuss the
notion of "horizon" much more fully in chapter V.)
We pointed out in Chapter I (Section 2.6) that the defmiteness of percep-
tion differs from that of ''individuative'' intentions, i.e., intentions in which
the subject knows (or has an opinion about) who or which the intended
object is. The descriptive content of the Sinn apparently plays a rather minor
role in perceptual definiteness. When I see a man, for example, the Sinn's
predicate-senses may determine very little about him other than that he is a
man with certain apparent physical characteristics; the act is then definite
only because directed toward this individual before me, not because the Sinn
specifies who he is. For individuative acts the Sinn's descriptive content seems
to playa larger role, insofar as "knowing who" is a matter of knowing prop-
erties sufficient to distinguish one individual from others. But then our dis-
cussion in this section leaves it completely unclear how individuative intention
can be achieved, for we have argued that it is always possible for different
objects to satisfy the descriptive content of a Sinn. We shall examine this
problem in considerable detail later , concluding that complete individuative
defmiteness is an ideal that actual intentions can only approximate to a
greater or lesser degree. In fact, we shall find that Husserl himself considered
the very identity of a transcendent individual to be itself transcendent, thus
exceeding what the content of any Sinn prescribes. (See Chapter VIII, espe-
cially Parts 3 and 4.)
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 213

The rest of this chapter pursues an account of perceptUili definiteness

modeled on a theory of reference drastically different from the definite-
description theory. As we thus leave the definite-description model of inten-
tion behind, we would note a certain irony in our reasons for doing so. The
definite-description theory of reference provides a good model for an account
of indefinite, or de dicta, intentions but not for defmite, or de re, intentions
and especially not for perceptions. Accordingly, the account of intention
most easily obtained from Husserl's analysis of noematic Sinne better fits
the intentions he seems not to have considered than those he meant to be
explaining.

3.4. The Sinn of Perception as "Demonstrative"

As we observed, Husserl's account of what we call definite, or de re, inten-
tions develops a theory very different from the definite-description model
of intention. Now, there is further, more direct evidence that for Husserl the
Sinne of some acts, especially those of perceptions, are not senses of definite
descriptions. In ideas, we know, he factors a noematic Sinn into a predicative
content and a "determinable X", which presents the object "in abstraction
from all predicates". The X thus seems to be a non-descriptive component of
sense, a sense that presents the act's object directly, without prescribing
properties of the object. (And so the X, it seems, prescribes the object in a
way that is largely independent of the descriptive, predicative content of the
Sinn.) Husserl tells us no more in general about what kind of sense an X is
or how its relation to an object is achieved. But he offers a promising idea
for the case of perception, where an object is "itself" given in "bodily pre-
sence" in "intuition". Earlier, in Logical investigations, he had said the
content of a perception is expressible by means of a demonstrative pronoun
such as 'this', which refers to an object "directly" rather than by appeal to
properties unique to the object.29 Indeed, he there offered a theory of mean-
ing and reference for proper names and demonstrative pronouns that differs
markedly from the Fregean definite-description model of reference. Thus,
if we draw on the investigations, it would seem the X in a noematic Sinn is
a type of sense expressible in language by a proper name or a demonstrative
pronoun. In particular, the X in a perceptual Sinn would seem to be a "de-
monstrative" sense, expressible by 'this' or 'that', a sense through which an
object would be intuitively presented as "this" object "itself". And the object
of a perception would be determined in a way analogous to that in which
the object of demonstrative reference is determined; perceptual intention
would be analogous to demonstrative reference. How, then, is perceptual
214 CHAPTER IV

intention achieved via Sinn, via an X? We shall now try to spell out HusserI's
account of perceptual Sinn and perceptual intention via Sinn, drawing on
these doctrines in both the Investigations and Ideas. We shall conclude that
perception poses a special problem for HusserI's basic theory of intention via
Sinn, and that although Husserl showed some awareness of the source of the
problem, his analysis of perception and its Sinn really offers no solution to
that problem.
It is natural to form a phenomenological description of a perception of an
object by use of the demonstrative pronoun 'this' (or 'that'):
I see this black bird
- or, in line with Husserl's talk of an object intended "as" such-and-such.
I see this as a black bird.
(We understand this sentence as ascribing a direct-object perception, not a
propositional perception or perceptual judgment that this is a black bird.)
This form of phenomenological description fits nicely with HusserI's analysis
of a perceptual Sinn. The predicative expression 'a black bird' would here
ascribe the predicative content of the act's Sinn, the predicate-sense expres-
sible by '[is] a black bird'; and the demonstrative 'this' would ascribe the X
in the Sinn. Thus, the X would be the type of sense expressible on a given
occasion by saying 'this' in reference to an object perceived before one, and
a perception's Sinn would be a complex "demonstrative" sense expressible
by a demonstrative phrase such as 'this black bird' or perhaps 'this as a black
bird'. We might say the "this" component of the Sinn prescribes the intended
object "itself" and the predicative component prescribes the properties it is
intended "as" having. (Recall Section 2.6 above on phenomenological and
noematic description.)
The use of demonstrative pronouns to form phenomenological descriptions
of perceptions, or alternatively to express the Sinne of perceptions, has a
foundation in Husserl's brief but penetrating account of demonstratives in
Logical Investigations (I, § 26, and VI, § § 1-5). An utterance of 'this' is
expressly keyed to perception (at least in one important use of 'this'). 'This',
HusserI says, is an "essentially occasional" expression: the referent, and even
the meaning, of 'this' varies with, and so depends on, the occasion of utter-
ance (LI, I, § 26). The referent of 'this' on a particular occasion of utterance
is the object the speaker then sees (or hears or otherwise perceives). Often
he physically points at the object, but it is the perception that is the basic
determinant in the "demonstration" of reference; the pointing is only a
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 215

dramatic aid to help the hearer determine more precisely what the speaker
is looking at and therewith that he is talking about. Suppose, Husserl says,
"I have just looked out into the garden and now give expression to my per-
ception in the words: 'A blackbird flies up'" (VI, §4, p. 680; with trans.
changes). In such a use:

'This' is an essentially occasional expression which only becomes fully meaningful when
we have regard to the circumstances of utterance, in this case to an actually performed
perception. The perceived object, as it is given in perception, is what the word 'this'
refers to list mit dem 'dies' gemeint]. (VI, §5, p. 682; with trans. changes.)

Importantly, unlike some philosophers, Husserl assumes that essentially

occasional expressions such as 'this' express meanings (albeit meanings very
different from those expressed by definite descriptions). But he distinguishes
two types of meaning for such an expression. (See LI, I, §26, pp. 315-17,
and VI, §S, pp. 683, 684, 686-86.) On the one hand, 'this' has a meaning
that does not vary from one occasion of utterance to another, a meaning that
concerns only the general "semantic function" of the expression (p. 315).
On the other hand, he holds, on each occasion of utterance 'this' expresses
a particular meaning that varies from one occasion to another, a meaning that
reflects the speaker's "direct intention", his perception or intuition, of the
object to which he is referring on that occasion (pp. 683, 686-87). The
hearer has at first only the constant, general meaning of 'this', the idea that
something is being pointed to and referred to; whereas the speaker has the
particular meaning expressed on that occasion, "and has it in a presentative
intention immediately oriented toward intuition" (pp. 686-87). Since the
general meaning serves the hearer as an "index" of the speaker's particular
meaning on that occasion, Husserl calls the former the "indicating" meaning
and the latter the "indicated" meaning of 'this' (p. 686). Presumably, the
constant, indicating meaning of 'this' is what would be characterized in a
dictionary, perhaps by 'the object the speaker is attending to'; but what is
the particular, indicated meaning of 'this' on a given occasion? It would seem
to be w.hat Husserl later, in Ideas, called an X, in particular, the X in the
speaker's perception of the object to which he is referring. For the X presents
the object "in abstraction from all predicates". And it would seem to be the
sense of a "direct intention" of the object. For by 'direct' Husserl means, in
part at least, without appeal to the prescribed properties of the object (see
p. 684, soon to be quoted below).30
Let us assume, then, that the X in the Sinn of a perception is a sense
the perceiver can express by a demonstrative 'this' on the occasion of the
216 CHAPTER IV

perception. We have generally observed parallels between reference and inten-

tion, and we may now seek in demonstrative reference a model or analogue
for perceptual intention. As Husserl and many others have noted, demonstra-
tive reference is occasional: the referent of 'this' varies with, and so depends
on, the occasion of utterance. Similarly, as Husserl clearly implies,perceptual
intention is occasional: the object of a perceptual experience varies with, and
so depends on, the occasion of the perception. But if perceptual intention is
analogous to demonstrative reference, how does demonstrative reference
work? And, ultimately, what role might a sense like an X play in demonstra-
tive reference?
According to Husserl:

Essentially occasional expressions [e.g., 'this'] are ... much like proper names, insofar
as the latter function with their authentic meaning. For a proper name also names an
object "directly". It refers to [meint] it, not in the attributive way as the bearer of these
of those properties, but without such 'conceptual' mediation, as that which it "itself" is,
just as perception might set it before the eyes. (LI, VI, § 5, p. 684; with trans. changes.)

So, like Russell and many others, Husserl holds that a demonstrative refers
"directly". And, he implies, neither names nor demonstratives express the
type of senses expressible by definite descriptions. 31 But if a demonstrative
or name does not refer by appeal to properties of the referent, as a definite
description does, then how does it refer? What is it to refer "directly", '~ust
as perception might set [an object 'itself'] before the eyes"? Qua intuition,
perception is a "direct" intention, but what is it to intend an object "di-
rectly"?
It is commonly held that the referent of 'this' on an occasion of utterance
is determined by the context of utterance, by the speaker's de facto physical
relation to the referent, including perhaps his pointing at it and perhaps its
causally affecting his senses. Then demonstrative reference would be "direct"
in that the referent would be determined by the context of the utterance, and
not by a descriptive sense expressed by the speaker. Analogously, perception
would be "direct" in that the object of a perception would be determined by
the de facto physical context of the perception, in particular, by the spatio-
temporal-causal relation that consists in the object's playing an appropriate role
in the causal genesis of the sensory phase of the perception. (This would be
a strong form of the popular "causal" theory of perception.) On this account,
the perception might still have a content or Sinn such as Husserl described.
Indeed, it might have a Sinn including predicative content that prescribes
certain properties of the object perceived, properties the object is perceived
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 217

as having. But which object is perceived would be determined by the context

of the perception. On this contextualist account, the intentional relation
between a perceptual experience and its object would be determined by the
"external" context of the experience, rather than, as Husserl's basic theory
of intentionality requires, by the "internal" content of the experience. Inten-
tionality would no longer be, as Husserl held, a purely phenomenological
property of consciousness, and it would no longer be something we can study
by purely phenomenological means, by bracketing questions of the external
world.
At first glance, Husserl's account of demonstrative reference resembles
the contextualist account just sketched. For, according to his characterization
of essentially occasional expressions, the referent of 'this' varies with, and so
depends on, the occasion of the utterance (Ll, I, §26, pp. 3l5-17). However,
upon closer reading, Husserl's account differs importantly from the context-
ualist account. According to Husserl, it is the hearer who must consider the
factual circumstances of the utterance, the speaker's physical surroundings,
in order to figure out what the speaker is seeing and referring to and what is
the indicated meaning the speaker is expressing. The speaker is already given
the referent "itself", and given it by means of the indicated meaning, in his
perception, or intuition, of the object to which he is referring. (CL Ll, I, § 26,
pp. 315-17, and VI, §5, pp. 686-87.) So, if the referent of 'this' depends
on the occasion of utterance, what is it within the occasion of utterance in
virtue of which 'this' refers to the relevant object? On the contextualist
account, it is the speaker's physical relation to the referent, the object's being
physically before him and perhaps causally affecting him. But on Husserl's
account, it is the speaker's intuition of the referent in perception (see LI, VI,
§5, pp. 683, 686-87). So Husserl's account of demonstrative reference is a
contextualist account only if he takes intuition to be a partly contextual,
perhaps partly causal, and not purely intentional relation. But there is no
evidence of such a view in Husserl; throughout his works, he consistently
characterized perception - and intuition in general - as an experience whose
intentional relation to an object is achieved by means of its phenomenological
content, or Sinn, in the way we detailed in Chapter III. For Husserl, then,
demonstrative reference is "direct" not because it is achieved in a physical,
contextual relation between speaker and referent, but because it is founded
on the speaker's "direct" intention, or intuition, of the referent. And so his
analysis of demonstrative reference depends ultimately on an answer to the
outstanding question, which he has yet to answer in our exposition: How is
intuition achieved via Sinn, via an X?
218 CHAPTER IV

What do we learn about Husserl's account of perceptual intention, then,

by using demonstrative reference as a model, and by outlining Husserl's view
of demonstrative reference? As we have seen, Husserl carefully notes the
occasional nature of demonstrative reference and observes that the content
of a perception, presumably the X in its Sinn, is expressible by a demonstra-
tive. Clearly, by implication, Husserl believes that perception itself is essen-
tially 'occasional: the object of a perception varies with, and so depends on,
the occasion of the perception. The parallel between demonstrative reference
and perception is illuminating in this regard; indeed, this parallel is the salient
result of our forming a "demonstrative" model for perception. Yet the occa-
sional nature of perceptual intention poses a serious problem for Husserl.
How are we to understand that feature of perception? As we observed, a
contextualist account of perceptual intention might be proposed: as demon-
strative reference is, on that view, a contextual relation between the speaker
and the referent on the occasion of utterance, so perceptual intention would
be a contextual, perhaps a causal, relation between the perceiver and the
object perceived on the occasion of perception, or between the perceptual
experience and the object. But such a contextualist view would conflict wjth
Husserl's purely phenomenological approach to intentionality, and with his
developed basic theory of intention via Sinn: it would no longer be solely in
virtue of its phenomenological content, or Sinn, that a perception is directed
toward its object; a perception would not have a determinate direction of
intentional "pointing" fixed solely by its phenomenological structure.
True to his intentions, Husserl avoids such a contextualist view of per-
ception (or of demonstrative reference). He consistently maintains that a
perception is directed toward its object solely in virtue of its Sinn, indeed,
we presumed, in virtue of its X, the perceptual content expressible by 'this'.
(And demonstrative reference is founded on the speaker's perception, or
intuition, of the referent.) But how would the occasional nature of perceptual
intention be accounted for, then? How does the "demonstrative" content,
the X, in a perception prescribe the particular object before the perceiver on
the occasion of perception? Husserl says nothing that suggests an adequate
answer. He says, "The word'!, names a different person from case to case,
and does so by way of an ever altering meaning" (LI, I, §26, p. 315; our
emphasis); and similarly for 'this' (cf. pp. 316-17). So if the (indicated)
meaning of 'this' on a given occasion is the X in the speaker's perception of
the referent, then the X in a perception varies from case to case. But what
does this mean? Is there a different X in every perception? That would
entail that in principle no two perceptions could ever have the very same
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 219

phenomenological content, which is implausible. Furthermore, if two percep-

tions with two different X's are directed toward what is in fact the same
object, what is it about the X's in virtue of which the perceptions reach the
same object? Or do perceptions apprehending what is in fact the same object
all share the same X? That is, is there in the noematic realm a unique X corre-
sponding to each object in the transcendent world? Surely that is implausible.
Husserl simply does not tell us how, via its X, a perception intends the right
object. For Husserl, it seems, the mystery and mystique of intuition reside
in that special type of sense, an X. We are forced to conclude that although
Husserl sharply indicated the occasional nature of perception, he did not
offer an account of perception that adequately explains or even properly
addresses that important feature of perception. Nor, it seems, did he fully
comprehend the problem it poses for his basic theory of intentionality. And,
ironically, perception was often his paradigm in developing that theory.
Somehow, in part perhaps by virtue of its demonstrative content, a per-
ception appeals to its context, to the physical surroundings of the perceiver.
An adequate theory of the intentionality of perception must account for
this feature of perceptual intention. But this will be a theory importantly
different from the fundamental thrust of Husserl's theory of intentionality.
For, it seems, the intention will then depend on the concrete occasion of the
perception, and not merely on its abstract and eternal noematic content. Can
the "occasional" nature of perception be accounted for, then, in strictly
phenomenological terms? A recent theory of demonstrative content, devel-
oped by David Woodruff Smith, suggests it can,32 though we shall not pursue
the details here.

3.5. Intentionality and Pragmatics: Contextual Influences on Intention

According to Husserl's basic theory of intentionality, the object of an act is
determined by - that is, it is a fUllcton of - the act's noematic Sinn alone.
But we have now seen that the object of a perception depends partly on the
context, the physical circumstance, of the perceptual experience and not on
the Sinn alone. And, as we shall note shortly, there are other ways in which
the objects of some acts depend in part on the contexts in which those acts
occur. Husserl's basic theory of intentionality fails to take account of such
contextual influences on intention. Accordingly, it must be modified or
extended to what we might call a "pragmatic" theory of intentionality, in
analogy with a pragmatic as opposed to a purely semantic analysis of linguis-
tic reference.
Traditionally, semantics is the study of meaning and reference independent
220 CHAPTER IV

of the context in which an expression is used, whereas pragmatics studies also

those aspects of meaning and reference that depend on the context of use of
an expression. For example, the meaning and referent of a "pure" defmite
.description, such as 'the first human being born at sea', do not depend on
the context in which the expression is uttered and so are accounted for by
semantics proper. But demonstrative pronouns and other so-called "indexical"
expressions, such as 'this', '1', 'you', 'she', 'now', or 'here', fall under prag-
matics. The meaning of such a term - its generic dictionary meaning (what
Husserl called its "indicating" meaning) - is independent of the context in
which it is used, but its referent (and, according to Husserl, its "indicated"
meaning) depends on its context of use. Indexical terms have a systematic
dependence on context, but for some other terms there may also be unsys-
tematic dependencies. In an example like Donnellan's (see Section 3.2 above),
if a person falsely believes that a certain woman at a wine-tasting party is
drinking a martini (and that no one else is), he may refer to her by the de-
scription 'the woman drinking a martini'. A purely semantic analysis would
conclude the term does not refer to that woman; but a pragmatic analysis,
taking account of the speaker's mistaken belief, would allow that the speaker
uses the term to refer to the woman even though she does not in fact fit the
description. Thus, pragmatics extends semantics in various ways so as to
account for contextual influences on meaning and reference. (Cf. Chapter VI,
Section 1.4, below.)
Where intention depends on context, Husserl's theory of intentionality
must be similarly extended from a purely "semantic" theory, in which inten-
tion is analyzed in terms of Sinn alone, to a "pragmatic" theory, in which
contextual factors are allowed to playa' role. Intention, like reference, is
subject to different sorts of contextual influences. In the case of perception,
the physical circumstance of the perception, including the sensory state of
the perceiver's body, plays a role in determining which object is intended. But
in a case like that at the wine-tasting party, the relevant context is quite
different. If I falsely believe that a certain woman is drinking a martini, I may
judge, with that presupposition, that the woman drinking a martini is a friend
of the hostess. Here the aboutness of my judgment, its being directed toward
that certain woman, depends on my (false) belief that she is the one and only
woman there who is drinking a martini. For if I did not have that belief, my
judgment would either be about some other person (if someone else is the
only one drinking a martini) or about no actual person at all (if no one is).
To look only at the Sinn of this act and to ignore the belief it presupposes
is, accordingly, to fail to understand the act and the intention it achieves
 HUSSERL'S THEOR Y NOEMATIC SINN 221

(cf. Section 3.2 above). Yet, the belief on which my judgment depends is
external to the judgment itself: it is not a part of my judgment but a part
of my background belief-system, which my judgment merely presupposes.
We might say that, whereas the perception depends on its "transcendent"
context, a circumstance in the transcendent, physical world, my judgment
depends on its "immanent" context, a circumstance within my stream of
consciousness or my background of mental attitudes. (Beliefs are not occur-
rent "acts" of consciousness; but, as Husserl might say, they are "passive"
judgments or dispositions to judge. Beliefs are then an immanent part of
mental life though not events in the stream of consciousness per se.)
Husserl was aware of the need to bring some contextual factors into the
theory of intentionality, but he seems to have attended carefully only to
what we just called immanent contextual influences. As we shall see in
Chapters V and VI, Husserl allowed for the influence of background beliefs
on intention, including particular beliefs (such as that about the woman
drinking a martini) and especially those broad beliefs that form one's larger
conceptual scheme. In later works such as Cartesian Meditations, he increas-
ingly stressed the role of such background belief-structures in directing an act
toward its object. But the elaboration of these belief-structures is an important
break from Husserl's early methodology of merely laying out the structure
of an act's noema (or corresponding noesis). For these structures are not a
proper part of the act's noematic Sinn but rather are presupposed by the act
or its Sinn. Husserl himself, we shall see, finds in these analyses "methods of
a totally new kind" (CM, §20, p. 48). Yet, insofar as background beliefs are
immanent, these methods still remain within the bounds of phenomenology,
studying what remains after bracketing the transcendent world. In a sense,
Husserl has simply broadened his notion of the phenomenological content of
an act.
The transcendent circumstances of an act are a different matter entirely.
If the physical circumstance of a perception has a role in determining the
directedness of the perception, then a purely phenomenological analysis of
intention will be inadequate for perception. For a phenomenolOgical analysis
attends only to what can be grasped in phenomenological reflection, without
consideration of anything external to the act and its content. In his early
Logical Investigations, we observed, Hussed noted the "essentially occasional"
nature of reference in the case of demonstrative pronouns, and he held that
a perception is expressible by use of demonstratives. So there he had some
awareness of the "occasional" nature of perceptual intention. Moreover, he
mentions "occasional" expressions and judgments also in his later writings,
222 CHAPTER IV

which follow his celebrated "transcendental" tum (see FTL, §80, pp. 199-
200; and Crisis, §33, pp. 122, 124). Yet, as we saw in the preceding section,
HusserI seems never to have developed a systematic theory of the occasional
nature of perception and its directedness, nor does he seem ever to have
comprehended the problem it poses for his basic theory. 33
In the following chapters we shall study HusserI's own extension of his
basic theory, by way of "horizon", in ways that accommodate the influence
of background beliefs on intention. In Chapter VIII we shall return to certain
aspects of the case of perception.

NOTES

1 F¢lIesdal's interpretation dates from his 1958 dissertation, Busserl und Frege (Note
10, Ch. III above). It is stated most succinctly in his 'Husserl's Notion of Noema' (Note
15, Ch. III above) and is applied to perception in 'Phenomenology' (Note 19, Ch. III
above). Also see his 'An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers'
(Note 10, Ch. III above). The interpretation has been expounded and developed in
various ways in doctoral dissertations directed by F¢lIesdal: Hubert L. Dreyfus, 'Husserl's
Phenomenology of Perception: from Transcendental to Existential Phenomenology',
(Harvard University, 1963); Ronald Mcintyre, 'Husser! 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).
2 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 Busserl, 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. III
above). Also see Dreyfus's comparison of Gurwitsch's and F¢lIesdal'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. III above).
3 Gurwitsch, 'Husserl's Theory .. .' (Note 2 above), p. 45; cf. p. 47.
4 Gurwitsch, 'On the Intentionality of Consciousness' (Note 2 above), p. 128; see also
p.130.
5 See Gurwitsch, 'Husser!'s Theory .. .' (Note 2 above), pp. 52-53; and The Field of
Consciousness (Note 2 above), pp. 183-84.
 HUSSERL'S THEORY OF NOEMATIC SINN 223

6 Gurwitsch, 'Husserl's Theory .. .' (Note 2 above), p. 55; also see The Field of Con-
sciousness (Note 2 above), pp. 184,223.
7 Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Note 2 above), p. 182; cf. pp. 164-68.
8 See Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Note 2 above), pp. 177-78.
9 Twardowski (Note 3, Ch. III above), p. 17.
10 Twardowski (Note 3, Ch. III above), pp. 11-17. Cf. Dreyfus's commentary on
Husserl's use of the 'as intended' and 'as such' terminology, in Dreyfus, 'Husserl's Phe-
nomenology of Perception' (Note 1 above), pp. 205 -13, and 'The Perceptual Noema'
(Note 2 above), pp. 154-59.
II Reinhardt Grossmann, in his Introduction to Twardowski (Note 3, Ch. III above),
has explicitly assimilated Husserlian noemata and Meinongian incomplete objects: see
esp. p. xxvi. A well-developed object-theory of a generally Meinongian sort is that of
Hector-Neri Castaneda: see his 'Thinking and the Structure of the World' (Note 25,
Ch. II above), and 'Perception, Belief, and the Structure of Physical Objects and Con-
sciousness', Synthese 35 (1977), 285-351. Castaneda does not purport to be interpret-
ing Husserl, but his theory seems to be the kind that would naturally follow from the
Gurwitschean interpretation.
12 Sections 2.1-2.5 below constitute a revised version of our 'Husserl's Identification
of Meaning and Noema', The Monist 59 (1975), 111-32, reprinted in part in Dreyfus
(Note 10, Ch. III above).
13 Frege (Note 9, Ch. III above), p. 79.
14 Frege (Note 9, Ch. III above), p. 79.
IS Bolzano, Theory of Science (Note 11, Ch.Ill above), esp. § §48, 270, 271.
16 Husserl sometimes uses 'Wirklich' in a broader sense, characterizing anything that
may be the object of an act prior to phenomenological (especiall)' transcendental) reduc-
tion, i.e., anything that is not a "transcendental" entity. In this broader sense mathe-
matical entities and natural essences, though nontemporal and nonspatial, are "wirklich ",
but meanings and noemata are not.
17 Frege, The Thought' (Note 56, Ch. II above), p. 302.
18 See Guido Kiing, 'Husserl on Pictures and Intentional Objects' (Note 16, Ch. III
above), p. 675; J. N. Mohanty, 'On Husserl's Theory of Meaning' (Note 16, Ch. III
above), pp. 229-32. Also see LI, I, § 33.
19 Husserl does characterize general terms, such as 'horse', as expressions that refer to
different things on different occasions of use, without changing their meanings (LI, I,
§ 12, p. 288). However, this characterization need not run counter to (3). While the
particular thing of which a general term is predicated will vary from case to case, the
extension of the term - the class of entities of which the term can be truly predicated -
will remain the same so long as the meaning remains the same. Thus, (3) is true of general
terms, too, provided we understand by the "referent" of a general term its extension.
Cf. LI, VI, § 7, p. 693, where Husserl speaks of the "range of objects" "covered" by a
general term.
20 See LI, I, § 12, p. 288; VI, § 7, p. 693. Mohanty has translated and discussed a
letter from Frege to Husserl (written in 1891) commenting on this difference: see J. N.
Mohanty, 'Husserl and Frege' (Note 10, Ch. III above), pp. 57-61; 'Frege-Husserl
Correspondence' (Note 10, Ch. III above), pp. 84-85.
21 Its most explicit statement in LI is in V, §21, p. 590 (where "semantic essence" =
"matter" = "Sinn"). The point is well conftrmed by Husserl's conception of expression
224 CHAPTER IV

in LJ, VI, § §1-15, and also in sections of Formal and Transcendental Logic and Ideas
that we shall be discussing.
22 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 e,mployed in W. V. Quine,
Mathematical Logic (Norton, New York, 1940).
23 We use 'prescribe' and 'predelineate' as technical terms. While 'predelineate' is our
translation of Husser!'s 'vorzeichnen', 'prescribe' does not translate a specific term of
Husserl's.
24 Our. discussion in this section and the next derives from two papers by Ronald
Mcintyre: 'Intending and Referring: Some Problems for Husser!'s Theory of Inten-
tionality', in Dreyfus (Note 10, Ch. III above); and 'Husserl's Phenomenological Con-
ception of Intentionality and its Difficulties', Philosophio, forthcoming.
25 The deftnite-<lescription 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.
26 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.
27 See Donnellan, 'Reference and Defmite Descriptions' (Note 14, Ch. I above).
28 See F¢llesdal, 'Knowledge, Identity, and Existence', Thearia 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.
29 This section of the present chapter is based on a more detailed study of Husser!'s
account of demonstratives in David Woodruff Smith, 'Husser! on Demonstrative Refer-
ence and Perception', in Dreyfus (Note 10, Ch. III above). Izchak Miller has also studied
the "demonstrative" element in perception put forth by Husser!; see Miller, 'The Phe-
nomenology of Perception' (Note 1 above). Miller stresses the singular (what we call
the definite, or de re) character of perception. John Lad also stresses this in his account
of perception as intuition; see Lad, 'On Intuition, Evidence, and Unique Representation'
(Note 1 above).
30 The theory of demonstratives and perceptual Sinn that we have presented is not
quite that of Husser! in Logical Investigations. Husser! says demonstratives serve to
"express" - to express the Sinne of - "judgments of perception", i.e., judgments
"grounded" on perception, rather than perceptions themselves (LI, VI, § § 3-4). This
is because he holds that "perception is an act that determines but does not contain
meaning" (LI, VI, §5, p. 684; with trans. changes). And that would block him from
holding that 'this' expresses the X in the Sinn of one's perception. However, Husserl's
reasons for balking at demonstratives' expressing perceptual sense per se seem to be
flawed and to involve mistakes that he should not have made if he had then clearly
articulated the doctrine of Xs put forth in Ideas. So we have presented, for our purposes
of assessing the Husserlian approach to intentionality, the emended theory we outlined,
which is not quite Husserl's. See David Woodruff Smith, 'Husser! on Demonstrative
Reference and Perception' (Note 29 above).
 HUSSERL'S THEOR Y OF NOEMATIC SINN 225

31 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 Identifyirlg Descriptions' (Note 26
above), and Saul Kripke, 'Namirlg and Necessity' (Note 25 above). On direct reference
by demonstratives, see David Kaplan, "Dthat" and 'On the Logic of Demonstratives',
irl Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language, ed. by Peter A. French,
Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., Howard K. Wettsteirl (University of Mirlnesota 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"?', Noils 16, No.2 (1982).
32 A study of the roles of content and context in perceptual acquaintance is found in
David Woodruff Smith, 'Content and Context of Perception', Synthese (to appear irl
1983). (Cf. the articles by Smith cited irl the previous note.) A longer study of acquairlt-
ance by Smith is irl progress under the title, Acquaintance. In those studies a partial
vindication of Husserl's leading irltuition that irltention is achieved irl virtue of phe-
nomenological structure is proposed. The general idea is this. A perception presents an
object visually before the perceiver on the occasion of perception: irl phenomenological
description he may say, "I see this tomato now here before me and affectirlg my eyes".
Now, the object of perception is not a function of the content alone, for another percep-
tion on another occasion could irl principle have the very same phenomenological content
and yet have a different object. That is, there is no functional, or many-one, relation
between the confent and the object of a perception (contra Husserl). Still, it seems, the
demonstrative content of a perception - the content "this (now here before me and
affecting my eyes)" - does prescribe the object of the perception, the object appro-
priately before the perceiver and affectirlg his senses on the occasion of the perception.
However, it is not the noematic content irl itself that so prescribes the object; rather, it is
the content only irlsofar as it is embodied irl that particular perceptual experience on
that occasion - if you will, the demonstrative content-irl-the-perception prescribes, or
is satisfied by, the object of the perception, the object contextually before the perceiver.
A similar view has been developed, irldependently and from a different direction, by
John Searle. On Searle's account, the causal relation between a visual experience and
its object is part of the "conditions of satisfaction" of the irltentional content of the
experience. (Searle's view is developed irl Intentionality (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1983 forthcomirlg), which served as the basis for his lectures at the 1980
Summer Institute on Phenomenology and Existentialism, 'Continental and Ana1ytic
Perspectives on Intentionality', held at the University of California, Berkeley, under
the auspices of The Council for Philosophical Studies with support from the National
Endowment for the Humanities. Smith's view was also presented irl lecture at the same
irlstitute.) Searle's view, like Smith's, may be seen as a partial vindication of Husserl's
view of perception, and irldeed Searle's general view of irltentionality (as well as his view
of the relation between language and thought) is broadly like Husserl's.
33 It is the "transcendental" foundation of Husserl's phenomenology that is irlcompa-
226 CHAPTER IV

tible with letting the object of perception, or any other part of the external world, play
a role in perceptual intention. An "existential" phenomenology such as Maurice Merleau-
Ponty's is not limited to what is in consciousness per se. For Merleau-Ponty, aspects of
the perceiver's body playa role in perceptual apprehension of an object. These include
the affection of the senses, for he holds that the sensuous and presentational components
of perception cannot be separated as Husserl proposed. And they include bodily skills
of which the perceiver has no consciousness or representational knowledge, such as his
ability - and tendency - to move around the object for a further view or to pick it up.
For Merleau-Ponty, it is in virtue of these bodily connections with the object, as well as
the structure of perceptual awareness, that one sees the object as "bodily present". This
interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception and its consequences
for Husserl's is put forth by Dreyfus in his 'The Perceptual Noema' (Note 2 above) .•
Compare Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by Colin Smith (Rout-
ledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., London, 1962; French original, first published in 1945). So
intimate is the role of the body in the phenomenology of perception that he can say in
a title on page 203, "The theory of the body is already a theory of perception". Does
such an account of perception remain purely phenomenological?
 CHAPTER V

HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON

For Husserl, phen~menological analysis of the intention achieved in an act

does not stop with analysis of the act's noema or, in particular, its Sinn.
What is prescribed of an object as it is intended in a particular act A, under
a particular Sinn, leaves much about the object "open" or "indeterminate".
The possible further "determinations" of the object that are compatible with
what is prescribed of it in A, Husserl calls the "horizon" of the object (as
intended in A). Correlatively, those possible experiences in which that same
object (as intended in them) is more closely "determined" than in A, Husserl
calls the horizon of A. A complete phenomenological analysis of the act A
includes analysis of its horizon (or of the Sinne of the acts in its horizon) as
well as analysis of its Sinn.
Husserl says that description of an act's horizon brings to phenomenology a
new method that goes beyond description of an act's noema and Sinn. As we
shall see in Chapter VI, horizon-analysis provides an alternative way of explicat-
ing the meaning of an act. But horizon-analysis has a special further heuristic
value in that it shows an act's intentionality to be determined not just by the
act's Sinn but also by certain of the subject's background experiences and
beliefs (or their Sinne) that are presupposed in the act. Horizon-analysis thus
displays the effect of the subject's other experiences and of his basic concep-
tual scheme on the intention achieved in a particular act, and it leads to analy-
sis of the act in terms of its genesis in the context of the subject's life-history.
Because of these features of horizon-analysis, the notion of horizon adds signif-
icantly to the basic Husserlian theory of intentionality we have been discussing.
The present chapter, as a preliminary to the analyses of meaning and in-
tention that we shall subsequently offer, is devoted to developing Husserl's
account of an act's horizon, its relation to background experiences and be-
liefs, and its structure.

1. MEANING AND POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE: THE TURN TO

HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON

1.1. The "Indeterminacy" in Intentions of Transcendent Objects

Typically, act-contexts such as 'Smith believes that _ _ ' or 'Smith sees
227
228 CHAPTER V

_ _ ' (in the phenomenological, or experiential, sense of 'sees') are inten-

sional: substitutivity of idel}tity may fail for terms in act-contexts. Specifi-
cally, to infer 'Smith sees the meanest man in Waycross, Georgia, blocking the
doorway of the cafe' from 'Smith sees the deputy sheriff of Ware County
blocking the doorway of the cafe', we would need the identity of not only
the referents but also the meanings of 'the meanest man in Waycross, Georgia'
and 'the deputy .sheriff of Ware County'. (To simplify, we delete 'blocking
the doorway of the cafe', losing a little color but damping the tendency here
to interpret the perception as propositional.) The description of an act in
intentional idiom is in this way relative to certain meanings. This relativity
we explained by appeal to Husserl's theory of intentionality: the intention
attributed an act in an act-sentence is mediated by a noema, which includes
the appropriate meaning or Sinn prescribing the object "as" .the subject
intends it. The Sinn specifies - whether explicitly or by implication - only a
limited aspect or set of properties of the object intended. A different Sinn
related to the same object will specify different properties. And so substitu-
tivity of identity may fail, because descriptions with different Sinne (even if
they prescribe the same object) express different conceptions and specify
different aspects under which the object is said to be intended. 1
Were everything about an object specified by each Sinn related to it, sub-
stitutivity would not fail, since all Sinne related to the same object would
then be analytically eqUivalent. But certain objects, Husserl holds, are tran-
scendent (of human experience) in the sense that we can never have adequate,
i.e., complete, evidence of them, we can never know everything about them.
It follows that any Sinn through which we can intend a transcendent object
can only specify a limited aspect or set of properties of the object. Husserl
says of the perception of physical things (note that 'Ding' always means
physical or material thing in Husserl's writings):

A certain inadequacy belongs ... to thing-perception.... A thing [Ding] can in principle

be given only "in one aspect" ["einseitig": "one-sidedly"], and that means not merely
incompletely or imperfectly in some arbitrary sense but precisely in the sense that pre-
sentation through perspective [Abschattung] prescribes .... To be in this way imperfect
... is part of the ineradicable essence of the correlation of "thing" and thing-perception.
(Ideas, §44, pp. 100-101.)

Thus, a Sinn related to a transcendent object - for example, the Sinn of an

act of perception - does not completely characterize the object. What the
Sinn prescribes of the object leaves the object incompletely determined; the
Sinn simply leaves open whether its object has certain properties or (as Husserl
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 229

says) "determinations". (We shall see, though, that what remains open may
be constrained, not only by the predicate·senses explicitly included in the
act's Sinn, but also by those parts of the subject's background conceptual
scheme to which the Sinn appeals, say, the subject's basic theory or concep-
tion of physical objects.)
Physical objects, persons, and the natural world as a whole are transcen-
dent, Husserl holds (Ideas, §§44, 47,53), so Sinne that relate to them charac-
terize them incompletely. But we do intend these objects as transcendent, as
complete objects having further properties not specified by the Sinn through
which they are intended in a particular act. When we perceive a physical
object, for example, we perceive it as having more to it than is directly given
in sensory "intuition" at that moment. The properties that are so given, what
Husser! sometimes calls the "genuinely" (eigentlich) perceived properties of
the object, are themselves taken as only a "side" or "aspect" of the perceived
object, which is itself intended as having further properties or aspects not
"genuinely" perceived. "The 'and so forth''', Hussed says, "is an ... abso-
lutely indispensable element [Moment] in the thing-noema" (Ideas, § 149,
p. 367). Consequently, that there is more to a physical object than what is
given in an act is itself given in the act, prescribed by its Sinn. Hussed says:

... As a consciousness, every cogito is indeed ... an intending of its intended [Meinung
seines Gemeinten: literally, 'a meaning of its meant'], but ... , at any moment, this
something intended [dieses Vermeinte] is more - something intended [Vermeintes]
with something more - than what is "explicitly" intended [Gemeintes] at that moment.
... This intending-beyond-itself [Uber-sich-hinaus-meinen], which is inherent in any
consciousness, must be considered an essential element [Moment] of it. (eM, §20,
p. 46; with trans. changes.)

An act's "intending beyond" what its Sinn "explicitly" prescribes, Husserl

says, indicates "another fundamental trait of intentionality": each act is
related to a "horizon" of other possible acts, whose Sinne would tend to
complete what is left open or indeterminate about the object in a given inten-
tion of it (CM, § 19). To explicate the intentionality of an act, he says, one
must not merely consider the act and its Sinn; one must also consider the
relation of the act to its horizon and the relation of its Sinn to the Sinne of
the acts that make up this horizon (see CM, §20).

1.2. Husserl's Notions of Object-Horizon, Act-Horizon, and Manifold

The notion of "horizon" is the focus of the present chapter; the purpose of
this section is merely to introduce it and some related notions. We shall do
230 CHAPTER V

so in terms of a concrete example of seeing a physical individual, Husserl's

own paradigm in his discussions of horizon (see esp. eM, § § 17-20); and
we shall generally stay with this paradigm throughout the chapter. Although
we reserve most of the textual documentation, as well as the details, for Parts
2-4, the following passage from Ideas will serve as a helpful introduction.
Husserl writes:
A thing [Ding) can in principle be given only "in one aspect", and that means ... in-
completely .... A thing is necessarily given in mere "ways of appearing"; and necessarily
there is thereby a nucleus of "what is actually presented" ["wirklich Dargestellten")
surrounded through apprehension [auffassungsmiissig) by a horizon of ungenuine
[uneigentlich) "co-given ness" and more or less vague indeterminacy. And the sense
[Sinn) of this indeterminacy is ... predelineated through the general sense of the per-
ceived thing in general and as such, or through the general essence of this type of percep-
tion that we call thing-perception. The indeterminacy necessarily means determinability
of a strictly prescribed style. It points forward to possible manifolds of perception
[Wahrnehmungsmannigfaltigkeiten) that, continuously merging with one another, close
together into a unity of perception in which the continuously enduring thing in ever new
series of perspectives shows again and again new "aspects" ["Seiten") (or returns to
old ones) .... In principle a horizon of determinable indeterminacy always remains,
however far we may proceed in experience [Erfahrung) . ... (§44, pp. 100-101.)

Suppose I see a tree some distance away. I see a fruit tree, let us say, but
I cannot see precisely what kind of fruit is hanging from it. In what respects
is the object of my perception determined by the Sinn of my perception, and
what is left open by the Sinn? The color and shape of the tree as apparent
from my particular perspective, and perhaps something of its texture, are
"genuinely" perceived; these visual properties of the front side of the tree are
thus prescribed by "filled" predicate-senses in my act's Sinn. But, of course,
I perceive the object as much more than this. In particular, let us suppose, I
perceive it as a citrus tree in full fruit, and I also perceive - though with a low
degree of attention - something of the object's environment, say, other trees
around it in an orchard. These "determinations" of the tree, along with the
more specific visual characteristics "genuinely" perceived of its front side,
are, let us say (picking up on Husserl's terminology in the passage we quoted
from Cartesian Meditations), "explicitly" intended of the object as it is given
in this act; and let us say that the predicate-senses that prescribe these prop-
erties make up the "explicit" content of the act's Sinn. The Sinn of the act
thus leaves open, it does not specify, whether the tree is or is not a grapefruit
tree, or whether it is or is not an orange tree, or whether it is either a grape-
fruit or an orange tree or is neither. It also leaves unspecified the precise
nature of the tree's back side (whether, for example, it has more or less fruit
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 231

on that side) and it leaves open whether the tree may harbor living creatures
among its branches. Importantly, though, not everything about these further
aspects of the tree I see goes unprescribed by the Sinn of my current percep-
tion. Husserl says, in the passage from Ideas, that the possibilities left open
are "predelineated" by the "general sense" of what is perceived. Here, for
example, I perceive the object as a citrus tree, and the sense "is a citrus tree"
"implies" much about the object. (What is "implied" here need not be strictly
a logical implication of this sense alone but may also draw upon various items
of background knowledge and belief, some of which are empirical; see Part
3 below.) The "explicit" Sinn of my act prescribes by "implication" (with
help from the appropriate background items) that the tree is a fruit tree and
not a conifer; that it has a back side containing leaves and fruit like those on
its front side, but that it will not hold a sprouting watermelon; that among
its branches may be found any of the various arboreal creatures indigenous
to Southern California, but that I shall not fmd there a stranded platypus;
and, indeed, that the tree I see has many further "determinations" not spec-
ified at all in my current perception. So the Sinn of my perception prescribes
- if not "explicitly", then by "implication" - many further properties of
the object, though these further prescriptions are for the most part quite
general, or non-specific, and leave open various possibilities for their particular
realization. In this way, Husserl says, my act of perception "intends beyond"
itself, it "points forward" to other possible perceptions whose Sinne would
characterize the object more closely and in further respects.
The possibilities that the Sinn of an act leaves open - what remains in-
determinate - about the object as intended in the act (here including, for
instance, the possibility that it is a grapefruit tree), Husserl calls the horizon
of the object as it is intended. 2 This horizon we may think of as the circum-
scribed limits of the object's further characterization and of its "constitu-
tion" in consciousness. 3 Corresponding to this horizon of the object as given
in my perception, to what the Sinn of the act leaves open or unspecified
about the object, is the set of possible perceptions that would, if they oc-
curred, tend to complete my perceptual determination of the object. Husserl
says, in the passage we quoted above, that "the indeterminacy ... points
forward to possible manifolds of perception ... in which the continuously
enduring thing ... shows again and again new 'aspects' .... " These possible
perceptions include, for instance, perceptions of the object's back side that
expand on the original perception, and perceptions in which I take a closer
look at its front side. These perceptions are co-directed with the original, and
their Sinne include predicate-senses that tend to complete the incomplete
232 CHAPTER V

characterization of the object by the predicate-senses in the Sinn of the

original perception. This set of possible perceptions Husserl later calls the
horizon of the act, or experience (Erlebnis), of perception (eM, § 19). Unless
otherwise specified, we shall use the term 'horizon' to mean this horizon of
possible acts associated with a given act, rather than the corresponding horizon
of possible "determinations" of the object intended in the act. When it is
necessary to distinguish the two notions, we shall call them "act-horizon"
and "object-horizon", respectively.
Husserl's discussion of horizon is almost exclusively addressed to the
horizon of an act of perception. But his definition of an act's horizon seems
intended to be general, applying not only to perceptions but to acts of any
thetic character (imagination, judgment, or whatever). It seems also that an
act's horizon is not intended to include only possible perceptions, though
Husserl's examples mention only perceptions. Thus, we take the following as
Husserl's general defmition of horizon: the horizon of an act is the set of
possible acts whose Sinne are co-related with and compatible in content with,
but also more "determinate" in content than, the Sinn of the given act (cf.
eM, § § 19-20). (N.b. This definition still applies only to "defmite" inten-
tions, however. We generalize it further in Part 5 below.)
Closely re~ated to an act's horizon is what Husserl calls its "manifold"
(Mannigfaltigkeit). The manifold of an act is the set of possible acts co-
directed with the act, that is, acts that are directed toward the same object
as the given act (FTL, App. II, §2a) and whose Sinne are thus co-related with
the Sinn of that act.4 The theme that unites the manifold is the "identity"
of the object correlated with it, and this theme will loom large in Chapter
VIII, on individuation. The notions of manifold and act-horizon are constantly
intertwined in Husserl's writings (cf. Ideas, §44, quoted above). The differ-
ence between them, as defined, is that Sinne of acts in the horizon, but not
the manifold, must characterize the object more closely than does the original
act's Sinn. But, as we shall see - although Husserl seems never to have said as
much - the developed notions effectively merge.
The terms 'horizon' and 'manifold' seem to have a fair amount of flexibility
in Husserl's usage. Frequently Husserl speaks of "horizons" and "manifolds",
covering smaller fragments of the overall horizon or manifold we defmed.
We shall be concerned with an act's overall horizon and overall manifold, and
we shall assume (with textual support supplied below) that they are the same.
In Cartesian Meditations (§ § 19-20), Husserl says that the acts that make
up an act's horizon are "implicit" in that act, and he also says that analysis
of an act's horizon uncovers the act's "implicit Sinn", or the Sinn "m~ant
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 233

implicitly" in the act. Although Husserl does not defme the notion of "im-
plicit Sinn", it seems reasonable to suppose that, in the same sense in which
he considers the acts in the horizon of a given act to be implicit in that act,
he would also consider the Sinne of the acts in this horizon to be implicit in
the Sinn of the given act. Accordingly, we shall say that the senses in the
Sinn of an act itself make up the act's "explicit Sinn", and that the senses
in the Sinne of the acts in the act's horizon make up that act's "implicit
Sinn".
Husserl's accounts of horizon (act- and object-horizon) are couched in
terms of possible entities (possible acts and possibilities regarding the object,
which itself need not be actual). As we consider in Chapter VI, Husserl's
commitment to a metaphysics of possibilia is unclear; he might well prefer
that talk of possible entities be ultimately eliminated in terms of correspond-
ing noematic entities. However, the idiom of possibilia is suggestive, and we
shall use it regularly until we offer our final appraisal of Husserl's account of
horizon-analysis.

1.3. Horizon-Analysis as a New Method of Phenomenological Analysis

The notion of horizon (with the notion of manifold) first emerges seriously
in Ideas (1913). It recurs in Husserl's later works, in Formal and Transcen-
dental Logic (1929), Cartesian Meditations (1931), Experience and Judgment
(1948, posthumous), and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology (1954, posthumous). Probably its most detailed development
per se occurs in Cartesian Meditations. But though the notion of horizon is
already present in early Husserl, his conception of its significance apparently
evolved.
Throughout Husserl's writings, as already in Ideas, the horizon of an act
is treated (as is the manifold) as a phenomenological given accompanying the
act and appropriate for phenomenological study. But in Husserl's later works,
especially Formal and Transcendental Logic (cf. §94, pp. 234-35; and App.
II) and Cartesian Meditations (§ § 18ff), the analysis of an act's horizon is
considered a kind of "explication" of the act's Sinn. In the latter work, after
characterizing an act's horizon as consisting of further "potentialities of con-
sciousness" (§19, p. 44), Husserl says:

[The] peculiar attainment [of intentional ''analysis''] as "intentional" is an uncovering

of the potentilliities "implicit" in actualities of consciousness, an uncovering that brings
about on the noematic side an "explication" [Auslegung] , a ''becoming distinct" and
perhaps a "clarification" of what is consciously meant [Vermeinten] , of the objective
Sinn .... (§ 20, p. 46; with trans. changes.)
234 CHAPTER V

Although Husserl rumself does not say so, horizon-analysis - as explication

of an act's noematic Sinn - might be thought of as providing an alternative,
or at least a supplement, to the method of epoche and reflection that Husserl
earlier described for becoming acquainted with noemata. For to spell out just
which acts are compatible with the noematic Sinn of a given act is to under-
stand what delimitations that Sinn places on the possible course of further
experience; and this is one way of marking off the meaningful content of the
act and its noema.
However, the results of horizon-analysis seem for Husserl not simply to
duplicate those of noematic reflection but to go beyond them. By including
horizon-analysis, Husserl says, "intentional analysis" becomes "totally
different from analysis in the usual and natural sense" (eM, §20, p. 46; cf.
pp. 47-48). Our discussion, in Chapter IV, of the structure of an act's noe-
matic Sinn can perhaps serve as an example of what Husserl means by analysis
"in the usual sense". There we considered the Sinn of an act at a particular
moment, and we "analyzed" it, by distinguishing the various components
making up the Sinn and by discussing their relationship to one another and
the role of each in determining the intentionality of the act. When we con-
sider an act's horizon, however, we do more than analyze that act in terms
of its components (and the components of its noema); we consider also its
relation to those possible, or "potential", acts that make up its horizon, and
the relation of its Sinn to the Sinne of these possible acts. Horizon-analysis
then brings into the phenomenological "analysis" of intention not only the
"explicit" Sinn of an act but also its "implicit" Sinn - the Sinne of the acts
in its horizon, by virtue of which the object is "constituted" as one object
having various possible further "determinations". Continuing two pages later
in Cartesian Meditations Husserl says:
[Intentional analysis] reaches out beyond the isolated experiences [Erlebnisse] that are
to be analyzed. By explicating their correlative horizons, it brings ... into the thematic
field of experiences that function "constitutively" for the objective Sinn of the cogita-
tum in question ... not only the actual but also the potential experiences which, as
potential, are "implicit" and "predelineated" in the sense-effecting [sinnleistenden]
intentionality of the actual experiences and which, when discovered, have the evident
character of experiences that explicate the impliCit Sinn. (P. 48; with trans. changes.)

And then a few lines further Husserl concludes: "The horizon structure be-
longing to every intentionality thus prescribes for phenomenological analysis
and description methods of a totally new kind".
Husserl's assessment of the role and importance of horizon-analysis as a
new method of phenomenological analysis is part and parcel of his increasing
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 235

stress on the ego's role in the constitution of objects. This stress is particularly
clear in Cartesian Meditations, §20, where Husserl observes that "intentional
analysis" leads from analysis of noematic Sinn to analysis of horizon (the
"peculiar attainment" of intentional analysis) and then to the role of the
ego who could "perform" the acts in the horizon (without horizon-analysis,
Husserl says, "the intentionality ... would remain 'anonymous' "). The role
of the ego that most interests Husserl here reflects his increasing emphasis on
"transcendental idealism". In § § 21 and 22 he effectively treats what Kant,
the godfather of Husserl's transcendental idealism, called "categories of the
understanding" and perhaps, in a way, conceived as phenomenological struc-
ture inherent in the ego or its functioning. Specifically, Hussed emphasizes
the role in intention of a priori principles governing the constitution of ob-
jects of various types, "constitutive principles" functioning in the ego so as,
in effect, to impose boundary conditions on the possible experiences that can
belong to the horizon of an act directed toward an object of the requisite
type (cf. El, §90, on "a priori 'conditions of possible experiences'''; also
Ideas, § §142---44, 149-50). For Husserl, the analysis of an act's horizon
lays out or "unfolds" the Sinne of these possible experiences and hence
exposes the "transcendental" principles presupposed by the Sinn of the act,
by virtue of which its object is constituted as belonging to a specific ontologi-
cal category.
Transcendental idealism is not a central concern of ours in this book,
however. But horizon-analysis brings the ego into intentional analysis in
another way that bears greatly on our own assessment of its importance. We
shall see that the implicit Sinne correlated with an act's horizon are not
simply analytically tied to the act's explicit Sinn; rather, these implicit Sinne
are fIXed by the explicit Sinn only in conjunction with certain background
beliefs (or their Sinne) held by the subject of the act. Some of these beliefs
will presumably be universally held "constitutive principles" of the sort
Husserl emphasizes in Cartesian Meditations; but others, as Hussed himself
argues (see, e.g., El, §83a), have their foundation in the particular experiences
of the subject of the act. As horizon-analysis unfolds an act's impliCit Sinne
it thus displays the contribution that is made to the intention by its being
present in the context of a particular subject's other experiences and beliefs.
It is this connection between horizon, Sinn, and ego that we shall stress, and
we shall argue for it in Part 3 below. Principally, then, we shall view horizon-
analysis as a particular way of explicating Sinn, or noematic meaning, and this
view will provide a direct link to our later discussion of meaning and intention
in possible-worlds theory and possible-worlds semantics (in Chapters VI and
236 CHAPTER V

Vll). But we shall also see that horizon-analysis is not "pure" meaning-analysis,
as its appeal to background presuppositions of an intention introduces a new,
"pragmatic" twist (see Chapter VI, Section 1.4, below).

2. HUSSERL'S CONCEPTION OF HORIZON

2.1. Early Notions of Object-Horizon: 'Ideas' (1913)

The notion of horizon (Horizont) emerges in full force only relatively late
in Husserl's writings, and it undergoes some notable development over the
course of those writings. Our primary interest is in the developed notion of
the horizon of possible experiences associated with an act, which merges with
the notion of the manifold (Mannigfaltigkeit) of possible acts associated with
the act. In this section, we trace its beginnings in Ideas.
The first occurrence of the term 'horizon' in Husserl's writings is appar-
ently early in Ideas, where it is associated with a notion rather different from
that we defined in Section 1.2. In § 27 the horizon of an object of perception
(relative to a given perception of it) is that which is given in the perception
as "surrounding" what is "actually" perceived:
That which is actually [aktuell) perceived, that which is more or less clearly co-present
[Mitgegenwartige) and determined (or at least to some extent determined) is partly
permeated, partly surrounded, by a dimly given [dunkel bewussten] horizon ofindeter-
minate reality. I can, with varying success, pierce it with rays of the illuminating glance
[Blickes] of attention [Aufmerksamkeit). (Ideas, § 27, p. 58.)

What is in this sense "actually" perceived is not specifically what is sensuously

given or "intuitively filled", but what is primarily attended to, or given atten-
tively.s So, as we can glean from the passage surrounding the quotation, what
belongs in the perceptual horizon of the object is that which the subject is
aware of inattentively. Such items need not be "directly in my field of per-
ception" (p. 58). Thus, the horizon should typically include the back side of
the object perceived; furthermore, Husserl says (pp. 58-59), it may include
things ''behind my back", and it ultimately extends to include my whole
"world" (Welt) or "environment" (Umwelt) - as very "indeterminate" - and
so is "infinite". That which is given inattentively Husserl calls "background"
(Hintergrund) (Ideas, §35), so we may generally think of the horizon given
in an act as that which is given in the "background" in the act. Specifically,
this "background" is the background of attention, not the visual background
in the field of vision (though objects seen in the background in that sense
would normally also be given in the background of attention).
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 237

Somewhat later in Ideas, in §§81-83, HusserI introduces what may at

first seem another sort of "horizon", a horizon of an act. Every act or experi-
ence (Erlebnis) , he says (§81, p. 198), has a "temporal horizon" insofar as
it belongs to a particular "stream of experience" ("Erlebnisstrom") that is
ordered by phenomenological time (the temporal ordering of the experiences
in a stream of experience, as internally given, without reference to an external
world). (Cf. Cartesian Meditations, § 18, p. 43.) This horizon of an act he
calls a "horizon of experiences (Erlebnissen)" (§82, p. 200). It includes those
experiences that precede and succeed the act in phenomenological time,
extending open-endedly into past and future.
But this notion of a horizon of experiences seems also to be defmed in
terms of attention. It is as an object of phenomenological or transcendental
reflection, as "possible givenness of reflective (immanent) perception", that
an act has such a horizon of experiences, HusserI says (p. 200). So attentive-
ness is also relevant here:

... An experience [Erlebnis) that has become the object of an ego-glance [lchblickes],
and thus has the mode of the looked at [Erblickten) , has its horizon of experiences that
are not looked at; that which is grasped in the mode of "attention" [''Aufmerksam·
keit") . .. has a horizon of background inattention .... (Ideas, § 83, p. 201. A footnote
on p. 202 compares "horizon" with "background" as discussed in § 35.)

Thus, just as, on Husserl's early account, the horizon of an object of percep-
tion as perceived is that which in the perception is given inattentively as
background surrounding the object (typically) in space, so this horizon of an
act as an object of reflection - its temporal horizon of experiences - is that
which in the reflection is given inattentively as background surrounding the
act in phenomenological time, in the stream of experience.
To generalize this early notion of horizon, we might define the horizon
of an object as given in an act to be that which in the act is given inatten-
tively, "surrounding" that which is given attentively or in the focus of atten-
tion. The horizon of an object is then relative to the act in which the object
is intended and to its noematic structure, indeed, to its noematic Sinn. The
degree or mode of attention with which something is given in an act is a
special act "character" or "way of givenness" and so is reflected in the
"Gegebenheitsweise"-component of the act's noema (cf. Chapter III, Section
2.4, above; and Ideas, §92). Those components of the act's Sinn to which
the "Gegebenheitsweise"-component "attentively" is not attached make up,
then, what we might call the horizon-portion of the Sinn.
This early notion of an object's horizon is clearly quite different from that
238 CHAPTER V

we defined in Section 1.2 in terms of "indeterminacy", drawing on Ideas,

§44. We might call these sorts of horizon respectively a "horizon of inatten-
tion" and a "horizon of indeterminacy". It is the latter notion of horizon
that is of greater interest for our purposes.
There is another passage in Ideas that describes an object's horizon of in-
determinacy. The world about the subject, we noted, is given - inattentively
- as indeterminate horizon about an object of perception (Ideas, § 27, p. 59).
Developing this point later, in a section entitled 'The Natural World as Corre-
late of Consciousness', Husserl says:

... Whatever exists in reality, but is not yet actually [aktuell] experienced [erfahren] ,
can come to givenness, and ... then that means [besagt] it belongs to the indeterminate
but determinable horizon of my current actuality of experience [Erfahrungsaktualitiit].
But this horizon is the correlate of the components of indeterminacy that essentially
attach to the thing-experiences themselves, and these leave open - always essentially -
possibilities of filling out, which are by no means arbitrary, but rather predelineated
[vorgezeichnete] according to their essential type, motivated. All actual [aktuelle]
experience points beyond itself to possible experiences, which themselves again point to
new possible experiences, and so in infinitum. (Ideas, §47, p. 112.)

In this passage Husserl uses 'aktuell' and 'Aktualitlit' not in reference to

"modes of attention", the use we noted earlier, but rather in distinguishing
the actual from the possible or potential. 6 The passage, like that quoted from
§44 of Ideas, is a clear precursor of Husserl's later characterization of an act's
horizon. Here, the real world, indeterminate as intended, is given as horizon
in my current perception or experience (Erfahrung). And "this horizon is
the correlate of the components of indeterminacy that essentially attach to
the thing-experiences", that is, the correlate of the indeterminacy of the
predicate-senses in the Sinn of such a current perception. (Note that this
clause entails that it is "object-horizon" rather than "act-horizon" that
Husserl is describing in the passage.) This horizon is then just the extended
"object-horizon" that corresponds to the perception's "act-horizon" as
described in the later Cartesian Meditations: the possible perceptions in the
act-horizon of a perception, as they progressively characterize the object of
perception, would in principle ultimately present anything in the world about
the object. Husserl even says the possibilities left open are "pre delineated"
by the "components of indeterminacy", just as he later says the acts in the
horizon of an act are predelineated by those components of indeterminacy;
and the pre delineation itself indicates "possible experiences" to which the
"actual experience points". (The ingredients of the notion of act-horizon are
also amply described in Ideas, § § 140-53.)
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 239

Now, it would surely be incorrect to hold that everything in such a horizon

of the object, everything that the current perception leaves indeterminate
about the object, is in fact given in the perception, even with lowest degree
of attention. Therefore, we should assume here a separate notion of horizon,
tied not to the background of attention but to what is indeterminate about
the object as intended. Apparently, then, the term 'horizon' has some flexi-
bility and looseness in Ideas, denoting at least two different, though not
totally unrelated, things. In Husserl's later writings, however, the term has a
quite well-fixed sense. Let us turn to Husserl's mature notion of horizon.

2.2. The Horizon of Possible Experiences Associated with an Act: 'Cartesian

Meditations' (1931)
Cartesian Meditations gives a mature - and apparently the most defmitive -
characterization of the horizon of an act as Hussed uses the notion through-
out his later works:

Every experience [Erlebnis) has an experience "horizon" ... - an intentional horizon

of reference to potentialities of consciousness that belong to the experience itself. For
example, there belongs to every external perception its reference from the "genuinely
[eigentlich I perceived" sides of the object of perception to the "co-intended" [mit-
gemeinten) sides - not yet perceived, but only anticipated .... Furthermore, the per-
ception has horizons made up of other possibilities of perception, as perceptions that we
could have, if we actively directed the course of perception otherwise: if, for example,
we turned our eyes that way instead of this, or if we were to step forward or to one side,
and so forth. (eM, § 19, p. 44; with trans. changes.) 7

This is the notion of horizon that is our concern: every act has a horizon that
consists of various possible acts (in Husserl's example, perceptions) in which
the object of the given act would be intended under various further aspects
or conceptions. 8
An act's horizon in this sense can also be construed as the "horizon" of
the act itself taken as object of internal reflection: the quoted passage is
introduced a few lines earlier by way of the observation that "any cogito
... that relates to the world ... not only intends something worldly but is
itself intended in the consciousness of internal time" (p. 44).9 However, we
may, like Hussed, omit any further reference to any particular internal reflec-
tion on the act, for the horizon will include what any careful reflection would
find.
Husserl shortly goes on to say, "The horizons are 'predelineated' poten-
tialities" (p. 45). What Husserl has in mind, as we shall see in Part 3, is that an
act's horizon is fIXed by specific components of the act's Sinn (together with
240 CHAPTER V

parts of the subject's background conceptual scheme or belief-system): it is

fixed by the "indeterminacy" of the predicate-senses in the Sinn, by what
they do and do not leave open. (The X-component in the Sinn must playa
role too, since acts in the horizon of an act are co-directed with that act.)
Specifically, a perceptual act's horizon includes those possible perceptions
that would present the object of the given act as further characterized, with
details filled in about (say) those sides of the object that are hidden from
view in the original act.
Thus, Hussed's mature notion of an act's horizon is no longer defined in
terms of what is intended inattentively - either in the act itself or in a poten-
tial reflection on the act - but in terms of what is left open, or indeterminate,
in a given intention. Hussed says: "This leaving open, prior to further deter-
minings (which perhaps never take place), is an element [Moment] included
in the given consciousness itself; it is precisely what makes up the 'horizon'"
(p. 45; with trans. changes).

2.3. Act-Horizon and Object-Horizon

Every act has a horizon of associated possible experiences. This horizon
consists of possible acts that could be directed to the object of the original
act, specifically, acts whose Sinne would prescribe of that same object further
properties, or "determinations", compatible with those already prescribed by
the Sinn of the original act. The totality of these possible acts associated with
an act - those co-directed and compatible with it, but more determinate in
what their Sinne prescribe of the object - we call the act-horizon of the given
act.
Correlated with the act-horizon associated with a given act, as we have
already observed, is a horizon of possible further "determinations" of the
act's object, those properties or "determinations" prescribed of the object by
the Sinne of the possible acts in the act-horizon. This horizon thus comprises
all the properties that provide possible completions or closer determinations
of the object in accordance with what the Sinn of the original act leaves open
or indeterminate about it. We call this horizon the object-horizon associated
with a given act directed toward a particular object.
These notions of act-horizon and object-horizon are clear correlates of
each other: the act-horizon associated with an act of intending a particular
object just consists of those various possible acts in which the object would
be presented as having those possible "determinations" included in the object-
horizon. Indeed, Hussed sometimes slips back and forth between the two
notions in his own discussions of horizon (cf. EJ, §8; Crisis, §47). But it is
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 241

apparently act-horizon that is the basic notion of horizon used throughout

Husserl's later writings (cf. CM, §§19-21;FTL, App. II, §2;EJ, §§25,33,
83; Crisis, § §45-57), and it will also be the focus of our attention. 10
The notion of object-horizon, as correlated with act-horizon, will playa
convenient role in our later comparison of Husserl's account of horizon-
analysis with recent analyses of meaning in terms of possible worlds (in
Chapter VI) and with a possible-worlds explication of intentionality that we
shall develop out of that comparison (in Chapter VII). From what we have
said above, the object-horizon associated with an act can be considered to
be the set of aspects that an object could have given that it has the aspects
prescribed of it by the predicate-senses in the act's Sinn - where an "aspect"
is taken to be any property, simple, complex, or relational. The object-horizon
thus consists of those "possibilities" concerning the object and its relationship
to its surroundings that are compatible with a given intention of it. Alterna-
tively, with but a slight shift in focus, an act's object-horizon can be' explic-
ated as the set of possible situations, ultimately possible worlds, in which
those possibilities concerning the intended object would be realized. It is this
latter alternative that we shall ultimately develop as a bridge to the use of
possible worlds in the analysis of meaning and intention.

2.4. The Central Role of Perception in Horizon

It is the perceptual horizon of an act, the possible perceptions in an act's
horizon, that gets the lion's share of Husserl's attention. Nonetheless, Husserl
does seem to think of the horizon as extending beyond the perceptual. There
is in HusserI good reason why he should have focused on the perceptual
horizon and yet conceived the overall horizon more broadly.
For Hussed, the world is "constituted" in steps or levels, as it were, the
most basic of which is the perceptual. Our sense of the world - our basic
sense or conception or theory of the transcendent objects about us - is built
up in layers. Late in Cartesian Meditations Husserl writes:
Constitution of "worlds" of any kind whatever ... is subject to the law of "oriented"
constitution, a constitution that presupposes at various levels ... something "primor-
dially" and something "secondarily" constituted. At each of the levels in question, the
primordial enters, with a new stratum of sense, into the secondarily constituted world;
and this occurs in such a fashion that the primordial becomes the central member, in
accordance with orientational modes of givenness. The secondarily constituted, as a
"world", is necessarily given as a horizon of being that is accessible from the primordial
and is discoverable in a particular order. (eM, §58, pp. 133-34.)

Now, the lowest or most basic "stratum" of the sense of objects in the
242 CHAPTER V

external world is that of the perceptual, of an object merely as having sensory

qualities (shape, color, etc.). At the end of Ideas, in § 149, Husserl describes a
physical object, or "material thing", as "constituted" most basically as "res
temporalis", as an entity in time; next as "res extensa", as an entity with
spatial attributes (location, shape, spatial relations to other objects) and also
(cf..§ 150) sensory qualities; and then as "res materialis", as an entity with
"substantial unity" and entering into "causal connections". As res extensa, a
thing is a "spatial form merely filled out with 'sensory' qualities - lacking
every determination of 'substantiality' and 'causality'" (§ 150, p. 370; cf. EJ,
§64b, on the lowest level of real objects as sensory).l1 These levels of "con-
stitution" are "strata" of sensee in the complex sense "material thing":
Husserl stresses that these distinctions of strata concern "the thing-noema".
In these levels of sense, "visual things" are constituted (§ 151, titled 'Strata
of the Constitution of a Thing'). "The [ormation next above [the stratum of
substantial-causal thing] is then the intersubjective identical thing" (§ 151 ,
p. 372). There are higher levels of sense building on intersubjectivity, which
Husserl describes in the fifth of the Cartesian Meditations. There Husserl
describes one's sense of the world as built up in increasingly rich stages that
present the world respectively as, first, one's "primordial sphere of ownness",
i.e., the world as intended with all sense-components stripped away that in
any way implicate the existence of other (transcendental) egos or (psycho-
physical) persons (CM, §44); then the objective, i.e., intersubjective, world
of nature, including psychophysical persons, myself and others (CM, § §48,
55); then the "cultural" world (CM, §58, pp. 132-36), presenting natural
objects as cultural, e.g., as books; next, the "practical" world of people's
"undergoing and doing" (CM, §58, p. 135); and, finally, the cultural, practi-
cal, human "life-world" (Lebenswelt) (CM, §58, pp. 133, 135, 136).
Husserl thus discerns the follOwing stages in the sense of external objects:
objects as "phantoms" or as having only phenomenal qualities, then as having
causal relations and hence as properly physical, then in some cases as having
personal attributes (for Husserl, being "animated" by a transcendental ego),
then as being objective or intersubjectively experienceable and hence properly
objects of nature, and finally as having "cultural" attributes (such as being a
book) and serving in the "life-world".
The priority that "lower" strata of sense have over higher is both genetic
and logical or conceptual. In the genesis of our sense of the external world,
we acquire perceptual concepts of objects first, since perception brings us our
basic or ultimate evidence of external objects and so is "original" conscious-
ness or "experience" (Er[ahrung) of them (cf. FTL, App. II, §2b). And, it
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 243

seems clear, higher strata of sense conceptually presuppose lower strata: an

object's being a cultural artifact such as a book, for instance, presupposes its
being a physical object. (Further, a non-deductive "theoretical" inference
between some levels may be warranted, as from the phenomenal to the physi-
cal or from the physical to other egos; it may even need be present in the
genesis of the higher level. However, to isolate Husserl's view here would be
a major undertaking in itself.)
Of course, perception is not restricted to phenomenal properties of objects.
Insofar as we see books and people as such, "higher-level" predicate-senses
such as those of 'book' and 'person' occur in perceptual Sinne. These are
present in a perception, transferred from above as it were, by virtue of what
Husserl calls "apperception" - a sort of association, which presupposes an
earlier "primal instituting" or initial acquisition of the transferred sense in
the subject's life-history (CM, § §50, 51 ;FTL, App. II, §2b).
We can now understand Husserl's emphasis on perceptual horizon. For the
perceptual part of an act's horizon explicates the basic or "original" parts of
an act's meaning (cf. Ideas, § 153, p. 376). These items include the basic
presuppositions regarding physical objects on which the Sinn is based. And
they would include specific predicate-senses that prescribe spatial and sensory
as well. as temporal attributes of the object intended. (Typically, such items
of sense would themselves appear, however, not in the act's explicit Sinn but
in the Sinne of background beliefs to which the Sinn appeals: see Sections
3.2 and 3.3 below.)
We can also see now why, on Husserl's grounds, the horizon must include
more than the perceptual. The rest would explicate all the higher levels of
sense built upon the perceptual. And some of those senses, the more "theore-
tical" at least, it seems cannot originate in perception alone, with no appeal
to non-perceptual acts of thought. Recall that the "secondarily constituted ...
is ... given as a horizon of being that is accessible from the primordial" (CM,
§58). This would suggest a broader horizon around and developing out of a
central and "primordial" perceptual horizon.
What sort of possible acts should we find in the supra-perceptual parts of
the horizon? They must be acts that present the given object as having various
higher-level, or more theoretical, attributes. These might most naturally be
possible defmite, or de re, judgments (or beliefs) about the object. Then we
fmd propositional acts in the horizon of a direct-object act. Alternatively, if
it is offensive to find propositional acts in the horizon of a direct-object act
(a. merely aesthetic offense, it would seem), we. might propose for the non-
perceptual part of the horizon possible acts of thinking, or conceiving, of
244 CHAPTER V

the object as having various specific theoretical attributes (assuming that

conceiving-as is a genuine direct-object fonn of consciousness).
Be reminded that we have been considering still only the horizon of an act
of seeing an individual, Hussed's paradigm.

2.5. The Maximal Horizon of an Act: An Act's Manifold of Associated Pos-

sible Acts
If we develop fully Hussed's basic notion of the experience-horizon of an act,
we get as maximal horizon what Husserl calls the ''manifold'' associated with
the act. The manifold of an act is the set of all possible acts of consciousness
that are co-directed with the given act. Acts in the manifold thus present the
same object as the given act but under a diversity of conceptions.
This notion of manifold appears in nearly all of Hussed's main works,
almost always expressed in very similar terms. 12 Its first sharp fonnulation
occurs in Ideas, §135. There Husserl first characterizes it noematically, in
terms of "manifolds" of noemata (Siitze), noematic Sinne, and noematic
"nuclei",u all related to the same object; then noetically, as corresponding
manifolds of experiences (Erlebnisse) of the same object:

... Every real thing [Ding) in nature is represented by all the Sinne and Satze through
which it, as so-illld-ta determined and further to be determined, is the correlate of
possible intentional experiences [Erlebnisse), thus, represented by the maIlifolds [Man-
nigfaltigkeiten) of 'Tilled nuclei", or what here signifies the same thing, all possible
"subjective ways of appearing", in which it can be noematically constituted as iden-
tical ....
. . . To every thing and ultimately to the whole thing-world ... there correspond the
manifolds of possible noetic events, the possible experiences [Erlebnisse) of single indi-
viduals and of individuals in community that relate to it, experiences that ... parallel ...
the noematic manifolds just considered .... The unity of the thing stands over against
an infinite ideal manifold of noetic experiences [ErlebniBSe) •.. ,all in agreement in that
they are consciousness of "the same". (pp. 329-30.)

The notion of manifold, like that of horizon, has some looseness in

Husserl's writings, Some Hussed texts (e.g., eM, §20, p. 47) suggest, as does
the passage just cited, a plurality of ''manifolds'' associated with a given act.
But propedy, it seems, an act has one overall manifold characterized as above;
and this is the view that emerges in the fmal sentence of the cited passage.
There are also some passages in which Hussed speaks as though the manifold
of an act directed toward a physical individual includes only possible percep-
tions of the same individual. Early in Ideas, where Hussed's emphasis is on
the nature of perception as empirical consciousness (Erf~hrung), he speaks of
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 245

"manifolds of appearances and perspectives [Erscheinungs- und Abschat-

tungsmannigfaltigkeiten]" (§41, p. 93) and of "manifolds of perception
[Wahrnehmungsmannigfaltigkeiten]" (§42, pp. 97-98) associated with
perceiving a physical individual; and in the passage we quoted earlier from
§44 he says that such an act's horizon of indeterminacy "points forward to
possible manifolds of perception" (p. 100). There is also some emphasis on
acts whose noemata include "filling" in the passage we just cited from Ideas,
§135. In that passage, however, it seems clear that Husserl only singles out
these "intuitional" acts as especially important (for the reasons we noted
in Section 2.4) and that he makes no attempt to restrict the manifold to just
these acts: note that throughout the passage it is possible Erlebnisse, experi-
ences in the most general sense, rather than Erfahnmgen, "intuitional" or
"original" acts of consciousness, that make up an act's manifold. In Formal
and Transcendental Logic Husserl offers a clear characterization of manifold
as we have defined it; in this passage possible empirical acts, or Erfahrungen,
are explicitly treated as only a part of the total manifold of an act:

... Every consciousness has, of essential necessity, its place in a particular manifold
[Mannigfaltigkeitj of consciousness that corresponds to it, a syntactic open infmity of
possible modes of consciousness of the Same - a manifold that has, so to speak, its
teleological center in possible "experience" [Erfahrungj. (App. II, § 2a, pp. 315-16;
with trans. changes.)

The "Erfahrung", or perceptual, portion of an act's manifold Husserl

terms a "horizon of ... evidence" (FTL, p. 316). Although he does not come
out and label the whole manifold a "horizon", it would, nonetheless, be pre-
cisely that, the act's overarching maximal horizon. Indeed, horizon and mani-
fold are tightly intertwined and apparently merged in Cartesian Meditations,
§ §17-22, which is one of Hussed's most detailed and illuminating discus-
sions of the notions. But to clinch this point of interpretation - that the
maximal horizon of an act just is its manifold - we should address certain
surface differences between horizon and manifold.
Horizon and manifold are each defined as a set of possible acts co-directed
with the given act. But while an act's total manifold includes more than per-
ceptions (or Erfahrungen), Husserl's examples of the horizon of acts directed
toward physical individuals seem always to be restricted to perception, citing
only possible perceptions in the horizon of an act of perception. 14 It is im-
portant that this should not be taken as a difference between horizon and
manifold. As we have seen, perception does playa crucial role for Husser! in
the constitution of the physical world. But, while this explains the central
246 CHAPTER V

role of perception in the horizon (and also the manifold), we have also seen
reasons why, for Husser!, the horizon should include more than the percep-
tual. As maximally conceived, both horizon and manifold extend beyond the
perceptual to include acts of any thetic character.
On our basic definition, an act's horizon includes, then, those possible acts
(perceptions and other acts) whose Sinne are not only co-related with the
act's Sinn but are also compatible with and more determinate than it in predi-
cate-content. In contrast, the definition of manifold asks only co-relatedness
of Sinne. However, as we shall see in Section 3.4, Husser! allows that further
experience may to some extent controvert one's current perception of an
object, and for that reason he includes in a perception's horizon possible
perceptions that present the same object "as otherwise" than it is presently
perceived. This relaxes the requirement that the Sinne of acts in the horizon
must be strictly compatible with the Sinn of the act. The only remaining
difference between horizon and manifold is that the Sinne of acts in the
horizon, but not the manifold, must be more determinate in predicate-content
than the act's own Sinn. But this requirement on horizon serves only to elimi-
nate redundancy of content between an act and its horizon, by excluding
from the horizon acts whose Sinne have no predicate-content not already
included in the Sinn of the original act. We may, if we like, also relax this
requirement; then we allow into the horizon of an act the act itself as well as
acts in which the object is less completely "determined" than in it.
We may assume, then, that the maximal horizon of an act merges with its
manifold. What is important is that an act's horizon should consist of just
those acts that are "predelineated", given the "indeterminacy" in the act's
Sinn: it includes those possible acts that intend the same object as the original
act but intend it under varying aspects or conceptions, and the more signifi-
cant of these possible acts intend the same object under more determinate
conceptions. These possible acts making up an act's horizon are just the acts
that make up the manifold associated with the act.

3. HORIZON AND BACKGROUND BELIEFS

3.1. The "Predelineation" of an Act's Horizon

Husser! says that an act's horizon is "predelineated" (vorgezeichnete) in the
act itself. By this he means, we take it, that what is meant "implicitly" in the
act, the set of Sinne associated with the acts in the horizon, is not arbitrary
but fixed or determined by the act's Sinn. The predicate-senses in the Sinn of
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 247

an act, we know, do not prescribe everything about the object of the act, and
much that they do prescribe is non-specific. Still, not everything is left open
with respect to the properties of the object that are ;.mprescribed or not
specifically prescribed. The Sinn of the act establishes what Husser!, in
Experience and Judgment (§21c), calls a "frame of indeterminateness"
(Unbestimmtheitsrahmen) into which the implicit Sinne, and what they
prescribe of the object, must fit. The predicative content of the act's Sinn
thus places limits, or boundary conditions, on the possible acts that are al-
lowed into the act's horizon (and on their Sinne). The horizon is predelineated
in the act, determined by its Sinn, because the horizon comprises only those
possible acts whose Sinne are compatible with, but more determinate in
content than, the Sinn of the act. Husser! formulates this view of predelinea-
tion in Cartesian Meditations, § 19:

The horizons are "pre delineated" [vorgezeichnete) potentialities. We say also: We can
ask any horizon what "lies in it", we can explicate or unfold it, and "uncover" the
potentialities of conscious life at a particular time. Precisely thereby we uncover the
objective Sinn implicitly meant, though never with more than a certain degree of fore-
shadowing, in the actual cogito. This Sinn, the cogitatum qua cogitatum, is never present
to actual consciousness [vorstellig] as a finished datum [Gegebenes] ; it becomes "clari-
fied" only through explication of the given horizon and the new horizons continuously
awakened. The predelineation itself, to be sure, is at all times imperfect [unvollkommen);
yet, with its indeterminateness, it has a structure of determinateness. For example: the
die leaves open a great variety of things pertaining to the unseen faces; yet, it is already
"construed" in advance as a die, in particular as colored, rough, and the like, though
each of these determinations always leaves further particulars open. This leaving open,
prior to actual closer determinings (which perhaps never take place), is an element
[Moment] included in the given consciousness itself; it is precisely what makes up the
"horizon". (P. 45; with trans. changes.)

This notion of pre delineation is the heart of Husser!'s definition of an act's

horizon. It has, in fact, been the basis of our prior discussion.
We should note that Husser! makes two caveats about horizon in the above
passage. First, he says the Sinn meant implicitly in an act is never grasped "as
a fmished datum" but "clarified" through explication of the act's horizon.
Husser! is pointing out that horizon-analysis is an open-ended process; an act's
horizon is never grasped in anything like completeness. Indeed, this open-
endedness should be evident from the definition of horizon. Second, he says,
"The pre delineation itself ... is at all times imperfect", itself having an in-
determinacy. What Husser! means here is less clear. Perhaps he means that
there are acts that do not clearly belong inside or outside an act's horizon;
that would be true, at any rate, since it may not always be unequivocally
248 CHAPTER V

clear, in advance of actual experience, whether a particular potential exper-

ience would or would not fit with what one currently intends of an object.
Husser! may, however, be simply making the point that the Sinn of an act
does not determine or pre delineate anyone unique way of filling in and mak-
ing specific the further aspects of the intended object, but that many alterna-
tive closer determinations of the aspects left open by the Sinn are equally
possible within the limits it imposes on the horizon of the act. (That Hussed
is making this simpler, and obvious, point is perhaps suggested by the example
with which he follows the caveat; cf. also EJ, § 21 c.)
The possible acts, or "potentialities", predelineated in an act "are not
empty possibilities", Hussed says (eM, §19, p. 44). This turns out to be an
important and interesting further restriction on the horizon of an act; for
it means that not every logically possible act, not every act whose Sinn is
logically compatible with the Sinn of the given act, is to be included in the
act's horizon. The acts in the horizon must be "motivated", not "empty",
possibilities. "Experienceability never means an empty logical possibility, but
one motivated [motivierte] in the nexus of experience [Erfahrungszussam-
menhange] ," Hussed says in Ideas, §47 (p. 112). And in §140 he says:
· .. Motivated possibility ... is to be sharply distinguished from empty possibility.
· .. It is an empty possibility that this writing-desk here has on its underside, which
is presently invisible to me, ten legs instead of four, as is actually the case. This
fourness, on the contrary, is a motivated possibility for the definite perception that
I directly perform. (pp. 344-45.)

Hussed's basic notion of "motivation", described in Logical Investiga-

tions, is that of a relation holding between certain of a person's beliefs:
when a belief is held because one holds other beliefs, the latter beliefs are
said to motivate the former.
· . . Certain objects or states of affairs of whose reality someone has actual know-
ledge indicate to him the reality of certain other objects or states of affairs in the
sense that his belief in the reality of the one is experienced (though not at all evi-
dently) as motivating a belief or surmise in the reality of the other. This relation of
'motivation' represents a descriptive unity among our acts of judgement in which
indicating and indicated states of affairs become constituted for the thinker. This
descriptive unity ... amounts to just this: that certain things mayor must exist,
since other things have been given. This 'since', taken as expressing an objective
connection, is the objective correlate of 'motivation' taken as a descriptively pecu-
liar way of combining acts of judgement. ... (LI, I, § 2, pp. 270-71.)

Motivation, as Hussed primarily conceives it, is a weaker relation than logi-

cal entailment; it is a "descriptive" or contingent relation in which "the
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 249

contents of one's judgements are not ... related as premisses are to a con-
clusion" (§3, p. 272). Where a motivation is objectively justified, the moti-
vating belief furnishes a contingent "ground of probability" for the belief it
motivates (§3, p. 272). But generally, motivation arises not by inference but
by association, by "association of ideas" (§4). And association is the process,
usually "passive", of assimilating, for instance, what one currently sees with
a kind of thing one has previously seen and otherwise experienced (cf. eM,
§ §39, 50, 51; EJ, § § 16, 44).
Beliefs motivated by virtue of association will presuppose general beliefs
one has developed about things of the kind being associated. By "associating"
what I now see with what I have seen in my previous perceptions of desks, for
example, I see this object as also being a desk. Given this association, what
"motivates" my belief that this desk has four legs on its unseen underside is
my general belief, based on past experience, that desks usually have four legs.
Thus, the possibility of seeing that the desk actually does have four legs is
"motivated" in that it - unlike the "empty" possibility of seeing that it has
ten legs - is compatible not only with what I currently perceive but also with
such broad beliefs about desks in general. We conclude that, for Husser!, the
requirement that the possible acts in an act's horizon be "motivated" possibi-
lities means that their Sinne must be compatible not simply with the act's
own, "explicit", Sinn but with that Sinn together with the Sinne of certain of
the subject's background beliefs, especially his broad beliefs about the kind of
object specified by that Sinn. Husser! writes in Experience and Judgment:

The object is present from the very first with a character of familiarity; it is already ap-
prehended as an object of a type more or less vaguely determined and already, in some
way, known. In this way the direction of the expectations of what closer inspection will
reveal in the way of properties is predelineated (§ 24a, p. 113; with trans. changes; cf.
also §83a).

Interestingly, then, it seems that for Husserl the "pre delineation" of an

act's horizon is fixed by the act's Sinn only together with certain of the
subject's relevant background beliefs, or their Sinne.

3.2. Horizon and Fundamental Background Beliefs

An act of seeing a tree presupposes the subject's system of general back-
ground beliefs about trees, about what a tree is and what trees are basically
like. For one cannot see a tree (in the experiential sense of 'see') - i.e., one
cannot see an object as being a tree - unless one has such beliefs. These be-
liefs play an essential role in the predelineation of an act's horizon: they
250 CHAPTER V

(or their Sinne) "motivate" the possibilities making up the horizon by pre-
scribing what would and what would not count, for the subject, as further
"determination" of the object as it is given in the present act. In this way
the horizon of a particular act is relative to the subject's fundamental back-
ground beliefs about objects of the kind the intended object is given as.
Of course, one and the same object is given in an act as being of fOore
and less generic kinds: for example, what is given as a tree is also given more
generally as a physical object, and it may be given more specifically as, say,
a citrus tree or as a grapefruit tree (cf. Ideas, § §9ff; EJ, §84). Accordingly,
the background beliefs that contribute to the pre delineation of the horizon
may be more or less general, including the subject's broadest, presumably
a priori, beliefs about physical objects generally, as well as less generic, and
empirical, beliefs that the subject has acquired about objects of more specific
kinds.
The role of the subject's more general beliefs in constraining the possible
acts in an act's horizon comes out in a somewhat convoluted way in § § 21-
22 of Cartesian Meditations, where Husserl sees horizon-analysis as revealing
the "rule-structure of the transcendental ego" (§ 22, p. 53; with trans.
changes). (Cf. Section 1.4 above.) But Hussed is more explicit on this feature
of horizon in Ideas:
Every category of object ... is a general essence that ... prescribes a general rule given
with insight for every particular object of which we become conscious in the manifold of
concrete experiences [Erlebnisse) . ... It prescribes the rule for how an object subsumed
under it is to be brought to full determinacy with respect to sense [Sinn) and way of
givenness [Gegebenheitsweise) .... (§ 142, pp. 349-50.)

That the "rules" (or "rule") of which Hussed is thinking here are of the most
general and basic sort, concerning physical objects generally, becomes clear
at the end of the same paragraph in Ideas:
... The unseen determinations of a thing [Dinges) - this we know with apodictic evi-
dence - are, like thing-determinations in general, necessarily spatial: this gives a lawlike
rule for possible spatial ways of completion of the unseen sides of the appearing thing;
a rule that, fully developed, is called pure geometry. Further determinations of a thing
are the temporal and the material: to them belong new rules for possible (thus not freely
chosen) completions of sense [Sinnes) and ... for possible... appearances. What the
essential content of these may be, to which norms their matters, their noematic (or
noetic) apprehension-characters [Auffassungscharaktere), are subject, is also predeline-
ated a priori. (P. 350; cf. § § 149, 150.)

These rules, then, are part of the concept the subject has of the basic ontol-
ogical category - here, physical object - to which the object, as intended,
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 251

belongs. We may see these rules, or the concept, as unfolded in a number of

fundamental and, at this level of generality, a priori beliefs the subject has
about the given category of object, such as his belief that physical objects are
continuous in space and time. These fundamental beliefs contribute to the
pre delineation of the horizon of any act directed toward a physical object:
they are, Husserl says, "necessary laws which determine what must necessarily
belong to an object in order that it can be an object of this kind" (EI, §90,
p. 352; cf. §§91-93). To intend an object as a physical object is thus (at
least tacitly) to intend it as an object whose possible further "determinations"
are compatible with these beliefs (or their Sinne).
We do not ordinarily intend objects merely as physical objects in the most
general sense, however; rather, we intend them as physical objects of more
specific kinds, as trees, tables, dogs, and the like. Our concepts of these more
specific kinds of physical objects are also backed by fundamental beliefs
about objects of the given kind. And these beliefs - which are, for the most
part, empirical and thus contingent - place further, and more specific, con-
straints on the horizon of an act directed toward an object of such a kind.
Husserl says, in a rather rare instance in which he is not focusing on the more
general and categorical:

The factual world of experience [Erfahrungj is experienced as a typified world. Things

are experienced as trees, bushes, animals, snakes, birds; specifically, as pine, linden, lilac,
dog, viper, swallow, sparrow, and so on .... What is given in experience as a new individ-
ual is fust known in terms of what has been genuinely perceived; it calls to mind the
like (the similar). But what is apprehended according to type also has a horizon of
possible experience [Erfahrung) with corresponding predelineations due to familiarity
[Bekanntheitsvorzeichnungen j and has, therefore, types of attributes not yet experi-
enced but expected. When we see a dog, we immediately anticipate its additional modes
of behavior: its typical way of eating, playing, running, jumping, and so on. We do not
actually see its teeth; but although we have never before seen this dog, we know in
advance how its teeth will look - not in their individual determination but according to
type, inasmuch as we have already had previous and frequent experience of "similar"
animals, of "dogs", that they have such things as "teeth" and of this typical kind ....
We anticipate this, and actual experience mayor may not confum it. (EJ, § 83a, p. 331;
with trans. changes.)

To intend an object as a dog is (at least tacitly) to intend it as an object of

which our fundamental beliefs about dogs are true: what is "anticipated" in
perceiving an animal as a dog, Husserl says in the passage just cited, are further
"modes of behavior" and further "determinations" compatible with such
beliefs. Yet, these beliefs are mostly neither a priori nor analytic (it is only a
contingent fact that, for example, most dogs have fangs); they derive from
252 CHAPTER V

our "previous and frequent experience of 'similar' animals". We build up our

concepts of "empirical generalities" through experience, we learn "through
the previous experiences of dogs" which attributes belong to "dogs in gen-
eral", and such concepts are both revised and enriched as the "progress of
actual experience" increases our knowledge, Husserl says (EJ, §83a, pp.
332-33; cf. § §82-86). It is thus our empirical beliefs about such things as
dogs, trees, and desks that are fundamental to our concepts of these types,
and they accordingly playa fundamental role in our experience of individuals
as being of typical and familiar kinds.
An act's horizon is, then, "predelineated" and "motivated", not only by
the "explicit" Sinn of the act itself, but also by the Sinne of the subject's
relevant background beliefs, both a priori and empirical. The act's "explicit"
Sinn only together with the Sinne of these fundamental background beliefs
provides the "frame of indeterminateness" into which the "implicit" Sinne,
the Sinne of the acts in the horizon, must fit.

3.3 Horizon and Concrete Background Beliefs; Background Meaning

We have argued that the various possible acts in the horizon of an act are
"pre delineated" by the act's own, "explicit" Sinn only together with the
Sinne of background beliefs or knowledge that the subject has about the
general type (or types) under which the object is intended. We have also tried
to show that this view is Husserl's, though it emerges fully only through a
synthesis of his writings in various sources (primarily, Ideas, Cartesian Medita-
tions, and Experience and Judgment). Now, we should also hold that an act's
horizon may be further constrained by the Sinne of still more specific back-
ground beliefs about the object intended - not general beliefs about types
of objects, but concrete beliefs about that particular object itself, such as
beliefs based on what the subject remembers about it. Husserl does not mark
out this point as clearly as he might, but it is suggested in his citing for every
perception "a horizon of the past, as a potentiality of awakenable recollec-
tions" (CM, § 19, p. 44). (This "horizon" is presumably a part of the overall
horizon of the perception: see Section 4.2 below.) And Husserl does, in fact,
make a very similar point in Experience and Judgment:

No apprehension is merely momentary and ephemeral .... This lived experience itself
... may become "forgotten"; but for all this, it in no way disappears without a trace; it
has merely become latent. ... The object, even though it has sunk into passivity, remains
constituted as the one having been determined by the determinations in question ....
This means that, even if the object has been given again originally, that is, perceptually,
and is not only realized in memory, the new cognition has a content of sense essentially
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 253

other than the preceding perceptions. The object is pregiven with a new content of sense;
it is present to consciousness with the horizon . .. of acquired cognitions: the precipita-
tion of the active bestowal of sense, of the preceding allotment of a determination, is
now a component of the sense of apprehension [Auffassungssinnesl inherent in the
perception, even if it is not really explicated anew. But if the explication is renewed, it
then has the character of a ... reactivation of the "knowledge" already acquired. ( § 25,
pp.122-23.)

We shall argue in Chapter VIII that such concrete background knowledge of

the intended object, especially knowledge acquired in previous experience of
the object, is of considerable phenomenological importance for the analysis
of certain definite, or de re, intentions: it is often primarily in virtue of this
background knowledge (or its Sinn), rather than in virtue of the predicative
content of the act's explicit Sinn, that the object is individuated for the
subject.
An example will help us to see some of the various kinds of background
beliefs that may constrain an act's horizon. Suppose, to vary our initial para-
digm, that I am walking up a familiar hill in Vermont enjoying the changing
colors of autumn when I see ahead a tree with vivid scarlet leaves. Then the
explicit Sinn of my current perception includes, in its predicative content,
the senses "is a tree" and "has scarlet leaves (on its front side)". Now it is one
of my fundamental beliefs about trees that, as physical objects, trees are
three-dimensional; and so I believe, tacitly, that this tree has a back side.
Further by "association" with experience of like objects (cf. EJ, § §25, 26;
CM, § §38, 39), I believe that this is a maple tree; and, since I believe (on the
basis of past experience) that the leaves on a given maple change colors at
about the same time, I believe that the leaves on the other side of this tree
will also be vividly colored. These beliefs are part of my general "expecta-
tions" or "anticipations" regarding the object I see (cf. CM, § 19, p. 44;
§ §38, 39; EJ, § §25, 26; §67a, p. 277). They are not, as it were, running
through my mind as a part of my perceptual experience, and the senses "has
a back side", "is a maple tree", and "has vividly colored leaves on its back
side" are not constituents of this perception's explicit Sinn. Yet these beliefs
and their Sinne do serve to constrain the horizon of my perception: the Sinne
of acts in the horizon must be compatible with the Sinne of these beliefs as
well as with the predicate-senses in the perception's own, explicit Sinn. Let
us further suppose now that this hill and I are old acquaintances and that I
know (and so I believe) that this particular tree I now see is the very tree
under which I often sat with Cecelia in the autumn of my sixteenth year. This
belief is based on my memories (and so belongs to my current perception's
254 CHAPTER V

"horizon of the past"). It, too, is no part of my current perceptual experience

(today I am walking with my wife, my past behind me). Yet, we may sup-
pose, it also plays a role in constraining the horizon of my perception: it
helps to individuate for me the tree I see, since I know it well; and so the
Sinne of acts in my perception's horizon must be compatible with the Sinn
of this further background belief as well as with the predicative content in
the perception's own Sinn and with the Sinne of various other background
beliefs.
Constraining the horizon in this example of perception, then, we fmd
certain background beliefs, of varying concreteness, that the subject holds
about the particular object intended in the act: that it is a maple tree, that it
has vividly colored leaves on its back side, and that it is the tree he sat under
with Cecelia. like his general beliefs about trees and indeed about physical
objects, these concrete beliefs about this tree are also presupposed by the
subject in his act of perceiving this tree. And so their Sinne join the act's
own Sinn in prescribing the act's horizon, in determining what is left open
in the act itself.
We should stress that none of the background beliefs that contribute to
the pre delineation of an act's horizon need be "active" phenomena of con-
sciousness in the way the act itself is. The concrete background knowledge
we have of the object itself, acquired in past experience of it, is "latent"
in the act, present in it "in the form of a habitus", Husserl says (EJ, §25,
p. 122). These items of knowledge, as well as our more general and funda-
mental background beliefs, are perhaps best construed as dispostions to judge.
Especially the more general of these may be held more or less firmly, and
more or less "obscurely", and probably more or less consciously (cf. EJ,
§67b). And they may not have been acquired in explicit prior acts of judg-
ment but only subliminally. Indeed, one reason why horizon-analysis is of
special value as a method of phenomenological analysis is that it displays
the effect on an intention of beliefs that are difficult to articulate clearly
and explicitly or to dredge up in reflection alone.
For the same reasons, we should also be careful to distinguish the Sinne of
the various constraining background beliefs from the explicit Sinn of the act
itself. Though it is not a term Husser! uses, we shall say that these Sinne make
up the background meaning (or Sinne) of the act, since they are the Sinne
of related knowledge or beliefs or experiences that form a contextual "back-
ground" against which the given act occurs. They are "potentially", though
not actually, meant in the act, owing to the background knowledge in which
they reside. We might say that the explicit Sinn is "actively" present in the
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 255

act, while the background Sinne are only "passively" present in it (cf. EJ,
§ §23b, 25, 67b; CM, §38).lS
Let us also be clear in separating the notion of background meaning from
the notion of "implicit" meaning that Husserl uses. Implicit meaning, or
"horizon-meaning", fills in the possibilities left open by the act's explicit
meaning together with its background meaning.

3.4. Counter-Evidence within an Act's Horizon

Husserl emphasizes perception and possible perceptual acts in an act's horizon
because perception provides evidence about physical objects. But it is a fact
about perceptual experience that what is given in perception at one time may
be controverted by later perceptions - just as current theory may be revised
or overthrown in the light of further observational, or perceptual, evidence.
The knowledge that, despite what is given in perception, the object one sees
may in fact not be as it appears to be is a basic part of one's fundamental
theory (both at the philosophical and the pre-philosophical level) of physical
objects. Accordingly, this fact is also reflected in the horizon of an act of
perception, though for simplicity we have so far passed over it.
In addition to those possible perceptions of the object that are compatible
with the original act, the horizon includes possible perceptions that determine
the object "as otherwise" than it actually has been, is being, or is expected to
be perceived (CM, § 19, p. 45; cf. also Ideas, § 138, and EI, §67a). Since
perception, though "evidence", is not "apodictic" evidence, it admits the
possibility of other perceptions conflicting with the given perception (CM,
§ §6, 7; Ideas, § 19). As I walk around the object I may see its back side as
other than I had intended or anticipated in the earlier perception. Then
my later perception presents as "fllled" and determined what is contrary
to the properties earlier intended of the back side. The later perception
thus "disappoints", rather than "fulfllls", what was in the earlier percep-
tion intended of the back side (EI, §21a, p. 88). Or, upon approaching
the object again from the same perspective as the Original perception, I
may now see the object as other than I earlier saw it. Then something has
to go. I may conclude that the earlier perception was mistaken (EJ, §21a,
pp. 88-91, and §67a). But then it is still the same object intended in both
acts.
The conflict cannot be too great, however. If it is then the synthetic noema
of the continuing perception "explodes": the object now perceived is no
longer even the same object as was earlier intended; the earlier object is "can-
celled" (Ideas, § § 138, 151; EI, §67a). Such conflicts are not umestricted,
256 CHAPTER V

then: the acts must yet be co-directed, though their respective contents can-
not both be true of the object. Those possible perceptions that conflict in
admissible ways with the original perception belong in the act's horizon
insofar as they fit into chains of progressive perceptions of the given object,
though they bring with them corrections in the acts' progressive characteriza-
tion of the object.

4. THE STRUCTURE OF AN ACT'S HORIZON

4.1. Internal and External Horizon

Exactly which acts belong in an act's horizon? What are their noematic Sinne
- specifically, their predicative "contents" - and how are they related to one
another? We have a basic answer from the preceding sections: the acts in an
act's horizon are those whose Sinne determine or characterize the object of
the given act more completely than does the act's explicit Sinn, in ways com-
patible with that Sinn and the Sinne of certain of the subject's background
beliefs. Starting with this key principle of the structure of an act's horizon,
we can piece together from various of Husserl's later works a fairly detailed
account of horizon-structure. Husserl's account is of the horizon of a visual
perception of an individual, and we shall for now stay with that special case.
In Cartesian Meditations (§ 19, p. 45), we saw, Hussed includes in the
horizon of an act of perceiving a die possible perceptions that would present
further properties of the back side of the die. In Experience and Judgment he
extends this account of horizon: the object-horizon of a perception, we learn,
breaks down into an "internal horizon" and an "external horizon" (§8; cf.
§ 22).16 The internal horizon includes possible further characteristics of the
object itself, say, of its back side. The external horizon includes other objects
intended - some of them seen - along with the object. It includes "not only
those [real things] of which we are actually aware but also ... those, pre-
sently unknown, of which it is possible to have experience and subsequent
knowledge" (p. 34). Indeed, it extends to include "the world as horizon of
all individual real things capable of being experienced" (pp. 36-37). More
precisely, the external horizon consists of relational properties of the object,
its relations to various objects in its environment (cf. §22). The act-horizon
of a perception will be correspondingly structured, then, breaking down into
those possible perceptions that present further possible "internal" properties
of the object and those that present its further possible "external" properties,
its possible relations to other objects.
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 257

Thus Husser! says:

Every experience [Erfahrungl has its own horizon . ... This implies that every experi-
ence refers to the possibility ... of obtaining, little by little as experience continues, new
determinations of the same thing. Every experience can be extended in a continuous
chain of explicative individual experiences, united synthetically as a single experience,
open without limit, of the same ....
Thus every experience of a particular thing has its internal horizon .... (EJ, § 8, p.
32.)
... This intending-beyond [Hinausmeinen: that is, implicit or horizon intending) is
not only the anticipation of determinations which, insofar as they pertain to this object
of experience, are now expected; in another respect it is also an intending-beyond the
thing itself with all its anticipated possibilities of subsequent determinations, i.e., an
intending-beyond to other objects of which we are aware at the same time, although at
first they are merely in the background. This means that everything given in experience
has not only an internal horizon but also an infInite, open external horizon of objects
cogiven .... (EJ, § 8, p. 33; with trans. changes.)

In this passage it might seem that the mode of attention is to playa role in
defining horizon since the external horizon includes "other objects of which
we are aware ... merely in the background". But that appears not to be
Husserl's point if we note that Husserl says, further on in the second quoted
paragraph, that the "awareness" we have is by " 'induction' or anticipation",
by appeal to background knowledge or "preknowledge" (pp. 32-33). Indeed,
Husserl explicitly generalizes external horizon beyond the background of
attention in a later section:

[By) the external horizon of the object ... we had in view [Husserl is referring to § 22),
above all, its objectively copresent surroundings [Umgebung), ... these surroundings
being always cogiven by way of background as a plurality of simultaneously coaffecting
substrates ....
But it is not only what is cogiven originaliter as perceptible in the objective back-
ground which provides occasion for relational contemplation and the acquisition of rela-
tive determinations, but also the horizon of typical preacquaintance [Vorbekanntheit)
in which every object is pregiven. This typical familiarity codetermines the external
horizon as that which always contributes, even though it is not copresent, to the deter-
mination of every object of experience. It has its ground in the passive associative rela-
tions of likeness and similarity .... (EJ, § 33, pp. 149-50.)

Thus it is consistently the generation of further possible determinations of

the object, compatible with background beliefs or knowledge, that Husserl
takes to determine horizon.
We should note that internal and external horizon are defmed as object-
horizon, not act-horizon. In the extended passage above, from EJ, §8, Husserl
258 CHAPTER V

slips back and forth between object-horizon and act-horizon, suppressing the
distinction. The elision is even more obvious where Husserl describes internal
and external horizon in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology :
For consciousness the individual thing is not alone; the perception of a thing is per-
ception of it within a perceptual field. And just as the individual thing in perception
has meaning only through an open horizon of "possible perceptions", insofar as what
is actually perceived "points" to a systematic manifold of all possible perceptual ex-
hibitings belonging to it harmoniously, so the thing has yet another horizon: besides
this "internal horizon" it has an "external horizon" precisely as a thing within afield of
things; and this points finally to the whole "world as perceptual world". (§47, p. 162;
with trans. changes.)

Here it is clear that the relevant act-horizon belonging to the act of perception
corresponds to the relevant object-horizon belonging to the object of the
perception. Clearly, then, the distinction between internal and external
horizon of an object of perception will be reflected in a corresponding
division within the act-horizon of the perception itself.

4.2. Temporal Structure in the Horizon

A more interesting feature of an act's horizon is its temporal structure: the
possible perceptions in the horizon of an act of perception break down into
temporal sequences of successive, continuous possible perceptions of the
object perceived. Thus Hussed says, to return to a central passage from
Cartesian Meditations:
... There belongs to every external perception its reference from the "genuinely per-
ceived" sides of the object of perception to the "co-intended" [mitgemeinten) .sides
- not yet perceived, but only anticipated and at first with a non-intuitional emptiness
(as the sides that are "coming" now perceptually): a continuous "protention", which,
with each phase of the perception, has a new sense [Sinn). Furthermore, the perception
has horizons made up of other possibilities of perception, as perceptions we could have,
if we actively directed the course of perception otherwise: if, for example, we turned
our eyes that way instead of this, or if we were to step forward or to one side, and so
forth. In the corresponding memory this recurs in modified form, perhaps in the con-
sciousness that, instead of the sides then visible in fact, I could have seen others -
naturally, if I had directed my perceptual activity in a suitably different manner. More-
over . . . to every perception there always belongs a horizon of the past, as a potenti-
ality of awakenable recollections. ... ( § 19, p. 44; with trans. changes.)

An act's temporal horizon includes, then, to begin with, possible future per-
ceptions that the perceiver anticipates he will (or could) have. ("Protention"
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 259

is the intention of what is expected to be presented in the near future; "reten-

tion" is "primary remembrance" of what was presented in the near past; cf.
Time, passim, e.g. § § 11, 26.) These anticipations, or protentions, align so as
to form a continuous chain of possible perceptions proceeding forward in
(internal) time from the original act, each "phase" of the continuing percep-
tion, each act in the chain, having a new Sinn and progressively determining
the object of perception. Similarly, the horizon includes a "horizon of the
past", a continuous sequence or series of potentially recollectible past per-
ceptions receding in time from the original act.
Importantly, what is presented in the temporal horizon of an act need be
only potentially, or possibly, and not actually recollected and anticipated in
the original act. Not only does the horizon include actual (retained) past
perceptions, Husserl says; it also includes possible past perceptions, percep-
tions the perceiver could have had in the past instead of those he did have.
Similarly, what is presented in the "future horizon" need be only potenti-
ally anticipated: it includes possible perceptions the perceiver could have in
the future if he were, say, to walk around the perceived object in one direc-
tion rather than another. Thus Husserl says, in Experience and Judgment,
that the horizon, as "a horizon of what is anticipated as possible", consists
of "systems of disjunctive possibilities" concerning "how subsequent experi-
ence [ErJahrung] could advance (what, in several mutually incompatible
ways, it could be)" (§93, p. 361; our emphasis). The temporal horizon of
an act thus consists of possible sequences of continuous perceptions of the
same object, all the sequences having the current perception as a common
perceptual phase but otherwise branching off into various "mutually incom-
patible" possible past and future "determinings" compatible with what is
currently intended of the object.

4.3. The Horizon's Breakdown into Verification Chains

The temporal sequences of possible continuous perceptions in an act's horizon
Husserl at one point calls "synthetical chains of possible progressive exper-
ience" (FTL, App. II, §2a, p. 315). Let us call them possible verification
chains (this is not Husserl's term), since each would - if it were to become
actual - verify a number of determinations of the object of perception.
Chains extending from the original act into the future connect up, naturally,
with chains extending from the act into the past. And chains extend indefi-
nitely in each temporal direction. Thus, we can see the horizon of a given act
of perception as structured into a set of possible verific~tion chains each of
which extends indefinitely into the past and into the future. Each such chain
260 CHAPTER V

progressively detennines the object so that, at the limit, it presents everything

about the object that is capable of being given in perception to one continu-
ously perceiving subject: each presents a possible perceptible life-story of the
object "as told to" the perceiving subject.
Now, anyone person can see only so much about an object, from only one
perspective, at anyone time. So it would take a family of verification chains
in the horizon, each chain progressively determining the object from a differ-
ent sequence of possible perspectives, to present the object as completely
determined in respect of all its perceptible properties. Thus, we see the possi-
ble perceptions in the horizon as clustered into families of possible verifica-
tion chains, each family tracing the object through a complete, or maximally
consistent, set of possible perceptible determinations of the object, an entire
possible "perceptible" history, compatible with what is given in the original
act.
Even if the horizon of an arbitrary perceptual act is restricted to possible
perceptions, it ought to include not only possible visual perceptions of the
object intended, but also tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory percep-
tions, insofar as these provide evidence about the object. Although visual
perception is a more primary source of evidence for most of us, with tactile
a close second, auditory clues are critical to the blind, and olfactory clues are
sometimes most important to animals. 17 Thus, only higher-level "theoret-
ical" properties would be excluded from a complete possible perceptible
history of the object.
Each family of possible verification chains traces out an entire possible
perceptible world about the object, a world compatible with what is presented
in the original act. Recall that an object's "external" perceptual horizon
extends to include "the whole 'world as perceptual world'" (Crisis, §47,
p. 162). Thus Husserl writes:
Only an uncovering of the horizon of experience ultimately clarifies the "actuality"
["Wirklickkeit"] and the "transcendency" of the world..... The reference to
harmonious infinities of further possible experience, starting from each world-expe-
rience ... signifies that an actual Object belonging to the world or, all the more so, a
world itself. is an infinite idea, related to infinities of harmoniously combinable expe-
riences - an idea that is the correlate of the idea of a perfect experiential evidence, a
complete synthesis of possible experiences. (eM, § 28, p. 62.)

Husserl is here concerned to characterize the sense "actually existing Object":

if the possible perceptions in a complete family of verification chains were
to occur, the family would present (in complete perceptual determination)
an object that is actual, in a world - the world - that is actual. Since the
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 261

horizon includes some explicitly counterfactual possible perceptions, and

since the original act of perception may itself be non-verdical, we can transfer
Husserl's point to possible objects in possible worlds: each complete family
of verification chains is the correlate of a (completely determined) possible
object in a (completely determined) possible world. Indeed, it will be the
same object that is variOUsly determined in these different possible worlds,
since acts in different chains in a given act's horizon must all be co-directed.
But we shall say more in Chapter VI on the notions of possible object and
possible world in Husserl.

4.4. Synthesis of Identification Within the Horizon

Verification chains, we noted, are "synthetical" chains of acts. That means
the acts in a given chain are capable of synthesis, of being conceptually united
in such a way that their Sinne form one synthetic, or composite, Sinn. Spe-
cifically, they admit of synthesis of identification (cf. eM, § § 17 -19), since
acts in a horizon are all co-directed with the original act. And co-directedness
requires that the Sinne of any two acts in the horizon have the same deter-
minable X - the same X as the Sinn of the original act - and that their
respective "contents" (conjoint predicate-senses) be mutually "harmonious",
compatible according to the subject's conceptual scheme (cf. Ideas, § 131 ;
also see Chapter IV, Section 3.1, above). Ideally, then, as each family of
verification chains traces out a history or world of the object of perception,
it generates a maximal synthetic Sinn that prescribes that world or history
of the object as given in the unfolding continuous perceptions that are those
verification chains.
The requirement that all acts within an act's horizon be co-directed, and
that acts within each verification chain admit of synthesis of identification,
reflects the fact that Husserl continues to address only "definite" intentions
(indeed, perceptions of individuals).

4.5. Summary of Husserl's Account of Horizon-Structure

In summary, then, Husserl describes the follOwing structure in the horizon
of an act of perception. The possible perceptions in the horizon - visual and
otherwise - are all co-directed with the original act but determine its object
more completely. They divide into perceptions that present the object's
"internal horizon" (Le., "determinations" of the object itself) and those that
present its "external horizon" (Le., other objects in its environment as vari-
ously determined or, more properly, its relations to these other objects),
262 CHAPTER V

ultimately "the whole world". And the possible perceptions in the horizon
align into families of "possible verification chains", temporal sequences of
continuous perceptions leading from the original act into both past and
future. Each family progressively determines the object of perception, tracing
out at the limit an entire possible perceptible history of the object and its
world. For our later discussions of the role of horizon in intentionality theory,
the most interesting structural feature of an act's horizon will be this struc-
ture of verification chains.

5. TOWARD A GENERALIZED THEORY OF HORIZON

Husserl's account of horizon is very specialized. He discusses in detail only

the horizon of an act of seeing an individual. And he addresses for the most
part only possible perceptions in the horizon of such an act. The theory of
horizon needs, then, to be generalized, to be extended so as to apply to kinds
of acts other than seeing an individual. Let us now consider briefly what the
horizon of acts of other kinds would look like. We shall describe only central
features of these horizons, and we shall not attempt to catalog all the basic
kinds of acts and to describe the horizon of acts of each kind.
The basic principle governing the generation of an act's horizon is appar-
ently that of compatibility. Thus, we might defme the horizon of an act
generally as the set of possible acts whose Sinne are compatible with the act's
own Sinn. (The interesting members of the horizon will be those whose Sinne
are also more "determinate" than the act's own Sinn.) More precisely, we
know that an act's horizon is determined not by the act's "explicit" Sinn
alone but by its explicit Sinn together with its "background" Sinne, the Sinne
that are presupposed in the act (cf. Sections 3.2 and 3.3). Thus, we may
defme the horizon of an act more precisely as the set of possible acts whose
Sinne are compatible with the act's explicit Sinn together with its background
Sinne. And, correlatively, we may define the horizon of the object of the act
as the set of possibilities - possible states of affairs, ultimately worlds - that
are compatible with what the act's explicit Sinn, together with its background
Sinne, prescribes.
The problem of generalizing the notion of horizon reduces, then, to that
of constructing a systematic characterization of compatibility that applies
to different forms of Sinn. The sort of act on which we have focused in this
chapter, following Husserl, is a special case of direct-object perception. Its Sinn
includes an X and a complex predicate-sense. Two such Sinne are compatible,
we may say, if and only if their X's are the same and their predicate-senses
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 263

could be satisfied by the same object (given the principles of individuation

presupposed for the kind of object commonly prescribed by these predicate-
senses). Our task now is to characterize compatibility between other forms of
Sinn.
Another sort of direct-object act is a de dicto act such as Holmes' seeking
the thief, whose Sinn is simply the sense "the thief". Husserl's account of
horizon does not naturally extend to such a case, so we are left to our own
devices. The senses that are compatible with the sense "the thief" will pre-
sumably be correlated with the possibilities compatible with being the thief.
So we might propose that the horizon of Holmes' act of seeking the thief is
the set of possible judgments about the thief, that is, judgments whose Sinne
include the sense "the thief" as subject-component. Importantly, the acts in
such a horizon will not admit of "synthesis of identification": they need not
be co-directed, since acts directed toward different individuals (intendable as
being the thief) may yet be compatible with the Sinn of a de dicto act.
A familiar sort of compatibility is that between propositional Sinne: pro-
positional Sinne are compatible if and only if they could be true at the same
time (that is, in the same possible world). Turning to propositional acts, then,
we may defme the horizon of a judgment that p, for instance, as the set of
possible judgments whose Sinne are compatible with the Sinn of this judg-
ment, the sense "p".
A propositional act or attitude, we know, is "directed" in one sense toward
that which is (say) judged, a proposition or state of affairs; and it may be
"directed" in a second sense toward the individual or individuals (if any) that
the judgment is about. Thus, we may defme not only a horizon of the judg-
ment itself but also a horizon of "aboutness" for the judgment (cf. EJ, § 51 b).
Let us define the horizon of "aboutness" for a defmite, or de re, judgment
about a particular individual (cf. Chapter I, Section 2.6) as the set of possible
judgments that are about that same individual and whose Sinne are compa-
tible with the Sinn of the given judgment. And the horizon of "aboutness"
of a de dicto judgment, that the cf> is 1/1, we may take to be the set of possible
judgments whose Sinne include as subject-component the sense "the cf>" and
are compatible with the Sinn of the original judgment.
There remains an outstanding question about an act's horizon: what
relevance for horizon-analysis has the thetic character of the possible acts in
the act's horizon? Basically none, we may conclude from our study in this
chapter. For we have characterized act-horizon solely in terms of Sinn, with-
out reference to thetic character or other "ways of givenness". We have of
course described a special role for possible perceptions in horizon, and this
264 CHAPTER V

might seem to call in the thetic character of perception. However, the special
contribution that perception makes to horizon lies within the special items
of sense that go into perceptual Sinne: items prescribing visible shape, color,
and so on.

NOTES

1 Here" we have in mind only one sort of Sinn, the Sinn related to an object intended
in a "definite", direct-object intention. This is the only sort of Sinn that Hussed de-
scribes in detail (cf. Chapter IV, Section 3.1). But where acts have Sinne of different
structure, failures of substitutivity in sentences describing acts may require an account
somewhat different in detail.
2 Cf. EJ, § 21c, pp. 96-98, on "open possibilities", and §67a on the "horizon of open
possibilities" .
3 A notion of horizon also appears in Heidegger: thus, time is the "horizon" of human
being, much as for Hussed in one of his uses of 'horizon'. The translators of Being and
Time note that in English 'horizon' may have the connotation of something we can
expand and go beyond, whereas in German 'Horizont' connotes something that sets
limits which we cannot go beyond but must remain Within. This comment would seem
to apply to Hussed's use of 'Horizont' as well as Heidegger's. See Martin Heidegger,
Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Harper & Row, New
York, 1962), p. 19, n. 4.
4 Hussed also uses the term 'manifold' in another, not directly related sense, where the
"theory of manifolds" is the mathematical theory of pure (uninterpreted) formal logical
systems (see LI,ldeas, FTL).
5 Cf. § 92 of Ideas, where modes of attention are classified as modes of "actuality"
(Aktualitiit). Translation of 'aktuell' is bound to lead to some awkwardness: 'aktuell'
ordinarily means not 'actual' (wirklich) , but 'topical' or perhaps 'focal', which would
be apt to modes of attention; yet Hussed also contrasts 'aktuell' or 'Aktualitlit' with
'possible' or 'potential' (cf.ldeas, §47).
6 This is surely also how 'aktuell' and 'Aktualitlit' are used when Husserl introduces the
notion of horizon in Cartesian Meditations, in § 19, assigning to each actual act a horizon
of possible acts. This point of usage is confusing. Perhaps in Ideas Husserl was thinking
that what is at the periphery of attention could potentially be made the center of atten-
tion. But what is not known at all should not be thought of as at the periphery of
attention, though Husserl seems to want it in the indeterminate horizon.
7 Note that where Husserl speaks of a plurality of horizons associated with an act, these
seem to be portions of one basic, overall horizon of the act. It is the latter we shall
consistently refer to as horizon.
8 Earlier notions of horizon are not completely absent from Cartesian Meditations. In
§ 18 Hussed cites the horizon of "immanent time": cf.ldeas, § 83.
9 We might prefer to say merely that an act is always potentially intended in internal
reflection. Husserl himself, though, believes that every act includes an actual, albeit
"inaktuell" (non-attentive), constituent consciousness of itself. Cf.ldeas, §4S, pp. 104-
105, and Time, Appendix XII.
 HUSSERL'S NOTION OF HORIZON 265

10 Our emphasis on act-horizon may be somewhat surprising, since it is object-horizon

rather than act-horizon that Husserl commentators often pick up on. And where Heideg-
ger and Merleau-Ponty talk of horizon, they also describe a sort of object-horizon, in
each case apparently drawing on Husserl's early notion of horizon defined in terms of
"background" (of attention) surrounding the object of perception (cf. Heidegger, Being
and Time (Note 4 above), p. 19, n. 4; and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of
Perception (Note 33, Ch. IV above), pp. 68, 102). But for an account of Husserl's notion
of horizon that is much like our own, see Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness
(Note 2, Ch. IV above), pp. 202-95, esp. pp. 280ff., which treats of act-horizon. At any
rate, act-horizon ought to be the more basic notion for Husserl, since the phenomenologi-
cal study of objects always proceeds by analysis of the acts (and their noemata) in (or
through) which objects may be intended (cf. Ideas, § 135).
11 A thing taken merely as bearing phenomenal qualities, and not as entering into causal
relations, Husserl calls a "phantom". Cf. Robert Sokolowski's nice discussion (citing
Ideen II, § § 10, 15b) in his Husserlian Meditations (Northwestern University Press,
Evanston, 1974), § 33.
12 Cf. for example L/, IV, §10, p. 701; Ideas, §98, p. 248; §131, p. 321, §135, pp.
329-31, § 150, p. 370; FTL, §98, p. 246, App. II, § 2a, pp. 315-16; CM throughout,
esp. § § 17-22; EJ, §63, p. 252; Crisis, § §45-51. Note that 'Mannigfaltigkeit' is often
translated as 'multiplicity' rather than 'manifold'.
13 By the "nucleus" of a noema Husserl here means its Sinn-component plus its "full-
ness"-component (if any) correlated with the hyletic phase of the act (see Ideas, § 132
and Bei/age XXIV). Hence, the "nucleus" is that part of a perceptual noema that pre-
scribes the properties of the object given "genuinely", in direct sense experience.
14 Husserl does speak of the horizon of acts directed toward "empirical generalities",
e.g. the type "dog". Such a horizon consists of "anticipations" of attributes belonging
to "dogs in general", over and beyond those attributes already known. Even here, how-
ever, the "anticipations" seem to consist of possible perceptions (of dogs) that would
extend further our knowledge of the type. See EJ, § 83a and surrounding sections.
15 Though the term 'background meaning' is not Husserl's, it is suggested by the term
'background of consciousness', which he does use (cf. EJ, § § 23b, 67b; also Ideas,
§ § 115, 123). It would probably be incorrect to assimilate this notion of background
meaning to the notion of a "background of attention", which arose in connection with
Husserl's early notion of object-horizon, however; for the items given through back-
ground meaning are typically not actually present in consciousness with any degree of
attention whatsoever.
16 The introductory sections (§ § 1-14) of Experience and Judgment were actually
written by Ludwig Landgrebe, with Husserl's collaboration and approval (cf. EJ, 'Editor's
Foreword to the 1948 Edition', pp. 6-7). The account of horizon there fits well with
Husserl's own direct accounts in the rest of EJ and also in CM and Crisis, however.
17 On the role of different senses in our conception of external reality, see Nelson
Goodman, The Structure of Appearance (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1951);
and Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, trans. by Rolf A. George
(University of California Press, Berkekey, 1969).
 CHAPTER VI

HORIZON-ANALYSIS AND THE POSSIBLE-WORLDS

EXPLICATION OF MEANING

In this chapter we assess the nature and importance of horizon-analysis as a

special, kind and part of phenomenological analysis. Basically, we view the
analysis of an act's horizon as a certain way of "explicating", or making clear,
the phenomenological structure of the act, especially its meaning, or Sinn.
We begin our assessment in Part I in somewhat general terms, assuming
results of Chapter V. We find the analysis of act-horizon comparable in some
ways to the analysis of meaning on a "verification" (or empiricist) theory of
meaning. And we fmd the analysis of object-horizon even more closely com-
parable to the analysis of meaning on a "possible-worlds" theory of meaning.
We also argue that horizon-analysis is not "pure" meaning-analysis, however:
insofar as the horizon (act- or object-horizon) of a given act is relative to
background beliefs presupposed in the act, horizon-analysis explicates certain
"pragmatic" features of intention over and above its specifically "semantic"
content, or meaning.
In Part 2 we develop in detail the possible-worlds approach to meaning,
which stems from late work of Carnap's and has been widely used in recent
semantic theory. In Part 3 we detail the basis we fmd in Husserl for explicating
Sinn and intention in terms of possible worlds. Husserl himself periodically
couches his analysis in terms of possible acts, possible objects, and even
possible worlds; still, this terminology seems for him to be a heuristic device
of phenomenological analysis, and a significant one, but not to stake a serious
commitment to a metaphysics of possibilia. More significantly, we fmd that
the notion of object-horizon harbors an exact structural basis for aligning
Husserl's analysis of Sinn and intention with the possible-worlds theory of
meaning. This alignment will be the basis, in Chapter VII, for our comparing
Husserl's theory of intentionality - developed in terms of meaning and
horizon - with a theory of intentionality - developed in terms of possible
worlds - that we shall there draw out of a possible-worlds semantics for
sentences ascribing propositional attitudes.
The analysis of meaning and intention in terms of possible worlds - or in
terms of object-horizon - can be seen as a development of Husserl's basically
Fregean analysis of Sinn and intention. However, the "pragmatic" depen-
dence of horizon on background beliefs marks a significant addition to the
266
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 267

Husserlian analysis of intentionality we developed in Chapters III and IV.

That analysis, which appeals exclusively to the noematic Sinn of an act, we
found to be inadequate in various ways; but the pragmatic twist in the turn to
horizon greatly enriches the basic Hussedian analysis. In particular, as we shall
see in Chapter VIII, it opens the door to a more adequate treatment of various
kinds of defmite, or de re, intentions than we were able to obtain from
Sinn-analysis alone. Horizon-analysis thus takes an important step beyond
Sinn-analysis and thereby significantly extends the efficacy of Husserlian
phenomenological analysis.

1. HORIZON-ANALYSIS AS EXPLICATION OF
SINN AND INTENTION

In Chapter IV we studied Hussed's account of meaning, its role in language

or linguistic acts, and its role in consciousness generally. Hussed conceives
meaning, or Sinn, as Frege does - as a certain sort of abstract, intensional
entity - and it is this Fregean conception of meaning that we have so far
emphasized in our discussion of Hussed's theory of intentionality. But views
about the nature of meaning other than Frege's are also relevant to Hussed's
theory of meaning and intention. These include the verification theory of
meanIng and, especially, the later-Carnapian possible-worlds theory of mean-
ing. Their relevance emerges with the notion of horizon.

1.1. Horizon-Analysis and the Verification Theory of Meaning

The verification theory of meaning, espoused by the pragmatist C. S. Peirce
and later by some of the positivists, holds that the meaning of a sentence is
determined by what would count as evidence for its truth. In its strongest
form the theory identifies the meaning of a sentence with the set of possible
experiences (perceptions) that would verify the sentence. The theory is not
usually applied to singular terms, but if it were it might identify the meaning
of a tenn such as 'the tree in the garden' with the set of possible experiences
that would count as perceiving the tree in the garden. The various attempts to
spell out details of such a theory of meaning have been largely unsuccessful,
but even in the absence of further detail we can see that there is some affmity
between Husserl and the verificationist. As we saw in Chapter V, Husserl
correlates with every act, and hence with every Sinn, an act-horizon. This
act-horizon he defmes, to begin with, as the set of possible experiences or
perceptions co-directed and complftible with, but more detenninate than, the
given act. And Husserl sees the unfolding of an act s horizon as the "peculiar
268 CHAPTER VI

attainment" of intentional analysis, which "brings about on the noematic

side an 'explication' [Auslegung] , a 'becoming distinct' and perhaps a 'clarifi-
cation' of what is consciously meant [Vermeinten], of the objective Sinn"
(CM, §20, p. 46; with trans. changes). Hence, according to Hussed, the Sinn,
or meaning, of an act can be "explicated" in terms of the possible acts
(prominently, possible perceptions) that make up the act's horizon.!
There are important differences, however, between verificationism and
Hussed's conception of horizon-analysis as meaning-explication. (Some
insignificant differences may be eliminated by adding the act itself to its
horizon and by either relaxing the requirement of greater "determinacy" or
adding a similar one to the verification theory. Other differences, such as
Hussed's concern with meaning in non-linguistic consciousness and his focus
on individual-directed acts, usually perceptions, are also not important for
our present purposes.) Prominently, Hussed resists reduction: where the
verificationist identifies meaning with a set of possible experiences, Husserl
merely correlates these. Second, whereas the verificationist cashes meaning
in terms of perception only, Hussed's notion of horizon is not restricted to
possible perceptions (although perceptions playa prominent role in the
horizons of acts directed toward physical objects: see Chapter V, Section 2.4,
above). Third, presumably unlike some of the positivists, Hussed includes
possible acts by other subjects in the unfolding of meaning, insofar as such
acts are ultimately included in an act's horizon (cf. Ideas, § 135, pp. 329-30;
Crisis, §47, p. 164). Fourth, the verificationist counts only perception as
"experience", as providing basic or intuitive evidence on which both knowl-
edge and meaning are founded; Hussed, on the other hand, counts not only
perception (concerning physical objects) but also eidetic intuition (concerning
essences) and transcendental reflection (concerning meanings, noemata,
noeses, ego, and hyle) (cf. Ideas, § § 19, 20), though our own concerns have
typically focused only on Hussed's discussions of perception.

1.2. Horizon-Analyis and the Carnapian, or Possible-Worlds, Theory of

Meaning
Hussed's conception of horizon-analysis as meaning-explication also compares
with another sort of theory of meaning, that which grew out of Carnap's late
(and post-positivist) work and has become prominent in work on the seman-
tics of modal or intensional logics. The chief feature of this theory is that it
cashes meaning, not in terms of possible acts or possible experiences, but in
terms of possible states of affairs, or "possible wodds". We call it, accordingly,
the Carnapian, or possible-worlds, theory of meaning. .Roughly, the theory
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 269

identifies the meaning of a sentence with the set of possible states of affairs -
maximally, possible worlds - in which the sentence would be true. And,
again roughly, it identifies the meaning of a singular term with a set of
possible individuals, namely, the set of individuals to which the term would
refer, respectively, in different possible situations ·or possible worlds. More
precisely, the theory identifies meanings with functions on possible worlds:
the meaning of a sentence is the function that assigns Truth to each possible
world in which the sentence would be true; and the meaning of a singular
term is the function that assigns to each possible world the individual re-
ferred to by the term in that possible world. We shall develop the details
of this theory of meaning, and some of the motivations for it, in Part 2
below.
Interestingly, Husserl's correlation of Sinn with horizon aligns closely
with the Carnapian theory of meaning if Husserl is granted the range of possi-
ble entities assumed by the Carnapian theory. As we saw in Chapter V,
Section 2.3, there corresponds to the horizon of an act the horizon of the
object of the act (as the object is intended in the act). This "object-horizon"
we defined as the set of possibilities that are left open by, or that are compat-
ible with, what the act's Sinn prescribes of the object and its environment.
And this set of possibilities, where the object's environment is considered
maximally as including the entire world about the object, is the very set of
possibilia that the Carnapian theory would identify (roughly) with that Sinn.
The significant difference between the Husserlian and the Carnapian versions
of this account of meaning would be on reduction: the Husserlian theory
would correlate but not identify meaning with an array of possibilia (or with
an appropriate function on possible worlds).
In Section 3.2 below we describe in closer detail the alignment we find
between the object-horizon that Husserl correlates with an act or its Sinn
and the array of possibilia (or an appropriate function on possible worlds)
that the Carnapian identifies with that same meaning. We can better appre-
ciate the alignment at that point, after we have developed details of the
Carnapian theory. We should say, however, that since Husserl addresses only
a specialized form of Sinn (one related to individual objects) the general align-
ment we envision depends on extrapolating from the form of Sinn whose ex-
plication in horizon he describes.
Importantly, this alignment of Sinn with a set of possibilia, or with a func-
tion on possible worlds, is the basis for our later assimilation of Husserl's
theory of intentionality and modern pOSSible-worlds semantics for intentional
modalities.
270 CHAPTER VI

I .3. Sorting Husserl with the Carnapian

We have compared Husserl's conception of horizon-analysis as meaning-

explication with both verification and Carnapian theories of meaning. Prima
facie, it may appear that Husserl is closer to the verificationist than to the
Carnapian, since he correlates meaning more prolilinently with structures of
possible experiences than with structures of possible objects and possible
worlds. Yet there is an important way in which Husserl and the Carnapian are
the closer kin.
Recall our observation that the verificationist cashes meaning in terms
of possible perceptions only, while Husserl aligns meaning with not only
possible perceptions (an act's perceptual horizon) but also other species of
possible consciousness (an act's manifold in toto, as its maximal horizon).
Now, this difference between Husserl and the verificationist has an important
consequence. Perception, as the verificationist understands it, presents only
"observable" characteristics of an object or situation; and the verificationist
has as his goal the reduction of all meaning to observational content, or
"empirical significance". An act's horizon, however, includes such non-
perceptual acts as judgments and imaginations, and these acts may present
"theoretical", or unobservable, properties of objects. Acts that present the
theoretical and unobservable, as well as acts that present the observable, are
thus included in Husserl's explication of meaning. And on this score Husserl is
closer to the Carnapian than to the verificationist. For theoretical properties
are in no way excluded from the possible objects or states of affairs in terms
of which the Carnapian defines meaning. (Of course, there remains the differ-
ence on reduction: the Husserlian would merely correlate meaning with an
array of possible experiences or of possible objects and states of affairs, there-
by "explicating" meaning, whereas the Carnapian seeks to reduce meanings to
possible objects and possible worlds, as the verificationist seeks to reduce
meanings to possible perceptions.)
The difference between Husserl and the verificationist here is important,
for theoretical properties playa significant role in our constitution of every-
day physical objects (as well as situations or states of affairs). To intend an
object as a tree, for example, is to intend it (at least implicitly) not only as
having a certain color, shape, and the like, but also as having properties that
are in principle unperceivable, or unobservable, such as properties relating to
its chemical or cellular composition. 2 Thus, items of meaning that correspond
to unobservable characteristics of things will be included (either explicitly or
by implication) in the Sinne through which we intend physical objects. Such
 EXPLICA nON OF MEANING 271

theoretical components of meaning are included in a Husserlian explication

qf meaning in terms of horizon (act- or object-horizon), and they are also
Included in a Carnapian analysis of meaning in terms of possible objects and
possible worlds. But theoretical meanings ultimately elude the verificationist.
To analyze the meanings of theoretical terms and sentences the verificationist
would reduce them to (meanings of) purely observational terms and sen-
tences; but this reductionist program is widely held to be a failure, as is
shown perhaps by the failures of Carnap's own attempt to carry out such a
reduction in The Logical Structure of the World. 3 (Of course, Carnap's
efforts there are to be separated from his later possible-worlds approach to
meaning.)
The admission of irreducibly theoretical meanings into horizon-analysis,
we would note, separates Husserl not only from the verificationist program
but also from the kindred program of "phenomenalism". Phenomenalism has
been offered in two basic versions, either as a theory about the meanings of
statements concerning physical objects or as a theory about the nature of
physical objects themselves. As a theory of meaning phenomenalism is itself
a form of verificationism, and as a metaphysical theory phenomenalism is a
form of idealism that would reduce phYSical objects to (possible) perceptions
or contents of perceptions. But both versions are incompatible with Husser!:
theoretical meanings - including meanings that relate to physical objects -
do not reduce to observational meanings for Husser!, and, therefore, physical
objects themselves surely do not reduce to perceptions or perceptual contents
(or perceptual Sinne).
We might add that there is still more to "explicate" in Sinne than the
observational and the theoretical. Husserl holds that we intend objects as
also having "spiritual" properties, which impute mental activity either to
oneself or to others; "practical" properties of doing things purposefully;
"cultural" properties, e.g., being a cabinet (made by other human beings) -
properties that depend on the mental and practical activities of (specifically)
other egos; and "value" properties, ethical or aesthetic. 4 (Cf. Chapter V,
Section 2.4, above.)

1.4. Horizon-Analysis as "Pragmatic" Explication of Intention

There remains an important complication in viewing Husserlian horizon-
analysis as meaning-explication. The horizon of an act includes those possible
acts whose Sinne are (inter alia) compatible in content with the act's own
Sinn. But more precisely, the horizon-Sinne must be compatible with the
act's explicit Sinn together with certain background meanings. These back-
272 CHAPTER VI

ground meanings are the Sinne of certain of the subject's background beliefs
about the object intended (cf. Chapter V, Sections 3.2 and 3.3, above),
including, in our earlier example of my seeing a tree, my beliefs that the tree
has a back side, that it is a maple tree, and that it, is the tree I sat under with
Cecelia. Now, so far we have thought of horizon-analysis as giving an explica-
tion of an act's own, explicit Sinn, of that particular meaning in its own right.
But insofar as background beliefs playa role in derming horizon, analysis of
an act's horizon goes beyond explication of the act's Sinn alone, of what is to
be found "in" that Sinn itself. For horizon-analysis reveals not only the role
of that Sinn in the intention achieved in the act but also the role of these
background beliefs and their Sinne.
Some of the background Sinne in an act are conceptually tied to the act's
explicit Sinn, but others are not. In our own example, propositional Sinne
that make up the subject's theory or conception of trees may be so tied to
the act's Sinn, for at least some of these Sinne are conceptually presupposed
by the sense "is a tree", which is a component of the explicit Sinn. And other
senses, e.g., "has a back side", may be entailed (in a sense appropriate to pred-
icate-senses) by these propositional Sinne together with the sense "is a tree",
and so they will be tied analytically to the act's explicit Sinn. Explication of
such background senses will not carry the horizon-analysis beyond explica-
tion of what is "contained" in the act's Sinn at least by implication. However,
the senses "is a maple tree" and "is the tree I sat under with Cecelia" are in
no way conceptually, or analytically, tied to the act's explicit Sinn: they are
only "passively" present in the act, the former by "passive" association with
past experiences, the latter by potential recollection of previous experiences.
So, insofar as these senses constrain the act's horizon, the horizon-analysis
goes beyond explication of the act's explicit Sinn and of the meanings it
includes, either as part of its content or by implication.
Insofar as an act's horizon is keyed to background meanings or beliefs
that are not conceptually tied to the act's explicit Sinn, we must emend our
view of horizon-analysis as a way of explicating the (explicit) Sinn of an act.
For horizon-analysis seems to be more than the "semantic" analysis of
meaning that we have heretofore considered. What we propose is that horizon-
analysis, as conceived by Hussed, should be seen as further including the
phenomenological counterpart of a "pragmatic" analysis of meaning and
intention.
Traditionally, semantics studies the meaning and reference of words,
while pragmatics studies the influences on meaning and reference exerted
by various features of the occasions or contexts of the use of words. s The
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 273

reference of demonstrative pronouns, for instance, depends not only on their

general or invariant meanings but also on "pragmatic", or contextual, features
of their use on particular occasions. The reference of 'this', for example,
depends on what the speaker is indicating, perhaps by pointing, when he
utters the word. 6 Sometimes the reference of a definite description may also
depend on contextual features of its particular occasion of use. For instance,
where a speaker and hearer share the same mistaken belief about which entity
is 1/>, the definite description 'the 1/>' may be used successfully to refer to some-
thing that does not in fact answer to the description. In this case the relevant
pragmatic, or contextual, features include the speaker's and hearer's mistaken
belief.
We see horizon-analysis as "pragmatic" in a similar sense, attaining thereby
an enhanced perspective on horizon-analysis as explication of Sinn or, better,
intention. Previously, we saw an act's horizon as marking off the "limits" of
the act's Sinn and so providing a certain sort of explication of that Sinn in its
own right. However, if certain of the subject's background beliefs playa role
in generating the possible acts in the horizon, beliefs that are not conceptual
or semantic presuppositions of the act's Sinn, then the horizon is no longer
marking off the limits of that Sinn alone. Rather, it is marking off what is
"meant", or given, in the act in virtue of not only the explicit Sinn but also
certain parts of the "context" environing its de facto presence in this partic-
ular act of this particular subject, a context consisting of certain of his back-
ground beliefs pertaining to the Qbject he is intending. And these beliefs, or
their Sinne, are "pragmatically" involved in the act, in this particular inten-
tion via that Sinn. They are, we may say, pragmatic presuppositions of the
act. 7 They are presupposed not by the act's Sinn in itself but by the subject
in performing the act. Thus, horizon-analysis is pragmatic in that it explicates
certain contextual influences on intention, namely, the influences of back-
ground beliefs on what is given in an act. Note that the contextual items we
are citing are not the de facto object of intention or contingent facts about it,
but rather contingently related beliefs about it, or other attitudes about it
that are pragmatically presupposed in the intention. On Husserlian prin-
ciples, intention can be achieved only by way of internal features of phenom-
enological structure and not by external features of the intended object that
are in no way brought into play by items of phenomenological structure.
There is now a difficulty, though, in saying just how far horizon-analysis
extends: how much of the subject's background belief-structure can plausibly
be regarded as pragmatically presupposed in the act and so as explicable in
the act's horizon? Empirical belief systems have a way of interweaving with
274 CHAPTER VI

other systems. A maple tree in New England might well harbor an opossum
but is unlikely to harbor a platypus or a koala bear. Are a person's beliefs
concerning local animal life then relevant material for analysis of the horizon
of his act of seeing a maple tree? We should like to see the line drawn closely
enough for horizon-analysis to explicate only those background meanings or
beliefs that play a significant role in the intention considered. However, we
ourselves have no sharper criterion to offer.
The difficulty cited concerns background beliefs that influence the inten-
tion but are not analytically related to the explicit Sinn. Now, one thing we
might consider is Quine's view that there is no sharp distinction between
analytic and synthetic propositions; 8 then there would be no sharp separation
between Sinne or beliefs that are analytically related to an act's Sinn and
those that are not. The sort of case on which we have dwelt with Hussed, that
of perceiving a natural object, lends itself to such a view. For it is not clear
whether it is a matter of meaning or of empirical botanical theory that, for
example, the leaves on one side of a tree must be of the same kind as those
on another side. Further, as Hussed rightly held, the essences of physical
objects - e.g., species of trees - are "transcendent" and so are not exhaus-
tively specified by any fmite number of propositions or beliefs (cf. Ideas,
§149, p. 365; El, §83). And this view could pose problems for the analytic/
synthetic distinction: some propositions that detail "essential" features of
(say) maple trees would then nonetheless not be involved in a person's con-
ception of maple trees and thus would not be analytically tied to the Sinn
of his act of seeing a maple tree. 9 If Quine's view is right, then there should
be no sharp separation between the "conceptual" and the "pragmatic" pre-
suppositions of an act and, probably, no sharp boundary defining those of the
subject's background beliefs that horizon-analysis may reach. We shall not,
however, cast ourselves into the analytic/synthetic dispute; and we have little
direct evidence of what Husserl's view might be on the matter.

1.5. Hussert's Appraisal of Horizon-Analysis Revisited

According to our emended view, horizon-analysis yields not merely a "se-
mantic" but also a "pragmatic" explication of a given act's Sinn and of the
intention achieved in the act. The emendation sheds light on Hussed's own
estimate of horizon-analysis in Cartesian Meditations, §20. There, as we saw
in Chapter V, Section 1.3, Hussed sees horizon-analysis as "the peculiar
attainment" of "intentional analysis", bringing to phenomenological analysis
and description "methods of a totally new kind". Specifically, he extolls its
lead to the transcendental ego and the ego's functioning in "constituting"
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 275

objects of consciousness. Now, the relations of a particular act to its ego and
to other of the ego's experiences or intentions are what we have called prag-
matic features of the act; and we have seen that the analysis of such features
in horizon-analysis goes beyond analysis of the act's noematic Sinn per se.
Insofar as horizon-analysis in this way goes beyond pure noematic analysis of
the act's explicit noematic structure, it brings to phenomenological analysis
"methods of a tot~y new kind". So our view of horizon as yielding a prag-
matic rather than a purely semantic, or noematic, explication of an intention
seems to be a generalization of Hussed's own view of what is distinctive about
horizon-analysis, of how it goes beyond pure noematic analysis.
Our view of horizon-analysis thus provides an interesting perspective on
Hussed's own evaluation of the importance of the notion of horizon. Yet our
stress is probably somewhat different from what Hussed himself had in mind.
In assessing the horizon of an act of, say, seeing a tree (in Chapter V, Sections
3.2 and 3.3), we saw that the background beliefs whose role in horizon most
interests Hussed are either a priori or very general empirical beliefs about
the kind of object intended (e.g., that trees are three-dimensional physical
objects and thus have back sides, or that the leaves on one side of a tree gen-
erally resemble those on the other). Our own assessment of horizon-analysis
as pragmatic analysis, however, also stresses the role in horizon of concrete
background beliefs (e.g., that this is a tree I have seen before). We saw that
Hussed does address these beliefs as well. But, since he does so less frequently
and somewhat less pointedly, it is not clear to what extent Hussed thought
them important in the consideration of horizon.
We should note that horizon-analysis leads into what Husserl calls "genetic"
phenomenological analysis. Insofar as horizon-analysis serves to explicate the
role played in a given act by the subject's passive associations and recollec-
tions, it calls into phenomenological analysis the dependence of an act on
the subject's past experience. Whereas "static" phenomenological analysis
describes an act's noema, specifically its explicit Sinn, genetic analysis de-
scribes an act's genesis in the subject's internal life-history. Thus, genetic
analysis concerns the history of the subject's experiences or acts of conscious-
ness and its influence on his present experience (cf. FTL, AppendiX II).

1.6. The Significance of Horizon-Analysis: Beyond Frege to New Horizons

The fundamental importance of Hussed's notion of horizon, we fmd, lies in
the fact that horizon-analysis is a special way of explicating the meaning,
or Sinn, of an act. There are in Hussed two correlative notions of horizon,
"act-horizon" and "object-horizon", as we have called them; and these yield
276 CHAPTER VI

two correlative methods of explicating an act's Sinn. By laying out the act-
horizon associated with a given act, the horizon of possible acts or experiences
whose Sinne are compatible with the act's Sinn, we layout in the realm of
experience "what" is experienced in the act as such, the meaning, or Sinn, of
the act. Thus, if we imagine ourselves as having these possible experiences,
we effectively dramatize for ourselves, in consciousness, the Sinn of the given
act. Correlatively, by laying out the object-horizon associated with a given act,
the horizon of possibilities compatible with what is prescribed by the act's
Sinn, we layout the act's Sinn - or its projection, so to speak - in the realm
of possibilia. .
Now, there are two aspects of horizon-analysis that we find to be of spe-
cific importance and that we shall pursue through the remainder of the book.
First, what is achieved in the explication of an act's Sinn in terms of the act's
object-horizon is effectively just what would be achieved in the Carnapian
analysis or explication of that Sinn in terms of possible worlds. The case for
this claim is to be found in Parts 2 and 3 below. This claim is the basis for
the assimilation we pursue in Chapter VII of a Husserlian approach to
intentionality and a possible-worlds semantics for propositional attitudes
(such as the type of semantics laakko Hintikka has proposed). Second,
the "pragmatic" element we found in the notion of horizon (act- or object-
horizon) carries Husserl's analysis of intention beyond what can be achieved
by his basic Fregean method of Sinn-analysis. We draw on this aspect of
horizon-analysis in Chapter VIII, where we pursue the phenomenological
analysis of certain definite, or de re, intentions in ways that are pragmatic.
These two features of horizon-analysis - its connection with possible-
worlds analysis of meaning and its connection with pragmatic analysis of
meaning and intention - are logically independent. Let us bring them into
somewhat finer perspective.
In semantics, the possible-worlds theory of meaning can be seen as a
development of the basic Fregean, and Husserlian, conception of meaning:
the possible-worlds approach to meaning is basically a specification within
possible-worlds theory of what meanings must do in determining referents.
This approach to meaning has proved to be of significant heuristic value as
an especially effective way of explicating particular meanings and how they
function. In phenomenology, horizon-analysis a la Husserl can be seen as a
similar development of the basic Husserlian analysis of an act's Sinn: analysis
of an act's horizon (specifically, its object-horizon) is a specification in terms
of possible situations or possible worlds of what the act's Sinn must do in
prescribing what is intended in the act. And horizon-analysis, too, can have a
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 277

significant heuristic value in phenomenology as a particularly effective way

of explicating the meaning-content of various kinds of acts of consciousness.
Indeed, as we shall see in Part 2 and in Chapter VII, specific results from
possible-worlds semantics can be transferred quite directly to phenomeno-
logical analysis by way of the notion of object-horizon. These results then
provide interesting and fruitful insights into some of the main problems of
intentionality and contribute to their solution.
Only up to a point, however, can horizon-analysis be seen as a development
of - or as a parallel alternative to - Sinn-analysis in phenomenology. For, as
we have urged, the pragmatic element in horizon carries horizon-analysis in
principle beyond Husserl's basic, Fregean sort of Sinn-analysis, which we
described in Chapters III and IV above.
To begin with, direct analysis of an act's Sinn does not show how that
Sinn and the intention achieved through it depend, as they often do, on
related background beliefs or their Sinne (or, perhaps, on other sorts of pre-
supposed background experiences). Horizon-analysis brings these further acts
and their Sinne into the phenomenological analysis of intention. Thus, in
Chapter V (cf. Sections 3.2 and 3.3) we considered the influence that both
general and concrete background beliefs may exert on the intention achieved
in an act, and we saw how analysis of the act's horizon reveals such influences.
Now, the pragmatic element in horizon-analysis can be pressed further in at
least two directions. In the direction of the fundamental, a priori general
beliefs presupposed in an act lies the Kantian element we noted in Husserl's
own remarks on horizon-anaIysis (cf. Section 1.5 above and Chapter V,
Section 1.3): horizon-analysis then uncovers the ego's operations in consti-
tuting objects in consciousness and, hence, the contributions the human
mind makes to our "sense" of the world about us. But in the direction of
concrete background beliefs presupposed in an act - which are less stressed
by Husserl - we find a quite different reward. For, as we shall see in Chapter
VIII (cf. Part 4, especially Section 4.1), it is typically in such background
beliefs that the "individuation" of objects occurs, the individuation pre-
supposed in individuatively definite acts. And so the phenomenological
analysis of how individuatively definite intention is achieved must, on
Husserlian ground, be carried out in horizon-analysis.
In Chapter IV (cf. Sections 3.3 ft), we found important difficulties facing
Husserl's analysis of defmite, or de re, intentions in terms of his basically
Fregean analysis of intention via Sinn. In Sinne directed to individuals,
Husserl found an "X" -component, and this component reqUires definiteness
of intention. Yet, among Sinne that prescribe individuals, Frege apparently
278 CHAPTER VI

recognized only senses of the sort expressible by definite descriptions (devoid

of indexical elements), and these are inadequate to the needs of definite
intention. Thus, we still need an account of how Husserl's "X" works -
indeed, of how a Sinn works - to achieve defmiteness of intention. Horizon-
analysis opens the door to a Husserlian account of definite, or de re intention,
and we shall pursue such an account throughout the remainder of the book.
In Chapter VII we learn, among other things, what to expect or to ask of the
Sinn of a defmite act; and in Chapter VIII we study definiteness of intention
in its own right.

2. THE EXPLICATION OF MEANING IN TERMS OF

POSSIBLE WORLDS

In this part of the present chapter we develop the "possible-worlds" theory of

meaning, or intension, that has emerged in the tradition of possible-worlds
semantics, taking note of features that are of special concern in evaluating
Husserl's approach to meaning and intentionality. We develop the theory out
of remarks of Carnap and C. I. Lewis. But we take a modified perspective on
Carnap's proposal that meanings be defined in terms of possible worlds: we
hold that meanings should be explicated but not strictly defmed in terms of
possible worlds. This perspective is more in keeping with Frege's and Husserl's
views about what meanings are. We shall be especially interested in the expli-
cation of "individual meanings", those expressible by singular terms, and we
shall consider how the sort of noematic Sinn Husserl took as a paradigm might
be explicated in terms of possible worlds.

2.1 Intension and Extension

For Frege, meanings were abstract entities thanks to which words refer to
their referents: singular terms to individuals, predicates to "concepts" or
"relations", and sentences to truth-values. Semantic theory has developed
considerably since Frege first articulated his doctrine of sense and reference,
but there is a general line of development in which his influence remains
clearly visible. According to semantic theory in this basically Fregean tradi-
tion, an expression's intension is to be distinguished from its extension: each
meaningful linguistic expression has an intension, or a meaning, which it ex-
presses, and (with the possible exception of terms that fail to refer) an exten-
sion, or a referent, to which it refers. (cf. Chapter II, Section 3.2). like
Camap in Meaning and Necessity, most philosophers in this tradition have
taken the extension of a predicate to be the set of individuals or ordered
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 279

n-tuples satisfying it, rather than a Fregean "concept" or "relation"; and C. I.

Lewis, in 'The Modes of Meaning', took the referent of a sentence to be
either the whole world (if the sentence is true) or nothing at all (if it is false),
rather than a truth-value. 1o Views other than Frege's have also developed
concerning the exact kinds of entities that play the role of intensions in
semantic theory; the possible-worlds view of meaning, which we shall be
exploring, is a notable example.
The cornerstone of Frege's theory, and any of its variants, is the principle
that the extension of an expression is detennined by the intension of the
expression. Frege himself said the sense of an expression includes a "mode
of presentation" - or "way of being given" (Art des Gegebenseins) - of the
referent and so determines the referent in a particular "way",'l Other philos-
ophers have correlated intensions with criteria for determining extensions:
"Sense meaning", said Lewis, "is ... a criterion in mind by which one is able
to apply or refuse to apply the expression in question in the case of presented
things or situations"P And according to Carnap, the intension of a word is
"the general condition which an object must fulfIl in order to be denoted by
this word . . . . 13
Considerations about this role of intensions in determining extensions
have led to a particularly interesting and influential development of the
generally Fregean theory of intension and extension. The leading idea behind
this development is that the intension of an expression determines not only
its actual extension but also a range of possible extensions, i.e., the extensions
an expression would have if various logically possible, but counterfactual,
situations were to obtain. Thus, to determine the intension of an expression,
says Carnap, "not only actually given cases must be taken into consideration,
but also possible cases, i.e., kinds of objects which can be described without
self-contradiction, irrespective of the question whether there are any objects
of the kinds described" .14 The developed version of this view of intensions
is the "possible-worlds" theory of meaning that we briefly characterized in
Section 1.2.

2.2 Intension and Comprehension

The possible-worlds analysis of meaning, or intension, grew out of late and
largely unpublished work of Carnap, and its full development has come in
still later work on the semantics of modalities. But the seeds of the view can
be found earlier in Lewis.
If, as Lewis held, the intension of an expression incorporates a criterion
for determining its extension, then intension ought to determine extension in
280 CHAPTER VI

any possible situation. For such a criterion should not only determine what
an expression refers to given the actual state of affairs, given the relevant
facts that actually do obtain; it should also determine what the expression
would refer to if somewhat different facts obtained. Thus, in 'The Modes
Meaning', Lewis linked with an expression not only an extension and inten-
sion but also what he called its "comprehension":S Lewis defined the com-
prehension of a term or predicate as the set of "consistently thinkable"
individuals falling under it - i.e., the possible as well as the actual individuals
to which it applies. The intension of an expression, Lewis held, determines its
comprehension as well as its extension, and, further, its comprehension deter-
mines its intension.
This notion of comprehension, of extension among the possible as well as
the actual, contains the germ of Carnap's later analysis of intension in terms
of possible worlds. But Lewis' notion is unsatisfactory as it stands. We cannot
take terms and predicates to apply, or fail to apply, to individuals simpliciter;
they apply only relative to worlds in which those individuals reside. Whether
an expression applies to some "consistently thinkable" individual depends on
whether the criterion for applying the expression is satisfied by that individ-
ual, and whether the criterion is satisfied depends, in turn, on what is true of
that individual in the world in which it occurs. For instance, relative to the
actual course of English history, the term 'First Lord of the Admiralty in
1939' refers to Winston Churchill. But relative to a different course of events,
a different possible history or "world", it refers to, say, Neville Chamberlain.
And in some other world it may refer to a merely possible individual, one
that occurs in that world but not in this, the actual world. It is similar with
predicates. For example, in some "consistently thinkable" situations, or
possible worlds, Robin Hood satisfies the predicate 'gave to the poor' while
in others he does not. Generally, then, the notion of extension should be
relativized to worlds. Let us say that the extension of a singular term in a
world is that individual (if any) denoted by the term in that world, the ex-
tension of a predicate in a world is the set of individuals (or n-tuples) that
satisfy it in that world, and the extension of a sentence in a world is its truth-
value in that world.
In this way the notion of extension can properly be extended beyond the
realm of the actual. But the result is not Lewis' notion of comprehension as
extension among possible individuals; it is the notion of extension in possible
worlds. To refine Lewis' notion, then, let us define the comprehension of an
expression as the set of ordered pairs (w, e), where w is a possible world and e
is the extension of the expression in w.
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 281

This revised notion of comprehension preserves Lewis' claims that the

intension of an expression determines its comprehension and that its com-
prehension also determines its intension. Consider, for example, the singular
term 'the thirty-third President of the United States'. Given the relevant facts
about the actual world or course of events, the intension, or sense, of this
term picks out Harry S. Truman as the extension, or referent, of the term in
the actual world. Given a different world, in which the relevant facts are
slightly different, it picks out, say, Thomas E. Dewey as the extension in that
world. In another world it picks out Franklin D. Roosevelt, and so on. As the
intension determines the extension in each possible world, it determines the
comprehension of the term. Conversely, the comprehension determines the
intension: if we knew the extension in each possible world, we could, as it
were, abstract from this comprehension the intension, or the criterion deter-
mining these extensions. For predicates and sentences, too, comprehension
and intension determine one another in the same way.

2.3 Intensions as Functions on Possible Worlds

These observations about meanings, or intensions, do little more than clar-
ify the role they are assigned by semantic theory. But we may now claim to
know several things about meanings. We may suppose, first, that meanings are
abstract entities, as Frege and Husserl held. We know, second, and again from
Frege and Husserl, that the intension assigned an expression determines the
extension of the expression. Third, we now see that an expression's intension
determines not only its extension in the actual world but also its extension in
other possible worlds - that is, its intension determines its comprehension.
And, fourth, the comprehension determines the intension of an expression -
which is to say, in effect, that there is nothing more asked of an intension
than that it determine comprehension. (Further observations will weaken this
fourth claim, however.)
Now, Carnap reportedly made a proposal in keeping with these observa-
tions about intensions, and it is this proposal on which the possible-worlds
theory of meaning is based. 16 Let us take intensions to be/unctions, Carnap
suggested. The intension of an expression will then be dermed as the function
that assigns to each possible world the extension of the expression in that
world. Specifically, on this proposal, the intension of a singular term (e.g.,
'Robin Hood', 'the thirty-third President of the United States') is the func-
tion that assigns to each possible world the individual (if any) that the term
denotes in that world; the intension of a predicate (e.g., 'gave to the poor')
is the function that assigns to each world the set of individuals (or n-tuples)
282 CHAPTER VI

that satisfy it in that world; and the intension of a sentence (e.g., 'Robin Hood
gave to the poor') is the function that assigns to each world the truth-value (if
any) of the sentence in that world. (Note that the defmition allows that ex-
pressions may have no extension in some worlds.) Let us call these functions
from possible worlds to appropriate extensions in worlds meaning [unctions.
Importantly, intensions on this view are to be entities ontologically in-
dependent of the expressions and the language that serve to express them.
Mention of linguistic expressions is thus not essential to Carnap's defmition.
Intensions are defined as meaning functions of various kinds depending on
the kind of extensions they assign to possible worlds, and semantic theory
then assigns to expressions of appropriate syntactic categories functions of
appropriate kinds.
Carnap's proposal amounts to identifying the intension of an expression
with its comprehension (as we have defined comprehension). Under the
standard set-theoretic defmition of functions, a functidn is defmed as, i.e.,
identified with, the set of ordered pairs of which the first member is an argu-
ment of the function and the second is the value of the function at that
argument. Thus, a meaning function from possible worlds to extensions - an
intension - is a set of ordered pairs, where the first member of each pair is a
world and the second is the extension assigned that world. And this set just
is a comprehension. Carnap's proposal is a theoretical identification, a theo-
retical posit, based on what we know of intensions in semantic theory. As
functions, intensions are abstract. And, as identified with the relevant com-
prehension, the intension of an expression both determines and is determined
by the comprehension of the expression.
We should note that there is a complication involved in identifying inten-
sion with comprehension in this way. The proposed analysis of intension may
capture the notion of meaning for certain expressions of fairly elementary
syntactic structure, with relatively simple semantic content, such as 'the house
on the corner' or 'is an animal'. However, intension cannot in general be iden-
tified with comprehension, with the meaning functions Carnap proposed.
Lewis noted, for example, that self-contradictory predicates like 'is a round
square' and 'is a triangular circle' have the same comprehension, viz., the null
set (for us, they have the same extension, the null set, in every world).17 Yet
these predicates do not have the same meaning. Similarly, all tautologies and
all logical truths in general have the same extension (viz., Truth) in all worlds,
yet not all such sentences have the same meaning. Lewis observed that the
meanings of such contradictory or tautological expressions must reflect not
only the comprehensions of the whole expressions but also their syntactic
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 283

structures. They must reflect the way the meanings of the whole expressions
are bullt up from the meanings of their syntactic parts. And Carnap similarly
suggested that synonymous expressions must exhibit the same "intensional
structure".18 Thus, while certain elementary intensions may be defmed as
functions from worlds to extensions, the intensions of more complex expres-
sions must be more complex abstract entities constructed from such elemen-
tary intensions in ways reflecting appropriate syntactic structure. Carnap's
proposal has been developed along these lines, though we shall not pursue
that development for our own purposes. 19

2.4 Intensions as Functions: Explication versus Definition

We have now seen that meanings can be correlated with meaning functions,
functions from possible worlds to appropriate extensions in worlds. However,
there is reason for restraining ourselves from identifying meanings with their
corre~ponding meaning functions, or comprehensions (in our revised sense).
Lewis held that despite the close correlation between intension and com-
prehension (in his sense) the notions must be kept distinct:

... For any term, its connotation [Le., intension) determines its comprehension; and
conversely, any determination of its comprehension would determine its connotation;
by determining what characters alone are common to all the things comprehended. In
point of fact, however, there is no way in which the comprehension can be precisely
specified except by reference to the connotation, since exhaustive enumeration of all
the thinkable things comprehended is never possible. 20

A similar point holds for our revised notion of comprehension. Even if in-
tensions and comprehensions stand in a one-to-one correspondence, there
remains an important difference between them. Intensions must be entities
that our fmite human minds can grasp, for otherwise meanings could not play
their appointed roles in human language. But we cannot completely grasp
comprehensions, which are infinite sets of ordered pairs. So it seems that in-
tensions cannot properly be identified with their corresponding comprehen-
sions. And, therefore, they cannot be identified with their corresponding
meaning functions, since meaning functions are just comprehensions.
Carnap's proposal that meanings, or intensions, be identified with meaning
functions is prompted by the needs of semantic theory, principally by the
requirement that intension determine extension in every possible world. But
Lewis' caveat points up the relevance of a further important part of Husserl's
theory of meaning. The notion of meaning, for Husserl, is not exclusively
or primarily a linguistic notion, for language is used to express underlying
284 CHAPTER VI

thought, the "content" (or noematic Sinn) of which is the meaning ex-
pressed. Fundamentally, on this view, meanings are the objective "contents"
of consciousness by virtue of which acts of consciousness are directed toward
their objects. (Cf. Chapters III and IV above). These claims about meanings
go beyond the demands of pure semantic theory, entering the broader arenas
of philosophy of language and theory of intentionality. But insofar as we
accept these claims, we cannot identify intensions, or meanings, with their
corresponding meaning functions, or comprehensions.
Another alternative is perhaps compatible with these further considerations
about meaning, however: one might identify intensions with meaning func-
tions and resist, instead, the identification of meaning functions with com-
prehensions. It is the set-theoretic reduction of functions to sets of ordered
pairs that identifies meaning functions with comprehensions, but that reduc-
tion can also be resisted. One might take a function to be a "rule" for assign-
ing values to arguments and so distinguish a function itself, as "function in
intension", from the corresponding set of ordered pairs it determines, as
"function in extension". One would then allow that different functions may
determine the same set of ordered pairs. The particular appeal of this view of
functions here, of course, is that it would give a more Husserlian slant to
Carnap's proposal to identify intensions with certain functions from possible
worlds to extensions. But there are two reasons why we shall not follow this
line. First, it is the "extensional" view of functions, as sets of ordered pairs,
that has been most widely used, and it is the "extensional" version of Carnap's
proposal that has been most discussed in the literature of possible-worlds
semantics. We want to draw on these more familiar and more widely discussed
notions in developing further the role of intensions in intentionality. Second,
it is the notion of comprehension - understood as certain sets of ordered
pairs, where each pair consists of a possible world and an appropriate ex-
tension - that we shall compare with Husserl's notion of object-horizon and
to which we shall thus appeal as a way of explicating meaning through hori-
zon-analysis. So we shall assume the extensional version of Carnap's proposal,
identifying meaning functions with comprehensions, and correlating - but
not identifying - intensions with their corresponding meaning functions, or
comprehensions.
Even if meanings and meaning functions are not identical, their close
alignment is of considerable importance. For one of the most effective means
of expUcating meaning, of getting a grip on a particular meaning, is to consider
the extensions it determines in a number of different possible situations or
worlds - that is, to grasp a part of its comprehension, its corresponding
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 285

meaning function. Accordingly, various kinds of meanings may be explicated,

even if not defined, by turning to meaning functions of appropriate kinds.

2.5. Two Kinds of Intensional Entities and Their Explication

There remains an important question concerning the explication of meanings
by corresponding meaning functions: on which possible worlds are these
functions to be defined? Are they to be defined on all logically, or meta-
physically, possible worlds; or only on worlds composed of things conceivable
by the human mind; or, perhaps, on worlds compatible with someone's
working conceptual scheme? Different answers will leave meanings explicated
in different ways. But they may also leave different kinds of intensional en-
tities explicated, for different answers seem to reflect different views about
the nature of meanings and the roles they play.
Entities of different ontological kinds have in fact been considered "inten-
sional entities", and different kinds of entities have been assigned the role
of "intensions", or "meanings", in different semantic theories of intension
and extension. In Meaning and Necessity Carnap proposed the following en-
tities as intensions: for sentences, "propositions"; for predicates, properties
and relations, which he also called "concepts"; and for singular terms, "in-
dividual concepts".21 Now, these entities seem to be rather different from
Husserlian noemata and Fregean Sinne. Properties, for Carnap, are objective
characteristics predicable of the things that have them, and individual con-
cepts are somewhat like properties but of a type that relates only to single
individuals. And so propositions, which are complex intensional entities that
include properties and individual concepts as components, seem to be a sort
of states of affairs. Carnap says:

By the property Black we mean something that a thing mayor may not have and that
this table actually has. Analogously, by the proposition that this table is black we mean
something that actually is the case with this table, something that is exemplified by the
fact of the table's being as it is. 22

For Husserl, on the other hand, the meanings of predicates are not properties
(or, in his terminology, "essences"): they are not themselves characteristics
that can be attributed to individuals but are, rather, noematic entities by
virtue of which we intend individuals as having such characteristics or proper-
ties (see Chapter IV, Section 1.4, above). Further, for Husserl, states of affairs
are extensions, or referents, of indicative sentences, while the meanings ex-
pressed by such sentences are abstract, or objective, contents of consciousness
by virtue of which these states of affairs are intended (cf. LI, V, §28;Ideas,
286 CHAPTER VI

§94; FTL, § §48-49). Fregean Sinne, too, seem rather different from
Carnap's intensions. Carnap suggests that, for predicates, his distinction
between intension (Le., property) and extension (Le., class) coincides with
the distinction between what Frege called a "concept" (Le., a function whose
arguments are individuals and whose values are truth-values) and its course of
values (roughly, the class of arguments for which the value of the function is
Truth).23 Now, Frege does not say precisely what sort of entity the sense
of a predicate is. But he does hold explicitly that it is not a "concept": a
"concept", he holds, is the referent, or extension, of a predicate, not its
sense, or intension. 24 And there is also evidence that Frege took "thoughts",
the senses expressed by sentences, to be objective contents of thought rather
than states of affairs. He says: "By a thought I understand not the subjective
performance of thinking but its objective content ... ";25 and he emphasizes
that thoughts can be "apprehended", "grasped", and "communicated". 26
Generally, Husserl's "meanings" (and perhaps Frege's "senses" as well) are
mediators of intention, while Carnap's "intensions" - in Meaning and Neces-
sity, at least - are entities more like those that serve as the objects of every-
day intentions. In Husserl's idiom, Husserlian noematic meanings are "tran-
scendental" entities while Carnapian intensions are "transcendent" - though
this contrast is one of epistemological status rather than one of ontological
status or kind. The difference is in fact brought out rather sharply in Lewis'
distinction of different "modes" or kinds of meaning. In addition to its
intension (or "connotation"), its extension (or "denotation"), and its "com-
prehension", Lewis held that every meaningful expression also has a "signifi-
cation". Whereas, for Lewis, the intension of an expression is a "criterion in
mind" for determining its possible extensions, its signification is that character
that any entity must have in order to qualify as an extension of the expres-
sion. He says:

We shall say that a term signifies the comprehensive character such that everything
having this character is correctly namable by the term, and whatever lacks this character
. . . is not so namable. And we shall call this comprehensive essential character the
signification of the term. 27

It seems that Lewis' intensions, or "connotations", are the entities that

Husserl and Frege took as meanings (Sinne) and that his "significations" are
what Carnap took as intensions.
We opened this section by asking whether intensions should be represent-
ed by meaning functions defined on all logically , or metaphysically, possible
worlds or by meaning functions defined on some more restricted set of
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 287

possible worlds. Now, the answer seems to depend on whether we primarily

think of meanings and their roles as Carnap did or as Husserl did.
Carnap's intensions are fundamentally semantic posits, put forth in the
interests of semantic theory. As such, one of their major roles is that of ex-
plicating the distinction between logical truths - sentences that are true in
every world that can be described in a logically consistent way - and con-
tingent (or factual) truths - sentences that are true in the actual world but
false in some logically consistent worlds. 28 In order to capture this distinction
the intension of a sentence must determine its truth-value in every logically
possible world. Carnap also gives intensions a key role in the truth-conditions
of modal sentences, i.e., sentences involving the modal operators 'Necessarily'
and 'Possibly'.z9 Now, since 'Necessarily p' is true just in case 'p' is true in
every logically possible world - or, better here, every metaphysically possible
world -, the intension of a sentence must determine its truth-value in every
metaphysically possible world. Carnap's intensions are approporiate sorts of
entities for these purposes: they are features of worlds and of individuals in
worlds, and, importantly, they are not in any way constrained by the limita-
tion of the human mind (unless the constraints oflogic are construed as such
limitations). If the meanings of predicates and singular terms are character-
istics that individuals may have, then, for any individual in any world, the
individual either will or will not possess the appropriate characteristic in that
world. And if the meanings of sentences are propositions in the sense of states
of affairs, then for any world the appropriate state of affairs either will or
will not obtain in that world. Indeed, Carnap considers necessity and possi-
bility to be predicable of propositions;30 a "necessary" proposition is then
a state of affairs that obtains in every metaphysically possible world and so
determines that a sentence expressing that proposition is true in every such
world. To explicate Carnap's intensions, we need postulate a set of meaning
functions defmed on all logically, or metaphysically, possible worlds, Le.,
a set of functions that assign appropriate extensions to every such world.
If we think of meanings as Husserl, Lewis, and apparently Frege did,
however, Carnap's intensions and the meaning functions that represent them
seem curiously inappropriate. According to Husserl, meanings are noematic
entities through which conscious subjects intend objects; for Lewis, they are
"criteria in mind" for determining extensions; and, for Frege, they include
"modes of presentation" of the referents they determine. All these ways of
speaking indicate a close connection between intension and intention; and
they suggest a more restricted role for intensions, restricted by the finite
capacities of the human mind. (Though Frege would apparently agree about
288 CHAPTER VI

the connection, it is not clear that he would also accept the restriction: so far
as we know, he does not say whether the "modes of presentation" correlated
with senses include only presentations that can be made to human minds). As
criteria in mind, for example, it seems quite unlikely that intensions can
legitimately be called upon to determine extensions in every logically, or
metaphysically, possible world; for we human beings seem not to be in
possession of such criteria. Our (tacit) criteria for deciding which individuals
are to be called "persons", or "animals", or "trees", for example, are imperfect
even as applied to the actual world; and it is surely implausible to suppose
them applicable in worlds that, though logically possible, differ wildly from
the world of our actual experience - say, in worlds where the laws of logic
hold but those of physics do not. If intensions are "criteria in mind" in any
literal sense, then, it seems that intensions at best determine extensions in
those possible worlds that do not differ drastically from the actual world as
we conceive it to be - hence, in those possible worlds in which most of our
beliefs are true. And as noematic entities, meanings are entities through
which we intend objects, not as Kantian "things·in·themselves", but as objects
constituted in accord with our past experiences and our peculiarly human
conceptual schemes. (This tenet is the heart of Husserl's so-called "tran-
scendental idealism": cf. Ideas, § §47-50, 55; eM, § §40-41.) The meanings
that play a role in human belief and other intentional phenomena - and in
language, considered as an intentional phenomenon - thus seem best re-
presented by meaning functions whose domains are sets of possible worlds
composed of things conceivable and understandable by human beings, worlds
compatible at least with our basic conceptual scheme.
Where meaning functions are invoked in explication of noematic meanings
at work in particular acts of consciousness, their domain may be restricted
even further. Basically, the role of a noematic Sinn in an act is to determine
which object is intended, and how it is constituted, in the act. In accord with
Husserl's notion of horizon, however, many possibilities concerning the object
and its environment are left open by what is intended in the act; ultimately,
the act's noematic Sinn must determine the object in all these possible
situations that the act's horizon subscribes. But these possibilities, Husserl
emphasizes, are not "empty", merely logical, possibilities; they are, rather,
possibilities "pre delineated" by the act's meaning in consort with the mean-
ings of background beliefs presupposed in the act - sometimes including quite
specific and concrete empirical beliefs about the object intended (cf. Chapter
Y, Part 3). And so the possible situations - ultimately, possible worlds -
that are relevant to the explication of a particular meaning as operant in a
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 289

particular act can be restricted to those compatible with these constraining

background beliefs. Consequently, a noematic meaning, functioning within
the limits of the "pragmatic" presuppositions of the act in which it plays,
can be represented by a meaning function whose domain is restricted to the
set of possible worlds compatible with those of the subject's background
beliefs that are presupposed in the act. Such a meaning function, however,
does not strictly explicate the act's own, "explicit", Sinn but that Sinn
togetlier with the Sinne of the constraining background beliefs.
We propose, then, that both Carnap's (semantic) intensions and Husserl's
(noematic) meanings can be explicated by meaning functions. The former are
represented by meaning functions defined on all logically , or metaphysically,
possible worlds; the latter, by meaning functions defined on a severely re-
stricted subset of the set of logically possible worlds. Thus, the meaning
functions corresponding to Husserl's noematic meanings may be genuine
restrictions of the functions corresponding to Carnap's intensions, restricted,
as it were, by the limitations of the human mind. 31

2.6. "Individual Concepts", or Individual Meanings

Our discussions of intentionality have focused on intentions of or about
individual objects and, hence, on noematic Sinne that relate to individual
objects. Given this focus, one class of meanings is of particular interest to us,
those meanings that determine individuals and are expressible by singular
terms.
To apply his semantical method of extension and intension to singular
terms, Carnap assumed a class of intensions he called individual concepts.
These intensions he took to be entities that differ logically and ontologically
from properties and propositions and to relate in their own way to individ-
uals. Of their type, Carnap says only that they are "concepts of a particular
type, namely, the individual type",32 but each seems to be a sort of amalga-
mation of properties that together uniquely determine an individual. The
corresponding class of meanings for Frege and Husserl we might call individ-
ual senses, or individual meanings. These meanings will be noematic entities,
abstract forms or "contents" of thought, each of which uniquely prescribes
an individual; and they will differ in logical, and phenomenological, type
from senses of predicates or sentences. (What more we should say about them
is not clear, however, since neither Frege nor Husserl says very much about
any specific class of meaning entities per se.)
The main feature of an individual meaning is that in any possible world
290 CHAPTER VI

the extension (if any) that it determines is a single individual. The meaning
of 'the fust European in North America', for example, determines for each
possible world w that one individual (if any) in w who was (in w) the first
European person to arrive in North America, and that individual is then the
extension of the expression in w.
Individual meanings are nicely represented, or explicated, by meaning
functions of a particular sort. For example, the meaning of 'the first European
in Nor,th America' correlates with, and is explicated by, the meaning function
that assigns to each possible world w the person (if any) who in w was the
first European on North American soil. In general, the meaning functions that
represent individual meanings will be those functions that assign to each pos-
sible world at most one individual.

2.7. Rigid and Individuating Meanings

An important class of individual meanings are those we may call "rigid". An
individual meaning (or concept) is rigid, we shall say, if and only if it deter-
mines the same individual in every world (in which it determines any individ-
ual at all). Thus, whereas individual meanings in general are represented by
meaning functions that assign at most one individual (but not necessarily the
same one) to each possible world, rigid individual meanings are represented
by meaning functions that assign the very same individual (if any) to every
world. Our use of the term 'rigid' derives from Saul Kripke's term 'rigid
designator', meaning a singular term that refers to the same individual (if any)
in every world. 33
A ready example of a non-rigid individual meaning is the sense of a defmite
description, say, that of 'the first European in North America'. That sense
picks out Leif Erikson (or so we were taught) in the actual world, but it picks
out Christopher Columbus in another possible world and St. Brendan in yet
another. It thus determines different extensions in different worlds, and so
it is not rigid. An individual meaning that picks out, say, Leif Erikson (if
anyone) in every possible world is, by contrast, a rigid meaning.
What sort of expressions in natural languages might serve to express rigid
individual meanings? An expression that expressed a rigid meaning would
be a term that takes the same referent in every possible world, i.e., a "rigid
designator". Proper names (e.g., 'Leif Erikson') and demonstrative pronouns
(e;g., 'this' and 'that') have both been held to be rigid designators,34 and so
they are prime candidates for expressions whose meanings are rigid. Usually,
however, these expressions have been treated as vehicles of pure reference,
like Russell's "logically proper names", that do not express any meanings as
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 291

distinct from their referents. Let us not pursue this issue here, however; in
Chapter VIII we shall return to proper names and demonstratives and to their
relation to rigid meanings as these playa role in noematic structures.
An important class of rigid meanings are those that achieve their rigidity
by virtue of individuation; we may call them "individuating" meanings. An
individuating meaning is an individual meaning that captures the "identity",
or the "individual essence", of an individual and for that reason prescribes the
same individual in every world.
Hintikka has stressed the importance of individuating meanings or rigid
meaning functions in the semantics of intentional modalities. For purposes
of analyzing quantification into contexts of propositional attitude, he postu-
lates a set of meaning functions he calls "individuating functions", defmed
as functions that pick out the same individual (if any) from every world. 35
Hintikka considers these functions a species of individual concepts, or in-
dividual senses, which he generally identifies with functions from worlds to
individuals. And he takes the set of individuating functions to capture "the
totality of ways" in which "we recognize one and the same individual under
different circumstances and under different courses of events".36 In Chapter
VII (see esp. Sections 2.4 and 3.3) we shall discuss the role of these functions
in a possible-worlds semantics for sentences of propositional attitude.
Ona Husserlian view, individuating meanings might also be given an im-
portant role in intentionality. We saw in Chapter IV that individuatively
defmite acts, intentions of or about particular indiViduals, require noematic
Sinne that incorporate a conception of the identity of an individual and so
determine that "definite" individual as the object intended. Hence, we might
take these noematic Sinne to be, or to include, individuating senses; individ-
uating senses would then be noematic entities in virtue of which individua-
tively defmite acts achieve their directedness to particular individuals.
There is an important complication in viewing individuating senses as
noematic entities, however. Husserl holds that the complete identity, or the
"individual essence", of an object in nature is necessarily transcendent of
human consciousness, beyond our complete grasp (cf. Chapter VIII, Section
3.2, below). But an individuating meaning is to be precisely a meaning that
captures the individual essence, or identity, of the individual it prescribes.
This complication points up an important difference in the notion of individ-
uating meaning depending on whether we think of meanings as Carnap did
or as Husserl did.
Carnap's intensions are semantic posits, apparently transcendent entities
that need not be correlated in any essential w~y with human consciousness.
292 CHAPTER VI

So conceived, an individuating intension may be taken to incorporate the

complete individual essence of a thing in nature, transcendent though that
essence may be; such an intension would be a complete intensional represen-
tation of the individual. But Husserl's senses are noematic entities, abstract
contents of consciousness. So conceived, an individuating (noematic) sense
could incorporate only a fragment of the complete individual essence of a
natural object, a fragment that a fmite human consciousness can grasp and
that somehow yields a conception, however inadequate, of the individual
itself. At least a part of the difference between these two conceptions of
individuating meanings is clearly explicated in terms of possible worlds. The
meaning function that corresponds to a Carnapian individuating intension
must pick out one and the same individual in every logically, or metaphysi-
cally, possible world (in which it picks out any). The meaning function that
corresponds to a Husserlian individuating sense must be a proper restriction
of such a Carnapian individuating intension, picking out the same individual
(if any) in some smaller set of possible worlds, those compatible at least with
the conceptual scheme presupposed in the relevant intention. 37
The notion of an individuating sense of the Husserlian sort - a noematic
entity that determines a "definite" individual by prescribing its "identity" -
may be an overly simple ideal. At the very least, such senses do not seem to
be operative in human consciousness in quite the simple way our remarks
here may suggest. But we shall return to this point in more detail later (cf.
Chapter VIII, Part 4, below; also cf. Chapter W, Sections 3.3ff, above).

2.8. The Explication of Noematic Sinn in Terms ofPossible Worlds

Since noemata and their components are meanings of various sorts, we should
be able to construct possible-worlds explications for the various noematic
entities Husserl describes. This we now proceed to do, restricting ourselves
to the Sinn-components of the noemata of certain prominent sorts of acts.
We shall see in Part 3 below that there is a sound basis in Husserl for proceed-
ing in the way we do.
Of particular concern to Husserl are perceptions of individual things, acts
that might be given phenomenological description in the form 'I see this as 1/>'
or 'I see x as being such that x is 1/>'. The Sinn of such an act Husserl describes
as structured into two components: an X, which stands for the object itself
"in abstraction from all predicates", and a set of predicate-senses, or a com-
plex predicate-sense "1/>", which characterizes the object as given in the act.
(See Chapter W, Section 3.1, above; cf. Ideas, §§130-31.) How might we
explicate such a Sinn in terms of possible worlds? The first thing to note is
that the Sinn as described is an individual sense: the X and the predicate-sense
 EXPLICA nON OF MEANING 293

"IP" do not in this case join into a propositional Sinn, since the perception is
properly directed toward an individual rather than a state of affairs. And so
we will want to represent this Sinn by a function that assigns an individual
(if anything at all) to every world to which it applies. But, further, the X in
the Sinn calls for definiteness of intention, and this suggests "rigidity" of
Sinn: the Sinn somehow determines the same object (if any) in every relevant
possible world. The meaning function that explicates the Sinn should, there-
fore, assign the same individual to each possible world. And, finally, the
predicate-sense "IP" requires that the object prescribed by the Sinn in any
given world be r/> in that world. Thus, we might represent the complete Sinn -
"x as r/>" - of such a perception by the meaning function that assigns to
every possible world the same individual - viz., the one that is actually before
the perceiver - provided it is r/> in that world. (See Chapter VIII, Part 2,
below.)
There is one further complication, however. The function we have defined
represents the perception's "explicit" Sinn, yet we know the perception is
conditioned by certain background beliefs that may characterize the object
further than the explicit content "r/>" does (cf. Chapter V, Sections 3.2 and
3.3). So we might more fully represent the perceptual intention, constrained
by the relevant background beliefs, by the function that picks out that same
object in any world provided that in the given world the object is not only
r/> but also propertied in accordance with the relevant background beliefs.
Alternatively, we might let the background beliefs manifest themselves as
"pragmatic" constraints on the possible worlds that are relevant to the ex-
plication of the given intention: we could then explicate the Sinn, as operant
in the intention, by the function that assigns the same object, provided it is
r/>, to every possible world compatible with the background beliefs in question
(cf. Sections 1.4 and 2.5 above).
Let us turn to propositional acts or attitudes, considering the noematic
Sinne of certain sorts of judgment. Basically, the Sinn of a judgment is a
propositional meaning, expressible by a grammatically complete sentence.
Thus, the Sinn of the judgment described by 'Smith judges that p' is the
meaning of the sentence 'p'. And this meaning can be represented by the
function that assigns Truth to each world in which it is the case that p and
Falsehood to all others (in which 'p' has a truth-value at all). But we also need
to consider further the internal structure of propositional meanings, which
is often of considerable phenomenological interest. In particular, we need to
consider the explication of the "subject" constituents of propositional Sinne,
since these constituents determine the "aboutness" of propositional acts or
attitudes (cf. Chapter I, Section 1.5).
294 CHAPTER VI

Consider the indefinite, or de dicto, judgment described by 'Holmes judges

that the murderer wears square-toed boots'. Here the Sinn is the meaning
expressed by 'the murderer wears square-toed boots'. This meaning incor-
porates as "subject"-component the meaning of 'the murderer' and as "pre-
dicate"-component the meaning of 'wears square-toed boots'. Now, the
former is an individual sense, and we can represent it by the function that
assigns to any world w the referent of 'the murder.er' in w, i.e., the person
who, in w, committed the murder. Let us call this meaning function"lm ".
Importantly, since the act is de dicto we should not suppose the meaning
represented by 1m to be rigid: Holmes' judgment is not "about" any specific
individual, and so the sense "the murderer", as operant in Holmes' intention,
ought to relate indifferently to different individuals (those who are Holmes'
"suspects") in different possible worlds. (We develop this point more fully in
Chapter VII, Section 3.2, below.) The "predicate" -component of the proposi-
tional Sinn is represented by the function - call it "IB" - that assigns to any
world W the extension of 'wears square-toed boots' in w, i.e., the set of in-
dividuals who in W wear square-toed boots. And so the composite Sinn is
represented by the function that assigns Truth to every world W in which the
individual assigned to W by 1m is a member of the set of individuals assigned
to W by IB - i.e., to every world in which the person who committed the
murder wears square-toed boots. The sense in which the composite Sinn
includes the component meanings as constituents is thus represented as a
functional dependence: if IBm represents the whole Sinn, then for any world
W, IBm(W) = Truth if and only if Im(w) E IB(W); and so the value of IBm at
a world W is a function of the values at W of 1m and lB.
Finally, consider the definite, or de re, judgment described by '(3x)
(Holmes judges that x masterrnined the crime)'. The simplest approach here
would be to take the Sinn of this judgment as a propositional meaning that
includes a rigid individual sense - perhaps an "individuating" meaning - as
subject-component (and, of course, the sense of 'masterminded the crime'
as predicate-component). The SUbject-component would then be represented
by a function that assigns to every world the same individual - the individual
(say, Moriarty) whom Holmes judges to have masterminded the crime -, and
the "rigidity" of this function would insure that the judgment described is
about that particular individual. Such an explication of the Sinn of a defmite
judgment and the aboutness it achieves contrasts in a helpful way with the
explication of the Sinn of an indefmite judgment that we just gave above.
But, as we shall see in Chapter VIII (esp. Section 4.1), the explication is
overly simple for important kinds of defmite judgments.
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 295

2.9. "Pragmatic" Explication of Intention in Terms of Possible Worlds

On Husserl's basic theory of intentionality, the object intended in an act is

determined by the act's Sinn. When we explicate that Sinn in terms of possible
worlds, by correlating with it a function from possible worlds to appropriate
entities, we are in effect explicating the intention achieved in the act by that
Sinn. For we are laying out the pattern of directedness the Sinn prescribes in
different worlds, the objects appropriately propertied in different worlds as
prescribed by the Sinn. (Cf. Chapter VII, Part I.) But now, as we have ob-
served at various points along our way, there are cases in which the object of
an act is not determined by the act's Sinn alone but depends on contextual
features of the act. In those cases, what we should seek to explicate in terms
of possible worlds is not the act's Sinn per se but rather the intention achieved
in the act. Since the intention is determined by the Sinn only together with
certain features of context, this sort of explication of intention in terms of
possible worlds will be pragmatic.
Generally, then, we may correlate with any act a function that assigns to
each possible world an appropriate entity, the entity (if any) that would be
intended in that world. This function is determined by the act's Sinn together
with such contextual factors as may influence the intention. We may call such
functions intention functions, for they serve to explicate the patterns of
intention achieved in consciousness. Where the object intended in an act is
determined by the Sinn alone, the act's intention function serves to explicate
the act's Sinn; but where the object intended depends also on contextual
factors, the act's intention function serves to explicate the full complex of
object-determining factors - or, better that we say, simply the intention
achieved in the act. Again, on Husserlian grounds, these factors would all have
to be items of phenomenological structure, whether explicit or presupposed
in the act.
In succeeding sections and chapters, we shall make use of such possible-
worlds explication of intention or, sometimes, of Sinn. Where appropriate,
we shall focus on explication of Sinn per se, but it should be borne in mind
that the more general kind of explication is explication of intention, whether
achieved by Sinn alone or by Sinn together with contextual factors. Notice
that this pattern of explication of intention will apply even if, contra Husserl,
the object of an intention is determined partly by factors external to the
subject's consciousness, e.g., historical or causal relations between the subject
and the object.
296 CHAPTER VI

3. THE BASIS IN HUSSERL FOR A POSSIBLE-WORLDS

EXPLICATION OF MEANING AND INTENTION

We have seen that various sorts of meanings can be explicated (or, by some
accounts, even given ontological analysis) in terms of certain structures of
possible worlds. We wish to show now, in more detail than we have heretofore
provided, that there is a strong basis in Husserl for applying the possihle-
worlds theory of meaning to Husserl's analysis of noematic Sinn and inten-
tion. We do so by showing, first, that Husserl himself is not averse to speaking
of possible objects and possible worlds (though it is not clear that he wishes
to stake out a strong ontological commitment to possibilia), and, second, that
the specific structure he describes in the horizon of an act harbors an exact
structural basis for laying out the corresponding object-horizon, and hence
for explicating the act's Sinn, in terms of possible worlds. Effectively, we
argue, the explication of Sinn in terms of horizon is equivalent to the explica-
tion of Sinn in terms of possible worlds.

3.1. Possible Objects and Possible Worlds in Husserl

Husserl talks explicitly of both possible objects (possible individuals) and
possible worlds, sometimes in ways that are quite suggestive of an explication
or analysis of intention in terms of possibilia.
Sometimes Husserl talks of the object that is correlated with an act, or
with a manifold of acts, as though it were a possible object, that is, an object
that mayor may not be actual but is nonetheless "constituted" in the act or
in the manifold of acts. Thus he writes in Ideas:
As every intentional experience [Erlebnis] has a noema and therein a Sinn through
which it is related to the object, so inversely everything that we call object . .. must be
represented within the limits of actual and possible consciousness by corresponding
Sinne, or Siitze ....
. . . We correlate with an object a manifold of "Siitzen", or of experiences [Erlebnis-
sen] having a certain noematic content, such, specifically, that through it syntheses of
identification are a priori possible in virtue of which the object can and must remain the
same one.... But ... is the object itself "actual" ["wirklich"]? Could it not be non-
actual, while the manifold harmonious and even intuitively filled Siitzen nevertheless
... ran their course in consciousness?
... In the broader sense an object - "whether it is actual or not" - is "constituted"
in certain connections of consciousness, which bear in themselves a discernible [einseh-
bare] unity insofar as they carry with them essentially the consciousness of an identical
X. (§135, pp. 329,331-32.)

(Recall from § 133 that by 'Satz' Husserl means the noematic Sinn together
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 297

with the thetic component of the noema, effectively the whole noema.) In
Experience and Judgment he says:

"The same" object which I just now imagine could also be given in experience: this same
merely possible object (and thus every possible object) could also be an actual object.
Conversely: I can say of every actual object that it need not be actual; it would then be
"mere possibility". (Appendix I, to § §40 and 43, p. 381.)

As we shall discuss in a moment, Husserl also talks of possible worlds.

And, as we shall discuss in Chapter VIII (see Section 3.4), he talks (though
not without qualification) of the same individuals existing in different worlds
(cf. EJ, §§40 ff); this talk presupposes a notion of possible individual well-
known in modern possible-worlds semantics.
The above quotations seem to stake a strong claim for Husserl on the
notion of possible objects. Still, adjacent passages show that Husserl is pri-
marily concerned with other issues. In § 135 of Ideas he is describing the
correlation of objects with structures of meaning or consciousness that is the
central doctrine of his transcendental idealism. And in the paragraphs that
follow the quotation from Experience and Judgment he retreats from the
notion of a possible object to that of a "complete sense" that would prescribe
an object. Husserl's view in both places is that to anything that could count
as an object, to anything that we could meaningfully speak of as an object,
there corresponds an ideally complete system of noemata or, alternatively,
of possible experiences (Erlebnisse) that would present that object.
Husserl also talks from time to time of possible worlds other than the
actual. We have pointed out that the horizon of an act of perception breaks
down into what we called "families of possible verification chains", each
complete family consisting of possible acts that together present a complete
possible perceptible history of the object and its environment. And we have
noted that the environment of an object of perception, its "external horizon",
extends maximally to include the whole world about the object. (Cf. Chapter
V, Sections 4.1 and 4.3, above; also Section 3.2 below.) Correlated with the
actual world, then, there is in the horizon of an act of perception that one
complete family of acts that happens to present everything perceptible in the
actual world. But every other complete family of verification chains in the
horizon presents a merely possible, non-actual, world. HusserI makes a very
similar point early in Ideas:

... The correlate of our factual experience [Erfahrung), called "the actual [wirkliche)
world", emerges as a special case of manifold possible worlds and non-worlds, which,
298 CHAPTER VI

for their part, are nothing other than correlates of essentially pollllible varilltions of the
idea "experiential consciousness" with more or less ordered experiential connections.
(§47, p. 111.)

There are limits, however, on those "possible worlds" of which Husserl

thinks it makes sense to speak. To put the sentence just quoted in context:

... What things [Dinge: physical objects) are, the only things about which we make
statements and about whose being or non-being, being so or being otherwise, we can
dispute and rationally decide, they are as things of experience [Erfahrung). It alone is
what prescribes them their meaning [Sinn) and indeed, where factual things are con-
cerned, it is actual [aktuelle) experience.... But if we can subject the experience-forms
of [natural) experience [Erlebnisarten der Erfahrung) and in particular the fundamental
experience [Grunderlebnis) of thing-perception to an eidetic consideration, ... then the
correlate of our factual experience, called "the actual world", emerges as a special case
of manifold possible worlds and non· worlds, which, for their part, are nothing other
than co"elates of essentially possible varilltions of the idea "experiential consciousness"
with more or less ordered experiential connections ....
This holds for every conceivable kind of transcendence that may be treated as ao-
tUality [Wirklichkeit) or possibility. An object that has being in itself [an sich seiender)
is never one such that consciousness and consciousness' ego have nothing to do with it.
(Ideas, §47, pp. 111-12.)

And, Husserl says a page later, "[The] transcendent ... necessarily must be
experienceable [er[ahrbar]" (§48,' p. 113). At issue once again is Husserl's
transcendental idealism. His point is that those objects and worlds, actual or
possible, of which we can meaningfully speak are those our conception of
which is based on "experience", i.e., perception. They are objects, or worlds
composed of objects, that are perceivable or, we would presume, accessible
by inference or by "constitution" based on the perceptual. Shortly Husserl
says, strikingly:
... The formal-logical possibility of realities [Realitiiten) outside the world, the one
spatiotemporal world that isjixed through our actual [aktuelle) experience [Erfahrung),
shows itself in fact as nonsense [Widersinn). If there are worlds, real [realen) things, at
all, then the motivations of experience constituting them must be able to reach into my
experience and that of every single ego .•.. (Ideas, §48, p. 114.)

hnportantly, Husserl is not saying here that the notion of possible worlds
other than the actual is nonsense. Indeed, he is talking only about what is
real or actual: what is nonsense is the supposition that there might be real
things (e.g., Kantian "things-in-themselves") that cannot, in principle, be
encountered in that world to which experience gives us access. His claim,
then, which ties to the previous section of Ideas, is that everything that is
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 299

actual or real is in principle accessible to experience (even if not human

experience, he notes in the next sentence). Husserl is quite explicit on just
this point in his later Cartesian Meditations: "The attempt to conceive the
universe of true being as something lying outside the universe of possible
consciousness, possible knowledge, possible evidence ... is nonsensical," he
says (§41, p. 84); and two pages later he goes on to deny "the possibility of
a world of things 41 themselves" (see also eM, § §25-29). Accordingly, those
possible but non-actual worlds of which it is meaningful to speak are those
that are correlates of possible manifolds of experiences - hence, "correlates
of essentially possible variations of the idea 'experiential consciousness' ... "
(§47, p. 111; quoted above). (Note that this point also ties in well with our
earlier observation that a possible-worlds explication of Husserlian meanings
ought to restrict itself to humanly conceivable worlds, compatible with our
basic conceptual scheme; cf. Section 2.5 above.)
Late in Cartesian Meditations Husserl again addresses the notion of possible
worlds other than the actual:
... There can exist only one objective world, only one Objective time, only one Objec-
tive space, only one Objective Nature ... .
But the sense of this uniqueness ... must be correctly understood. Naturally Leibniz
is right when he says that infinitely many monads and groups of monads are conceivable
but that it does not follow that all these possibilities are compossible; and, again, when
he says that infinitely many worlds might have been "created", but not two or more at
once, since they are incompossible. (§ 60, pp. 140-41.)

Here again Husserl is not rejecting the notion of possible worlds. Quite to
the contrary, he says Leibniz is right that many "groups of monads", i.e.,
worlds, are "conceivable", that is, presumably, possible. Husserl's point here
is Leibniz's, that no two worlds are compossible, simultaneously or conjointly
realizable, and that only one is actual. We could ask for no better evidence
that Husserl accepts the notion of possible worlds than his own avowed
agreement with Leibniz himself. (There is much more afoot around §60 of
Cartesian Meditations, dealing with intersubjectivity, but it remains beyond
the scope of our points.)
Possible objects and possible worlds are, then, familiar and to some degree
amenable to Husserl. Yet it is not clear that he assumes a bona fide meta-
physics of possibilia, as Leibniz did and as some modal logicians have in
recent years. Husserl appeals to possible objects and possible worlds for
phenomenological, rather than ontological, purposes, citing them as correlates
of certain structures of noemata or possible experiences. This use of the no-
tion of possibilia suggests that his talk of possible "Objects and possible worlds
300 CHAPTER VI

is merely a convenient fllfon de parler that is properly about phenomenologi-

cal structures, his real concern. At any rate, Husserl does not need to appeal
to possible objects or possible worlds for his account of intentionality and
phenomenological structure; the work they might do can be done by noemata
and noematic structures alone (cf. Section 3.3 below).
If Husserl did embrace a metaphysics of possibilia, then we can see Husserl
verging on a bona fide possible-worlds theory of intentionality such as we
shall describe in Chapter VII. If he did not, then his talk of possible objects
and possible worlds is merely a heuristic device; but it is a device that will
specifically serve the "explication" of intention in terms of possible worlds,
given Husserl's account of the structure of an act's horizon.

3.2. The Equivalence of Horizon-Analysis and Possible-Worlds Explication of

Sinn and Intention
Given Husserl's talk of possible objects and possible worlds, we can generate
from his account of the structure of an act's horizon a possible-worlds ex-
plication of the phenomenological structure of the act, of its noematic Sinn
(conjoined with the relevant "background" Sinne - cf. Chapter V, Sections
3.2 and 3.3). For the act-horizon correlated with an act, and hence with its
Sinn, projects a corresponding object-horizon that, by virtue of the structure
of the act-horizon, effectively coincides with the array of possible worlds that
would serve to "explicate" that Sinn.
According to Husserl, we know, an act's ("explicit") Sinn presents a par-
ticular object as "determined", or propertied, in certain respects. The object
intended in the act, through this Sinn, mayor may not exist; given the idiom
of possibilia we may say that it is, in that sense, a possible object. Now, we
have seen that Husserl correlates with the act a horizon of possible acts, acts
whose Sinne present the same object as does the act's explicit Sinn but whose
predicate-contents characterize it further. And correlated with the possible
acts in this "act-horizon" are various possible further "determinations" of
the act's object, further properties - including relations to other objects -
that the object could have given what is prescribed of it by the original act's
Sinn. These possibilities concerning the object - that it have such "deter-
minations" - make up the "object-horizon" associated with the act. (Cf.
Chapter V, esp. Sections 1.2 and 2.3.) The assimilation of horizon-analysis
with a possible-worlds explication of Sinn and intention is founded on the
structure implicit in these corresponding notions of horizon.
Let us develop this assimilation, staying with Hussed's paradigm of per-
ceiving an individual, say, my seeing a maple tree whose leaves have turned
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 301

to red in autumn. The explicit Sinn of this act presents a particular tree as a
maple tree with red leaves (on the side I see, at least). Central to the act's
horizon are possible perceptions, for instance, those in which I see that same
tree from the back side as. also having red leaves on that side and, perhaps, as
having an opossum hanging from one branch. The possible perceptions in
the horizon are organized into temporal sequences that we called possible
"verification chains"; each of these chains is a continuous sequence of pos-
sible perceptions extending from the original act indefmitely into its past
and future (cf. Chapter Y, Section 4.3). Each chain, then, is a sequence of
perceptions I could have of the same tree were I seeing it continuously, from
appropriately varying perspectives, before and after the given perception -
for instance, the perceptions I might have if I approached the tree from a
given angle and continued walking past it so as to continue seeing it from the
resulting angles along my ensuing path. These chains of perceptions in the
horizon can be grouped into what we called "families" of chains, where each
such family collectively yields a consistent characterization of the tree as it
might be seen from various sequences of perspectives. When ideally com-
pleted, and buttressed by possible judgments or beliefs in the horizon that
bring in more theoretical properties of the object, each maximal family of
chains collectively traces out a possible total determination of the given tree,
as seen from all perspectives, and as otherwise flxed in all its properties and
relations to other objects. Of course, at most one of these families of acts can
present the tree as it is actually determined, in the actual world; but each
complete family traces the tree through all its properties, as it would be deter-
mined, in some possible world. Correlatively, the noematic Sinne of the
possible acts in each family conjoin, by "synthesis of identification", to form
a synthetic "world-Sinn" that prescribes a possible world in which the given
tree is completely determined in ways compatible with its incomplete deter-
mination in the original act (cf. Chapter Y, Section 4.4). In this way the
complete act-horizon, by virtue of its structuring into families of chains of
possible perceptions buttressed by other possible acts, projects an array of
possible worlds featuring the given tree as completely determined in all the
various ways compatible with what is presented in the original act.
The resulting array of possible worlds corresponding to the ideally com-
plete horizon of an act coincides precisely with the correlative object-horizon,
structured so as to reflect the structure of the act-horizon. In each of these
possible worlds there is realized a maximal consistent set of possibilities com-
patible with what is given in the original act; all these possibilities are included
in the horizon of the object as intended in the act - indeed, they make up
302 CHAPTER VI

that part of the object-horizon that correlates with the complete family of
acts that presents the possible world in question. And together the possible
worlds aligned with the complete act-horizon cover all the possible patterns
of further determination of the object and its environment; hence, they com-
prise all the possibilities included in the complete object-horizon correlated
with the horizon of the original act. Consequently, as the act-horizon breaks
down into various complete families of possible perceptions, buttressed by
other possible acts, the corresponding object-horizon - the possibilities
concerning the object's further characteristics, given its characteristics as
presented in the original act - itself breaks down into possible worlds featur-
ing the object as further characterized in various ways.
Here, then, is the basis in Husserl for our thesis that the explication of
Sinn and intention in terms of horizon is effectively equivalent to the explica-
tion of Sinn and intention in terms of possible worlds. The possible worlds
that are marked out by an act's horizon are just those possible worlds com-
patible with what is presented in the original act - in our example, a certain
object given as a maple tree having red leaves on a given side (and also having
whatever further properties the relevant background beliefs may ascribe).
And these are the very possible worlds that would serve to explicate the Sinn
of the act (together with the relevant background Sinne) on a possible-worlds
theory of meaning. More precisely i we now see that the object-horizon asso-
ciated with the act is effectively equivalent to a set of possible worlds such
that in each world the same tree, with the same properties attributed it in
the original act, is singled out as the object to which the Sinn relates in that
world. To explicate an act's Sinn, and the intention achieved through it, in
the way Husserl suggests - by laying out the horizon that is pre delineated
by that Sinn (together with the background Sinne) - is thus effectively
equivalent to correlating with that Sinn, and so representing it by, the func-
tion that assigns to each of these possible worlds the same object as that given
in the original act provided the object is in that world a maple tree and has
leaves turned to red on a given side (and has the further properties prescribed
by the background Sinne). And this explication accords precisely with the
possible-worlds explication of the Sinn of a direct-object perception that we
gave, in more general terms, in Section 2.8 above.
Indeed, the notion of object-horizon in Husserl's theory of intentionality
now emerges generally as the counterpart of the notion of "comprehension"
we defmed in the possible-worlds theory of meaning: the object-horizon that
explicates the Sinn of an act is effectively equivalent to the comprehension
of an expression that would express that Sinn. (Recall that the comprehension
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 303

of an expression is a set of ordered pairs, each pair consisting of a possible

world and the extension of the expression in that world - equivalently, the
meaning function that assigns to each world the extension of the expression
(as determined by its Sinn) in that world. Cf. Sections 2.2 and 2.3 above.)
The object-horizon associated with any act will consist of just those possibil-
ities that are delineated in the set of possible worlds compatible with what is
presented in the act - i.e., a set of possible worlds, each featuring the object
(with the properties the Sinn prescribes) to which the Sinn relates in that
world. (N.b. For a "definite" intention the Sinn will relate to the very same
object in every world. But where the intention is "indefinite" different ob-
jects can satisfy the prescriptions of the Sinn, and so generally the Sinn may
relate to different objects in different worlds. Cf. Chapter V, Part 5; also cf.
Section 2.8 above.) The object-horizon, then, is effectively equivalent to a set
of possible worlds each of which is paired with the "extension" determined
by the Sinn in that world. And these pairs of worlds and extensions are just
those comprised by the comprehension that a possible-worlds theory of
meaning would correlate, or even identify, with that Sinn. We conclude in
general, therefore, that to explicate the Sinn of any act in terms of the act's
horizon is effectively equivalent to representing that Sinn by a meaning func-
tion that assigns to each possible world the object (with appropriate prop-
erties) prescribed by the Sinn in that world.
Of course, Husserl's accounts of both Sinn and horizon are carried out
for a particular sort of act, that of seeing a given individual as thus-and-so.
Yet the correlation of horizon with possible worlds and the equivalence of
horizon-analysis and possible-worlds explication of Sinn and intention seem
generalizable, and our broader considerations support such a generalization
(cf. Chapter V, Part 5; and Part 2 above, esp. Section 2.8). The pOSSible-worlds
explication of Sinn and intention should therefore have a heuristic value in
the practice of phenomenology comparable to that of horizon-analysis: like
horizon-analysis, possible-worlds explication should bring to "phenomenologi-
cal analysis and description methods of a totally new kind" (eM, §20).
Indeed, we shall employ such methods in Chapters VII and VIII.
We would add a caveat, however, about possible-worlds explication as a
part of phenomenological analysis: we should not think of completely deter-
mined possible worlds, or possible individuals completely determined in
possible worlds, as themselves being given in consciousness or as being a part
of the phenomenolOgical content of an act. They are not, so to speak, right
there on the subject's mind awaiting phenomenological description. Indeed,
they could not be. To begin with, far too many possible worlds are compatible
304 CHAPTER VI

with an act's Sinn and hence aligned with the horizon. Further, each one is
itself too much for a fmite human mind to grasp, either in the act itself or
in phenomenological reflection on the act. Individuals are "transcendent" of
human consciousness and worlds are vastly more so: the complete determina-
tion of an individual (in a world) or of a world is beyond our knowledge and
beyond our grasp. So we can grasp an individual or a world only incompletely:
it remains for us, Husserl says, an "Idea in the Kantian sense", a "limit" for
our expanding experience (cf. Ideas, §§143, 149). Husserl is explicit on
this point, which is true of actual as well as possible individuals and worlds.
Finally, we would also warn, in some cases it may even be indeterminate
whether a given possible situation, hence world, is itself compatible with the
Sinn of an act.
Consequently, the possible worlds and possible objects correlated with an
act or its Sinn constitute only a structure of ideal limits or boundaries that
demarcate the intentional content of the act, its Sinn. We should remember
that the implicit Sinne corresponding to the horizon of an act are themselves
only "implicit" in the act and that Husserl makes comparable caveats about
horizon-analysis (cf. Chapter Y, Section 3.1). He says that the Sinn (or Sinne)
meant implicitly in an act, that which corresponds to the act's horizon, "is
never present to actual consciousness as a fmished datum" (eM, §19, p. 45).
And he says (on the same page) that the pre delineation of an act's horizon is
partly indeterminate, which perhaps suggests that it may be indeterminate
whether a given possible act belongs in the horizon. Thus, we may think of
the practicing phenomenologist as starting with the explicit Sinn of an act
and working out from there, first characterizing a possible object with a
limited set of properties and in a limited possible situation, and then gradually
expanding the characterization further and further.

3.3. The Eliminability of Possible Entities from Husserl's Theory of Horizon

In our discussion and assessment of Husserl's notion of horizon we have
spoken freely of possible acts, possibilities regarding an object, and possible
worlds, and we might as well have allowed possible but nonexistent individuals
as objects of intention. These notions are surprisingly amenable to Husserl's
own formulations, as we have seen. However, it is important to see also that
Hussed's theory of horizon could be formulated without presupposing an
ontology of possibilia.
The horizon of an object as given in an act we defmed as a set of possibil-
ities regarding the act's object, viz., the possibilities that are left open by the
act's Sinn. The object-horizon of an act thus consists of possible conditions,
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 305

or possible states of affairs, or possible worlds, in which the act's object is

thus-and-so. We can easily avoid these possible entities, however, by retreating
from object-horizon to the corresponding act-horizon.
The horizon of an act we defmed as a set of possible acts, and these are a
species of possible events. We could also avoid these entities by speaking
instead of noemata, of the noemata or the noematic Sinne that these acts
would have if they were to occur. Noemata, being abstract, do not depend
on the actual occurrence of acts whose noemata they would be, and so the
noemata of possible acts are themselves actual entities. And so whatever work
is done by possible entities in Husserl's theory of intentionality can ultimately
be done by actual, albeit intensional, entities. 38
Although we can defme horizon without assuming possibilia, there is none-
theless a point to considering Husserl's account of horizon within the context
of a theory of possible worlds, states of affairs, and individuals. For then we
can compare horizon-analysis, as we have above, with the explication of
meaning in terms of possible worlds. Such a possible-worlds explication of
phenomenological structure has considerable heuristic value even if we should
ultimately decide that the correct ontological analysis of intention does not
assume possibilia. And, as we consider in the next chapter, it also opens the
door to a bona fide possible-worlds theory of intentionality based on Husserl's
own detailed account of horizon.

NOTES

1 Husser! sometimes uses the term 'explication' for a more special, but not unrelated,
notion. Cf. EJ. § § 22f, where by the "explication" of an object of perception he seems
to mean the process of determining which further properties an object actually has; this
process itself involves a consideration of the horizon of the act of perception.
2 We would agree with the claim, made by Quine among others, that the distinction
between observation and theory is not sharp but graded; cf. Quine's 'Grades of Theore-
ticity', in llxperience and Theory, ed. by Lawrence Foster and 1. W. Swanson (The
University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, Mass., 1970), pp. 1-17. For Husser!, per-
ception - and perceptual judgment, or "observation", in particular - is always laden
with some "theory" or "interpretation" (Auffassung) in virtue of the "noetic" phase
that overlays its sensory or "hyletic" phase (Ideas, § § 85, 88); this would seem to insure
a gradation similar to that of which Quine speaks.
3 Carnap (Note 17, Ch. V above). Cf. Quine, 'Epistemology Naturalized', in his Ontolog-
ical Relativity and Other Essays (Columbia University Press, New York, 1969), pp. 69-
90, esp. pp. 74-78.
4 Castaneda has argued that knowledge of other minds is similar to theoretical knowl-
edge: see his 'Consciousness and Behavior: Their Basic Connections', in Castaneda (Note
21, Ch. I above), pp. 121-58.
306 CHAPTER VI

5 For recent discussions, see Robert Stalnaker, 'Pragmatics', Synthese 22 (1970), 272-
89; and Richard Montague, 'Pragmatics and Intensional Logic', Synthese 22 (1970),68-
94; both reprinted in Davidson and Harman (Note 25, Ch. N above).
6 Cf. Husserl's interesting and remarkably lucid discussion of "essentially occasional
expressions": LI, I, §26, VI, §5; see Chapter N, Section 3.4, above.
7 Our notion of "pragmatic presuppositions" is analogous to that characterized by
Stalnaker (Note 5 above), pp. 279ff.
8 See Quine, 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', in From a Logical Point of View (Note 29,
Ch. I above), pp. 20-37. Cf. Morton G. White, 'The Analytic and the Synthetic: An
Untenable Dualism', in John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom, ed. by Sidney
Hook (Dial Press, New York, 1950), reprinted in Linsky (Note 53, Ch. II above), pp.
272-86.
9 Relevant here is Hilary Putnam's 'Meaning and Reference' (Note 26, Ch. N above).
10 Lewis (Note 53, Ch. II above), p. 242.
11 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44, Ch. II above), pp. 57-58 (p. 41 of the recent
German edition cited in note 44, Ch. II); cf. Begriffsschrift (Note 50, Ch. II above),
pp.l1-12.
12 'The Modes of Meaning' (Note 53, Ch. II above), p. 247.
13 'Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Languages', Philosophical Studies 6 (1955),
reprinted in Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), p. 234.
14 'Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Languages' (Note 13 above), p. 246.
15 Lewis (Note 53, Ch. II above), pp. 238ff.
16 The proposal we develop was lust made by Carnap in conversation, according to
Montague, with the difference that possible worlds were taken to be models; see
Montague (Note 5 above), p. 91. The conversations were presumably in the late 1950's.
One can also see the beginnings of the idea in Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I
above), perhaps with some influence from Lewis' 'The Modes of Meaning' (Note 53, Ch.
II above): see § 16 and §40. (The first edition of Meaning and Necessity was published
in 1947.) Also see Carnap's 'Replies and Systematic Expositions', in The Philosophy of
Rudolf Camap, ed. by Paul Arthur Schilpp (Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1963), pp.
889-900.
17 'The Modes of Meaning' (Note 53, Ch. II above), p. 246.
18 Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), pp. 56-64.
19 See David Lewis, 'General Semantics', Synthese 22 (1970), 18-67, reprinted in
Davidson and Harman (Note 25, Ch. IV above).
20 'The Modes of Meaning' (Note 53, Ch. II above), p. 240.
21 Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), pp. 19-22,26-32,40-41.
22 Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), p. 27.
23 See Meaning and Necessiry (Note 16, Ch. I above), pp. 126-27.
24 Cf. Frege, 'Function and Concept', in Geach and Black (Note 44, Ch. II above),
pp. 30-32; 'On Concept and Object', in Geach and Black (Note 44, Ch. II above), pp.
47-48. Also see Furth's introduction to Frege's The Basic Laws ofArithmetic (Note 44,
Ch. II above), pp. xxxviii ff; and Mohanty, 'Husserl and Frege' (Note 10, Ch. III above),
pp.57-62.
25 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44, Ch. II above), p. 62, n. *.
26 Cf. 'The Thought' (Note 56, Ch. II above), esp. pp. 307-11.
27 'The Modes of Meaning' (Note 53, Ch. II above), pp. 238-39.
 EXPLICATION OF MEANING 307

28 Cf. Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), pp. 8-11, 23, 27.
29 Cf. Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), pp. 173-77.
30 Cf. Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), pp. 173-77, 179.
31 Hintikka has argued for the same point. See his 'Carnap's Semantics in Retrospect',
Synthese 2S (1973), 372-97 (esp. pp. 379-83); reprinted as 'Carnap's Heritage in
Logical Semantics', in The Intentions of Intentionality (Note 6, Ch. I above), and in
RudolfCamap, LOgical Empiricist, ed. by Hintikka (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975). Also
cf. Hintikka's 'The Semantics of Modal Notions and the Indeterminacy of Ontology',
Synthese 21 (1970), 408-24 (esp. pp. 415-20), reprinted in Davidson and Harman
(Note 25, Ch. IV above).
32 Meaning and Necessity (Note 16, Ch. I above), p. 41.
33 Cf. Kripke, 'Naming and Necessity' (Note 25, Ch. IV above), pp. 269-70.
34 See Kripke, 'Naming and Necessity' (Note 25, Ch. IV above); and Kaplan, 'On the
Logic of Demonstratives' (Note 31, Ch. IV above).
35 See esp. Hintikka's 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes', in Models for Modalities
(Note 6, Ch. I above), pp. 101-106. Our formulation, that an individuating meaning
captures the "identity" of an individual, is somewhat more specific than Hintikka's OWll
words about individuating functions. (Our formulation is intended to serve our charac-
terization of "~dividuatively definite" intentions - cf. Chapter I, Section 2.6, above;
and Chapter VIII, Section 1.1, below.) Hintikka also describes a second kind of individ-
uating function he calls "perceptually individuating" (see Note 15, Ch. I above); we shall
consider a related sort of function, tied especially to perception, in Chapter VIII, Section
2.2, below.
36 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes', in Models for Modalities (Note 6, Ch.
above), p. 101.
37 Cf. Hintikka, 'Carnap's Semantics in Retrospect' (Note 31 above), pp. 383ff.
38 Alternatively, we might try to avoid both possible acts and noemata by describing
the horizon in terms of counterfactual conditionals. Thus, we might say:
(3x) (I see x as a tree and as having red leaves on this side & if 1 were to
look at the other side of x then I mighl see x as having red leaves on that
side & if ... ).
The difficulty with this alternative, however, is that a proper definition of horizon in
terms of acts seems to require quantification over possible acts since we cannot specify,
by description in counterfactual terms, all the acts in an act's horizon.
 CHAPTER VII

INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS

Our discussion of Husserl's theory of intentionality has focused on two

important notions and their role in the theory: the notions of meaning (or
noema) and horizon. In Chapters III and N our development of Husserl's
theory assumed - along with Husserl - a generally Fregean account of mean-
ing. But in Chapter VI we studied a rather different analysis of meaning, the
Carnapian analysis in terms of possible worlds. We found that this view, un-
like the Fregean, allowed us to relate the theory of meaning to Husserl's
theory of horizon. Our effort in this chapter will be to develop Husserl's
theory of intentionality further by explicitly incorporating into the theory
this possible-worlds analysis, or explication, of meaning and horizon. The
result is an interesting extension of Husserl's basic theory of intentionality
featuring, in effect, the view that acts are directed toward objects occurring
in possible worlds.
The possible-worlds theory of intentionality can be drawn from Husserl in
either of two ways: from his own account of horizon, developed as a horizon
of possibilities concerning the intended object; or from his theory of intention
via meaning, together with the possible-worlds explication of meaning. But
the theory can also be drawn, for the case of propositional attitudes, from a
different source, viz., from modern-day possible-worlds semantics for sen-
tences of propositional attitude. Indeed, the possible-worlds analysis of mean-
ing arose in large part from the development of possible-worlds semantics
for modalities, including the propositional attitudes. Our development of the
possible-worlds theory of intentionality in this chapter will begin with Husserl,
but will focus on the semantics for the details.
In the first part of the chapter we shall sketch two versions of the possible-
worlds theory of intentionality: a "Husserlian" version that assumes both
meanings and possible worlds, and a "pure" version that does not explicitly
assume meanings. The second part of the chapter will deal with semantic
issues exclusively. There we shall layout the possible-worlds approach to
semantics and apply it specifically to sentences of propositional attitude, and
we shall compare this approach to semantics with the Fregean. We shall fmd
that a special virtue of possible-worlds semantics is the light it sheds on the
difference between de re and de dicta sentences of propositional attitude.
308
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 309

Our concern will then be to show, in Part 3, how a possible-worlds semantics

for intentional sentences can contribute significant detail to the possible-
worlds theory of intentionality discussed in Part 1. A semantics for intentional
sentences makes at leas~ tacit assumptions about the nature of intentionality
itself. By making explicit the assumptions about intentionality that underlie
a possible-worlds semantics for intentional sentences, we shall draw out of
the semantics the possible-worlds theory of intentionality, especially as it
applies to belief. Our discussion will stress the difference between indefmite,
or de dicto, beliefs and defmite, or de re, beliefs on this theory, and we shall
see how it deals with the existence-independence and conception-dependence
of intentions. The fourth part of the chapter will address the semantics of
propositional attitudes with the purpose of developing such a semantics in
accord with Husserlian results on the intentionality of belief.

1. INTENTIONALITY IN POSSIBLE-WORLDS THEORY

The "possible-worlds" theory of intentionality can be developed in either of

two ways: as a version of Husserl's theory of intentionality via Sinn, or as a
"pure" possible-worlds theory that does not explicitly assume meanings.
Insofar as the latter version dispenses with meanings as mediators of intention
it is not properly a "Husserlian" theory of intentionality. But we shall fmd a
tacit commitment to meaning entities even in this "pure" possible-worlds
theory of in ten tionality .

1.1. Husserl's Theory of Intentionality With and Without Possible Worlds

As we observed in the preceding chapter. Husserl's commitment to possible
worlds and possible individuals is unclear. But whatever the historical Hussed
may have held, we can distinguish two interesting versions of the Hussedian
theory of intentionality, one that assumes a metaphysics of possibilia and
another that does not.
Let us call the version of Hussed's theory of intentionality that does not
assume possible entities the strict, or actualist, version. This theory is the
one we studied in Chapters III and IV. It assumes a rich ontology of actual
entities, including acts, egos, physical objects, states of affairs, essences, and
noemata or meanings. But it does not in any way assume merely possible
entities. This actualist version of Husserl's theory seeks to explain the distinc-
tive aspects of intentionality in terms of noemata: its fundamental assumption
is that every intention is mediated by a noema, which prescribes the intended
object in the way it is presented in consciousness. And it takes noemata
310 CHAPTER VII

themselves to be actual entities - albeit abstract, or ideal, meaning entities.

Importantly, on this view the objects of acts are also actual entities: by virtue
of an act's noema the act is directed toward an actual object of some sort or
- if no actual object satisfies the noema's prescription - toward no object
at all. (Cf. Chapter III, Section 3.2, on how the theory accounts for the exist-
ence-independence, conception-dependence, and indeterminacy of intention.)
Now, if we enrich the ontology of the strict Husserlian theory by assuming
various possible entities, we get an interesting extension of the basic Husserlian
theory. Let us call it the possible-worlds version of Husserl's theory of inten-
tionality. It assumes all the actual entities assumed by the strict Husserlian
theory, including noematic entities, or meanings. But it also assumes possible
entities in addition to actual entities. Prominently, it assumes possible worlds
in addition to the actual world and possible individuals as well as actual
individuals.! Importantly, the possibilist Husserlian theory retains the funda-
mental assumption that intention is mediated by meaning, and so it treats
intentionality in the same basic way as does the actualist Husserlian theory.
The difference concerns the objects of intention. On the actualist version
intentions reach only actual objects, objects existing in the actual world;
whereas on the possible-worlds version intentions "reach possible objects,
objects existing in some possible worlds but perhaps not in the actual world.
Where the object of intention does not exist, as in expecting Santa Claus or
imagining the fountain of youth, the strict Husserlian theory says that no
object is intended; the possibilist Husserlian theory, on the other hand, says
that a possible but non-actual object is intended. Either theory, however,
correlates with the act or intention a noematic Sinn, and it is the Sinn that
gives the act its "directedness".
The possible-worlds Husserlian theory of intentionality has been waiting
visibly in the wings throughout Chapters V and VI. It is now time to allow it
center stage.

1.2. The "Husserlian" Possible-Worlds Theory of Intentionality

Husserl comes closest to a possible-worlds version of his theory of intention-
ality in his discussion of horizon (cf. Chapter V, especially Sections 1.2 and
2.3). Correlated with each act of consciousness, for Husserl, is a meaning,
or noema, that determines which object is intended in the act and the way in
which the object is presented in the act. Also associated with the act is a
horizon of possible acts. These possible acts present the object of the act in
further ways that are not specified by the act's meaning itself but are com-
patible with it and with certain background Sinne presupposed in the act.
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 311

And correlated with this horizon of possible acts is a horizon of possibilities

concerning the object, possibilities that are compatible with what is prescribed
of the object by the Sinn of the original act together with the presupposed
background Sinne. Now, we have argued that this latter horizon - the
"object-horizon" associated with the act - is effectively equivalent to an
array of possible worlds, specifically, those possible worlds that are com-
patible with what the Sinn of the act and the presupposed background Sinne
prescribe (cf. Chapter VI, Section 3.2). Ultimately, then, Husserl's notion
of horizon, added to his basic theory of intention via Sinn, can be seen as
yielding the basic ingredients of what we have called the possibilist, or pos-
sible-worlds, Husserlian theory of intentionality.
The "Husserlian" possible-worlds theory of intentionality associates with
each act of consciousness both a noema and a "horizon" of possible worlds
compatible with what the Sinn of this noema (together with the act's back-
ground Sinne) prescribes. The act's noematic Sinn determines the intention-
ality of the act by picking out, in each possible world, the object in that
world that complies with what the Sinn prescribes. More precisely, on this
possibilist theory an act's directedness is relativized to a possible world. The
object of an act - the object that the act is directed toward or is about - is
that object that the Sinn of the act prescribes. But, according to the possible-
worlds theory, the Sinn of an act does not simply prescribe, or point to, an
object in the actual world; rather, it points to an object in each of the various
possible worlds associated with the act by virtue of the act's horizon. Conse-
quently, since an act is directed toward an object insofar as the object is that
prescribed by the act's Sinn, we should say that an act is directed toward an
object in a given possible world insofar as the object is that prescribed by the
act's Sinn in that world. On the possible-worlds version of Husserl's theory,
then, an act is not directed toward an object, or about an individual, sim-
pliciter but only in, or relative to, a possible world. And so an act's intention-
ality consists in a pattern of directedness that reaches into various different
possible worlds under the noematic guidance of the act's Sinn.
Thus1 consider in this light an act whose object does not exist, e.g., an act
of expecting Santa Claus (which we may assume takes place in the actual
world). Since Santa Claus does not exist in the actual world, this act is not
directed toward any object in the actual world. But Santa Claus does exist in
various possible worlds; in particular, he exists in those possible worlds that
are compatible with what the Sinn of this act of expectation prescribes. In
each of these worlds the Sinn of the act pre-scribes the jolly fat man himself
as the object of the act. And so, while the act is directed toward no object at
312 CHAPTER VII

all in the actual world, it is directed toward Santa Oaus in each possible
world correlated with the act's horizon. According to the possible-worlds
Husserlian theory, then, an act of expecting Santa Claus is directed to a
merely possible object, an object that exists in various possible worlds but
not in the actual world.
Relativization of intention to a possible world also yields a perspicuous
account of "indefinite" intentions, such as the shopkeeper's act of expecting
her 100000th customer. Unlike the Sinn of an act of expecting Santa Claus,
the Sinn of this act does not prescribe any specific individual as the object
of intention. Hence, the horizon of the act will include possible acts directed
toward different individuals, and the possible worlds compatible with what
the Sinn prescribes will include worlds in which different individuals satisfy
the condition of being the shopkeeper's 100000th customer. The act will be
directed accordingly toward different objects in different possible worlds -
toward, say, Mr. Olson in one possible world (where it is Mr. Olson who walks
through the door) and toward Ms. Green in another world (where it is she
who enters the shop); and, for this reason, the act will not be "definitely"
directed toward some one specific object. (Cf. Part 3 below on the de dicto/
de re distinction and its analysis in a possible-worlds approach to intention-
ality.)
While the notion of horizon provides the Husserlian basis for a possible-
worlds theory of intentionality, a further theoretical foundation for it is
the possible-worlds explication of meaning we studied in Chapter VI (see
especially Part 2). Husserl himself saw horizon-analysis as a way of explicat-
ing an act's meaning, or Sinn (see eM, §20; cf. Chapter V, Section 1.3): in
particular, analysis of the object-horizon associated with an act can be seen as
a kind of explication of the act's meaning, achieved by laying out what the
meaning prescribes in different possible circumstances. The possible-worlds
theory of meaning applied to noematic Sinn supports this view, though it
goes beyond Hussed's own work. For, on that theory, an act's Sinn can be
represented or explicated by the meaning function that assigns to each pos-
sible world what would be prescribed by the Sinn in that world. Thus, from
each world compatible with the act's Sinn, this function picks out the object
prescribed by the Sinn - and so the object toward which the act is directed -
in that world. The explication of noematic Sinn in terms of meaning func-
tions is in this way virtually equivalent to the explication of Sinn in terms of
horizon, at least insofar as these two ways of explicating an act's Sinn merge
in the possible-worlds version of Hussed's theory of intentionality. (Cf.
Chapter VI, Section 3.2.)
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 313

We would note, however, that some modifications are called for in the
possible-worlds theory of meaning if it is to serve as a foundation for a
Husserlian possible-worlds theory of intentionality. What we have said so far
applies directly to individual-intentions, intentions of or about individuals.
But propositional intentions will require modification: the value at a world
of a propositional meaning function is a truth-value, but the object of a pro-
positiohal act, at least according to Husserl, is a state of affairs and not a
truth-value. Also, horizon-analysis brings to light the influence of background
beliefs or presuppositions on an act's intentionality, and so the possible-worlds
explication of meaning, as applied to intention, will have to be developed in
a way that reflects this influence (cf. Chapter VI, Sections 1.4-1.6, 2.5, 2.9).
Horizon-analysis serves to explicate not simply an act's Sinn but the act's
Sinn together with the Sinne of related background beliefs or other experi-
ences presupposed in the act. Thus, on the Husserlian possible-worlds theory
of intentionality, an act is directed toward appropriate objects in different
possible worlds via its Sinn together with whatever Sinne it presupposes.
Insofar as meaning functions are to be invoked in a theory of intentionality,
then, these functions must appropriately represent the meaning complex
consisting of the act's own Sinn and its presupposed background Sinne, and
not just the act's Sinn alone. Later we shall find that a pOSSible-worlds se-
mantics for intentional sentences takes the influence of background beliefs
into account in an interesting way.

1.3. The Pure Possible-Worlds Theory of Intentionality

The Carnapian possible-worlds theory of meaning identifies a meaning with
its corresponding meaning function, which (on the set-theoretic analysis of
functions) is identified with a set of ordered pairs, each pair consisting of a
possible world and the appropriate extension in that world. A Husserlian
may recognize the correlation between meanings and meaning functions, or
"comprehensions", yet would resist their identification. (Cf. Chapter VI,
Sections 2.1-2.4.) But the Carnapian identification permits an interesting
alternative to the Husserlian approach to intentionality.
The Carnapian identification of meanings with meaning functions is an
instance of ontological reduction. As such it can be read in either of two
ways. We may think of it as telling us that, while there are meanings, meanings
are nothing but functions of a certain kind. Or we may think of it as eliminat-
ing meanings by telling us that there really are no such things as meanings,
that the work traditionally assigned to meanings can be done instead by
functions of a certain kind. Although both readings contrast with a more
314 CHAPTER VII

Husserlian view, which would recognize meanings as distinct from meaning

functions, taking the latter slant provides a clear picture of an interestingly
different theory of intentionality.
First assume with Husserl that each act of consciousness is correlated with
a noematic Sinn. (To allow for the influence of background meanings on in-
tention, we may let each such Sinn include any relevant background meaning
as well as the meaning of the act itself.) Also assume the appropriate correla-
tion of a noematic Sinn with its "comprehension", which is roughly the array
of possible worlds compatible with what the Sinn prescribes. And assume the
resulting correlation we have described between an act and its associated
object-horizon, which we have identified with this array of possible worlds.
Now delete the Sinne from this picture (think of eliminating Sinne in favor of
their corresponding meaning functions, or, equivalently, think of eliminating
the Sinn of an act in favor of the act's corresponding object-horizon). Then
the intentionality of an act consists in a pattern of directedness toward
objects in various possible worlds - precisely the same pattern we observed
in the possible-worlds version of Husserl's theory of intentionality.
Here we have a theory of intentionality distinct from either of those we
have previously discussed. Let us call it the strict, or pure, possible-worlds
theory of intentionality. It assumes possible worlds and possible individuals,
but it does not assume meanings and does not assume that intention is
mediated by meanings. Fundamentally, it assumes that intention consists in
a complex relation, a pattern of directedness, that obtains between a person
in a given possible world and certain possible objects, Le., objects in various
possible worlds.
Thus, for instance, when one admires Isadora Duncan a certain relation of
directedness obtains between oneself, in the actual world, and Isadora Duncan
in each world that accords with the intention. And where the shopkeeper is
expecting her lOOOOOth customer, a certain relation of directedness holds
between the shopkeeper in the actual world and various individuals in various
possible worlds: Mr. Olson in one world, Ms. Green in another, and so on.
Propositional acts or attitudes, such as judging, may be treated in some-
what different ways on the strict possible-worlds approach. If we assume
possible states of affairs, then in judging that p one is directed, from within
(say) the actual world, toward the state of affairs that p in each relevant
world. Alternatively, if we do not assume possible states of affairs (other than
whole worlds, which are maximal consistent states of affairs), then we might
say that in judging that p one is directed toward the truth-value Truth in each
of these worlds.
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 315

The strict possible-worlds theory of intentionality and the strict Husserlian

theory unite, of course, in the possible-worlds Hussedian theory. For the
possibilist Husserlian theory is an extension of the strict Husserlian theory
achieved by the adjunction of possible worlds, and it is an extension of the
strict possible-worlds theory achieved by the adjunction of meanings.

1.4. The Possible- Worlds Approach to Intentionality

What sort of approach to intentionality is embodied in the strict possible-
worlds theory of intentionality? The Husserlian version of the possible-worlds
theory, like Hussed's actualist theory, is a "mediator"-theory: intention is
mediated by meaning, though it reaches objects in various possible worlds.
But the strict possible-worlds theory does not assume meanings; intention is
not mediated by meanings but directly reaches objects in possible worlds. Is
it then a kind of "object-theory" of intentionality, of the sort we discussed
in Chapter II?
The pure possible-worlds approach to intentionality closely resembles the
object-approach in that it seeks to treat problems of intentionality solely in
terms of the objects intended (in various worlds). But it also differs from the
object-approach in significant ways. For one thing, the possible-worlds theory
does not say that the objects of intention are unusual "intentional objects",
entities whose characteristics or whose mode of being distinguishes them
from ordinary, everyday entities. Rather, on this theory the objects of acts
are ordinary entities that either exist in the actual world or do not exist at all.
Now, when the object of an act does not exist, the possible-worlds theory
does say that the act is nonetheless directed toward an object - a "possible
object", an object that exists "in possible worlds" but not in the actual world.
But this is not to say that merely possible individuals or possible worlds are
in any sense actual or endowed with being of any kind: merely possible in-
dividuals are individuals that do not exist but could exist, individuals that
exist in some possible worlds but not in the actual world; merely possible
worlds are neither actual nor do they exist in worlds; and so they too are not
among the entities that exist in any sense in the actual world. Indeed, insofar
as merely possible individuals and worlds are objects without being, they
resemble Meinong's "Ausserseienden"; and insofar as intended objects may be
nonexistent, the possible-worlds approach resembles Meinong's approach to
the problems of intentionality. (Cf. Chapter II, Section 2.3.) But there are
important differences from Meinong's approach, too. For Meinong, intended
objects are "incomplete", or "incompletely determined", and thus essentially
different from the entities that exist in the actual world. Objects in possible
316 CHAPTER VII

worlds, by contrast, are not "incomplete"; rather, they are - within their
respective worlds - quite ordinary and complete entities of the very same
sort that are found in the actual world. Furthermore, the possible-worlds
approach to intentionality differs from the object-approach significantly in
that it does not treat intention as a simple relation to a single (albeit unusual)
object; rather, intention is seen as a complex relation to a vast array of ordi-
nary objects in various possible worlds.
Thus, on the object-approach, intention consists in an ordinary relation
to unusual objects; and on the Husserlian approach, intention consists in a
meaning-mediated - and therewise unusual - relation to ordinary objects. But
on the possible-worlds approach, intention consists in a relation of "multiple
directedness", a pattern of directedness reaching into various possible worlds. 2
And so it seems that the possible-worlds approach might best be classified as
a distinctive type of approach, sui generis.
However, there are good grounds for seeing the possible-worlds approach
to intentionality as basically Husserlian. True, the pure possible-worlds theory
of intentionality does not explicitly assume meaning entities. Yet, we know,
meaning entities - Carnapian meaning functions, functions from possible
worlds to appropriate extensions - are but a defmition away. For the patterns
of directedness that a possible-worlds analysis must fmd in intention are just
those regimented as meaning functions that represent the noematic Sinne a
Husserlian analysis fmds in intention. In a sense, then, there is no "pure"
possible-worlds theory of intentionality, if 'pure' means ultimately free from
a life of Sinn. And insofar as we fmd meaning functions implicit in the strict
possible-worlds theory of intentionality, we should sort it ultimately with the
Husserlian approach to intentionality.

2. POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS FOR PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

The possible-worlds theory of intentionality can be seen as providing a

philosophical basis for so-called possible-worlds semantics, especially a
possible-worlds semantics for intentional sentences. Historically, however,
the development of possible-worlds semantics has been largely independent
of concerns about intentionality. Indeed, but for possible-worlds semantics,
it is unlikely we would have clearly discerned in Husserl's analysis of an act's
horizon the structures of possible worlds that serve to explicate the phenom-
enological content of an act. In this part of the chapter we develop the
essentials of a possible-worlds semantics, especially as it, has been applied to
sentences ascribing propositional acts or attitudes (prominently, belief). (We
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 317

try to keep this part as informal as possible, and details of formulation may be
skimmed over by any who prefer to do so.) Our discussion here will lay the
foundation for a fuller account of the possible-worlds theory of intentionality,
which we shall offer in Part. 3.
Meanings (Sinne) playa crucial role in the Husserlian theory of intention-
ality, and it was the Carnapian possible-worlds analysis of meaning that led
us to consider a possible-worlds theory of intentionality. Accordingly, we
shall be interested in the roles meanings might play in possible-worlds seman-
tics, especially for sentences of propositional attitude.

2.1. Fregean, Tarskian, and Possible- Worlds Semantics

Classically, semantics is the study of language and its relation to the world;
its topics include reference, meaning, truth, syntax, synonymy, analyticity,
entailment. The most significant work in semantics has largely been done
within the last century, much of it inspired by Frege. There have been three
especially prominent types of semantic theory: Frege's (and the differing
Fregean systems of Carnap and Church), Tarski's, and possible-worlds se-
mantics.
We have already described the essentials of Frege's semantics in Chapter II,
Part 3 (and we described Husserl's similar program in Chapter IV, Part 2).
Expressions of certain basic categories are each assigned a meaning and a
referent (or an intension and an extension). The meaning of an expression
determines the referent of the expression. The meaning of a syntactically
complex expression (such as a whole sentence) depends on - is a function
of - the meanings of its parts (for a simple sentence, e.g., its subject and its
predicate). And hence the referent of a complex expression depends on the
referents of its parts.
A somewhat different type of semantics has developed out of Alfred
Tarski's account of truth as a semantic notion. 3 Tarski constructed a systema-
tic (recursive) characterization of the conditions under which any sentence
in a specified language would be true. In particular, Tarski showed how the
truth-value of a sentence (its extension) depends in specified ways on the
extensions of its semantically significant parts. (For the notion of extension,
cf. Chapter II, Section 3.2.)
A Tarski-type semantics for a language begins with a limited set of rules
of syntax that show how sentences are built up from more elementary expres-
sions of the language. An interpretation then relates the elementary expres-
sions of the language to appropriate extra-linguistic entities. Specifically, an
interpretation for the language may be given by defming an interpretation
318 CHAPTER VII

[unction, which assigns a specific extension to each appropriate expression

in the language (the primitive terms and predicates). Then, given such an
interpretation along with the rules of syntax, a Tarski-type theory of truth
for the language consists of a limited set of statements of truth-conditions
for basic forms of sentences in the language. For instance:

(i) For any atomic sentence 'a is P', 'a is P' is true if and only if the
extension (the referent) of 'a' is a member of the extension of 'is
P' (the set of individuals that "are P");
(ii) For any sentences 'p' and 'q', the molecular sentence 'p and q' is
true if and only if'p' is true and 'q' is true;
(iii) For any sentence 'p', the molecular sentence 'It is not the case
that p' is true if and only if 'p' is not true.

A complete Tarski-type theory of truth for a language will require a number

of such "recursion" clauses, which together show how to determine the
truth-value of any sentence in the language. (A main technical device Tarski
devised was a characterization of the satisfaction of an open sentence, e.g.,
'x is charismatic', by an individual or a sequence of individuals. This device
allows a characterization of the truth-conditions of quantified sentences, e.g.,
'(3x) (x is charismatic)'.) A Tarskian semantics includes in this, way a syntax,
an interpretation, and a defmition of truth. Note that although modern logical
semantics has proceeded in a fundamentally Tarskian way, the details of
formulation - including those we have sketched - may vary somewhat from
original Tarski and from author to author.
Importantly, a Tarskian theory of truth for a language does not assume
intensional entities such as Fregean Sinne. Nonetheless, some philosophers
have urged that a Tarski-type truth-characterization encompasses everything
we should ask of a semantics for the given language. At the least, it lays out
all the relevant relations of words to world to be found in the language. And
Donald Davidson has argued further that a Tarskian theory of truth for a
language gives us all that we could want of a theory of meaning for the lan-
guage. 4 With Tarski we learn the conditions under which any sentence in the
language is true; and Davidson argues that nothing more is needed in order
to know the meaning of a sentence (as a whole). We also learn for any sub-
sentential expression what contribution it makes to the truth-value of any
sentence in the language; and, according to Davidson, that is tantamount
to knowing its meaning. So Davidson concludes that a Tarskian account of
truth in a language yields an adequate account of meaning in the language,
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 319

all without assuming meaning entities (and, let us note, without assuming
possible entities}
However, even if the classical form of Tarskian truth-theoretic semantics,
which in no way uses meanings, is adequate for elementary extensional lan-
guages such as Tarski addressed, it is not adequate for modal, or intensional,
languages. Sentences ascribing necessities or intentional acts bring failures
of extensionality, failures of substitutivity of identity and of existential
generalization (cf. Chapter I, Part 3). And so these sentences resist a Tarskian
characterization of truth, for their' truth-values seem not to depend only on
the extensions of their parts. To account for such failures, a Fregean semantics
for (say) belief-sentences assumes meaning entities and holds that meanings
playa role in the truth-conditions of belief-sentences; indeed, while Frege
held that the truth-value of a belief-sentence is a function of the referents (or
extensions) of its parts, he, also maintained that expressions in belief-contexts
refer to their customary meanings (cf. Chapter II, Section 3.4). But insofar
as a semantics for intentional sentences brings meanings into the truth-con-
ditions for these sentences, as Frege's semantics does, it goes beyond the
resources of a Tarskian semantics.
An alternative to the Fregean approach to modal sentences is that of so-
called possible-worlds semantics. On this approach, expressions in intensional
contexts refer to, or draw their extensions from among, entities in different
possible worlds. The leading idea is the Leibnizian view of necessary truth
as truth in all possible worlds: hence, where 'p' is any extensional sentence,
'Necessarily p' is true if and only if 'p' is true in every possible
world.
Thus, the truth-value of 'Necessarily p' depends on the truth-value of 'p' in
different possible worlds, and so it depends on the extensions of the seman-
tically significant parts of 'p' in different possible worlds. (As we shall see in
the next section, a similar approach has been proposed for the semantics of
intentional sentences, such as 'a believes that p'.) This Leibnizian proposal
of truth-conditions for 'Necessarily p' presupposes an analysis of the truth-
conditions for 'p' in any possible world, and so we first need to see how a
possible-worlds semantics works for extensional sentences.
A possible-worlds approach to semantics extends the basic Tarskian ap-
proach to semantics by assuming a multiplicity of possible worlds and derming
extensions and truth-conditions relative to a possible world. Thus, given a
fixed (extensional) language, expressions of basic categories are each assigned
an extension in, or relative to, each possible world (cf. Chapter VI, Sections
320 CHAPTER VII

2.1-2.2): each singular term is assigned for each possible world one individual
(at most) existing in that world; each predicate is assigned for each world a
(possibly empty) set of individuals (or ordered n-tuple,s) in that world; and
each sentence is assigned a truth-value for each world (on some alternatives,
sentences are allowed to have no truth-value in some worlds). On the possible-
worlds approach, then, an interpretation for a language is given by means of
a two-argument function that relates each expression to its extension in each
possible world. Conditions of truth for any sentence in the language are
dermed recursively after the fashion of Tarski, except truth is also dermed
relative to a possible world. (Truth simpliciter is of course just truth in the
actual world.) For instance:
(i) For any atomic sentence 'a is P', 'a is P' is true in a possible world
w if and only if the extension of 'a' in w is a member of the set
which is the extension of 'is P' in w;
(ii) For any sentences 'p' and 'q', the sentence 'p and q' is true in a
possible world w if and only if both 'p' and 'q' are true in w;
and so on.
, As described so far, the possible-worlds approach to semantics does not
assume meaning entities and so represents an alternative to the basic Fregean
approach to semantics for extensional languages. However, as we saw in
Chapter VI, Part 2, meanings may be naturally dermed, or at least repre-
sented, in possible-worlds theory as functions that assign appropriate exten-
sions to possible worlds - meaning functions, as we have called them. And a
possible-worlds semantics for an extensional language is committed to pre-
cisely these functions insofar as it assigns to each semantically significant
expression in the language its extension in every possible world. So a possible-
worlds semantics does not avoid meaning entities. Indeed, meaning functions
can easily be written into possible-worlds semantics with a role in extensional
languages like that of Fregean senses.
To construct a possible-worlds semantics for an extensional language L, we
derme an interpretation function E that assigns to each meaningful expression
0: in L and each possible world w the extension of 0: in w, E(Oi., w). But we
could equivalently derme an interpretation function I that assigns to each
meaningful expression 0: in L its intension, i.e., its meaning or sense. The
intension of 0: - 1(0:), or lOt - we would then take to be itself a function, viz.,
the meaning function that assigns to each world w the extension of 0: in w;
that is, IOt(w) = E(o:, w). (Note thatIOt(w) is the value at w of lOt, which is the
meaning function assigned to 0: by the interpretation function I: evaluate I
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 321

at O! and you get the intension of O!; which is itself a function Ia; evaluate this
function Ia at wand you get an extension, the extension of O! at w, E(O!, w).)
Thus, the extension of O! is determined by way of the intension given O! by I.
Given these two interpretation functions, E and I, we can then formulate
the truth-conditions in a world for a sentence in either of two ways. For in-
stance, for the English sentence 'The morning star is a planet' we have either:

'The morning star is a planet' is true in w - i.e., E('The morning

star is a planet', w) =Truth - if and only if E('the morning star',
w) E E('is a planet', w);
or:
'The morning star is a planet' is true in w - i.e., I'The morning star
is a planet' (w) = Truth - if and only if I'The morning star' (w) E
hs a planet' (w).
Though the two formulations are equivalent (since Ia(w) = E(O!, w», the
second makes explicit use of meaning functions.
If we assume both the extension-assignment function E and the intension-
assignment function I, we have a Fregean type of possible-worlds semantics.
For the intension assigned an expression by I determines the extension
assigned the expression in a world by E. Thus, the essentials of a Fregean
semantics re-appear in possible-worlds semantics under the influence of the
Carnapian identification of meanings with meaning functions. 5
We return now to the interpretation of modal, or intensional, sentences
in a possible-worlds semantics, and there we fmd pOSSible-worlds semantics
effectively committed to another and more pressing role for meaning entities.
To an extensional language L such as we considered above, add the sentential
operator 'Necessarily'. Assuming interpretation functions E and I defmed as
above, add to the assumed truth-conditions for L the following:
'Necessarily p' is true in a possible world w if and only if 'p' is
true in every possible world,
thatis:
For any possible world w, E('Necessarily p', w) = Truth if and
only if, for every possible world w', E('p', w') =Truth.
(Of course, there is more to a complete pOSSible-worlds semantics for a lan-
guage asserting necessities, and variant semantics have been proposed within
the genre. But this clause is all we need consider at this point.) To evaluate
322 CHAPTER VII

the truth-value of 'Necessarily p' in a world w, then, we must evaluate the

truth-value of 'p' in every world; and to do this is to determine the intension
of 'p', the meaning function J,p', which assigns a truth-value to every world.
Thus, the truth-value of 'Necessarily p' - its extension in w - depends not
on the extension of 'p' in w but on the intension of 'p'. And we might refor-
mulate the above truth-conditions for 'Necessarily p' accordingly:

For any possible world w, E('Necessarily p', w) = Truth if and

only if J,p' takes the value Truth constantly over the set of all
possible worlds.

In this way intensions are involved in the very truth-conditions of necessity

sentences as interpreted in a possible-worlds semantics. We shall later stress
a similar point concerning belief-sentences in a possible-worlds semantics.
By and large, possible-worlds semantics originated with work on the
semantics of modal logics, including prominent work by Saul Kripke and
Jaakko Hintikka among others. 6 It has enjoyed its greatest utility in the inter-
pretation of different sorts of modal, or intensional, sentences. Our concern
lies with the applications to sentences ascribing propositional acts or attitudes,
so let us tum now to the fundamentals of a possible-worlds semantics for
propositional attitudes.

2.2. Hintikka's Possible-Worlds Approach to Semantics for Propositional

Attitudes
Two approaches to the semantics of sentences ascribing propositional atti-
tudes have been especially prominent: Frege's and Hintikka's. We discussed
Frege's in Chapter II, Section 3.4. For comparative purposes, let us recall the
highlights. Assuming the general doctrines of sense and reference, Frege noted
that the truth of a sentence 'Smith believes that .. .'depends not on the
customary referents but on the customary senses of the expressions following
'believes that'. In response, he proposed that when an expression occurs in a
belief-context, it refers not to its customary referent but to its customary
sense. In particular, since the customary sense of a sentence is for Frege a
"thought" (while its customary referent is its truth-value), in 'Smith believes
that p' the sentence 'p' (or the clause 'that p') refers to a thought - the
thought that p. Importantly, Frege's analysis presupposes that belief consists
in a relation that holds between a person and a thought (since for Frege
'Smith' would refer to a person and 'believes' would refer to a two-place rela-
tion - cf. Chapter II, Section 3.5).
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 323

Now, Hintikka's approach to the semantics of belief-sentences is very

different (prima facie - but see Section 2.4 below): it is a possible-worlds
approach resembling the Leibnizian approach to necessity sentences we
sketched in the preceding section. Briefly, whereas Frege proposed that
expressions in belief-contexts refer to their customary senses, Hintikka pro-
poses that they refer to ordinary extensions in different possible worlds.
For the fundamentals of Hintikka's semantics, the source most useful for
our purposes is his essay, 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes'. There he
says:

What I take to be the distinctive feature of all use of propositional attitudes is the
fact that in using them we are considering more than one possibility concerning the
world ....
My basic assumption ... is that an attribution of any propositional attitude to the
person in question involves a division of all the possible worlds ... into two classes: into
those possible worlds which are in accordance with the attitude in question and into
those which are incompatible with it. 7

Accordingly, Hintikka says, we may paraphrase an attribution of belief in the

following way:

a believes that p = in all the possible worlds compatible with what

a believes, it is the case that p.8

This paraphrase - intended as an obvious tautology 9 - is the intuitive basis

for Hintikka's possible-worlds semantics for belief-sentences. Assume a basic
pOSSible-worlds semantics, such as we described in the preceding section, for
non-intensional sentences of English (those excluding intensional operators,
in particular 'a believes that'). Then the interpretation of belief-sentences is
founded on the following additional clause formulating the conditions under
which any sentence 'a believes that p' would be true in a given possible world
w:
'a believes that p' is true in w if and only if, for every possible
world w' compatible with what the person referred to by 'a'
in w believes in w, 'p' is true in w'.

If 'p' is 'the morning star is risen', for instance, it is true in a given world w'
just in case the referent, or extension, of 'the morning star' in w' is a member
of the extension of 'is risen' in w'. And sO'" the truth-conditions for (say)
'Smith believes that the morning star is risen' would be formulated as follows:
324 CHAPTER VII

'Smith believes that the morning star is risen' is true in w if and

only if, for every possible world w' compatible with what Smith
believes in w, the referent of 'the morning star' in w' is a member
of the extension of 'is risen' in w'.

In the next section we shall pursue the details of Hintikka's treatment of

singular terms in belief-contexts and quantification into belief-contexts.
Hintikka's possible-worlds semantics for propositional attitudes is an
instance of a general type of possible-worlds semantics for modalities that has
developed from work of Hintikka and others, notably Kripke. Modalities are
taken to include necessity (that is, logical or metaphysical necessity), physical
necessity, propositional acts or attitudes such as belief, and in fact any other
phenomena susceptible to the ensuing form of analysis. Generally, it is as-
sumed that each modality generates from any given possible world w a set of
possible worlds that are "alternative" to w with respect to the given modality.
For necessity these are, for any world, the set of all possible worlds. (There
may be other, perhaps non-Leibnizian, views of necessity on which the set
of worlds alternative to w may vary with w.) For physical necessity, the
worlds "physically" alternative to ware the worlds in accord with the physi-
cal laws governing in w. And for a person a's believing (at time t) in a world
w, the worlds "doxastically" alternative to w for a (at t) are the worlds com-
patible with what a believes (at t) in w. Thus, it is assumed that there corre-
sponds to each modality an appropriate relation of altemativeness that holds
between worlds. Then a given modal operator 'M' is interpreted in a possible-
worlds semantics according to the following condition:
'Mp' is true in a world w if and only if 'p' is true in every world
that stands in the relation AM to w,
where AM is the alternativeness relation associated with the modality ascribed
by 'M'. Equivalently, we may take each modality to be correlated with a
relation between a world and the set of worlds appropriately alternative to
that world,lO and thus:

'Mp' is true in a world w if and only if 'p' is true in every world

that is a member of tPM(W),
where tPM is the function that assigns to each world the set of worlds that are
"M" -alternative to that world.
To understand belief as a species of modality, then, Hintikka assumes an
alternativeness relation corresponding to belief: a world w' is an alternative
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 325

to a world w with respect to a person a's beliefs in w if and only if w' is

compatible with what a believes in w. Hintikka thus defmes a function CPB
that assigns to any person a and any world w (in which a exists) the set
CPB(a, w) of all worlds that are "doxastic" alternatives to w for a: CPB(a, w)
is the set of worlds compatible with what a believes in w. The basic clause
in Hintikka's possible-worlds semantics for belief can then be formulated as
follows:

'a believes that p' is true in a world w if and only if 'p' is true in
every world that is a member of CPB(the referent of 'a' in w, w).

(Hereafter, in place of the cumbersome expression 'the referent of 'a' in w'

we shall often simply use 'a'. Hence, for example, 'CPB(the referent of 'a' in
w, w)' will become 'CPB(a, w)'.)
Interestingly, underlying Hintikka's semantics for belief-sentences we fmd
an unusual and provocative conception of the intentionality of belief. For
Hintikka, we may see belief as establishing a relation between a person in a
world and a set of possible worlds, or, more precisely, a pattern of truth-
values in those worlds. In other words, underlying Hintikka's semantics we
fmd a possible-worlds theory of intentionality such as we characterized in
Part 1 above. In Part 3 we shall draw from details of the semantics some
important details of such a theory of intentionality, especially as it applies
to belief.
One of the strongest assets of a possible-worlds semantics for belief-sen-
tences is its explanation of failures of extensionality in belief-contexts, failures
of substitutivity of identity and existential generalization. The explanation
falls out of the possible-worlds treatment of singular terms in belief-contexts
and quantification into belief-contexts. Let us turn to these matters now.

2.3. The Account of Intensionality in Possible-Worlds Semantics for Proposi-

tional Attitudes
Consider the interpretation of the sentence,

(1) Holmes believes that the murderer wears square-toed boots,

in the Hintikkian, possible-worlds semantics we have outlined for belief-
sentences:
(1) is true in a world w if and only if 'the murderer wears square-
toed boots' is true in every world compatible with what Holmes
(the referent of 'Holmes' in w) believes in w.
326 CHAPTER VII

(For intuitive impact, we have here characterized the set of worlds, cf>B
(Holmes, w), that are doxastic alternatives to W for Holmes as the worlds
compatible with what Holmes believes.) Now, 'the murderer wears square-
toed boots' is true in a given world w', we know, if and only if the referent
(or extension) of 'the murderer' in w' is a member of the extension of 'wears
square-toed boots' in w' - that is, if in w' the person who is the murderer
wears square-toed boots. The truth of (1) in the actual world depends, then,
not on the referent of 'the murderer' simpliciter, its de facto referent in the
actual world, but on its referents in each of various possible worlds, the
worlds compatible with what Holmes believes. Thus, according to Hintikka,
the reference of terms in belief-contexts is a matter of "multiple" reference,
reference in an appropriate set of possible wodds. ll
This account of the reference of terms in belief-contexts yields a ready
explanation of failures of substitutivity of identify in belief-contexts. From
(1) and

(2) The murderer = the cabman,

we cannot infer

(3) Holmes believes that the cabman wears square-toed boots.

The explanation in possible-worlds semantics is straightforward. Suppose (1)

and (2) are both true in a given world, say, the actual world, which we will
call 'wa'. (2) is true in wa if and only if 'the murderer' and 'the cabman' both
refer to the same individual in wa' But, even if that condition is fulfIlled,
these terms need not be co-referential in all the worlds compatible with what
Holmes believes (in general they will not be unless Holmes also believes that
the murderer is the cabman). So, even if (2) is true in wa , it may be that 'the
murderer wears square toed boots' is true in all the worlds compatible with
what Holmes believes in wa but 'the cabman wears square-toed boots' is not;
and (1) will then be true in wa and (3) not. So (3) does not follow from (1)
and (2).
Existential generalization also may fail, we know, for terms in belief-
contexts. Thus, from (1) we cannot infer

(4) (3 x) (Holmes believes that x wears square-toed boots),

that is, 'Someone is such that Holmes believes that he wears square-toed
boots'. This inference may fail for either of two reasons, as we considered
in Chapter I (Sections 3.3-3.4): either because there may be no murderer
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 327

(perhaps the "murder" was a hoax) and henc~ no (actual) individual Holmes'
belief is about; or because the belief may not be about any particular individ-
ual, say, Mr. Jefferson Hope, since Holmes merely believes that the murderer,
whoever that may be, wears square-toed boots. The inferential failure in
either case is explained quite naturally within possible-worlds semantics for
belief-sentences. The explanations stem from the possible-worlds interpreta-
tion of de re belief-sentences such as (4).
An elementary de re belief-sentence such as (4) may be interpreted in a
generally Hintikkian way according to the following condition:
'(3x) (a believes that x is cp)' is true in a world W if and only if
there is in W an individual who satisfies the predicate 'is cp' in
every world compatible with what the referent of 'a' in W believes
in w.
(Hintikka's own formulation here is a bit different, in ways we shall be not-
ing.) Thus, (4) is true in the actual world wa just in case there exists in Wa
an individual such that, in every world compatible with what Holmes believe3
in W a , that very same individual wears square-toed boots. The most important
point here is that it is the same individual who wears square-toed boots in
each of Holmes' "belief worlds": that is what shows the belief described by
(4) to be about a particular individual.
Armed with the truth-conditions we have seen for (1) and (4), we can now
explain both cases of the failure of inference from (1) to (4). The inference
may fail in the first case because (1) may be true in wa - in that 'the murderer
wears square-toed boots' is true in all worlds compatible with what Holmes
believes in Wa - even though there is no individual to whom 'the murderer'
refers in wa. In that case there would be no individual in Wa whom Holmes'
belief might be said to be about, and so (4) would not be true in Wa. Thus,
(4) does not follow from (1). The inference fails for a more interesting reason,
however, in the second case. (1) may be true in wa even though 'the murderer'
does not refer to the same individual in every world compatible with what
Holmes believes in wa: it is compatible with Holmes' belief that any of a
number of suspects is the murderer. But then, we may suppose, there would
be no one individual who wears square-toed boots in each of Holmes' belief
worlds, and (4) would then be false in wa. And so in this case, too, (4) does
not follow from (1).
The proper interpretation of "quantifying-in" constructions, as in (4), has
been one of the thorniest problems for the semantics of belief-sentences.
We saw in Chapter II (cf. Section 3.4) that Frege's idea, that expressions in
328 CHAPTER VII

belief-contexts refer to their customary senses, does not naturally extrapolate

to quantifying-in. And Quine has even suggested a special "relational" sense
of belief in the case of de re belief, requiring different senses of 'believes' in
(4) and (1).1 2 One of the strongest assets of a possible-worlds semantics for
belief-sentences is the fact that it does allow an interpretation of quantified
belief-sentences that seems to capture what we mean by the likes of (4)
(within, at any rate, the framework of a possible-worlds semantics). Indeed,
that interpretation suggests a striking explication of the "aboutness" of de re
belief in terms of possible worlds, which we shall develop in Section 3.3
below.
We should note that Hintikka's formulation of truth-conditions for de re
belief-sentences differs slightly, but importantly, from the formulation we
gave above. Hintikka does not -restrict the quantifier in (say) (4) to ranging
over actual individuals. 13 lifting this restriction allows us to say that Holmes
has a definite belief about a defmite individual independently of whether that
individual actually exists. A natural way to formulate this point of interpreta-
tion is to take the quantifier in sentences such as (4) as ranging over possible
individuals, i.e., individuals existing in some possible worlds though perhaps
not in the actual world. Then we might formulate truth-conditions for an
elementary de re belief-sentence as follows:
'(3x) (a believes that x is cp)' is true in a world w if and only if
there is a possible individual who satisfies the predicate 'is CP' in
every world compatible with what the referent of 'a' in w believes
in W.14

This formulation is very nearly Hintikka's own proposal, which we consider

(with an eye to other points) in the next section.

2.4. Meaning Entities in Possible-Worlds Semantics for Propositional Atti-

tudes
In Section 2.1 we saw that a possible-worlds semantics for non-intensional
sentences is at least implicitly committed to meaning functions and can be
formulated so as to make explicit use of them; this formulation yields a
possible-worlds version of basic Fregean (or Husserlian) semantics, building
on a doctrine of sense and reference, or intension (meaning functions) and
extension, in possible worlds. Now, the importance of meaning entities in
semantics is especially felt in the interpretation of intensional sentences such
as those ascribing propositional attitudes. For the truth of a sentence 'Smith
believes that .. .' apparently does not depend on the referents, or extensions,
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 329

but on the meanings of expressions following 'believes that'; thus, Frege

proposed that expressions in belief-contexts refer to their customary mean-
ings. Is a possible-worlds semantics for sentences of propositional attitude
committed to a similar role for meaning functions, given its commitment
to such functions?
Initially, in 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes', Hintikka argued that
a possible-worlds semantics achieves the goals of a theory of meaning within
the framework of a theory of reference alone, albeit reference in different
possible worlds (in particular, where dealing with contexts of propositional
attitude). However, as we shall soon consider, for the interpretation of de re
belief-sentences he assumed a special class of "individuating functions",
which he compared with "individuating" individual concepts. And more
recently Hintikka, along with many other philosophical logicians in recent
years, has come to see Carnapian meaning functions in general as the legiti-
mate heir of Fregean meanings in possible-worlds theory.ls Now, assuming
appropriate meaning functions, a possible-worlds semantics for propositional
attitudes can indeed be formulated as close kin to Frege's approach to belief-
sentences. Such a semantics is achieved by adapting the semantics Hintikka
has outlined so that it makes use of intensions taken as meaning functions. l6
Let us see how it would go. We assume, as in Section 2.l, an interpretation
function I that assigns to an expression a the meaning function 100 which, in
turn, assigns to any world w the extension IQ,{w) of a in w.
On our prior formulation, a simple belief-sentence of the form

(5) a believes that p,

is interpreted according to the following truth-conditions:

(6) 'a believes that p' is true in a world w if and only if 'p' is true in
every world w' E </>B(a, w).

(Recall that </>B(a, w) is the set of worlds compatible with what a - the
referent of 'a' in w - believes in w.) Thus, the truth of (5) in w depends not
on the truth of 'p' in w but on the truth of 'p' in the worlds compatible with
what a believes in w. Now, the propositional meaning function I. p ' assigns 'p'
its truth-values in various worlds. So we can recast the conditions of truth for
(5) as follows:

(7) 'a believes that p' is true in a world w if and only if, for every
world w' E </>B(a, w), I.p'(w') = Truth.
330 CHAPTER VII

Inasmuch as the conditions (6) and (7) are virtually equivalent,17 I,p' plays
a tacit role in condition (6). For according to (7), the truth of (5) (in a world
w) depends on/,p', the meaning function associated with 'p': on the fact that
I'p' distributes Truth among worlds in accordance with what a believes (in w).
Thus, (7) effectively interprets (5) as asserting that a certain relation obtains,
in a given world, between a and the propositional meaning function I,p'. And
so, insofar as meanings can be identified with meaning functions, (7) could
be seen as a possible-worlds rendition of Frege's interpretation of (5).18 For
Frege would take the contained sentence 'p' in (5) to refer to its customary
sense, the "thought" that p, and would thus take (5) to assert that a certain
relation obtains between a and the sense of 'p'.
Suppose, now, we consider a concrete case, the belief-sentence

(1) Holmes believes that the murderer wears square-toed boots.

This sentence will be interpreted according to our revised truth-conditions,

(7), as follows:

(8) (1) is true in a world w if and only if, for every world w' E IPB
(Holmes, w), I'the murderer wears squared-toed boots' (w') = Truth.

But now, for any world w', I'the murderer wears square-toed boots' (w') = Truth if
and only if I'the murderer'(W') E I'wears square-toed boots'(W'). Thus,

(9) (1) is true in a world W if and only if, for every world w' E IPB
(Holmes, w), I,the murderer'(w') E I,wears square-toed boots'(W').

Here the truth of (1) (in a world) is explicitly shown to depend on the mean-
ing function associated with the term 'the murderer'. Assuming the correla-
tion of meanings with meaning functions, then, (9) compares with the Fregean
view that when a term occurs within a belief-context it refers to its customary
sense.
Consider now a simple de re belief-sentence, say,

(4) (3x) (Holmes believes that x wears square-toed boots).

Frege himself did not address quantification-in. But if terms in belief-contexts

refer to their customary senses, as Frege held, then it would seem that vari-
ables of quantification into belief-contexts should range over senses, specifi-
cally, senses of the sort expressed by singular terms (cf. Chapter II, Section
3.4). Then (4) would assert that there is an individual sense s such that
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 331

Holmes stands in the relevant relation to the thought whose "subject" com-
ponent is s and whose "predicate" component is the sense of 'wears square-
toed boots'_ But we must be more restrictive, since not every individual sense
can establish a de re belief. In particular, the sense of a definite description
cannot (cf. Chapter IV, Section 3.3), and so the truth of (1), for instance,
cannot insure the truth of (4). Apparently, we must restrict the quantifier
in (4) to "rigid" individual senses (cf. Chapter VI, Section 2.7), in order to
secure a proper Fregean interpretation of (4). (For further development of a
Fregean interpretation of quantifying-in, see Part 4 below.)19
Consistently with these remarks, Hintikka assumes for the interpretation
of de re sentences, such as (4), a special class of "individuating functions",
which he compares with "individuating" individual concepts. 20 These individ-
uating functions are functions that assign the same individual to every world
(in which it exists). Thus, they are the meaning functions that represent what
we have called rigid meanings (cf. Chapter VI, Section 2.7); we might call
them rigid meaning functions, in line with our prior terminology. Then
Hintikka's proposed truth-conditions yield for (4):

'(3x) (Holmes believes that x wears square-toed boots)' is true

in a world w if and only if there is an individuating function f
such that, for every world w' E ct>B(Holmes, w), few') is a mem-
ber of the extension of 'wears square-toed boots' in w'.

Calling in our full range of meaning functions, we can recast this proposal as
follows:

(10) '(3x) (Holmes believes that x wears square-toed boots), is true in

a world w if and only if there is a rigid meaning function f such
that, for every world w' E ct>B(Holmes, w).!(w') E I'wears square-
toed boots'(W').

Here, then, we have a possible-worlds interpretation of (4) that compares

with a properly developed Fregean approach to quantifying into belief-con-
texts. The distinguishing feature of a rigid meaning function - in Hintikka's
idiom, an "individuating" function - is that it assigns the same individual
to every relevant world (to which it assigns a value). This feature is what
insures that the belief described by (4) is de re. 21
It seems unnatural, however, that the quantifier in (4) should range over
meanings, or meaning functions, rather than individuals: (4) then seems to
say that Holmes has a belief about a meaning, rather than about (say) the
332 CHAPTER VII

murderer himself, Mr. Jefferson Hope.22 (Cf. Chapter II, Section 3.5.) Now,
it is worth noting that withing an intension-laden possible-worlds semantics,
de re belief-sentences may yet be interpreted so that variables of quantifying-
in range over individuals rather than meanings. This is achieved for (4) as
follows:

(11) '(3x) (Holmes believes that x wears square-toed boots)' is true in

a world w if and only if there is a possible individual i [add if
you wish: in w] such that for every world w' E</>-B(Holmes, w),
i E /'weaIS squart:rtoed boots·(W' ).
However, if the belief described involves a rigid sense that presents the be-
liever with the individual the belief is about, then this formulation does not
indicate the role of that rigid sense. In Part 4 we shall consider how such a
sense might be incorporated into the truth-conditions formulated in accord
with Husserlian views.

2.5. Background Beliefs in Possible-Worlds Semantics for Propositional

Attitudes
In previous chapters, we observed that what is intended in an act, and the
"way" it is intended, may depend on the subject's background beliefs. And
this dependence is reflected in the act's horizon, for the object-horizon con-
sists of those possibilities concerning the act's object - maximally, possible
worlds - that are compatible with the act's Sinn together with the Sinne of
the background beliefs presupposed in the act (cf. Chapter V, Sections 3.2
and 3.3). Importantly, insofar as background beliefs influence intention, the
analysis of the act's horizon yields a "pragmatic", or "contextual", explica-
tion of the intention (cf. Chapter VI, Section 1.4). Now, according to Part 1
above, a possible-worlds analYSis of the intention achieved in an act effectively
coincides with an analysis of the act's horizon. So we should find a similar
contextual element in a possible-worlds analysis of belief, and so in a fully
adequate possible-worlds semantics for belief-sentences.
Interestingly, we do fmd such a contextual twist in Hintikka's semantics.
Briefly, for Hintikka,

'a believes that p' is true in a world w if and only if 'p' is true in
all the possible worlds compatible with everything a believes in w.

As is evident here, Hintikka defmes the "alternativeness" relation for belief

in terms of being compatible with all of a's beliefs, not only a's belief that p
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 333

but his whole network of beliefs. Thus, the analysis of believing that p would
call on the subject's overall "background" belief-structure.
In the fashion of our discussion of horizon, we would cite as relevant to a's
believing that p only those of his other beliefs that are presupposed in his
believing that p. Hintikka's approach, though, would cite all of a's beliefs,
even those that are not presupposed by or directly relevant to his believing
that p. One might support this expansiveness on grounds of the holistic
character of belief, holding that a person's total system of beliefs form a web
any comer of which is sensitive to any other area, so that in some way any
belief presupposes the whole system. But let us not pursue the issue as to how
much of one's belief-system influences a given belief. We can see in any event
that a Hintikkian possible-worlds semantics for belief-sentences is sensitive to
contextual influences on a belief by background beliefs, and this sensitivity
is like that we found in horizon-analysis as explication of intention.
We are focusing exclusively on belief, but we should note some complica-
tions regarding other species of acts or attitudes. Background beliefs may be
presupposed in an act of perception, but they may be irrelevant to an act of
phantasy quite unconstrained by what one thinks of reality. The horizon
of such a phantasy would not be constrained by background beliefs, then.
Generally, we would defme the object-horizon as the set of possibilities -
ultimately, possible-worlds - compatible with the way the object is intended
in the act, assuming intention may be constrained by what is intended in
other acts or attitudes presupposed in the given act. A possible-worlds seman-
tics for sentences ascribing a given propositional act or attitude would then
proceed in terms of a horizon of possible worlds defmed in an appropriately
general way.

3. INTENTIONALITY IN POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS

FOR PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

In Chapter I we observed that a semantics for intentional sentences should

reflect the basics of a theory of intentionality. Our ordinary language about
acts or attitudes of consciousness clearly seems to presuppose that they are
intentional; indeed, the intensionality of act-sentences seems to reflect the
intentionality of the phenomena that such sentences describe (cf. Chapter I,
Parts 3 and 4). And so a semantics for intentional sentences that explains
their intensionality should interpret these sentences as describing mental
phenomena in accordance with a conception of such phenomena as inten-
tional. Now, different semantics for intentional sentences that are adequate
334 CHAPTER VII

to our ordinary language seem to presuppose rather different theories of

intentionality: one such semantics for propositional attitudes is Frege's,
another is possible-worlds semantics. (As we have seen, the two tend to
converge under the possible-worlds theory of meaning.) In this part of the
chapter we turn to a study of certain details of the theory of intentionality
we fmd underlying a Hintikka-inspired possible-worlds semantics for proposi-
tional attitudes. We shall be particularly interested in the underlying analysis
of "aboutness", of what it is for a belief to be about an individual. We con-
sider the aboutness of both de re and de dicta beliefs.

3.1. Object and Content of Belief

A Hintikkian possible-worlds semantics of belief-sentences presupposes a
possible-worlds analysis of belief, that a person's believing something (in a
world w) establishes a relation between that person (and, or in, w) and a
distribution of Truth among a set of possible worlds. Specifically, the truth-
conditions for a simple belief-sentence are formulated as follows:

'Holmes believes that p' is true in a worl~ w if and only if 'p' is

true in every world compatible with what Holmes believes in w.

And this formulation presupposes the following tautological equivalence:

Holmes believes that p (in a world w) if and only if, in every

world compatible with what Holmes believes (in w), it is the case
thatp.

Whereas the first formulation gives the truth-conditions for a belief-sentence,

the second can be understood as an analysis of the intentionality of belief
itself.23
On such an analysis, what is the object of a belief, that which is believed;
and what is the content, the noematic Sinn? No answers are directly forth-
coming from the semantics, for it is not designed specifically to answer these
questions. But we can generate some answers.
Within possible-worlds semantics, we know, meanings are naturally repre-
sented as meaning functions, functions from worlds to extensions. Thus, the
meaning of a sentence 'p' - a "proposition" in one sense of the word - is
represented as the function J. p ' that assigns Truth to each world in which 'p'
is true and Falsehood to each world in which it is false. Such meaning func-
tions are, we saw, at least implicit in a possible-worlds semantics, and so we
re-formulate the above truth-conditions as follows (cf. Section 2.4 above):
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 335

'Holmes believes that p' is true in a world w if and only if, for
every world w' compatible with what Holmes believes in w,
I.p'(w') = Truth.

And we may re-formulate the possible-worlds analysis of belief accordingly:

Holmes believes that p (in a world w) if and only if, for every
world w' compatible with what Holmes believes (in w), I.p'(w') =
Truth.

But now, although this formulation of the analysis of belief explicitly assumes
propositional meaning functions, it is not committed as to what their role
might be in the intentionality of belief. For systematic and extra-semantic
reasons that have emerged in our study of intentionality, we would take them
to represent the noematic Sinne of beliefs, the contents that mediate the
directedness of the beliefs. In particular, if Husserl's account of individual-
directed consciousness generalizes to cover propositional consciousness, so
that propositional intentions are also mediated by but not directed toward
meaning entities, then the propositional meaning function associated with
a belief must be taken to be or represent not the object but the noematic
content of the belief.
What, then, would be the object of a belief, that which is believed? Ac-
cording to Husserl's theory of intentionality, the object of any act is deter-
mined by the act's noema: the object intended in an act is the entity that the
act's noema, or meaning, prescribes. Accepting this fundamental tenet of
Husserl's theory, and having correlated a belief's associated propositional
meaning function with the noema of the belief, we should take the object
of belief (in a world) to be the value of this propositional meaning function
(in that world). Then the analysis of belief that emerges from possible-worlds
semantics for belief-sentences is an instance of the "Husserlian" possible-
worlds theory of intentionality we described in section 1.2: associated with
each belief is a noematic meaning entity - represented by, or perhaps iden-
tified with, a meaning function - by virtue of which the belief is directed
toward What the meaning prescribes in various possible worlds.
However, tllere is a certain infelicity in taking as objects of belief the
values that a belief's associated meaning function takes in the various possible
worlds under consideration. A natural view, held by Husserl among others, is
that the objects of belief are states of affairs, conceived as non-noematic enti-
ties transcendent of consciousness. But the values of a propositional meaning
function, on our present analysis, are not states of affairs but truth-values.
336 CHAPTER VII

Indeed, modern semantics has largely skirted worries about states of affairs,
at least partly by assuming with Frege that the referent or extension of a
sentence is its truth-value. 24
Now, the Husserlian view could be worked into a possible-worlds theory
of belief. In fact, the possible worlds that are assumed in the possible-worlds
analysis of belief and thence in the semantics of belief-sentences are them-
selves large (maximal consistent) states of affairs. So we could say, for each
world w such that I,p'(w) = Truth, not that the belief that p is directed
toward Truth in w, but that it is directed toward the state of affairs that is
w. The analysis still does not specifically calion states of affairs smaller than
whole worlds, however; and to accommodate smaller states of affairs would
involve notable technical changes in the customary style of possible-worlds
semantics. The natural move - in line with Husserl's view of the relation
between the meaning and the object of an act - would be to defme proposi-
tional meaning functions as functions from worlds to states of affairs rather
than truth-values, and then to define truth-conditions in a world in terms of
states of affairs' obtaining in that world. We shall pursue further the notion of
states of affairs, their role as objects of belief, and their role in semantics in
Section 3.5 and in Part 4 below. But for now let us focus on beliefs' being
"about" individuals.
A belief, we know, is directed in one sense toward what is believed, a pro-
positional entity such as a state of affairs; and it is directed in a second sense
toward the individual(s) (if any) that it is about. The individual a belief is
about is sometimes also called the object of the belief. For Husserl, aboutness
is like direct-object intention of an individual (such as seeing or imagining
an individual) in that it is mediated by a noematic Sinn (cf. LI, V, § 11,
pp. 559-60; cited in Chapter I, Section 1.5, above). However, "indefinite"
and "defmite" beliefs are about individuals in quite different ways. The dif-
ference comes out sharply in a possible-worlds analysis of belief; it is reflected
in the semantic difference between de dicta and de re belief-sentences, a
major concern of possible-worlds semantics for belief-sentences. We turn now
to an account of de dicta and de re aboutness.

3.2. The Aboutness of Indefinite, or De Dicta, Belief

Suppose Holmes has not yet focused his suspicions on anyone individual but
has nonetheless brilliantly "deduced" that, whoever the dastard may be, the
murderer wears square-toed boots. Then Holmes' belief, described by

(1) Holmes believes that the murderer wears square-toed boots,

 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 337

is a paradigm indefinite, or de dicta, belief. Whom, or what, is such a belief

about and how is its aboutness achieved?
If there is a unique, actual individual who committed the murder, then we
may have some inclination to say that the belief is about that person. Yet, in
another sense, it is not about any individual at all, since it is merely about
"the murderer, whoever that may be". In the fashion of Husserl, it is the
meaning of 'the murderer', functioning as subject component of the belief's
noematic Sinn, that determines the aboutness of the belief. Now, that mean-
ing prescribes (at most) one individual in the actual world, and to that extent
the belief may be said to be about that individual. But insofar as the meaning
of 'the murderer' is not a rigid meaning, it prescribes different individuals in
different worlds (cf. Chapter VI, Section 2.7); and so there is also a sense in
which the belief is not about any particular individual at all.
Consider our inclination to say that Holmes' belief is about the one actual
individual (if any) who answers to the meaning of 'the murderer'. This in-
clination is natural for belief, since in belief one takes what one believes and
what one's belief is about to be actual. Yet something is wrong here. The
presumption of actuality belongs to the attitude, the "thetic" character, of
belief; it should not appear in the belief's content or Sinn (cf. LI, V, §34,
pp. 626-27). For that same Sinn may serve as the Sinn of an act of imagina-
tion in which the presumption of actuality is not present. Suppose in a mo-
ment of daydreaming Holmes imagines himself solving an intriguing murder
case (not necessarily the one we have supposed him to be investigating); and
suppose he imagines that the murderer wears square-toed boots. This act of
imagination should then be "directed" in the same way as the belief we
ascribed Holmes, since they should have the same Sinn. In particular, they
should be about the same thing, the aboutness in each case determined by the
meaning of 'the murderer'. But this imagination stakes no claim of actuality
for the object imagined about. So, even if there is an actual individual pre-
scribed by the meaning of 'the murderer', it is unnatural to hold that this act
of imagination is about that individual. And, therefore, it should be Similarly
inappropriate to hold that Holmes' belief is about that individual.
For some purposes we perhaps shauld say Holmes' belief is about the
actual individual answering to the meaning of 'the murderer'. But that sense
of 'about' is not the primary one that pertains to de dicta beliefs. The primary
sense is that in which Holmes' belief is about the same thing as the imagina-
tion we described - "the murderer", we are wont to say, though no particular
individual. This latter sort of aboutness in a de dicta belief is of more funda-
mental and more general phenomenological importance, since it is present in
338 CHAPTER VII

other propositional acts or attitudes with the same Sinn as the belief. It is
what we call "indefmite", or "de dicto", aboutness.
Now, if we assume possible worlds, we can characterize de dicto aboutness
in a perspicuous way. The basic move is to relativize aboutness to a possible
world: a propositional act or attitude is about an individual only relative to,
or in, a given possible world (cf. Section 1.2 above). Then Holmes' belief,
occurring in a world w, is about an individual in a world w' just in case in w'
that individual is the murderer. And insofar as different individuals may be
the murderer in different possible worlds, Holmes' belief may be about
different individuals relative to different worlds.
This is the natural account of de dicto, or indefinite, aboutness to draw
from Hintikka's semantics for de dicto belief-sentences such as (1). For, on
Hintikka's interpretation,

(1) is true in a world w if and only if, for every world w' com-
patible with what Holmes believes in w, the referent (extension)
of 'the murderer' in w' is a member of the extension of 'wears
square-toed boots' in w'.

Since 'the murderer' takes different referents in different worlds, it is natural

to say that the belief described by (1) is about different individuals relative
to different worlds compatible with what Holmes believes. Indeed, this view
of aboutness captures the fundamental feature of de dicto aboutness: de
dicto aboutness is, as it were, dispersed or "indeterminate" in "direction";
it is not definite, not a determinate pointing toward a particular individual,
the same in each world.
It is also reasonable to draw from a possible-worlds semantics for belief-
sentences the further, Husserlian view that de dicto aboutness is mediated
by meanings. Assuming appropriate meaning functions, we can formulate the
truth-conditions for (1) as follows (cf. Section 2.4 above):

(I) is true in a world w if and only if, for every world w' com-
patible with what Holmes believes in W, !<the murderer'(w' ) E
I'wears square-toed boots'(W ' ),

where I'the murderer' is the meaning function associated with 'the murderer',
the function that assigns to any world that individual (if any) who in that
world committed the murder. Then it is natural to say the belief's being
about a given individual in a given world is mediated by the meaning repre-
sented by the meaning function I'the murderer'. And the belief is then about
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 339

different individuals in different worlds - and hence de dicta - since this

meaning function takes different values in the various worlds compatible
with what Holmes believes.

3.3. The Aboutness of Definite, or De Re, Belief

Consider now the belief described by

(4) (3x) (Holmes believes that x wears square-toed boots).

This is a paradigm de re, or defmite, belief. It is about a definite individual, as

(4) directly asserts. (Cf. Chapter I, Sections 2.6 and 3.5, and Chapter VIII.)
A perspicuous interpretation of (4) is Hintikka's, put thus:

(4) is true in a world w if and only if there is an individual i such

that, for every world w' compatible with what Holmes believes in
w, i is a member of the extension of 'wears square-toed boots' in
w.
I

What shows that the belief described is definite is the fact that in each of
Holmes' "belief"-worlds it is the same individual who is featured and turns
up in the extension of 'wears square-toed boots'. If aboutness is relativized
to a world, as in the preceding section, then Holmes' belief is about the same
individual in each of the worlds compatible with what Holmes believes. And
so we may say his belief is about that individual, simpliciter.
The truth-conditions for (4), as stated above, leave open an important
question about de re beliefs: can there be de re, or definite, beliefs about
nonexistent individuals? As we observed in Section 2.3 above, Hintikka's
interpretation of sentence like (4) in effect treats the quantifier as ranging
over possible individuals that mayor may not be actual. And so Hintikka's
analysis separates the question of definiteness of belief from the question of
the existence or nonexistence of the individual believed about. A belief is
about a definite individual, and in that sense is de re, just in case it is about
the same individual in each of the relevant belief-worlds; while a belief is
about an existent individual just in case the individual believed about happens
also to exist in the actual world. This is an important feature of Hintikka's
semantics insofar as the semantics reflects an analysis of aboutness. For it
permits us to preserve the Husserlian view that consciousness retains its
directedness - here, its aboutness - even if that toward which it is directed
does not exist. Thus, it leaves the analysis of defmiteness of aboutness general,
covering defmite belief about either a nonexistent or an' existent individual.
340 CHAPTER VII

We shall pursue a bit further the question of existence-independence in

defmite beliefs in section 3.4 below (also see Chapter VIII, section 1.2).
Thus, from Hintikka's possible-worlds interpretation of de re belief-
sentences we can draw an interesting and perspicuous analysis of de re, or
defmite, aboutness that is compatible with Husserl's views on the existence-
independence of intention. We can also extract from the semantics, as we
have variously formulated it, the Husserlian view that de re aboutness is
mediated by a meaning entity. Specifically, de re aboutness is mediated by
a rigid meaning, represented by what we have called a rigid meaning function
(cf. Section 2.4 above and Chapter VI, Section 2.7). Assuming appropriate
meaning functions, and in particular rigid meaning functions, we can formu-
late the truth-conditions on (4) as follows (cf. Section 2.4 above):
(4) is true in a world w if and only if there is a rigid meaning
function [ such that, for every world w' compatible with what
Holmes believes in w, [(w') E I'wears square-toed boots'(w' ).
Then we may say the belief's being about a certain individual, the same in
each belief-world, is mediated by a certain rigid meaning, represented by a
rigid meaning function. Centrally, a rigid meaning function selects the same
individual from each world, and this is what makes the given belief definite.
Now, there are quite different kinds of de re, or definite, beliefs. (Cf.
Chapter I, Section 2.6, and especially Chapter VIII, Section 1.1.) A belief
may be about a defmite individual because the believer knows who the
individual is, in the rather strong sense that he has a sense or knowledge
of the individual's identity. A much different case is that where a belief is
defmite because it is about an individual that the subject currently sees.
(Hintikka has laid the groundwork for distinguishing these two kinds of de
re beliefs.)25 These two kinds of de re beliefs seem to involve two quite
different modes o[ de re aboutness. (And there are others: cf. Chapter VIII,
section 1.1). If these two kindS of aboutness are mediated by meanings, quite
different sorts of meanings they would have to be. Aboutness in the first sort
of belief might be mediated by what we have called an "individuating" mean-
ing, a meaning that somehow incorporates the identity of the individual. In
the second sort of belief, aboutness might be mediated by a meaning keyed
to one's immediate perceptual acquaintance with the individual. In any event,
both sorts of meaning must presumably be rigid meanings, meanings that
prescribe the same individual in each possible world relevant to the intention.
Both modes of intention will be examined in the next chapter.
"Individuating" meaning functions enter Hintikka's'interpretation of the
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 341

likes of (4) with his observation that quantifying-in presupposes the individ-
uation of the objects the quantifier ranges over. Of course, quantification
always presupposes the individuation of the objects the quantifier ranges over.
But Hintikka's point, as we would put it, is that the quantifier in (say) (4)
presupposes the individuation in Holmes' mind or consciousness of the objects
it ranges over. Thus, the quantifier ranges over obje"cts such that Holmes has a
sense or conception or perhaps knowledge of their "identity";26 or, better,
instead of restricting the range of the quantifier, we might say that the truth
of (4) depends on the given individual's being individuated in Holmes' con-
sciousness. This point of Hintikka's is an important contribution to the
analysis of a certain kind of de re belief. Though we shall study such "individ-
uatively definite" beliefs in the next chapter, it is worth noting here that our
present picture, with aboutness mediated by an "individuating" meaning that
would seem to function as a constituent of the belief's Sinn, is overly simple.
Note also that Hintikka sees in perception a second kind of "individuation"
per se; we need not address that view here, but we consider it in part in
Chapter VIII, Section 2.2.

3.4. Existence-Independence and Conception-Dependence of Aboutness

Relations of intention are, we know, characteristically independent of the
existence of the object intended and dependent on a specific conception of
the object (cf. Chapter I, Part 2). Since the aboutness of belief is a type of
intentionality, we should find aboutness to be existence-independent and
conception-dependent. Indeed, the possible-worlds analysis of aboutness we
have developed yields an account of these features of aboutness. The account
derives, of course, from the possible-worlds seman tical account of failures of
existential generalization and substitutivity of identity in belief-contexts
(cf. Section 2.3 above).
Consider first the aboutness of a de dicto belief, Holmes' believing that the
murderer wears square-toed boots. On the possible-worlds analysis, this belief
is about an individual in a world if that individual is the person who in that
world committed the murder. Now, it may be that Holmes so believes and
yet there is no murderer, in the actual world. In that case, Holmes' belief is
about various individuals in various possible worlds, but not about any in-
dividual in the actual world. Thus, the aboutness of his belief is independent
of the existence, in the actual world, of any object that the belief is about.
Further, the aboutness of Holmes' de dicto belief is relative to a concep-
tion, to the concept or sense "the murderer", which is the subject component
of the belief's propositional Sinn. In any world Holmes' belief is about the
342 CHAPTER VII

individual selected in that world by the meaning function representing the

sense "the murderer", and so this sense determines what Holmes' belief is
about in each world. The pattern of directedness (aboutness) of Holmes'
belief, then, is determined by, and thus relative to, the sense "the murderer"
as it functions in the noematic content of Holmes' belief.
Consider now the aboutness of a de re belief, Holmes' believing of some-
one that he wears square-toed boots. This is the belief described by
(4) (3x) (Holmes believes that x wears square-toed boots),
which we discussed in the preceding section. Now, it is perhaps debatable
whether such a de re belief is existence-independent, for it might be argued
that there cannot be definite (and in that sense de re) beliefs about non-
existent individuals. 27 But it seems that there can be. No doubt we would
ordinarily take the belief described by (4) to be about an actual individual-
in our story, some particular (actual) individual whom Holmes has judged to
have committed the murder. But suppose Holmes had read all his clues in
the same way and had formed a belief with the same phenomenolOgical
structure as that described, yet the whole case was a bizarre hoax. Such a
belief would be describable by a sentence like (4) provided the quantifier
is interpreted as ranging over possible individuals (cf. Sections 2.3 and 3.3
above). And the belief would be definite in that it would be about the same
individual in each of the relevant belief-worlds; only, that individual would
not exist in the actual world. Assuming there are such beliefs, then, it may be
that Holmes' belief is about a fixed individual in every world compatible with
Holmes' beliefs - and thus the belief is definite - even though that individual
does not exist in the actual world. And insofar as such beliefs are possible,
the intentionality, or aboutness, of a de re belief is independent of the exis-
tence, in the actual world, of the object it is about.
The conception-dependence of de re aboutness is also debatable, for de re
aboutness seems not to be relative to a conception of the individual the belief
is about - or, at any rate, not in the way de dicto aboutness is. Indeed, de re
belief often seems to be about an individual simpliciter and not "under" any
specific conception or description: there need not be explicitly present in
Holmes' consciousness any "descriptive" conception of the individual his
belief is about, any conception of that individual as "the such and such".
Husserl, however, seems to have held that some predicative sense-content,
prescribing properties of the intended object, is present in the noematic Sinn
of every act. And Hussed's view can perhaps be admitted if interpreted liber-
ally enough: the background meanings on which an intention depends will
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 343

likely include such descriptive content, even if the explicit Sinn of the inten-
tion itself does not (cf. Chapter VIII, Section 4.1). Insofar as this is so, even
de re belief is relative to a conception of the object it is about and in that
sense is conception-dependent. Nonetheless, whatever predicative content
may be relevant to Holmes' de re belief, it cannot play the same role that it
would play in a de dicta belief: it cannot determine the aboutness of the
belief. Holmes' de re belief is directed toward (about) the same fixed individ-
ual in every world under consideration. But, as we saw in Chapter IV (cf.
Section 3.3), a conception or sense that appeals to properties of an individual,
in the manner of a defmite description, will prescribe different individuals in
different worlds compatible with the intention. Unlike a de dicta belief, then,
the determination of the object of a de re belief is relatively independent of
the presentation of the properties it is intended as having. We shall study de
re belief in detail in the next chapter. But suffice it to say here that if de re
aboutness is to be determined by a meaning, a rigid meaning, such a meaning
cannot be of the sort expressible by a definite description.
The "indeterminacy", or incompleteness, in intentions of transcendent
objects is, we know, related to their conception-dependence (cf. Chapter I,
Section 2.5). This character of intention is nicely explicated on the possible-
worlds approach. Any individual is completely "determined", or propertied, in
any world in which it occurs. Yet an individual sense such as "the murderer"
specifies only a limited aspect, an incomplete "determination", of the in-
dividual it prescribes in any world. In this sense there is an indeterminacy in
the aboutness of a de dicta, or indefinite, belief such as we described. And
a de re, or definite, belief is indeterminate in the same way, insofar as it is
dependent on a conception of the object it is about. However, there is also
a somewhat different sort of indeterminacy in de re aboutness, at least of the
individuative sort. For, as we shall consider in the next chapter, the very
"identity" of a concrete individual apparently transcends human grasp and
so is never fully given in human consciousness (cf. Chapter VIII, Section 3.2).

3.5. States af Affairs as Objects af Belief

From Hintikka's semantical treatment of de dicta and de re belief-sentences
we have drawn an account of the difference between the aboutness of de
dicta and the aboutness of de re beliefs. Let us also note the natural com-
panion account of the "primary" objects of belief on a possible-worlds
Husserlian theory of intentionality. These objects are states of affairs, which
we left in abeyance in Section 3.1.
For the Husserlian, the contents of belief are propositional noematic Sinne.
344 CHAPTER VII

The "primary" objects of belief are states of affairs; and where a belief is
about an individual, the individual is a "secondary" object of the belief and
a constituent of the state of affairs that is the primary object of the belief
(cf. Chapter I, Section 1.5). Now, on the possible-worlds Husserlian theory
of intentionality, an act is directed via its Sinn toward various objects in
various possible worlds. A propositional act or attitude, such as a belief; is
then directed toward various states of affairs occurring in various worlds. We
have focused on the aboutness of beliefs, which is mediated by individual
senses and terminates in individuals in various worlds. Let us now observe the
natural account of the states of affairs toward which a belief is directed in
various worlds, in particular for the cases of certain de dicta and de re forms
of belief.
Consider Holmes' de re, or defmite, belief about a certain man - Jefferson
Hope - that he wears square-toed boots. With respect to each world this belief
is about Jefferson Hope: it is about the same man in every world, and thus
de reo Accordingly, Holmes' belief is directed toward the same state of affairs
in each world (wherein the state of affairs occurs), namely, the state of affairs
that consists in Jefferson Hope's wearing square-toed boots (habitually).
In contrast, consider Holmes' prior de dicta, or indefinite, belief that the
murderer wears square-toed boots. With respect to a given world this belief is
about an individual, but it is not about the same individual in every world.
This belief is also directed toward a state of affairs in each world, the state
of affairs consisting in a certain individual's (namely, the individual the belief
is about in that world) wearing square-toed boots. With respect to each world,
then, the belief is directed toward a state of affairs, but it is not directed
toward the same state of affairs in every world. In some worlds the state of
.:!ffairs is that Jefferson Hope wears square-toed boots, in others it is that
Arthur Charpentier wears square-toed boots, and so on, depending on who in
the given world committed the murder.
These forms of belief, one de re and the other de dicta, differ in their
primary intentionality in a basic way. The de re belief is directed toward the
same state of affairs in every possible world (wherein it occurs), whereas the
de dicta belief is not. The difference is a direct consequence of the difference
in aboutness: the de re belief is about the same individual in every world
(wherein it exists), whereas the de dicta belief is not.
Notice that we have taken both forms of belief to be directed, in any
world, toward singular states of affairs, i.e., states of affairs consisting of an
individual having a property. The contents or Sinne of de re and de dicta
beliefs differ in structure, but there is no need to maintain that their objects,
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 345

in worlds, differ in structure too. (In particular, there is no need to assume -

as Russell's theory of descriptions might require - that the object of the
de dicta belief is a complex state of affairs that there is one and only one
murderer and he wears square-toed boots.) Indeed, it is most natural to think
the objects in both cases are singular states of affairs.

4. A HUSSERLIAN POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS

FOR PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

Having found phenomenological insights in semantic analyses, let us now

draw on Husserl's phenomenological account of intentionality to put together
a Husserlian possible-worlds semantics for sentences ascribing propositional
attitudes. By this we mean a semantics of a generally Hintikkian sort that is
explicitly designed to reflect Husserl's insights about intentionality. Specifi-
cally, the semantics will assume Husserl's account of the role of noematic
Sinn or sense in intentionality, his distinction between the sense and the
object of a propositional act or attitude, and his account of the horizon
associated with an act or attitude. As we have seen, it is his notion of object-
horizon that invites into his account of intentionality the notion of possible
worlds. The semantics will differ from Hintikka's by calling on the notion of
horizon, by explicitly using senses as opposed to meaning functions, and by
recognizing states of affairs as objects of beliefs. We shall cast the semantics
in the generic Tarskian style of truth-theoretic semantics. As our focus is on
motivating the system, we shall present the essential outlines of the semantics
in a reasonably informal idiom, leaving to the interested reader the task of
filling in the technical details.
First we frame a Husserlian possible-worlds semantics for the extensional
part ~ of English, a semantics like the usual possible-worlds semantics only
enhanced with Husserlian machinery. This system will make use of the
Husserlian semantics that we described in Chapter IV, Section 2.2, but since
Husserl did not himself develop the details of a semantic system, some impro-
visation will be required. Basically, correlated with each semantically signifi-
cant expression in ~ - each term, predicate, or sentence - will be a sense, an
object of reference (Beziehung) in each possible world, and an extension in
each world. Because we seek to preserve Hussed's views on intentionality as
far as possible, the sense of an expression is not identified with its associated
meaning function. Further, the semantics distinguishes the object or referent
of an expression from its extension. This distinction may appear to be some-
346 CHAPTER VII

what unusual, but in fact Frege made.just such a distinction for predicates: he
identified the referent of a predicate with a function, or "concept", and the
extension with the class of entities falling under the concept. In our case,
the distinction is required because, on a Husserlian semantics, the extension
(or truth-value) and the referent of a sentence will not be the same: for
Husserl, we should take the object, or "objective reference", of a sentence to
be the object of a speaker's underlying judgffient~in uttering the sentence,
and that object is a state of affairs, not a truth-value. (Husserl affirmed this
seman tical position, but in the case of a predicate he took the "objective
reference" to be the several objects falling under the predicate, in effect the
extension. On these points see LI, I, §12.) With a distinction between referent
and extension we shall be able to formulate a semantics embracing the usual
treatment of extension, with sets of objects assigned to predicates and truth-
values assigned to sentences, and also to utilize Husserl's distinction between
noematic sense and object.
Hence, we assume three levels of semantic assignment: sense, referent
(object of reference or of intention) in a possible world, and extension in a
possible world. We further assume that sense determines referent in a world,
and referent in a world determines extension in a world: let us say a sense
designates a referent in a world, which captures an extension in a world.
Thus, the sense of a singular term is an individual sense, its referent in a world
is the individual (if any) designated in that world by that sense, and the ex-
tension in that world is that individual ("captured" thus by the referent).
While the sense of a predicate is a predicative concept or sense, we shall say
(a fa Frege rather than Hussed) that the referent in a world is the property
(the same in any world) designated by that sense, and the extension in a
world is the set of individuals occurring in and having that property in that
world (thus captured by that property). And, fmally, the sense of a sentence
is a propositional sense or thought, the referent in a world is the state of
affairs (if any) designated in that world by that sense, and the extension in
a world is the truth-value Truth if there obtains in that world a/the designated
state of affairs - otherwise the extension is Falsehood. We may codify these
seman tical structures in the following form.
We assume a function I that assigns to each semantically significant ex-
pression a in t! a sense - the sense or intension of a, I(a). The types of senses
are familiar: an individual sense for a singular term, a predicative sense or
concept for a predicate, and a propositional sense or thought for a sentence.
We further assume a function R that assigns to each appropriate expression a
in t! and each possible world w a referent - the "objective reference" of a in
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 347

w, R(o:, w). For a term this will be an individual existing in w; for a predicate,
a property (presumably, instantiated in w); and for a sentence, a state of
affairs occurring or obtaining in w. We allow that R be undefined, or take no
value, at some worlds for some expressions. Finally, we assume a function £
that assigns to each appropriate expression 0: and each possible world w an
extension of the usual sort - the extension of 0: in w, £(0:, w). We assume
the sense of 0: designates the referent of 0: in w, and the latter captures the
extension of 0: in' w. Accordingly, let Do be the function that assigns to a
sense and a world the referent it designates in that world: thus Do(/(o:} w) =
R (0:, w). And let K be the function that assigns to a referent in a world the
extension it captures in that world: thus K(R(o:, w)) = £(0:, w). So £(0:, w)
= K(Do(/(o:), w)). A sentence is true in a world, then, just in case it refers to
a state of affairs obtaining in that world, or is assigned a referent by R in that
world. Truth-conditions can be laid down then in pretty much the usual
manner follOwing Tarski, working with the extensions so determined. (The
main complication concerns the treatment of quantification, as there must
be developed a treatment of variables and quantifiers vis-a-vis sense and object
or referent.)
A systematic Husserlian semantics of the preceding sort requires a sys-
tematic doctrine of states of affairs. We leave to future research the tasks of
ferreting out Husserl's detailed views on states of affairs and then developing
the appropriate seman tical details based thereon. However, we observe some
points fundamental to our concerns. We assume the state of affairs referred
to by a subject-predicate sentence is a singular state of affairs consisting of an
individual having a property. Thus, the referent of 'Sherlock is shrewd' in a
world w is the state of affairs, occurring in w, consisting of the individual
R('Sherlock', w) having the property R('is shrewd', w). And the referent of
'The murderer wore boots' in w is the state of affairs in w consisting of the
individual R ('the murderer', w) having the property R (,wore boots', w).
(Thus, defmite descriptions are treated as .referential terms and are not elimi-
nated as per Russell's theory of descriptions. Note that the senses expressed
by these two sentences may be of different sorts even though the referents
are both singular states of affairs.) Importantly, the state of affairs referred
to by a sentence of form 'The 4> is a 1/1' in one world may be different from
that referred to in another world, because the referent of the defmite descrip-
tion in one world may be different from that in another world (we assume a
qualitative predicate refers to the same property in any world). On the other
hand, if a term 0:, perhaps the name 'Sherlock', takes the same referent in
every world, then the sentence '0: is a 1/1' refers to the same state of affairs in
348 CHAPTER VII

every world. These observations will of course be important when we turn

to belief-sentences. We leave unspecified the details regarding compound
sentences such as those of form 'p and q' and qUantificational sentences such
as 'Someone burgled the Smythe house'. (One approach assumes compound
states of affairs and general states of affairs; another approach assumes only
atomic or singular states of affairs and grounds compound and general propo-
sitional senses, or the truth-values they determine in worlds, in the occurrence
in worlds of appropriate singular states of affairs only.)28
We turn at last to our primary task, the formulation of a Husserlian
possible-worlds semantics for sentences of propositional attitude. We focus
exclusively on sentences ascribing beliefs. Thence, our task is to extend the
preceding semantical system to the language obtained by adding to the exten-
sional part of English (iff) belief-sentences, sentences of the form 'a believes
that p' and sentences formed by quantification into contexts of the form 'a
believes that _ _ '. It is in this part of the semantics especially that we seek
to reflect a properly Husserlian account of the intentionality of belief, its
being directed upon a state of affairs and, as the case may be, its being about
an individual. We begin by noting the relevant views of intentionality.
For Husserl, a propositional act or attitude consists in a person's enter-
taining (actively or passively) a noema whose Sinn is a propositional sense,
whereby a state of affairs is intended. A belief is a propositional attitude
whose noema's thetic component is doxic (this being a primitive item of noe-
matic structure). A belief consists then, we may say, in a person's doxically
entertaining a propositional sense - and thereby intending a state of affairs.
But let us be more precise. There is correlated with each act or attitude, for
Husserl, a horizon defined as the possibilities left open by the act's Sinn
together with the Sinne of the background beliefs (and possibly other acts or
attitudes) presupposed by the subject in having the attitude. We have argued
that an act's horizon is effectively organized into a set of possible worlds,
those compatible with the act's Sinn and the presupposed background Sinne.
Accordingly, the intentionality of a belief consists in a directedness, via a
propositional sense, toward an appropriate state of affairs in each horizon-
world. Let us assume, then, a function HB that assigns to each belief its
horizon. For our purposes we shall defme HB as a function with three argu-
ments: a person s, a propositional Sinn 1f, and a world w. Assuming the doxic
element of belief, these three parameters individuate a belief, s's belief in w
with Sinn 1f (suppressing for simplicity the time at which the belief is held in
w). Thus HB(S, 1f, w) is the set of worlds that make up the horizon of s's
belief in w with Sinn 1f.
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 349

A Husserlian semantics then assigns to a belief-sentence 'a believes that p'

a sense and in each possible world a referent and an extension. The extension
in a world w is the truth-value in w of 'a believes that p'. The referent in a
world w is the state of affairs in w that consists in a's - i.e., the person
R('a', w)'s - doxically entertaining the propositional sense /('p') and thereby
intending an appropriate state of affairs in each world w' in the horizon of
the attitude, viz., the state of affairs R (,p', w'). Let us focus on the truth-
conditions for such belief-sentences in a Husserlian semantics.
For a Husserlian possible-worlds semantics, we would propose the follow-
ing truth-conditions for a basic belief-sentence:

'a believes that p' is true in a world w if and only if in wa doxi-

cally entertains the propositional sense /('p') such that, for every
possible world w' in the horizon HB(a, /('p'), w), there obtains
in w' the state of affairs designated in w' by /('p') - so that 'p' is
true in w'.
This somewhat loose formulation is designed to make the Husserlian input
obvious and to present an appearance that permits easy comparison with the
truth-conditions of Hintikka's semantics. In particular, the formulation makes
it clear that belief is interpreted as consisting in a direction through a proposi-
tional sense toward certain states of affairs in various worlds.
An important special case is that of ascription of a de dicto belief by use
of a defmite description. In an illustrative instance we fmd the following
truth-conditions:
'Sherlock believes that the murderer wore boots' is true in a world
w if and only if in w Sherlock doxically entertains the sense 1T
such that, for every possible world w' in HB (Sherlock, 1T, w),
there obtains in w' the state of affairs consisting of the individual
A(/('the murderer'), w') having the property A(/('wore boots'),
w').
The individual the ascribed belief is about in each horizon-world is the in-
dividual designated therein by the sense of 'the murderer'. Now, the individual
designated in one world by this sense may be different from that designated
in another world by the sense, and this makes the belief de dicto, or indefi-
nite. And in consequence of this pattern of designation, the state of affairs
intended in one horizon-world may be different from that intended in another
horizon-world.
A second case of special interest to us is the ascription of a de re belief.
350 CHAPTER VII

Let us assume that de re aboutness is mediated by a rigid sense (perhaps a

Husserlian X in some cases), where we take rigid senses to be whatever sorts
of individual senses are unearthed by careful phenomenological analysis of
defmite, or de re, intention (cf. Chapter VIII). We assume rigid senses have
the trait, much stressed in ou,r prior discussion, of designating the same
individual in every possible world (wherein that individual exists). Then for
a simple de re belief-sentence we may propose the following truth-conditions:

'(3x) (a believes that x is cpr

is true in a possible world w if and
only if in w a doxically entertains a propositional sense 11" such
that: there is a possible individual i, the SUbject-component of
11" is some rigid individual sense that rigidly designates i, the
predicate-component of 11" is l('is CP'), and for every possible world
w' in HB(a, 11", w) there obtains in w'the state of affairs consist-
ing of i having the property .:l(l('is CP'), w').

Thus, a de re belief-sentence ascribes a belief with a noematic Sinn whose

SUbject-component is a rigid individual sense. In each horizon-world, the
belief ascribed is about the individual designated in that world by this sense.
And since the sense designates the same individual in any world, the belief
is de re, or definite. The belief is also directed toward the same state of affairs
in any horizon-world, the state of affairs consisting of the fixed individual
having the ascribed property. Note that variables of quantifying-in range over
possible individuals (understood as individuals existing in different possible
worlds and perhaps not in the actual world). This is natural to Husserlian
theory since objects of intention need not exist (in the actual world, or in the
world at which the belief-sentence is evaluated).

NOTES

1 Though we shall not foray into the details of a theory or metaphysics of possible
worlds and other possibilia, we might note at least the following fundamental assump-
tions we would make in developing a possible-worlds Husserlian theory of intentionality.
Assume possible worlds and possible individuals. Exactly one world is actual. Possible
individuals are individuals that exist in some possible worlds; merely possible individuals
exist in some worlds but not in the actual world. Assume also possible states of affairs,
possible events (including possible acts of consciousness), and possible histories or
courses of events. Possible worlds (of the sort we need consider) are maximal consistent
possible histories. Assume further that the same individual may exist in different possible
worlds: trans-world identity and individuation make sense and trans-world relations of
identity do obtain. (Cf. Husserl's interesting views on trans-world identity, discussed in
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 351

Chapter VIII, Section 3.4.) Meanings are abstract individuals (cf. Chapter IV, Part 2),
which we might hold either to exist in every world or to exist in no worlds (worlds are
concrete histories) but to have their being outside worlds. PossibiIia, however, are not
abstract entities. Finally, we might even assume impossible objects and impossible
worlds, if these notions prove both coherent and useful; but we shall not address issues
concerning them here.
2 Similarly, Hintikka proposes to treat the reference of terms within intensional con-
texts as "multiple reference", reference to objects in different possible worlds. This
view is used throughout his work on modalities of different species; see, for instance,
his Knowledge and Belief (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), p. 140. The
terminology traces to his early paper, 'Modality as Referential Multiplicity', Ajatus 20
(1957),49-64.
3 Alfred Tarski, 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages', in his Logic, Seman-
tics, Metamathematics (Clarendon, Oxford, 1956), pp. 152-278 [a translation of 'Der
Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen', Studia Philosophica 1 (1936), 261-
405). See also his less formal essay, 'The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Founda-
tions of Semantics', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (1944), 341- 75,
reprinted in Linsky (Note 53, Ch. II above).
4 Donald Davidson, 'Truth and Meaning', Synthese 17 (1967), 304-25.
5 This is especially perspicuous in Montague's work: cf. his 'Pragmatics and Intensional
Logic' (Note 5, Ch. VI above). Cf. also Hintikka, 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes',
in Models for Modalities (Note 6, Ch. I above), p. 93.
6 Cf. Saul Kripke, 'Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic', Acta Philosophica
Fennica 16 (1963), 83-94, reprinted in Linsky (Note 19, Ch. I above). We draw on
Hintikka's explicitly possible-worlds-semantical 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes'
(Note 5 above). This is closely related to his Knowledge and Belief (Note 2 above) and
a number of essays in his Models for Modalities (Note 6, Ch. I above), as well as earlier
essays, which work in terms of "model sets"; model sets are maximal consistent sets of
sentences, which would describe possible worlds. See also the bibliographies in those two
books.
7 Hintikka, 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes' (Note 5 above), pp. 90-91.
8 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes' (Note 5 above), p. 92.
9 Hintikka, 'On the Logic of Perception', in Models for Modalities (Note 6, Ch. I above),
p. 156.
10 Cf. Montague, 'Pragmatics and Intensional Logic' (Note 5, Ch. VI above), p. 144 (cf.
p. 158).
11 The accounts of failures of existential generalization and of substitutivity of identity
in belief-contexts that we present in this section are due to Hintikka. Cf. his 'Semantics
for Propositional Attitudes' (Note 5 above), pp. 96-98. At certain indicated points,
though, we vary somewhat from some details of the semantics outlined in that essay.
12 Quine, 'Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes' (Note 26, Ch. I above), pp. 177-78.
13 See 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes' (Note 5 above), p. 98 (bottom).
14 If variables inside belief-contexts range over possible individuals, how are we to take
variables outside belief-contexts? We could treat them differently, with a variable ranging
over actual individuals when it occurs outside belief-contexts but ranging over possible
individuals when it occurs inside belief-contexts. But then we have the strange situation
that in (*) '(3 x) (x is sane and Holmes believes that x is deranged)' the variable ranges
352 CHAPTER VII

fust over actuals and then over possibles. An easier approach is to let variables always
range over possible individuals but hold that (say) 'x is sane' is satisfiable in a world by
a possible individual only if the individual exists in that world. Then (*) is true in a
world w if and only if there is a possible individual that satisfies 'x is sane' in wand
satisfies 'x is deranged' in every world compatible with what Holmes believes in w.
15 Cf. Hintikka, 'Carnap's Semantics in Retrospect' (Note 31, Ch. VI above).
16 This sort of approach has been 'detailed by Montague in his 'Pragmatics and Inten-
sional Logic' (Note 5, Ch. VI above), pp. 158-59.
17 (6) and (7) are not exactly equivalent. For (6) is committed, not to the full range
of the function J'p', but only to the restriction of J'p' to the union of the sets of worlds
compatible with what Holmes believes respectively in the various worlds to which our
semantic theory applies. A similar point applies to the other sorts of meaning functions
we shall write into the semantics: the basic Hintikkian semantics we begin with is strictly
committed only to such a restriction of the meaning functions we shall write into the
relevant tru th-conditions.
18 On Frege's approach 'believes' is taken as standing for a relation between a person
and a propositional meaning, a thought. (The 'that' in 'a believes that p' forms an "ab-
stract noun clause", 'that p', wherein 'p' and its constituents stand for their customary
meanings: cf. Frege, 'On Sense and Reference' (Note 44, Ch. II above), p. 66.) On the
basic Hintikkian "modal" approach 'a believes that', as a modal operator, is taken as
standing for a relation between a person and (in) a world and a set of worlds. Generalizing
(7), we write propositional meaning functions into the interpretation of belief-sentences
'a believes that p'. The resulting semantics is equivalent in a sense to a semantics that
directly interprets 'believes' as a relation between a person and a world and a proposi-
tional meaning function, where 'that p' in 'a believes that p' refers to a propositional
meaning function. Montague has argued to this effect: cf. his 'Pragmatics and Intensional
Logic' (Note 5, Ch. VI above), pp. 157-58.
19 The definitive discussion of a Fregean approach to quantifying into belief-contexts
is Kaplan's 'Quantifying-In' (Note 26, Ch. I above).
20 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes' (Note 5 above), pp. 101-106.
21 Note that Hintikka has distinguished two different kinds of "individuating" meaning
functions: see his 'On the Logic of Perception' (Note 9 above) and 'Objects of Knowledge
and Belief' (Note 6, Ch. I above). Our notion of an individuating meaning in Chapter
VI corresponds to only one kind of individuating meaning function characterized by
Hintikka; the other we address partly in Chapter VIII, Section 2.2. Our general notion of
"rigid" meaning corresponds to Hintikka's general notion of "individuating" function.
Actually, there are some subtle differences relevant to the discussion of individuation in
Chapter VIII, but they should not concern us at this point.
22 Hintikka has shown some ambivalence as to whether variables of quantification into
belief-contexts, which officially range over individuating functions, should be thought of
as ranging over individuals or over individuating concepts. Although he has compared
individuating functions with a species of individual concepts, he has also tended to think
of individuals themselves - possible individuals, individuals occurring in different possible
worlds - as individuating functions. Behind this tendency is a view he calls "Kantian",
his view that trans-world identities are not simply objectively real but are partly due
to our own conceptualizations, registered in individuating functions. In any event, for
Hintikka, trans-world individuals - presumably as identified with individuating functions
 INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE-WORLDS SEMANTICS 353

- are to be distinguished from concrete individuals within worlds, the "manifestations"

or "embodiments" in worlds of individuals themselves, i.e., trans-world individuals. See
Hintikka's 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes' (Note 5 above), pp. 104-109, and
'On the Logic of Perception' (Note 9 above), p. 179. Also, in Hintikka's The Intentions
of Intentionality (Note 6, Ch. I above), see 'The Semantics of Modal Notions and the
Indeterminacy of Ontology', esp. p. 30 and p. 42, n. 17, 'Objects of knowledge and
Belief', esp. p. 44, and 'The Intentions of Intentionality', pp. 215-19.
23 Alternatively, this second formulation can be seen as giving not an analysis but a
certain sort of explication of belief or its intentionality. This would compare with our
approach, in Chapter VI, to Husserlian horizon-analysis as explication, rather than analy-
sis, of meaning and intention. If the tautology is seen as an ontological analysis of the
intentionality of belief, it is a circular analysis given the characterization of the doxastic
alternativeness relation as generating the worlds compatible with what the believer
believes in a given world (cf. Section 2.2 above). The circularity can be removed, how-
ever, by taking the alternativeness relation as primitive or more fundamental than belief
itself. This compares with an analysis of belief in terms of a more fundamental relation
between a person (in a world) and a propositional Sinn or meaning function: cf. Section
2.4 above.
24 Interestingly, C. I. Lewis distinguished states of affairs, or "facts", as the "significa-
tions" of sentences, from both their extensions and their intensions. See 'The Modes of
Meaning' (Note 53, Ch. II above), pp. 242-43.
25 Cf. Hintikka, 'On the Logic of Preception' (Note 9 above), and 'Objects of Knowledge
and Belief' (Note 6, Ch. I above), where he distinguishes "perceptual" from "physical"
"methods of individuation". In Chapter VIII we make use of a similar distinction in
discussing the difference between what we call "perceptually definite" and "individua-
tively definite" intentions.
26 This notion does not seem to be exactly the same as Hintikka's notion of individ~
uation.
27 F9IUesdal, for example, has argued for an epistemic logic in which variables of quan-
tifying-in must range over actual entities only. Cf. his 'Knowledge, Identity, and Exis-
tence', Theoria 33 (1967), 1-27.
28 Some of the relevant issues arise in Russell, 'On Propositions: What They Are and
What They Mean', in Logic and Knowledge (Note 23, Ch. I above), pp. 285-320; and in
Bas Van Fraassen, 'Facts and Tautological Entailment', Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969),
477-87.
 CHAPTER VIII

DEFINITE, OR DE RE, INTENTION IN

A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK*

We have seen that a HusserIian theory of intentionality can be developed

considerably beyond the basic Frege-like approach we discussed in Chapters
III and N. Our goal now is to apply the developed theory of defmite, or de
re, intentions. We first elaborate on the characterization of defmiteness,
which we have heretofore defined largely by example, and we distinguish
more sharply perceptually definite from individuative/y definite acts. We then
develop analyses of the phenomenological structures that achieve, respec-
tively, perceptual and individuative defmiteness of intention.
We proceed within a broadly HusserIian framework, but we also develop
and use certain concrete results of Hussed's that form a partial basis for our
analyses. Specifically, our Husserlian input is as follows. Fundamentally, we
adopt Husserl's leading idea that intentionality is to be explained in terms of
noematic Sinn. Also, we pursue HusserI's concrete views on individuation;
these afford important constraints on individuative intention. And we fmd
helpful Husserl's account of perceptual Sinn as expressible in part by the
demonstrative pronoun 'this', for 'this' may express that component of a
perception's Sinn that achieves perceptual acquaintance, perception's peculiar
mode of defmite intention. Finally, a valuable heuristic device for seeing what
is required of defmite intention is its explication in terms of possible worlds,
and this we have argued (in Chapter VI) is equivalent to its explication in
terms of the Husserlian notion of horizon.
In this chapter, then, we move toward an adequate account of two basic
kinds of defmite intention that is still fundamentally Husserlian.

1. THE CHARACTERIZATION OF DEFINITE, OR DE RE, INTENTION

1.1. Modes of Definite Intention

Acts can be intentional, or directed, in a variety of ways, by virtue of different
phenomenological structures; there are accordingly various modes of inten-
tion. Importantly, quite different modes of intention qualify as "defmite".
To see this, let us survey some prominent cases. Thereby we layout a richer
intuitive notion of defmiteness of intention. (Our survey makes no claim to
completeness.)
354
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 355

There are very different kinds of acts that involve defmite intention. There
are acts of different species or "thetic" character, and there are both direct-
object and propositional acts. Consider Smith's admiring Isadora Duncan,
his expecting his (only) brother, his seeing the snail on the garden wall, his
hoping that his psychiatrist will not think ill of him, and his judging that
Hussed will be considered one of the great philosophers. All of these acts are
either "of" or "about" a particular individual in a way that indefmite, or
de dicto, acts are not (cf. Chapter I, Sections 2.6 and 3.5; and Chapter VII,
Part 3). Let us focus on two kinds of definite acts that are especiany common
and important: seeing an individual and judging definitely, or de re, about an
individual. We shall consider, then, various modes of directedness that are
involved in these two kinds of acts.
To begin with, every perception of an individual is directed definitely in
that the individual "itself" is given in direct perceptual acquaintance. Percep-
tion involves a unique mode of directedness, and we shall study it in some
depth in Part 2 below. It has a special sort of defmiteness, which we have
called perceptual defmiteness, or defmiteness of perceptual acquaintance.
The directedness that concerns us in a judgment is its being "about" some-
thing, and defmiteness in a judgment is thus a quality of its aboutness (cf.
Chapter I, Section 1.5, and Chapter VII, Part 3). Now, a judgment too may
be defmite by virtue of perceptual acquaintance, as when Smith judges of, or
about, the woman he sees on the sidewalk ahead that she is a psychiatrist.
Here one judges about an individual one currently sees. The aboutness is
determined by the subject's perception of the individual he judges about,
and so we may say the judgment is perceptually definite. A related but more
complicated mode of aboutness is that of a judgment about an individual one
saw on a previous occasion and now remembers (or, alternatively, remembers
seeing). Here the aboutness is fixed by a sort of "deferred" perceptual ac-
quaintance, yielding a modified sort of perceptual definiteness of judgment.
Yet another mode of aboutness occurs when a person knows or believes that
someone else saw an individual on some occasion and judges something about
that individual. This judgment too seems to be definite, and defmite also by
a kind of deferred perceptual acquaintance, although the deferral is social or
intersubjective. 1
Another kind of definite judgment - to which the third and fourth parts
of this chapter are devoted - is what we have called individuative, or individ-
uatively definite, judgment. An individuative judgment occurs where one
knows (or opines or conceives) who or which an individual is and judges
about that individual. That is, the subject has knowledge or an opinion or
356 CHAPTER VIII

(most generally) a conception of the individual's "identity"; the individual

is, as we shall say, individuated for him, individuated in his consciousness or
belief-system. Examples include Smith's judging that Indira Ghandi was the
Prime Minister of India, his judging that his mother will always vote for con-
servative candidates, and his judging that his automobile is in need of repair.
The aboutness in: such cases is determined by the subject's knowledge of the
identity of a certain individual about whom or which he judges. This mode of
aboutness is clearly "definite", a paradigm ofindividuative defmiteness. And
these judgments are, we may say, definite by virtue of individuation.
Individuative intention may also be achieved in direct-object acts, such
as Smith's admiring Isadora Duncan or remembering his uncle. A specially
important and interesting case is that of individuatively defmite perception.
Suppose that our subject sees the famous artist of ballet, Rudolf Nureyev,
while walking in Manhattan. His perception is describable, let us say, by the
sentence 'I see this as a person who is wearing a leotard on Fifth Avenue and
who is Rudolf Nureyev'. Nureyev himself is thus given in perceptual acquaint-
ance. But this perception also presupposes its object's proper individuation
for the subject, achieved in a network of background beliefs about the famous
dancer that yield a sense of "who" he is. It is thus individuative/y definite as
well as perceptually definite. This act therefore enjoys two distinct modes of
directedness. Nureyev himself is intended, individuatively, in virtue of the
individuation presupposed in the act; and the object before the subject is
intended, by perceptual acquaintance, in virtue of the demonstrative sense
"this" (or perhaps "this person") in the act's Sinn. Importantly, the percep-
tual directedness in the act must be separated out as independent of the
individuative directedness in the act. Should the object seen turn out to be
not Nureyev but an imposter parading as Nureyev, we should still say the act
is directed - in one important way - to that man on the street before our
perceiver. Thus, perception has a defmiteness of intention - that of percep-
tual acquaintance with an object - that is independent of the object's further
individuation or constitution in the act.
Another kind of act that is arguably defmite occurs where a person has
reason to believe that others (the experts, say) know who an individual is
and on that basis he judges something about that individual. 2 Suppose, for
instance, that Smith has heard of the theologian Berdyaev but does not know
who he is or was, and suppose Smith judges, from what little he has heard,
that this thinker must have been influenced by Nietzsche. This judgment
seems to be about a particular individual, in a way that is rather weak but is
yet distinguishable from that of de dicto aboutness (see Chapter VII, Section
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 357

3.2). (The judgment is not exactly the same, it seems, as the de dicto judg-
ment that the theologian named 'Berdyaev', whoever he is, must have been
influenced by Nietzsche.) We might say the judgment is definite by virtue of
"deferred" individuation.

1.2. Must the Object of a Definite Intention Exist?

In the examples we have offered of defmite intention, the individual intended
has been both actual and taken as actual. Does defmiteness of intention
require either? Some theories would say SO.3 According to Husserl, however,
defmiteness is a phenomenological character of an act, a quality of its inten-
tional directedness: it turns only on the act's phenomenological structure and
not on the existence of the object intended. And so perception, for instance,
should not lose its character of definiteness if its object fails to exist, nor
should a judgment about what one sees. Similarly, an individuative judgment
about an individual, grounded in beliefs that make up an opinion of the in-
dividual's identity, should not lose its character of definiteness if those beliefs
do not individuate an actual individual. In ordinary language, of course,
'about' often carries a presupposition of "success" - presumably because
we are usually concerned with judgments or other acts about individuals that
by assumption are actual. Accordingly, if we say, "Virginia is thinking about
Santa Claus", it might be objected that one cannot think about what does
not exist. However, in an important and basic sense also familiar in ordinary
language, one can. In that sense, aboutness is properly a matter of phenom-
enological structure, and, therefore, so is defmiteness of aboutness.
Does defmiteness of intention require that the individual intended be given
or posited as actual - even when not actual? In general, probably not, though
there are some interesting pressures to the contrary. As we consider later,
Husserl holds in Experience and Judgment that "individuation ... is possible
only within the world of actual experience, on the basis of absolute temporal
position [in the actual world]" (§40), and that individuation in imagination
(Phantasie) is merely "quasi-individuation" (§ § 39, 40, 64b). The implication
seems to be that natural objects can be individuated only in perception or in
judgment or belief, where they are taken to be actual, and hence that con-
sciousness of or about natural individuals can be individuatively defmite only
in virtue of such individuation. Thus, imagination about an individual could
be individuatively definite only if the individual were taken to be actual, as
in Smith's imagining that John Kennedy had served out his term. However,
Husserl's conclusion is not this strong. His main point is that individuation
in imagination apes individuation in perception and judgment (or belief);
358 CHAPTER VIII

individuation in imagination is "quasi-individuation" because objects of

different imaginations (by the same person) cannot in general be identified
or distinguished, whereas objects of different perceptions or judgments can,
since they are constituted as belonging to a common time frame. (Vide
§ §38-41; cf. our discussion of these passages in Section 3.4 below.) Appar-
ently, then, Husserl could allow individuatively defmite imaginations about
imaginary individuals. And indeed there seem to be such acts: consider
Smith's imagining or phantasizing an evening with Scarlett O'Hara. Other
kinds of acts also seem to be individuatively about individuals not posited
as actual: consider Smith's wishing that Santa Claus were actual. Some direct-
object acts, too, seem to have a kind of definiteness even though their objects
are not posited as actual. Thus, imagining an individual, in the sense of form-
ing a visual image of an individual, seems to have a defmiteness akin to that
of seeing an individual. Indeed, Husserl considers such acts a species of "intui-
tion", which immediately suggests defmiteness (cf. Chapter I, Section 2.6).
However, defmiteness in these various cases is an intriguing issue that deserves
more attention than we can give it. So we shall restrict our attention to defi-
niteness in perception and in judgment or belief.
Prima facie, then, definiteness of intention does not in general require that
the object intended be actual or posited as actual. However, in some cases,
such as perceptual acquaintance, the issues here are more complicated than
Husserl seems to have thought. We saw in Chapter N (Section 3.4) that
perceptual defmiteness has a "demonstrative" character that seems to call in
the actual circumstances of perception. We shall be discussing this aspect of
perceptual acquaintance shortly (see Part 2 below), and we shall argue that in
perceptual acquaintance the object's being given as something actual, in the
perceiver's immediate environment, plays an important role in its being given
in a definite way. And we shall later consider whether individuative intention
depends in some way on something like acquaintance or awareness of some
historical cormection with the object intended in an individuatively definite
way.

1.3. Expressing and Describing Definite Intentions: Proper Names, Demon-

strative Pronouns, and Quantifying-In
We may express the Sinn of a judgment or belief, we know, by uttering a
declarative sentence (cf. Chapter N, Section 2.4). Commonly, we express
the Sirm of a definite judgment by use of a proper name. Thus, when Smith
says, "Isadora Duncan was a truly inspiring dancer", he expresses the Sinn
of a defmite judgment (or, more typically, belief). The judgment may be
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 359

individuatively definite (say, Smith has made a study of Ms. Duncan's career),
or it may be defmite by virtue of perceptual acquaintance (say, he saw her
dance, not knowing who she was, and his companion said, "That is Isadora
Duncan"). Generally, when a person uses a proper name (e.g., 'Isadora
Duncan'), he has a particular individual "in mind" in some mode of defmite
intention, and he uses the name to refer to that particular individual. His use
of that particular name is part of a tradition of use of that name into which
he has been appropriately initiated. Often; perhaps even typically, the in-
dividual is individuated for him, that is, he knows who it is. But individuation
of this sort is not necessary in order to use the name. All that is required is
some mode or other of definite intention, together with the knowledge (or
reason to believe) that the individual so intended is the individual the name
is used to refer to. A name, then, need not "express" any specific structure
of noematic sense, though its use on a particular occasion presupposes some
mode of defmite intention. Insofar, Smith's utterance, "Isadora Duncan was
a truly inspiring dancer", does not fully express the noematic structure of
his judgment. (In Part 4 below we consider the noematic structure of an
individuative judgment.)
Smith himself might give phenomenological description to his judgment
by uttering the sentence,
(1) I judge that Isadora Duncan was a truly inspiring dancer.
And we might describe his act by saying,
(2) Smith judges that Isadora Duncan was a truly inspiring dancer.
Generally, the truth of a sentence such as (2), in which a proper name occurs
within an intentional context, requires at least the follOwing: that the subject
of the act described be appropriately familiar with the use of that name (the
tradition of use in which the utterer of (2) uses it), that in the act he intend
a particular individual in some mode of definite intention, and that he be
disposed to use the name to refer to the individual he so intends (or, that he
hold that the individual he so intends is the individual the name is used to
refer to-). From our skeletal account above of the use of proper names, then,
we get a basic account of their use within intentional contexts. In particular,
it should be fairly easy to account on this basis for failures of substitutivity of
identity for names in intentional contexts, even where different names for the
same individual are inter-substituted.
Now, perceptually definite judgments fmd a natural expression by the use
of demonstrative pronouns such as 'this' and 'that' (cf. Chapter N, Section
360 CHAPTER VIII

3.4). When, for instance, Smith sees an object on the beach and judges it to
be a jellyfish, he may express the Sinn of his judgment by saying, "This is a
jellyfish". Here his use of 'this' is specifically keyed to his perceptual ac-
quaintance with the jellyfish: he uses 'this' specifically to refer to the object
he sees before him. Indeed, it can plausibly be held that his uttering 'this'
expresses a basic component of the Sinn of his perception of the jellyfish.
We study this view of demonstratives in Part 2 below, where we shall see that
Hussed held a view of this sort. (Cf. Chapter IV, Section 3.4.)
Accordingly, Smith may give a phenomenological description of his per-
ceptual judgment by saying,

(3) I judge that this is a jellyfish.

We, however, could not capture the Sinn of his judgment by saying,

(4) Smith judges that this is a jellyfish.

For our utterance of 'this' would (we may suppose) be keyed to our own
perception of the jellyfish rather than to his.4
Now, apparently, the most general way to describe acts of defmite inten-
tion is by quantifying into intentional contexts, as in

(5) (3x) (Smith judges that x has the backbone of a jellyfish),

and
(6) (3x) (Smith sees x as a beach bum).

The force of quantifying-in is, in part, precisely to ascribe defmiteness to the

act described (cf. Chapter I, Sections 3.4 and 3.5). However, we have urged
that defmiteness does not require that the individual intended exist. If
quantifying-in is to afford a general form for describing definite intentions,
then, the quantifier must be stripped of its customary existence presupposi-
tion (at least, as per Hintikka,s where it binds a variable within an intentional
conte,xt); it might be interpreted, say, as ranging over possible individuals. In
that case, quantifying into first-person intentional contexts might be used as
a general form for phenomenological description of definite acts, as in
(7) (3x)(ljudgethatxiscp)
and
(8) (3x)(1 see x as cp).
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 361

The quantifying-in construction does not, however, specify the component or

structure of sense by which the directedness is achieved in the act described,
nor does it specify what kind of defmiteness the intention has. 6 And for that
reason, act-sentences like (7) and (8) will remain incomplete phenomenologi-
cal descriptions (but see Sections 4.1 and 4.3 below).
As we saw in Chapter IV, Hussed describes an "X"-component in the
noematic Sinn of certain acts that are definite (cf. Ideas, § 131). The X is an
intensional token for the intended object itself, "in abstraction from all
predicates" and indeed from its mode of intention in the act. We suggested
that an X might best be expressed by a variable of quantifying-in, as in (7)
or (8). We may now suggest, conversely, that if quantifying-in - stripped of
existential commitment - affords a general form for the phenomenological
description of definite acts, then we should find an X-component in the Sinn
of any definite act, there in virtue of the specific mode of definite directed-
ness achieved in the act. (But see Section 4.3 on another role for X's, which
partly revises our account of X's so far.)

1.4. The Explication of Definite Intention in Terms of Horizon and Possible

Worlds
Definiteness of intention is usefully explicated both in terms of possible
worlds and in terms of the Husserlian notion of horizon. Each method of
explication puts in sharp relief just what a phenomenolOgical structure must
dQ if it is to achieve definiteness of intention. Indeed, the methods themselves
are equivalent, we argued in Chapter VI.
Husserl's account of horizon is developed for the special case of perceiving
an individual. A fundamental feature of the (act-) horizon of such an act is
the co-directedness of all the possible acts in the horizon: they are all directed
toward the same individual as is the given act, and their Sinne include the
same X as the Sinn of the given act. This feature of horizon seems to gen-
eralize to the horizon of any defmite act and to be precisely what explicates
the definiteness of the intention achieved in the act: an individual is so given
in the act that no act is compatible in Sinn with the act unless it presents that
same individual.
Explication in object-horizon is equivalent to explication in act-horizon
(cf. Chapter VI, Section 3.2), so we should fmd a similar explication of
defmiteness in object-horizon. And explication in terms of object-horizon is
equivalent to explication in terms of possible worlds (cf. Chapter VI, Section
3.2). Let us pursue the explication of defmiteness, then, in terms of possible
362 CHAPTER VIII

worlds, as we have worked in those terms in considerable detail in Chapters

VI and VII.
Prima facie, an intention is defmite, or de re, just in case its phenomen-
ological content, its Sinn, determines the same individual in each relevant
possible world. Its defmiteness is unfolded in precisely this feature of directed-
ness, that the same individual is determined in each world. Thus, for instance,
Smith"s admiring Isadora Duncan is directed toward the same individual, Ms.
Duncan, in each world. And his judging that his brother will win the bicycle
race is directed toward, in the sense of being about, the same individual in
each world, viz., his brother. (Cf. Chapter VII, Section 3.3.) Both of these
acts are individuative. So each is directed toward the indicated individual by
virtue of Smith's conception or knowledge of who that individual is. This
knowledge we might suppose is encapsulated in an individuating meaning.
This is a kind of rigid meaning and so is represented by a meaning function
that picks out a fIxed individual from each ofan appropriate range of possible
worlds. (Cf. Chapter VI, Section 2.7, and Chapter VII, Section 3.3.) We shall
pursue a more precise characterization of the phenomenological structure of
individuative intentions in Part 4 below.
There are other kinds of defmite acts than individuative acts, as we have
seen. These, too, it is natural to see as directed toward a fIxed individual in
various appropriate worlds; and, again, it is natural to hold that this feature
is what shows them to be directed toward a defmite individual. Thus, it is
natural to hold that these defmite, but non-individuative, acts are also directed
in virtue of some sort of rigid meaning, represented by a meaning function
that assigns a fIxed individual to each of various possible worlds. In Part 2 we
shall consider the case of perceiving an individual, studying in some detail
the noematic Sinn of such an act and how it might be explicated in terms of
possible worlds. This is a defInite act, and its Sinn will be a rigid meaning on
the analysis we develop.
We shall assume, then, that in general defmiteness of intention is to be
explicated in terms of "rigidity" of intention, that defmite intention is in
each case directedness toward the same individual in each relevant world. 7
This completes our basic characterization of defmite, or de re, intention.
Subsequent parts of the chapter pursue perceptual and individuative defmite-
ness in greater detail.

2. PERCEPTUAL ACQUAINTANCEs

Intrinsic to perception is a fundamental sort of defmiteness: every perception

 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 363

of an individual is defmite, or de re, insofar as the perceiver is in direct

perceptual acquaintance with the individual perceived. Perceptual acquaint-
ance is a species of "intuition", which we may characterize as any mode of
consciousness in which one is "directly" aware of an object, or in which the
object is "itself" presented in consciousness. Our task is to characterize the
structure of Sinn that achieves this type of intention.
As 'acquaintance' would normally be understood in ordinary language,
acquaintance occurs only where the object of perception exists and is causally
related to the perception. Our concern, however, is with the phenomenologi-
cal, or noematic, structures involved in the achievement of perceptual ac-
quaintance. And these structures are the same whether or not the object
exists or is causally related to the perception. So, in keeping with our prior
studies, let us treat perceptual "acquaintance" as the basic mode of intention
in perception, whether the intended object exists or is in fact causally related
to the perceptual experience.

2.1. The "Demonstrative" Acquainting Sense in Perception

The defmiteness of perception is readily apparent in our descriptions of
perceptions. In phenomenological description of his perception Smith may
say, "I see a spreading chestnut tree". But he may also say, more accurately,
"I see this spreading chestnut tree". For he does not see (in the experiential
sense of 'see') just "some" tree or other; he sees a definite tree, "this" one, as
he might put it. Alternatively, he may say, "I see this as a spreading chestnut
tree". Indeed, every perception of an individual fmds a natural phenomen-
ological description in the basic form:
I see this [or that] as 1/>.
This form of phenomenological description fits nicely with Husserl's
analysis of perceptual Sinn in Ideas, particularly given his analysis of demon-
strative reference in Logical Investigations - as we saw in Chapter IV, Section
3.4. The demonstrative 'this' serves to ascribe the X in the perception's Sinn,
while the predicate 'I/>' ascribes the predicate-sense in the Sinn. For Husser!,
it seems, the object intended is prescribed independently of the predicate-
content in the Sinn: the X presents the object "simpliciter", the object
"itself", and the predicate-content presents properties the object is given as
having. Thus, for Husserl, perceptual acquaintance is apparently achieved by
the X in a perception's Sinn.
Now, Husserl's analysis of the structure of a perceptual Sinn seems phe-
nomenologically accurate, yet it is importantly incomplete. To sayan object
364 CHAPTER VIII

is "itself" given in perception is not to say fully how it is given, to articulate

the phenomenological structure that achieves perceptual acquaintance; it is
only to indicate one important feature of the phenomenological structure
of perceptual acquaintance. Perception is but one kind of "intuition", and
perception surely differs from other kinds of intuition (such as memory,
phenomenological reflection, and essential insight) in the wayan object is
"itself" given. How more exactly is a definite object given in perception? In
terms of noematic Sinn, the X in a perceptual Sinn embodies the structure
of the presentation of an object "itself". But an X is quite mysterious if it
appears all by itself. There must be other items of Sinn that embody the way
that object is ultimately presented and so are responsible for the presence of
the X. What are they?
Fundamentally, in perception the object one sees is visually presented as
an individual at a certain location before one and appropriately affecting
one's optic system. This is the basic structure of perceptual presentation:
strictly speaking, perceptual acquaintance consists in just this presentation
of an individual as sensuously before one. Thus, in the Sinn of every act of
seeing an individual there must be a component of sense that prescribes an
object as sensuously before the perceiver at a certain location. Let us call such
a sense a perceptually acquainting sense, or simply an acquainting sense, since
it mediates perceptual acquaintance, the basic mode of perceptual intention.
Obviously, the acquainting sense in a perceptual Sinn must be distinct from
the X in the Sinn, since the X merely presents the object "itself" that is
prescribed by the acquainting sense. We may say the acquainting sense
"introduces" the X, for it is precisely in virtue of the presentation of an
object as sensuously before the perceiver that a defmite object - "this"
object - is presented. We should say, then, it is not the X but the acquainting
sense that is most properly and fundamentally a "demonstrative" sense.
Indeed, we can now say more precisely in what sense a perceptual Sinn is
demonstrative. An acquainting sense is an essentially demonstrative sense in
that it points toward something in one's immediate environment. Prescribing
an object as sensuously before one, it specifically appeals to the environment
of the perceiver at the time of perception. Consequently, the object it pre-
scribes depends on the context of the perception, and in that sense perceptual
intention is a "pragmatic" matter (cf. Chapter IV, Section 3.5, and Chapter
VI, Section 2.9).
We have not described in specific detail the structure of the acquainting
sense in a perceptual Sinn, nor will we be able to heJe. But basically, an
acquainting sense presupposes a prescribed spatial field from which an object
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 365

is selected in virtue of its location in the field. The field is defined by a dis-
tribution of colors and shapes, enjoying the support of sensuous stimulation
(for Hussed, sensuous "filling" or "hyle": see Chapter III, Section 2.6.) To
the extent that the object's spatial location is determined by the distribution
of colors and shapes among the object and its environs, the acquainting sense
includes predicative content and appeals to predicate-senses in determining
the object prescribed. But the predicate-senses involved are restricted to
predicate-senses prescribing "sensory" qualities such as color and shape, and
all enjoy the support of sensuous stimulation. By contrast, HusserI's separa-
tion of the X and the predicate-senses in a perceptual Sinn seems to entail
that the object prescribed is determined independently of the predicate-senses
in the Sinn; however, Hussed does not explicitly address the independence,
and he should be open to the dependence on sensory qualities.
If the acquainting sense at the base of a perception's Sinn includes or builds
upon sensory predicate-senses prescribing colors and shapes, it is nonetheless
not a descriptive sense: its structure is not that of, say, "the red round bumpy
object". Such a descriptive sense is not a rigid sense, where an acquainting
sense is, as we shall elaborate in the next section. Nor is such a descriptive
sense a "demonstrative" sense, as is an acquainting sense, pointing out some-
thing as before the perceiver at the time of the perception. The proper internal
structure of a perceptually acquainting sense is that of an object singled out
in a perceptual field. Nothing could be more familiar. Yet we cannot here say
more exactly what that "logical" or phenomenological structure is, except to
note that it is not a descriptive structure.
HusserI did not articulate at the base of a perceptual Sinn the structure we
have called an acquainting sense. He did, however, layout a possible founda-
tion for this structure. For he held that material objects ("things", Dinge) are
"constituted" in levels, as it were, with the most basic "stratum" being that
of a spatial object with only "sensory" qualities:

IE] very appearance of a thing necessarily conceals in itself a stratum that we call the
thing-schema: it is the spatial form IRaumgestalt] filled out merely with "sensory"
qualities - lacking every determination of "substantiality" and "causality".... (Ideas,
§ 150, p. 370; cf. also § 151 and Chapter V, Section 2.4, above for comments on these
passages.)

We should note that the object of a perception, on our analysis of percep-

tual acquaintance and acquainting sense, is an ordinary physical or natural
object and not an unusual "phenomenal" object or a "sense-datum". Thus,
our analysis is committed to "direct" or "naive" realism, if that view is, as
366 CHAPTER VIII

Romane Clark has characterized it, simply the thesis that the objects of
perception are everyday physical objects. 9 Similarly, when we sayan object
is singled out in a visually given spatial field, we do not mean a "phenomenal
field", i.e., a distribution of visually given colors forming a complex of sense-
data. Rather, we mean that in perception one is presented with an object in
a spatial field; one is presented with a local region of space occupied by
various things including the given object. If the perception is veridical, the
object presented is an ordinary physical object and the spatial field presented
is a region of physical space occupied by appropriate objects including the
given object. And if the perception is not veridical, it is still the case that the
object is intended as a physical object in a region of physical space. (Bear in
mind that, all along, we have been speaking of perception in the experiential
sense, so that the object of a perception is precisely what the noematic Sinn
of the perception prescribes.)

2.2. The Explication of Perceptual Acquaintance in Terms of Possible Worlds

The core constituent of the Sinn of a perception, as proposed above, is a
"demonstrative" acquainting sense. We can understand this sort of sense more
clearly by explicating it in terms of possible worlds, in the manner we have
pursued in the previous chapters. More precisely, it is the intention achieved
through an acquainting sense - perceptual acquaintance - that we explicate,
since this sort of sense appeals to "pragmatic" or "contextual" features of
the act in which it is instantiated (cf. Chapter VI, Section 2.9). How, then, is
perceptual acquaintance to be explicated in terms of possible worlds?
We begin with a proposal inspired by Hintikka's work on the logic of
perception: 10 an instance of perceptual acquaintance, or alternatively an
acquainting sense instantiated in a given perception, can be represented by
the function that assigns to any possible world the one individual (if any)
which in that world is located at a certain place before the perceiver (and is
affecting his senses) at the time of the perception. The perceiver is, let us say,
the ubiquitous Smith. His perception presents its object as directly before
him, in a certain visible spatial relation R to himself. The values of the pre-
scribed function are then defined in terms of Smith and this relation R: given
any world w, fmd Smith in w, find whatever individual is located in win
relation R to Smith, and that individual is the value of the function at w. (We
have restricted the acquainting sense to the object's spatial location, but we
can also include visual qualities of the object that are visible from the subject's
perspective. )
The leading idea about the acquainting sense in a perception is that it
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 367

presents an object as directly before one. This idea is reflected here in the role
of the relational property of standing in the relation R ,to Smith, its role in
generating the values of the function described. Both Smith and R remain
fIxed as the function selects its value in each world. So the value of the func-
tion (in any world) is whatever individual is before Smith (in that world).
Now, this explication of perceptual acquaintance, or of acquainting sense
in a given perception, seems just about right; but it leaves out something
important. On this explication, perceptual intention/acquaintance and ac-
quainting sense are non-rigid (cf. Chapter VI, Section 2.7): the representative
function does not select the same individual from each possible world, since
in different worlds different individuals may stand in the relation R to Smith.
But then perceptual intention, perceptual acquaintance, is not defInite - if,
as we assumed, rigidity of intention is the mark of definiteness (cf. Section
1.4 above). (However, as we shall shortly note, Hintikka himself would main-
tain that perceptual acquaintance is rigid, but in a weaker sense than we mean
here.) Further, demonstrative reference, where mediated by such a meaning,
is also not rigid: 'this', uttered on a particular occasion of perception, does
not take the same referent in each world. Yet there is a signifIcant inclination
to think that demonstrative reference is rigid; this inclination is embodied in
David Kaplan's work on demonstrativesY Briefly, Kaplan would require that
'this' (or 'that'), uttered on a particular occasion, refer to the object appro-
priately before the speaker (and appropriately demonstrated) in the actual
context of utterance. That very object itself is the referent in any possible
world (wherein the object exists), and so the reference is rigid. This suggests
a modifIcation of our first explication of perceptual acquaintance, a modifIca-
tion that leaves perceptual intention rigid.
Consider accordingly the following proposal: an instance of perceptual
acquaintance, or an acquainting sense instantiated in a given perception, may
be represented by the function that assigns to any world the individual (if
any) that is in fact located at a certain place before the perceiver at the time
of the perception, that is, in the actual context in which the perceiver is
situated in the world in which the perception takes place. The values of this
function, like those of the function we first considered, are defIned in terms
of an object's visible spatial relation to the perceiver. But they are determined
in a different way. For the case of Smith's perception, fmd Smith in the
actual world in which the perception takes place, fmd the individual that in
the actual world stands in the relation R to Smith, and that same individual is
then the value of the function at any world (wherein that individual exists).
Thus, the function so defIned selects the same individual from each relevant
368 CHAPTER VIII

possible world and so is a rigid function. Note that this second explication of
acquaintance simply strengthens the first in an interesting respect: it repre-
sents the acquainting sense inhering in a given perception as presenting an
object not merely as before oneself, the perceiver, but as actually before one,
before one in the actual context, and so in the actual world, in which the
perception actually occurs. This seems an important phenomenological feature
of perceptual acquaintance, and so we accept this second explication of
acquaintance or of acquainting sense. 12
Notice that if the perception is not veridical, if there is no object appro-
priately before the subject in the actual world, then the perceptual intention
is a smashing failure. Not only does it fail to reach an object in the actual
world, it fails to reach an object in any world: the representative meaning or
intention function fails to pick out an object not only in the actual world but
also in any other world as well, since its value in any world is to be that same
object it selects in the actual world.
We have preferred to represent perceptual intention by the function that
assigns to any world the object actually before the perceiver, i.e., in the actual
world. The advantages of this explication over the initial proposal are two: it
recognizes a sense of actuality implicit in perception; and by doing so, it
preserves the rigidity of perceptual intention. However, the rigidity of per-
ceptual acquaintance poses a problem.
As Hintikka has stressed so well, perception is (as we would say) always
perceptually defmite but usually individuatively indefmite. Thus, I see "this"
gentleman before me but I do not see "who" he is: my perception includes a
sense of a particular person actually before me, but it includes no sense of the
identity of that person. Now, on our theory, the perception is directed by
virtue of its acquainting sense toward the same individual in each world com-
patible with the perception. Yet, since the perception does not specify "who"
"this" man is, it would seem the perception is directed toward different
individuals in various worlds compatible with the perception. Recognizing
the individuative indefiniteness of perception, Hintikka allowed that a "per-
ceptUally individuating" meaning function assign different individuals to
various worlds compatible with the perception - different, that is, by prin-
ciples of "physical individuation". Seeking to maintain the de re character
of perception with a kind of rigidity, however, he held that the individuals
assigned are, by different criteria of identity, "the same" - the same by
principles of "perceptual individuation". Thus, Hintikka dealt with these
issues by positing two methods of trans-world identification. The problem
we see for Hintikka's approach is this: is there a plausible sense in which
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 369

individuals in different worlds really are the same, according to principles

inherent in the structure of perception, merely because they are in their
worlds appropriately before a perceiver? We don't see that there is. The
problem for our approach is how then to accommodate individuative indefi-
niteness in a perceptual intention that succeeds in reaching really the same
individual in every world. Our problem resolves itself as we realize that differ-
ent meanings, or intentions with different meanings, can be represented by
the same meaning function even though both meanings are rigid. (Cf. Part 2
of Chapter VI, where we observed that meanings and meaning functions do
not align perfectly.)
A perceptually defmite intention and an individuatively defmite intention
may attain the same individual in all worlds even though they have different
senses. Then the same function, assigning that individual to each world where-
in it exists, will represent two distinct intentions. Both intentions are rigid,
and both are represented by the same function, though they have different
senses. Just as intentions with different phenomenological content (say,
conceiving the morning star and conceiving the evening star) may be directed
toward the same individual in the actual world, so intentions with different
contents may be directed toward the same individual in every world. But in
the latter case they are represented by the same meaning function. Now, a
perception is always a definite intention, by virtue of its acquainting sense.
And, on our account, it is rigid. Hence it is represented by a certain function
that assigns the same individual to each world. But it does not follow that the
perception must be individuatively definite. An individuatively definite inten-
tion of the same individual would be represented by the same function, but
it may have an individuative sense that is not present in the perception. And
so a perception may be directed toward a particular individual in every world
compatible with the perception even though it includes no sense of the
identity of that individual.
A full treatment of this and related problems, however, lies beyond the
scope of our present study. Here we have only touched on the full intricacy
of perceptual consciousness.

3. IDENTITY, INDIVIDUATION, AND INDIVIDUATION

IN CONSCIOUSNESS

Individuative consciousness, involving a conception of the "identity" of the

intended individual, is the second principal kind of defmite intention we
shall study in depth. In Part 4 below we develop an analysis of individuative
370 CHAPTER VIII

consciousness. In this part of the· chapter we lay the groundwork for that
analysis. The groundwork includes a careful audit of the fundamental notiohs
of identity and individuation. These are matters of metaphysics, the central
issue being wherein the identity of an individual consists. A conception of the
identity of an individual is a phenomenological matter, the issue being how
the identity of an individual is grasped or "constituted" in consciousness,
how the individual is thereby "individuated in consciousness". The metaphys-
ical principles of individuation we study here are offered as principles inherent
in our working conceptual scheme, and as such they are relevant to the sub-
sequent phenomenological study of individuative consciousness. Not to leave
Husserl completely behind, we shall trace out some of his proposed doctrines
on individuation; those doctrines are not only interesting and plausible but
ostensibly indigenous to our conceptual scheme and are so offered by Husserl.

3.1. Concerning Identity and Individuation

We now proceed to layout certain fundamental assumptions concerning
identity and individuation. This project will help to mark out our subject
area in philosophical space.
Identity - the relation customarily denoted by '=' - is simply the relation
of being identical with, being numerically the same as. Thus, for instance, Bill
Tilden was the greatest all-court tennis player, Cicero was Tully, and 8 + 13 =
21. And distinctness - denoted by '=1=' - is simply the relation of not being
identical with.
Individuation is the determination of which individual a thing is. More
precisely, the individuation of an individual x consists in the determination
of whether x is identical with this, with that, and so on, that is, the deter-
mination of the various relationships or propositions of identity and distinct-
ness involving x that obtain or are true. Individuation is a matter of substan-
tive, and often empirical, theory about just what sets a thing apart from
others, in particular, from others of its kind. (We address the individuation of
individuals only, not events, states of affairs, facts, or properties.)
Individuation, as we have defined it, is to be distinguished from the mental
act or attitude of judging which individual a given thing is. Judging of this sort
we may aptly call identification. Thus, individuation is a topic of metaphysics,
while identification is a topic of epistemology. The term 'individuation' has
been used sometimes for the metaphysical notion and other times for the
epistemological notion, but let us use 'individuation' for the metaphysical and
'identification' for the epistemological notion. There is also a phenomenolog-
ical notion we would distinguish: we sayan object is individuated in an act
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 371

or attitude insofar as the act's Sinn either presupposes or explicitly includes

(in some appropriate way) a sense of which individual a given thing is, a sense
of its "identity"; where an object is individuated in an act we also say that
the object is individuated for the subject.
In its metaphysical sense, the term 'individuation' may be somewhat
bothersome since it suggests that individuation is done "by" something. If we
want to say individuation is done by something, we may sayan individual is
individuated by those of its properties that determine whether it is identical
with this, with that, and so on - perhaps its shape, color, mass, location,
kind, etc., if it is a physical object. Collectively, the properties that so individ-
uate an individual may be said to make up the identity of the individual. We
shall take up the notion of aq individual's identity in greater detail a bit later.
A primary task of a theory of individuation is to state conditions under
which an individual x is identical with an individual y. As a beginning, we
may assume that an individual x is identical with an individualy only if x and
yare of the same basic kind. But different kinds of individuals call for very
different principles of individuation. And for that reason we need specific
theories of individuation for specific kinds. For instance, a set x is identical
with a set y if and only if x andy have the same members. But a (real) num-
ber x is identical with a number y if and only if x and y stand in the same
order (of being less than or equal to) with respect to any number z. Here we
find one criterion of identity uniquely appropriate to sets and another to
numbers. Each is a bona fide criterion of identity, the philosopher's ideal of
a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for identity.
For everyday middle-sized physical objects, however, there do not seem
to be such bona fide criteria of identity. For it seems there are no finite
sufficient conditions of identity for physical objects, much less human beings,
as we fit them into our everyday conceptual scheme. There are, however,
necessary conditions. Prominently, a physical object x is identical with a
physical object y only if x and yare spatiotemporally continuous, that is,
their spatiotemporal loci, their spatial locations (and extensions) for each
moment of time, coincide and form a continuous curve in space-time. Further,
x and yare identical only if they have the same chemical composition - and
at any time the very same matter. For living things, we may add that they
must be of the same biological species; and for persons, that they must enjoy
the same stream of experiences. Another sort of principle says that if an
individual x and an individual yare of the same kind and if x exists at time t
and y exists at a somewhat later time t', then x is identical withy only if the
properties of y at t' are not drastically different from those of x at t, or Mt
372 CHAPTER VIII

too different in some specified way. Principles such as this last one are based
on a theory of how individuals of that kind change through time.
Let us call principles of individuation any such propositions setting condi-
tions on identity for a given kind - necessary conditions, sufficient condi-
tions or both. We shall avoid the phrase 'criterion of identity' since it may
call to mind only necessary and sufficient conditions of identity. Correct
principles of individuation will presumably be necessary truths, true in virtue
of the "essence" .of the given kind.
We shall be primarily concerned with natural individuals: inanimate physi-
cal objects, living things, and, in particular, human beings. The individuation
of a natural individual is the determination, according to appropriate prin-
ciples of individuation, of the various propositi9ns of identity and distinctness
true of it. Such individuation addresses prominently relations of identity
across time as well as at a fixed time. Indeed, the individuation of a natural
individual is achieved largely by its progress through time, that is, by its
persisting through various changes in its location and extension, its qualities,
and its relations to other things. As we shall see in Section 3.3 below, Husserl
held such a view of individuation for natural objects.
Our discussion so far has been effectively confmed to identity and individ-
uation concerning individuals within the actual world. But given a metaphysics
of possible worlds, we must consider identity and individuation within other
possible worlds and, more importantly, across different possible worlds.
Trans-world identity is identity across different possible worlds, identity such
that an individual that exists in one possible world is identical with an in-
dividual that exists in another possible world. We have already seen trans-world
identity assumed in the possible-worlds analysis or explication of de re inten-
tion. And it is assumed in certain possible-worlds analyses or explications of
de re modal attributions: for instance, 'Truman might have lost the 1948
election' would be taken to mean that in another possible but non-actual
world Truman lost the 1948 election, presupposing that one and the same
individual, Harry S. Truman, is present in each of two possible worlds.
Trans-world individuation, then, is the determination of which individual
a thing is among individuals occurring in different possible worlds. It consists
in the determination of the various propositions of trans-world identity and
distinctness that are true of a given individual - that is, the determination
of the relationships of trans-world identity and distinctness into which the
individual enters. This determination presupposes the individual's individ-
uation within each world in which it exists, the determination of those
relationships of intra-world identity and distinctness into which the individual
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 373

enters, including identity and distinctness both at a fixed time and across
time.
There do not seem to be fmite sufficient conditions of trans-world identity
for natural individuals. However, being of the same kind is a plausible neces-
sary condition. So a plausible principle of trans-world individuation for
natural individuals is this: if a natural individual x exists in one world and a
natural individual y exists in another world, then x is identical with y only if
x and yare of the same natural kind (say, camels) - and/or of the same
natural substance (e.g., flesh or coal). Like intra-world individuation, trans-
world individuation is a matter of substantive theory about a given kind of
individual, where however the theory encompasses de re modal claims about
individuals of the given kind.
Trans-world identity and individuation have been considered problematic
by some philosophers, largely because it is difficult to see what makes an
individual in one world the same as an individual in another. One issue in
question is that of essentialism, the doctrine that some of an individual's
properties belong to it essentially. Assuming a metaphysics of possible worlds
and trans-world identity, a property is essential to an individual, or the in-
dividual has it essentially, if and only if it belongs to the individual in every
possible world in which the individual exists. A further issue is whether some
fmite subset of an individual's essential properties - called, collectively, the
individual essence of the individual - suffice to individuate it in every possible
world in which it exists, and so to achieve its trans-world individuation. It is
not very plausible that natural individuals have such individual essences. Nor
does a high degree of similarity between individuals in different worlds seem
sufficient to "make" them the same. 13 An interesting and perhaps plausible
approach to trans-world individuation for natural individuals is Husserl's,
which bases trans-world individuation, like intra-world individuation, on
continuity through time. We shall consider Hussed's approach in Section 3.4
below.
Let us now summarize briefly the primary notions of this section. The
relation of identity is simply that of being the same as; the relation of dis-
tinctness, that of not being the same as. The individuation of an individual is
the determination of which individual it is, whether it is or is not identical
with this individual, with that individual, and so on. Collectively, the prop-
erties of an individual that serve to individuate it, to determine which in-
dividual it is, make up its identity. Relations of identity include relations of
identity at a fixed time, identity across time, identity within a world (in par-
ticular, the actual world), and identity across possible worlds. Relationships
374 CHAPTER VIII

of identity and distinctness are governed by principles of individuation for

the relevant kinds of individuals; such principles are part of the fundamental
theory of the nature of a given kind of individual.
We summarize too the substantive doctrines about identity that we have
embraced. These help to make clear our use of the notions of identity and
individuation, though they are not essential to the characterization of identity
and individuation. For natural individuals, which are our primary concern,
we hold the following. There are necessary conditions on identity for natural
individuals, for identity at a time or across time: natural individuals are
identical, for instance, only if they are of the same natural kind or substance.
There are also necessary conditions on trans-world identity of natural individ-
uals: again, natural individuals in different worlds are identical only if they
are of the same natural kind - equivalently, being of that kind is essential
to that individual. But there are no finite sufficient conditions, and hence no
fmite necessary and sufficient conditions, on identity of natural individuals
either across time or across worlds. (Being in the same location may be a
sufficient condition for identity at a time, for bodies if not for persons.) We
would add that relations of identity - whether identity at a time, across time,
or across worlds - are primitive and do not consist in a certain distribution
of properties. In particular, identity does not consist even in sharing all
properties (a nonfmite necessary and sufficient condition), as one reading of
Leibniz's Law might suggest.
But where does Leibniz's famous doctrine fit into our broad view of iden-
tity and individuation? Basically, it lies beyond our main concerns. Leibniz's
Law is the doctrine that an individual x is identical with an individual y if
and only if x and y have exactly the same properties - that is, for any prop-
erty P, x has P if and only if y has P. The viability of this doctrine depends on
what are to count as properties. If restricted to qualitative properties (e.g.,
being red or being wise), the doctrine is probably false - and if by chance
true, it is surely not a necessary truth: if spatiotemporallocations are added,
the doctrine may hold for natural objects for identity within a world; if
pertinent to trans-world identity (as Leibniz thought it not), the doctrine
might call in modal properties (e.g., being necessarily human) and world-
bound properties (e.g., being in world w a cousin of the President). The status
of Leibniz's Law is an important and complex issue for a complete theory
of individuation, but it is not of direct relevance to our emerging phenom-
enolOgical concerns. Leibniz's law, in whatever form it finally takes, is a cate-
gorical doctrine applying to individuals of any kind whatsoever, whether
abstract or concrete, animal or vegetable or mineral. Regardless of the status
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 375

of such a doctrine, though, there are important principles of individuation

of the sort we have indicated. These include principles that are a part of a
substantive theory about a given kind of object, for example, the principle
that a California live oak tree grows - the same tree changing size and char-
acter through time - in a typical way. Such principles of individuation are
not, by contrast, a part of a theory about identity; identity is presupposed in
such principles. It is primarily these sorts of principles of individuation that
are invoked in identification fjudgments of identity) and individuation in
consciousness.

3.2. The Identity of a Natural Individual and Its "Transcendence"

In everyday English we speak of the "identity" of an individual (vs. relations
of identity). This notion helps to make intuitive, and idiomatic, certain points
about individuation and individuative consciousness. We may defme the
identity of an individual as that property of the individual that serves to
individuate it, to determine whether it is identical with this individual, with
that individual, and so on.
Formulated in this way, the defmition of an individual's identity is quite
neutral. The identity of a thing may be a simple or a complex property, and
further specifics will be a matter of a developed theory of individuation.
Indeed, philosophers have been attracted to some very different views about
what constitutes that which we have called an individual's identity, and our
discussions above already register some preferences.
One view of the identity of an individual posits for every individual an
individual essence of a very strong sort: a complex property consisting of the
conjunction of various properties (ideally, finite in number) that are purely
descriptive or qualitative (like being blue or wise or snub-nosed) and are
essentially unique to the individual. That is, they are, collectively, unique
to it in every world in which it exists (and thus are essential to it); and so,
collectively, they serve to individuate it in any world in which it exists. Alas,
however, there does not seem to be any such thing, at least not for natural ob-
jects. Another view posits for each individual its pure "thisness", or haecceity.
The haecceity of an individual might be defmed as a special sort of simple,
non-descriptive property that by its nature could not be shared and so, again,
is essentially unique to the individual. So defmed, the notion of haecceity
seems completely ad hoc (pun intended) and so not terribly plausible. More
neutrally, perhaps, the haecceity of an individual x might be taken to be just
the property of being identical with x, being that individual itself. This notion
can playa useful role in an account of individuation. But it is not the notion
376 CHAPTER VIII

of an individual's identity that we are after, for the work of individuation

must still be done by other properties than that of being x, properties that
determine the individual's being x. And those properties make up the individ-
ual's identity in the sense we seek. Of course, to plump for this richer notion
of an individual's identity is to plump for a theory of individuation guided by
principles of individuation somewhat in the way we described earlier - and
some might prefer a weaker theory of individuation.
The notion of haecceity permits a helpful perspective on our view of
individuation. 14 Assume the weak notion of haecceity as the property of
being identical with a certain individual x. Haecceitism, we may say, is the
doctrine that there are haecceities of individuals in this sense. It is assumed
that haecceities do not consist in, do not reduce to, other sorts of properties
or complexes of other types of properties, in particular, purely qualitative
properties. Extreme haecceitism holds that having a certain haecceity is
completely independent of, unconstrained by, having other properties. Thus,
on extreme haecceitism, an object can change any or all of its non-haecceity
properties, from one time to another or indeed from one world to another;
different individuals in different worlds can differ only in their haecceities.
Moderate haecceitism, though, allows that there may be constraints on
haecceity by other sorts of properties. Thus, for instance, if an individual x
is of natural kind K, then for any individual y, necessarily, y = x (y has
the haecceity of x) only if y is of kind K. Our position is that of moderate
haecceitism. On our view, the "identity" of an individual x is then that
complex property which "makes" that individual have the haecceity it does,
which determines whether an individual y existing at a given time or in a
given world has that haecceity, whether y =x.
Assuming there are no individual essences for natural individuals, one
might advance the view that the identity of a natural individual comprises all
its features or properties - except its modal attributes of being possibly or
necessarily thus-and-6o and its "subjective" attributes of being intended in
various ways. In particular, an individual's identity would include its spatial
locations - and spatial relations to other things - at all times of its existence,
since these playa fundamental role in its individuation. As we see later,
Husserl may have held such a view of a natural object's identity, its "individ-
ual essence" in Hussed's sense (cf. EJ, Appendix I; and Ideas, § § 12, 149).
(It was Leibniz who originally proposed that the individual essence of an
individual includes everything about it; however, unlike Husserl, Leibrriz held
that an individual exists in only one possible world.)15 When we turn to
different possible worlds, on this view, the identity of an individual would
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 377

comprise, for each world in which the individual exists, its full range of
(non-modal and non-"subjective") properties in that world. 16 This view of a
natural individual's identity seems pessimistic at first, but it gains plausibility
as we attend to details.
Different properties of a natural individual play different roles in its
individuation and hence in its identity. The kind to which an individual
belongs is not unique to it but yet distinguishes it from every individual
of every other kind; further, an individual's kind is essential to it and so
distinguishes it from any individual in any possible world that is of a different
kind. Thus, the genera and species of a thing serve partially to individuate it
- indeed, within the actual or any possible world - and so must have a place
in its identity. Integral to a thing's kind is its "nature", which comprises
various of its dispositions to behave in certain ways. Such dispositions too
are not unique to it but help to individuate it and so belong in its identity;
and some are arguably essential to it. (A fox is essentially crafty, or at least
essentially four-legged, barring mutation or mutilation.) Other dispositions of
an individual are strongly bound to it and help to individuate it at least in the
actual (or some one) world but are not essential to it (thus, a given politician
is tricky to the core, but had he known a different childhood and a more
successful athletic experience he might not be). Such dispositional traits will
also enter a thing's identity. It is difficult to think of any properties of an
individual that are, collectively, both unique to it and also essentially unique
to it, unique to it in every world. Thus, it is difficult to see any plausibility
in the strong sort of purely qualitative individual essence we first noted. But
of course some properties of an individual are unique to it at least in the
actual (or some given) world: for instance, its being in a given location at a
given time, or something's happening to it at a given time, or its performing
a specific action at a given time. Such "historic" properties playa prominent
role in individuation (within a given world), and so in a thing's individuation;
and accordingly we often base our judgments as to an individual's identity
on knowledge of such properties. However, an object is not completely
individuated even within a given world by anyone such property. For the
fact that an individual is, say, (uniquely) located at a given place at a given
time may not - and usually does not - determine whether it is located at
another place at another time. And yet this determination is a part of the
individual's individuation. Thus, it seems that the complete individuation of
a natural object, and hence its identity, must cover all its "historic" prop-
erties, as well as any other distinguishing characteristics (such as fmgerprints,
birthmarks, or scars, for human beings). And so it seems on reflection that
378 CHAPTER VIII

the full identity of a natural object must include a very wide range of its
properties. We mayor may not conclude that the identity of a natural
individual includes everything about it (save its· modal and "subjective"
attributes), but the preceding reflections argue that an individual's identity
goes well beyond its qualitative essence (its combined essential qualitative
properties) and includes many of its concrete contingent properties in dif-
ferent worlds.
Assayed so, the identity of an individual is clearly not a property on a par
with other properties of the individual; it is an extremely complex property
that strictly sets the individual apart from all others. Further, from what
we have said, it seems evident that the identity of a natural individual is
transcendent of human consciousness: it cannot be completely known, and
it cannot be completely grasped through (the predicate~enses in) any single
noematic Sinn or any fmite set of Sinne. Reflecting this fact, perhaps, the
notion of an individual's identity grows rather lax in everyday use.
Significantly, Husserl expressly held that the "individual essence" of a
material object escapes complete, or "adequate", human apprehension. Late
in Ideas he writes:

... The essence "(Material] Thing" is originally given (in "ideation" (p. 368), by eidetic
variation (p. 365)], but this givenness cannot on principle be adequate. We can bring
the noema or thing-meaning (Ding-Sinn] to the point of adequate presentation (in
phenomenological reflection]; but the manifold thing-meanings [Dingr-Sinne], even
taken in their fullness, do not contain the regional essence "Thing" as an originally
intuitable constituent immanent in them, just as little indeed as the manifold meanings
[Sinne] relating to one and the same individual thing contain the individual essence
[/ndividualwegen] of this thing. In other words, whether it is the essence of a thing-
individual [Dingindividuumg] that concerns us or the regional essence Thing in general,
in no case does a single thing-intuition [ie., perception] or a f'mite closed continuity or
collection of thing-intuitions suffice.. to obtain [in "ideation" (p. 368)] in adequate fonn
the desired essence in the total fullness of its essential detenninations. An inadequate
insight into the essence is, however, always obtainable ....
This holds true for all levels of generality of essence, from individual essence up to
the region Thing. (§ 149, p. 365.)

Husserl's point here is an interesting one. It is a commonplace in science

that we always have more to learn about the nature of the objects we study in
the natural world, about their kind as such, or "essence(s)" in Husserl's idiom
(cf. EJ, § §82-86, esp. §83). We may take this as a point in principle. So
natural essences, or natural kinds - kinds of animals (e.g., homo sapiens),
plants, or substances -, are transcendent of human knowledge and also of
human conception or grasp. Husserl says in the above passage that the same
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 379

holds true from the highest to the lowest level of essence belonging to a
natural individual: from its most general kind, the "region" Material Thing, to
its genus and species and even to its specific "individual essence". He says
that no finite set of noematic Sinne "contains", or adequately presents, a
thing's "individual essence". That is to say, the "individual essence" of any
material thing, and hence that of any natural object, is transcendent of
human grasp. (N.B.: we do not interpret Husserl's 'contain' literally in this
passage since essences are not properly senses but are rather properties or
universals. Cf. Ideas, Chapter 1, especially the end of § 10.)
It is not clear just what a thing's individual essence is supposed to include
for Husser!' Clearly, it is to be an essence, or universal, and it is apparently to
individuate the object (cf. £J, Appendix I; Ideas, § 12, on "eidetic singulari-
ties"). A reasonable hypothesis may be that it is to include everything about
the object, in particular, its spatiotemporal attributes. For Husserl's own
specific discussions of individuation heavily stress spatiotemporal location
and continuity (cf. Section 33 below) and seem to align with our consid-
erations in Section 42 below. Note that a thing's individual essence then
coincides with its complete "determination", which of course we know is
transcendent. Note also that our remarks on transcendence pertain only to
individuation within a single world, presumably the actual world.
Husserl's conception of the individual essence of a thing, whatever the
details, would be a specification of our broad notion of the identity of a thing
set out above. But now, since the individual essence of a material object is
transcendent, it might be thought that our intentions of material objects
could never be strictly individuative, directed to a particular object in virtue
of a sense or knowledge ofits identity. However, that would be going too far.
In the quotation above, Husser! says that although the individual essence of a
thing cannot be given adequately (completely), it can be given inadequately,
apparently with varying degrees of adequacy or inadequacy. Thus, although
individuation in consciousness is achieved in degrees and only incompletely,
for Husserl, we often attain a sufficient fix on an individual's identity that we
may intend it with individuative defmiteness.
Husserl's specific views on the individuation of material things support his
view that the individual essence of a material thing is transcendent. We tum
now to his views on individuation.

33. Husserl on Individuation Through Time

Husser! only rarely discusses individuation. When he does, his focus is on the
continuity in space and time of enduring individuals.
380 CHAPTER VIII

In Experience and Judgment Husser! says physical individuals are identical

only if they are temporally continuous:
... Individual [natural] objects which are in different times and in separate locations
can be the same only so far as they endure continuously through these temporal posi-
tions, therefore, so far as they are also in the intermediate times ... (§64b).

This condition is stated as a metaphysical principle of individuation; however,

as the context shows, it is offered in description of natural objects as "con-
stituted" and so is intended as a principle of our everyday conceptual scheme.
And Husser! is talking here explicitly of objective, or natural, time. Note that,
of course, he offers temporal continuity only as a necessary, not a necessary
and sufficient, condition of identity.
The cited section of Experience and Judgment is devoted to time. But
spatiality is also mentioned. So it would have been natural for Husserl to
say further that physical or natural individuals are identical only if they are
spatiotemporally continuous. Indeed, Husserl does hold that view in an earlier
section, where he also observes that the spatial extension of an individual, as
well as its location, must be continuous through time or change continuously
(cf. EJ, §43b).
Husserl's most detailed (published) discussion of individuation per se
seems to be his 'Seefeld Manuscripts on Individuation', published as Part
III of Part B of the German edition of On The Phenomenology of Internal
Time-Consciousness (Zeit.). Again the focus is on temporal objects, objects
that endure through time. The objects he considers, however, are sense-data,
e.g., "this brown", "the pure datum of sensation [Empfindungsdatum] , just
as it is phenomenologically given, as 'now' enduring" (Zeit., p. 253). Later
he gives an abstract description of such an example:
.. , The unity of temporal succession [Folge] of the phases of the temporal object
[Zeitgegenstand] ... is a succession [Nacheinandersein] of "object-points" ["Gegen-
standspunkten"] that construct [bilden) a continuum by virtue of this continuous
form of being ....
But the unity of the object of the total duration is not only the unity of a binding,
but is a unity that stretches itself through the unbroken continuity (fusing) of the
phases [and] is in every phase ... but is not itself the mere continuous succession
[Nacheinander) of the phases ... .
A temporal sequence [Zeitreihe) has unity in itself, if that which temporally succeeds
fulfills certain stipulations; if that which succeeds shows a certain continuity of content
and has this way of continuous transition . . . . The unity is that of the identical sub-
stratum for this continuum as event. (Zeit., pp. 263-264.)

Returning to his example Husserl then says:

 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 381

The brown of this and the brown of that piece of the duration in question are distinct
substrata, but insofar as they fill continuously one time-stretch there is one substratum,
one enduring [entity), which goes through this time-stretch and its substrata. (Zeit.,
p.265.)

These passages contain an account of identity through time, one that

assumes a rather classical notion of "substratum". For Husser!, a temporally
enduring object consists of temporal phases, a distinct phase for each point
in time in the duration of the object. The object itself is a substratum that
endures, exists, through the duration. It is distinct from but exists "in" each
phase. The phases are parts of the object, but they are dependent parts: they
could not exist apart from the object itself (cf. p. 263). They too may be
considered ("partial") substrata.
Traditionally, the notion of substratum is that of an individual distin-
guished from the properties it bears and/or from its changing properties -
in the extreme, an individual "bared" of all its properties. For Husserl, it is
a notion from "formal ontology" and not very mysterious: a substratum is
anything capable of bearing properties. And "ultimate" substrata are simply
"individuals", entities lacking "syntactic" form such as states of affairs have.
(Cf. Ideas, § 11; EJ, § 29.) An enduring physical individual is of course a
"substratum" in that sense: "individual objects of external sensuous percep-
tion, that is, bodies, are ... substrates in an exemplary sense" (EJ, §29,
p. 134). But its phases also count as susbtrata, since they bear time-relative
"determinations", such as being green at a certain time (and so, presumably,
the individual itself bears these determinations).
Husserl's example in the individuation manuscripts is that of a sense datum.
But his account of physical individuals qua temporal objects is apparently the
same. The paragraph we quoted from Experience and Judgment continues
but a few lines later:

The experiencing consciousness (giving [natural) individuals at fust hand) is not only
a flowing consciousness, spreading itself out in the flux of lived experiences, but a
consciousness-of, an integrating consciousness. In it, therefore, there is to be distinguished
in every phase an objective correlate, and, in each new phase, a new correlate, but only
in such a way that all the continuous momentary objects join together in the unity of
a single object, like the moment of consciousness in a single consciousness-of. (§64b,
p. 257.)

The notion of temporal phases of an individual could permit an ontology

that treats enduring individuals as processes (Husser! says 'event' in the
passage from the individuation manuscripts above) consisting of continuous
382 CHAPTER VIII

successions of phases as momentary events. We shall not pursue this point.

Nor shall we pursue the notion of individual-phases in its own right. What it
will do for us is to facilitate our discussion of the individuation of natural
individuals.
Hussed formulates one important principle of individuation for enduring
individuals. He says:

A temporal sequence has unity ... if that which succeeds shows a certain continuity of
content and has this way of continuous transition .... The unity is that of the identical
substratum for this continuum as event (Zeit., p. 264; quoted above).

That is to say, individual-phases in a temporally continuous succession belong

to the same enduring individual if the phases "show a certain continuity of
content", i.e., if any change or variation in properties from one phase to
another is "continuous". "Content-<:ontinuity" is surely a necessary condition
on identity through time. Hussed's words say it is a sufficient condition. That
may be too strong, but it is surely a primary ingredient of identity through
time. Presumably, Hussed would apply this skeletal principle of individuation
to natural individuals as well as sense-data. For, as we quoted above, Hussed
says (though years later), " ... The continuous momentary objects that are
phases of a natural individual join together in the unity of a single object"
(El, §64b, p. 257).
The principle stated is really only a principle-schema. To flesh it out we
need to specify just what makes up "content-<:ontinuity". And that varies
depending on the kind of temporal individuals considered. What counts as
"continuous" change in an individual is considerably different, for instance,
for a boulder as it weathers over time, different species of plants as they
grow (and decay), and various organisms as they develop over their lifetimes.
The details are complex, learned bit by bit, and make up very concrete
knowledge of the world around us. Husserl does not go on to elaborate them,
and we shall not be that specific either. But let us note that continuity of
spatial location and extension should be included, as a sort of basis for other
changes.
It seems that for Hussed, then, continuity over time - continuity of
existence, of spatial location and extension, and of qualitative change - is
both a necessary and a sufficient condition for the identity across time of
natural individuals. This principle of individuation is basic and natural. With
Hussed, it is offered as a principle of the individuation of natural individuals
as constituted, as we ordinarily conceive and experience them. So it is a prin-
ciple governing the individuation of objects for us in our everyday experience.
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 383

3.4. Husserlon Trans-World Individuation

Hussed's account of individuation through time is an account ofindividuation

within a given natural world. Interestingly, in Experience and Judgment
Husserl explicitly discusses trans-world individuation as well. It is significant
that Husserl addresses this notion, because his account of horizon is pointedly
committed to trans-world identity insofar as different parts of an act's horizon
present the same object as determined in different possible worlds (cf. Chap-
ter VI, Section 3.2, above). We shall see that Husserl's view of trans-world
individuation is both interesting and highly restrictive.
At first sight Husserl's view seems to be that identity and individuation
across different worlds make no sense. In §40 of Experience and Judgment
he says that in a "'complex' of imaginings [of the sort 'belonging to a fairly
tale'] ... a unitary world of imagination is constituted as correlate" (p. 172)
- a "possible world", he says on the next page. He then considers how the
" 'individual' singularizations" (individuals and their phases) of one imaginary
world are related to those of another:

We can speak here of the likeness and similarity of the components of such worlds but
never of their identity, which would have absolutely no sense .... It makes no sense,
e.g., to ask whether the Gretel of one fairy tale and the Gretel of another are the same
Gretel, whether what is imagined for the one and predicated of her agrees or does not
agree with what is imagined for the other, or, again, whether they are related to each
other, etc. I can stipulate this - and to accept it is already to stipulate it - but then both
fairy tales refer to the same world ....
. . . In the continuation, although free and open, of the unity of a complex of imagin-
ings, it is the unity of a "possible world" which is constituted with an encompassing
form of the time of imagination pertaining to it.
In what has been pointed out, the implication is that individuation and identity of
the individual, as well as the identification founded on it, is possible only within the
world of [i.e., the world constituted in] actual experience [Le., perception and percep-
tual judgment] , on the basis of absolute temporal position. (EI, §40, p. 173.)

Husserl's view here seems clear and strong: trans-world identity and individua-
tion (constituted in imagination) make no sense. However, as we shall see, his
point is not that strong.
Husserl's actual view on trans-world individuation connects with what we
have just seen of his view of intra-world individuation. Fundamentally, HusserI
seems to hold that identity of natural individuals makes sense only if they
belong to a common flow of time. Hence, identity across worlds makes sense
only if the worlds are alternative courses of events that coincide up to some
point in time, i.e., share a common partial history, and so have a temporal
384 CHAPTER VIII

connection. Temporal continuity (of location/extension and of change) can

then serve as a necessary and sufficient condition of identity not only within
a world but also across different worlds, if the worlds are temporally con-
nected.
The reason identity and, hence, individuation make no sense across dif-
ferent worlds of (constituted in) imagination, Husserl says, is that individuals
in such worlds are not related to one another in time. A few lines before the
passage we quoted he says:

... The "things", the events, the "actualities" of one world of imagination have "nothing
to do" with those of the others. Better: the fulfillments and disappointments of inten-
tions constitutive of one of these worlds can never extend to intentions which are con-
stitutive of another .... Here the unity of time plays its special role as the condition
of the possibility of a unity of the world .... (EJ. §40, p. 172.)

Thus his conclusion: "Individuation and identity of the individual ... is

possible only in the world of actual experience, on the basis of absolute
temporal position".
The reason time plays an important role in individuation in imagination
is that constitution in imagination apes, as it were, constitution in perception.
(Cf. Chapter Y, Section 2.4, on the central role of perception in horizon.)
Husserl says: "The 'unity of an imagination' is manifestly nothing other than
the unity of a possible experience of the modification of neutrality of a unity
of experience" (EJ, §40, p. 171). That is to say, we take it, the "unity" of
an imagination is just the "unity" of the corresponding perception in which
the same thing(s) is presented through the same Sinn. (Recall that "experi-
ence" (Erfahnmg) is perception. By "neutrality-modification" Husserl means
a modification of the thetic character of an act, the modification that trans-
forms an act with "positing" character (taking the intended object for actual)
into an act with "neutral" character (taking the object only "as if" actual)
while leaving the noematic Sinn unaltered: cf. Ideas, § § 109-11.) The
"unity" Husserl has in mind here is evidently the unity of a synthesis of
identification: the same object is presented in a sequence of imaginings, or of
possible perceptions. The individuation of the object in perception - its
presentation as the same object in each phase of the sequence - is achieved
by its presentation as temporally continuous through the temporal duration
of the sequence of perceptions. Individuation in corresponding imagination
is precisely the same. So time plays the same central role.
More generally, the constitution of a "world" in imagination apes the
constitution of the world in perception (cf. EJ, § §39-40). Husserl says that
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 385

in imagination there is constituted a "quasi-world" (p. 171) with a "quasi-

time" (p. 168) including "quasi-individual objects" (p. 174) to which "a
quasi-identity" (p. 174) pertains. That which is natural - time, individuals,
world(s) - has a "quasi" character when constituted in imagination appar-
ently because its sense is borrowed, as it were, from perceptual experience of
nature. Our "original" experience of nature is perceptual. Part of the force of
this claim is that perception is not only our ultimate source of evidence about
nature but also the genetic origin of our basic sense of things in nature. That
is, it is in perceiving that we acquire our concepts or sense of things natural.
Most important, (objective) time is "originally" experienced in perception.
And time is of the essence of things natural, the basis, the most basic presup-
position, of our sense of them.
Thus, leading into the sections we have been examining, Husserl says:

In this unique world [the intersubjective, natural life-world, our earth), everything
sesuous that I now originally perceive, everything that I have perceived and which I can
now remember or about which others can report to me as what they have perceived or
remembered, has its place. Everything has its unity in that it has its fIxed temporal
position in this objective world, its place in objective time.
This holds for every object of perception as such, i.e., as an intended object, as an
object alleged to actually exist. (EJ, §38, p. 163.)
We now understand the inner truth of the Kantian thesis: time is the form ofsensi-
bility, and thus it is the form of every possible world of objective experience. (P. 164.)
Every perception and every recollection as the reproduction of a perception must,
therefore, set up for their objects a temporal relation which on principle is capable of
being made intuitive. They are connected with each other as referring to objects, either
actual or intended, within one world. This connection serves as the basis for a certain
kind of relation, for relations of the temporal location of all perceived objectivities
intended in perceptions as actually existing. (P. 166.)

Note especially Husserl's claims: "Everything [perceptible] has its unity [Le.,
its individuation] in that it has its ftxed temporal position in this objective
world", and "time . .. is the form of every possible world of objective experi-
ence [Le., perception]". (Husserl is speaking of objective time, not inner
time, here: cf. p. 163.)
Following this discussion of the role of time in individuation, Husserl in
§40 concludes that "individuation and identity ... is possible only within
the world of actual experience [perception]". But he then goes on to loosen
the restriction. §41 poses "the problem of the possibility of an intuitive
unity [in particular, identity] between objects of perception and objects
of imagination of one ego". And §42 presents a solution. Objects of differ-
ent intuitions, say a perception and an imagination (cf. EJ, §42), may be
386 CHAPTER VIII

constituted as in different worlds. So their identity as constituted is a ques-

tion of trans-world individuation as constituted in consciousness. Husserl's
proposal is that objects of different intuitions (say, a perception and an
imagination, or two imaginations) can be identical only if in intuition (in
imagination, at least) they can be brought together (intuited) within a com-
mon (if imaginary) flow of time. That requires the respective worlds in which
the objects occur, as constituted, to be temporal or historical alternatives of
one another; that is, the worlds must coincide up to some point of time, after
which the one world could have gone as the other did. Trans-world identity
and individuation would then make sense only if - presumably, if and only
if - the relevant worlds were temporal alternatives of one another. Thus,
Husserl seems to hold the following principle of trans-world individuation: an
individual x occurring in a world w is identical with an individualy occurring
in a world w' other than w if and only if w and w' share a common partial
history h, x and y can both be traced into h through time in w and w' respec-
tively, and x and yare traced continuously to the same object-phase (or
sequence of phases) in h. Here is the proposal in Husserl's own words:
... We bring objects which belong to different fields of presence [perception, memory,
imagination) together by transposing them to one temporal field; we move the illst
objects to the intuitive temporal field of the others. In this way we bring them into one
intuitive succession or into an intuitive coexistence (that is, into a unity of simultaneous
duration). ... A unity of intuition, a unified assemblage of objects of intuition ...
means, therefore (since we are in the sphere of individual or quasi-individual objects), a
unity of time in which thelle objects are intuitively together . ...
This unity of intuition, originally established by association, is such, therefore, that
it is possible, not only between perceptions and memories of the same ego, but also
between positional and imaginary intuitions. With this we have attained the broadellt
concept of the unity of intuition, which we can derme as follows:
The unity of intuition ill the unity of an intuitive object-conllcioumellll and has all a
correlate the intuitive unitY of objectivity. Different individualll (or quasi-individuals of
imaginary intuitions) can, however, attain the unity of an intuition, or correlatively, can
in general form a unified intuitive objectivity, only insofar as they are encompaslled by
the unity of an intuitively constituted time, insofar, therefore, as they appear phenome-
enally as simultaneous or consecutive ... in the unity of an intuitive presence.
This implies: the unity of the intuition of time ill the condition of the pOllllibility
of all unity of the intuition of a plurality of objects connected in any way, for all are
temporal objects; accordingly, every other connection of such objects presupposes the
unity of time. (EJ, §42c, pp. 181-82.)

Husserl's concern here is with a broad notion of ''unity of intuition", achieved

through "association". The kind of "unity" in which we have been interested
is that of acts whose objects are constituted as identical. But the important
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 387

point is this: "Different individuals ... can ... form a unified intuitive objec-
tivity, only.insofar as they are encompassed by the unity of an intuitively
constituted time".
In these passages of Experience and Judgment Husserl thus allows for
identity of individuals across worlds constituted in different imaginations
or in imagination and in perception, provided those worlds share a common
time frame. And as we observed earlier, with his theory of horizon he is
already committed to identity across different worlds constituted in different
possible perceptions~ Husserl's down-to-earth view of trans-world identity is
an appealing solution to a problem that -- pretty much independently of
issues that exercised Husserl, such as the "horizon" of a perception - has
become a pivotal point in modal ontology nearly half a century later.
The study of Husserl's views of individuation through time and across
worlds allows a smooth transition to our study of individuative consciousness
in the next part of the chapter. For Husserl's discussion of metaphysical
issues of individuation was a discussion of metaphysical principles presup-
posed in the "constitution" of individuation or identity in consciousness. Let
us tum to the associated phenomenological issues.

4. TOWARD A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF

INDIVIDUATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

Our concern now is the analysis of that particular type of defmite, or de re,
intention we have called individuative, or individuatively defmite, intention.
Our task is to describe the phenomenological structure of such an act, and
how it achieves individuative directedness.

4.1. The Phenomenological Structure of Individuative Intention: Toward a

"Pragmatic" Analysis of Individuative Definiteness
An individuative act is directed toward or is about a particular individual
in virtue of the individual's being individuated for the subject, in that the
subject has a conception of the individual's "identity". Let us focus on a
typical case of individuative judgment, say, Smith's judging that his cousin
Billy Joe is the meanest man in town.
It is an important phenomenological fact that when Smith so judges his
judging typically does not include any specific descriptive sense in virtue
of which he has the individual Billy Joe in mind. In particular, whatever
structures of sense make up his conception of who Billy Joe is, ordinarily
these will not be wafting through his mind, so to speak, as he judges. Rather,
388 CHAPTER VIII

Smith simply judges about Billy Joe himself, that he is the meanest man in
town. (Even the name 'Billy Joe' may not cross his mind.) It is a natural
proposal, then, that the Sinn of Smith's judgment is a propositional Sinn
whose "subject" -component is what Husserl calls an "X" - and whose
"predicate" -component is the sense "is the meanest man in town". For an X,
we proposed, is no more than an intensional token for an individual, having
no structure per se.
Earlier, we characterized an "individuating" meaning as an individual
meaning that incorporates a conception of the "identity" of an individual
and thereby picks out that individual in any possible world (cf. Chapter VI,
Section 2.7, and Chapter VII, Section 3.3). Now, an individuating meaning
might have been expected as SUbject-component of an individuative act such
as Smith's judgment about Billy Joe: the act's aboutness is determined by the
individuation of Billy Joe for Smith, and it might have been expected that
this aboutness would be detennined directly by the Sinn's subject-component.
But the above considerations indicate that for such a judgment, though the
act is individuative, no individuating meaning is likely to occur as a component
of its explicit Sinn. Specifically, the subject-component of the Sinn is an X,
and an X is not an individuating meaning. The X in these cases presupposes
individuation, however, and so an individuating meaning seems to be involved
in th~ act in a less direct way, as we may shortly see.
What makes Smith's judgment a judgment about the individual Billy Joe is
Smith's knowledge or conception of the identity of Billy Joe, of who Billy
Joe is. Yet, as we just observed, this knowledge or conception is not itself a
part of the Sinn of the judgment. How, then, does this knowledge serve to
make the act about Billy Joe?
We have argued that the intention achieved in an act often depends not
only on the explicit Sinn of the act but also on the act's "pragmatic" presup-
positions - specifically, on a network of background beliefs presupposed in
the act (cf. Chapter V, Sections 3.2 and 3.3, and Chapter VI, Sections 1.4 and
1.6). Now, it seems clear that Smith's knowledge of Billy Joe's identity is just
the sort of knowledge that will be found dispersed throughout such a system
of background beliefs, beliefs in which Billy Joe is individuated for Smith.
(In subsequent sections we consider what might be included in these beliefs.)
These beliefs are presupposed by Smith in his act of judging; and their Sinne
are part of the act's background meaning, in the sense we distinguished in
Chapter V, Section 3.3. Thus, their Sinne are in no way incorporated in the
Sinn of the judgment, but they are in a certain way presupposed by that Sinn,
in that they are presupposed in the act. Specifically, we may hold, the X in
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 389

the judgment's Sinn is tied to - its presence presupposes in a certain way -

the system of Sinne correlated with these individuating background beliefs.
Thus, the judgment is about the individual Billy Joe in virtue of the X in its
Sinn. But the X is not an autonomous bit of sense that itself prescribes that
individual. Rather, it calls on the system of Sinne correlated with these
background beliefs, and it stands in intension for the individual individuated
within that system of beliefs.
We might think of the X as the sense of a pronoun ( or variable) tied in an
appropriate way to the given system of Sinne. Thus, the defmiteness of the
act might be ascribed in an act-sentence as follows:
(9) Smith knows who Billy Joe is & Smith judges that he is the
meanest man in town.
Here the second conjunct ascribes a defmite judgment, with an X in its Sinn,
and the first conjunct specifies in kind how its aboutness is determined, by
the individuation achieved in Smith's knowing who Billy Joe is. Such an
ascription is more informative than the simple quantifying-in constructions
considered in Section 1.2, e.g.,
(10) (3 x) (Smith judges that x is the meanest man in town).
(10) ascribes a defmite judgment with, on our Husserlian proposal, an X in
its Sinn; but it specifies nothing of the mode of directedness or the kind of
defmiteness. (9), by contrast, does so. But (9) still does not specify even in
outline what the belief-system is that individuates Billy Joe for Smith, nor
does it indicate precisely how the X hooks into such a belief-system. These
points require a detailed study of exactly how individuation in consciousness
proceeds. The following sections will launch such a study.
Other sorts of individuative acts, we may suppose, have a noematic struc-
ture similar to that we have described for individuative judgment. Thus, the
Sinn of Smith's recalling or admiring his cousin Billy Joe should include an
X that presupposes a system of background beliefs in which Billy Joe is
individuated for Smith. (These acts are, however, direct-object acts rather
than propositional acts, so their Sinne will not be propositional in form.)
Depending on details of how individuation is achieved, there may be other
forms of Sinn for individuative acts (and there may be some acts whose Sirme
specifically include a sense of the identity of the object intended).
The account we now have of the typical structure of individuatively
defmite intentions sheds light on some of the difficulties we encountered in
Chapter VII, Section 3.4. There we saw that a de dicta act of intending "the
390 CHAPTER VIII

cp" is clearly conception-<iependent: its Sinn specifically incorporates the

subject's conception of the object as cp, and the intention achieved is deter-
mined by this qualitative sense component. But when we looked into the
predicative content of the Sinn of an individuative de re intention, we were
unable to discover a similar item of sense that could plausibly be said to
determine the act's individuative directedness. Now we have a more complete
view of the noematic Sinn of an individuative intention, one that makes
clearer the way in which individuative intention is conception-<iependent.
We may say the intention is mediated by a conception or sense of the in-
tended individual, in particular, a sense that is built on a knowledge of the
individual's identity. However, that sense - typically, at least - is not a
constituent of the act's own Sinn but is rather dispersed, as it were, through
the background beliefs that individuate the individual for the subject. And,
importantly, the intention is not strictly tied to that sense in the way that a
de dicta intention is tied to a sense of the object intended. In that respect,
individuative intentions are not conception-<iependent in the same direct
way de dicta intentions are. (YVe shall return in Section 4.3 to the problem
of just how background Sinne are related to the Sinn of an individuative
judgment.)
We may also now see why our analysis in Chapter IV failed to unearth
the items of sense that determine individuative definiteness. The complete
"meaning" of an individuative act, as we have described it, typically includes
not only the Sinn that is actually and "explicitly" present in the act, that
which we properly call the Sinn of the act, but also the system of Sinne cor-
related with certain related background beliefs. A complete phenomenological
analysis of the act must embrace those Sinne as well as the act's explicit Sinn,
because it is those Sinne that ultimately prescribe which individual the act is
directed toward or is about. In this respect, the phenomenological analysis
of individuative intention must be "pragmatic", addressing certain features
of the "context" of beliefs within which the act is performed (cf. Chapter
VI, Section 2.4). Consequently, so long as one looks only at the noematic
structure explicitly present in an act, one will miss what gives the act its
peculiarly individuative character, for one will miss the background beliefs
or Sinne by virtue of which the act's object is individuated for the subject.
For precisely that reason, horizon-analysis - or, alternatively, possible-worlds
explication - is a significant heuristic device for the phenomenological
analysis of individuative intention. The explication of an individuative inten-
tion in terms of either horizon or possible worlds not only uncovers the
act's explicit Sinn and its role in determining the act's directedness; it also
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 391

uncovers the role of the act's background Sinne in determining the identity of
the object intended in the act.
Nonetheless, neither method of explication, in terms of horizon or of
possible worlds, automatically reveals the substantive content of the back-
ground beliefs that serve to individuate. What horizon-analysis, or possible-
worlds explication, does is to show what the act's "meaning" must achieve.
This may then lead one to reflect on the belief-structures that individuate
the object for one. But, importantly, the background beliefs or meanings
that individuate an individual for one are not easily discovered in reflection.
Many of them have receded into "obscurity", as Husserl says, in the "passive
background" of consciousness; they are but a "habituality of the ego ...
ready for a new associative awakening" (EJ, §67b). What remains readily
accessible is a "trace" of the individuation they achieve, a trace of the individ-
ual they individuate, in the form of an X.

4.2. Knowing-Who and Individuative Consciousness

We have just observed that, in many typical cases, an individuative act is
directed toward or is about an individual because it presupposes the subject's
knowing who (or which) the individual is. To know who a person is is to
know what his or her "identity" is. Let us now consider what sorts of items
of knowledge count as knowing who an individual is, in light of results of
Sections 3.1 and 32 P These considerations will lead to a more specific or
substantive view of individuative consciousness.
To begin with, knowing who an individual is is relative to a mode of
presentation of that individual: the truth of 'Smith knows who a is' depends
on the term 'a'; 'Smith knows who _ _ is' is an intensional context. Thus,
it may be that Smith knows who the author of L 'etre et Ie neant is but does
not know who Simone de Beauvoir's long-time paramour is, even though the
author of L 'etre et Ie neant is Simone de Beauvoir's long-time paramour.
And Smith may know who Cicero was but not know who Tully was, though
Cicero was Tully.
Further, what counts as knOwing who a is varies considerably from case to
case, as some examples readily show. In order to know who that women I see
across the room is, it may suffice merely for me to recognize her as a person
I have seen before. However, normally, in order to know whoa is, one must
have some significant descriptive knowledge of a. Thus, I know who John
F. Kennedy is, or was, insofar as I know that John F. Kennedy is the man
who was elected President of the United States in 1960, that he was a son of
Joseph Kennedy, that he went to Harvard, that as President he was involved
392 CHAPTER VIII

in the Bay of Pigs affair and the Cuban missile crisis, and so on. And I know
who Freddie McAlister is: he is the fellow who sat next to me in the fifth
grade, he played center on our high school basketball team in 1961, he went
to the state university, and he is now the only orthodontist in town.
Proper names sometimes play a special role in our accounts of knowing-
who. Thus, I know who that man across the street is: he is Dr. Lauben. And
I know who the author of L 'etre et Ie neant is: he is Jean-Paul Sartre. But
such items of knowledge - that that man across the street is Dr. Lauben or
that the author of L 'etre et Ie neant is Jean-Paul Sartre - are not the ultimate
or most basic items in which knowing-who consists. It is more basic to
knowing-who that I know that Dr. Lauben is a very old acquaintance of my
family, and so forth, and that I know that Jean-Paul Sartre studied at the
Sorbonne, was the leading spokesman of extentialism, and so forth.
Most basically, we may say, to know who a is is to know that a is l/J for
various predications 'l/J' that ascribe properties that are of significance to the
individuation of the individual a and thus form some Significant part of the
identity of a. 18 These properties may include physical traits, personality or
character traits, occupation, notable achievements or deeds, time and place
of birth, lineage, and so on. Ideally, the senses of the relevant predications
would go together to form an individuating meaning (cf. Chapter VI, Section
2.7). However, this ideal may be unrealizable. If the identity of a person is
indeed transcendent, as Section 3.2 above would suggest, then our knowledge
of a person's identity, of who he or she is, may fall short of what is required
of a bona [ide individuating meaning. In particular, a knowledge of who a
is may not yield a rigid concept of a.
There is a laxity apparent in our everyday standards for knowing-who.
Indeed, precisely what counts as knowing who a is seems not to be a defmi-
tive matter but to be relative to the needs of our immediate knowledge claims
about a. The laxity and relativity we accept may well reflect an awareness
that the identity of a person is transcendent, and that consequently we know
a person's identity only "inadequately" in bits and pieces. Thus, there is
a vagueness of degree inherent in knowing-who. Further, one may fmd it
difficult to articulate the knowledge one has of a person's identity; one may
even defer to others, to the experts, to fix a person's identity beyond a
few salient items. These attitudes, too, seem to reflect an awareness of the
transcendence of a person's identity: we rest content with a certain minimal
grasp on who a person is, knowing that his identity is "out there", more
fully determinable as need be.
Knowledge is not an occurrent act of consciousness but a dispositional
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 393

state, the disposition to judge, correctly and on appropriate evidence. To

know who a is is thus, to begin with, to be disposed to judge who a is, that
is, to perfonn an act of identification (as we called it in Section 3.1). The
most basic fonn of identification would be that of judging that a is cp, for
some appropriate predication 'cp'. If I so judge, then a's identity is explicitly
given (if only partially) in my act of judging. By contrast, when I judge that
Freddie McAlister will win the race for mayor, Freddie's identity is not
explicitly given in my act of judging; rather, my knowledge of his identity is
presupposed in the act of judging.
When I judge that a is cp, for some appropriate individuative predication
'CP', we may say a is individuated for me in my act of judging. Objects may be
similarly individuated for a person in other kinds of acts too, in imagination,
in perception perhaps, and so on. Generally, let us say, an individual is
individuated for a person in an act he perfonns if and only if the individual
is given in the act as cp, for some predication 'CP' that ascribes some property
(typically rather complex) that plays a significant role in the individuation
of the given kind of individual according to the person's presupposed back-
ground principles of individuation. That is to say, the individual is given
as having certain properties that would constitute a significant part of its
identity. Its individuation for the subject is thus achieved in the act through
a complex predicate-sense, expressible by 'cp', occurring in the act's Sinn
(the exact role of the predicate-sense, or its constituents, in the -Sinn may
vary with the structure of the act). Let us also say, assuming that a belief
is a disposition to judge (rather than an occurrent act of judging), that an
individual is individuated for a person in a belief he holds if the individual
would be individuated for him in the corresponding judgment, were he
actively to perfonn it.
We can now appreciate more fully the characterization of individuative
consciousness as that which involves a sense of an individual's identity, of
who or which it is. An individuative act, we may say, is an act that is directed
toward or is about an object that is individuated for the subject, either in
the act itself or in other, background acts that the act presupposes. And the
intention achieved in such an act - its directedness, for a direct object act, or
its aboutness, for a propositional act - is an individuative intention, i.e., an
intention whose object is detennined by an appropriate sense- explicit or
presupposed - of the object's identity. Thus, Smith's seeing his cousin Billy
Joe blocking the doorway of the cafe is individuative because it presupposes
Billy Joe's individuation for Smith in a aystem of background beliefs. And his
judgment about Billy Joe that he is the meanest man in town is individuative
394 CHAPTER VIII

for the same reason. Also individuative is Sherlock's judgment, issuing from a
series of brilliant "deductions", that the murderer lives at a certain place and
works for a certain sinister professor and has certain traits of appearance and
behavior. This judgment, however, is an act in which an object's individuation
for the subject is explicitly achieved, rather than presupposed, in the act. The
features actually given in the act individuate the murderer for Sherlock: they
give Sherlock a rudimentary grasp of the murderer's identity. And Sherlock's
judgment is thus an act of identification of the basic sort we described.
Importantly, the individuation of an individual in one's experience is
regulated by one's fundamental background beliefs concerning individuation,
beliefs that articulate principles of individuation for the kind of individual
given. (Cf. Chapter Y, Section 3.2, on fundamental. background beliefs
presupposed in an experience. And see Part 3 above for the relevant kind of
principles of individuation.)

4.3. A Closer Look at the Structure of Individuative Intention

As a typical individuatively defmite judgment, we offered the judgment
described by
(9) Smith knows who Billy Joe is & Smith judges that he is the
meanest man in town.
Smith's jlldgment presupposes his knowing who Billy Joe is, and what makes
the judgment about Billy Joe is its presupposition of that knowledge. The
judgment is individuatively definite because its aboutness is so based on a
knowledge of who Billy Joe is, ofhis identity. In light of our results in Part 3
and the preceding section, we now ask more precisely what is the structure of
the background knowledge or beliefs on which the judgment is based, and we
ask how the Sinn of the judgment ties into the Sinne of those background
beliefs. The semantical reflection of these conjoined questions is what form
our description (9) should take when expanded so as to spell out the relevant
background knowledge. For simplicity let us collapse knowledge into belief
and for the outset assume the background beliefs compressed into a single
complex belief.
The dependence of Smith's judgment on the relevant background belief
is of a noteworthy character: the judgment is about an individual somehow
intended in a separate attitude of belief, and the phenomenological character
of the aboutness is that of pointing "back" to - or calling forth - the indi-
vidual presented in the "antecedent" attitude. This form of intention is
discernible in a familiar form of linguistic reference. Suppose Holmes says,
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 395

"The murderer entered by the window", and then, noting the size of the
window, adds; "He was a small man". Holmes' reference in saying 'He' is
called anaphoric because his term 'He' refers "back" to the referent estab-
lished by the grammatical antecedent of the pronoun 'He' (the antecedent
here being Holmes' utterance of 'The murderer'). Underlying Holmes' succes-
sive linguistic assertions are successive judgments (cf. Chapter IV, Section
2.3). In the second judgment Holmes judges about the individual he judged
about in the ftrst judgment: his intention, or his act's aboutness, in the
second judgment is in this manner tied "back" to his intention, or his act's
aboutness, in the "antecedent" judgment. Thus, we may call the intention
or aboutness in the second judgment anaphoric. (Anaphoric reference, then,
is founded on anaphoric intention.) The aboutness of Smith's judgment
is similarly anaphoric, though with two differences. First, the antecedent
intention is a concurrent attitude of belief rather than a prior act of judgment
(though the belief is no doubt the "residue" of a prior judgment or group of
judgments). Second, and more important, Smith's anaphoric judgment is
defmite, or de re, where Holmes' is indefmite, or de dicto. Signillcantly,
anaphoric intention may be either defmite or indefmite.
What is the structure of the Sinn of an anaphoric judgment? Evidently,
the Sinn of Smith's judgment about Billy Joe consists simply of an X com-
bined with a predicate-sense, where the X is somehow grounded in the Sinn
of the "antecedent" background belief. Similarly, it would seem, the Sinn of
Holmes' anaphoric judgment consists of an X and a predicate-sense, where the
X is appropriately tied to the subject-component of the Sinn of the antecedent
judgment. In general, it would seem, the Sinn of an anaphoric intention
includes an X-type of sense that is tied to an appropriate element of sense in
the Sinn of the antecedent act or attitude. But now, in Chapter IV and in
Section 1.3 above, we recognized X's only in defmite intentions. Here we
would need also to recognize X's that belong to indefmite intentions. Indeed,
anaphoric intentions inherit the character of defmiteness or indefmiteness
belonging to their antecedent founding intentions. So, if anaphoric intention
takes an X-form of sense, we must recognize that this X achieves a defmite
intention only if tied back to a defmite intention, introduced perhaps in a
defmite intention such as perception (cf. Section 2.1). But let us here focus
on deftnite anaphoric intention, observing only X's bearing the character of
defmiteness.
When we take X's as this sort of anaphoric sense, and already when we
hold that the X in a perceptual Sinn is "introduced" by an acquainting sense
and so becomes available for later thinking of that same object (cf. Section
396 CHAPTER VIII

2.2), we go beyond Hussed's treatment of X's. And allowing X's in indefInite

anaphoric intentions clearly seems to differ from Hussed. For Hussed, an
X stands for an object "simpliciter"; it apparently requires defIniteness
of intention; and it is not obviously "introduced" by any other structure
of sense, though it could naturally be seen as recurring in a later act of
thinking of the same intended object. Our reasons for extending Hussed's
phenomenological doctrine of X's, and even changing it in critical ways, have
been cited in the needs of phenomenological structure of certain forms of
intention.
Now let us ask, with regard to Smith's judgment about Billy Joe, what is
the structure of the Sinn of the background belief on which the judgment is
founded? We are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the judgment is
founded on a definite, or de re, background belief, as we might ascribe with
the form
(10) (3x) (Smith believes that t/>X & Smith judges that x is the meanest
man in town),
then we have to ask what makes the background belief defInite. And if the
background belief is individuative, we have to ask for its form; and so we
have only pushed the original question onto this belief. On the other hand, if
Smith's judgment about Billy Joe is founded on a de dicto background belief,
perhaps as ascribed in
(11) Smith believes that the cp is 1/1 & Smith judges that he is the
meanest man in town,19
then it seems clear the judgment cannot be de re as assumed.
We choose the first horn of the dilemma: the founding background belief
is itself defInite, or de reo Moreover, it must be individuatively definite. It
would not do were the background belief, say, merely perceptually defInite,
perhaps a belief about an individual Smith sees or saw on a previous occasion.
Such a belief would itself be anaphoric, the X in its Sinn tied to the relevant
perception, being the X in that perception's Sinn (cf. Section 2.2). But then
the judgment anaphorically tied to that belief would be perceptually but
not yet - at least not on that account - individuatively defInite. So the
background belief on which Smith's judgment is based must be individuative.
Indeed, it must itself constitute a knowledge of who Billy Joe is. Often,
perhaps typically, an individuative intention is merely an anaphoric intention
calling on some background belief system that constitutes knowing-who.
But the buck must stop there, with 'a system of beliefs that constitutes
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 397

knowing-who. (Thus are we disimpaled from our chosen hom of the dilemma.)
The beliefs that constitute a case of knowing-who are not easy to unfold, for
we may acquire many and varied beliefs about an individual and thereby in
a most unsystematic way acquire a knowledge of who the individual is. As
we observed in Section 4.2, knowing-who is in fact and for good reason a
very flexible notion. In light of Part 3 and Sections 4.1-4.2, let us unpack in
a schematic way the structure of such an array of collectively individuating
background beliefs. Here we abandon the simplifying assumption we made
shortly above, that Smith's knowing who Billy Joe is forms a single individ-
uating belief.
We may naturally see Smith's knowledge of who Billy Joe is as dispersed
through a system of beliefs that attribute various properties to the same
individual. That is, the beliefs are all co-directed, or about the same individ-
ual. And they are bound together, as Hussed might say, by a "synthesis of
identification" (cf. eM, §18), a tacit judgment or consciousness that the
individuals so given are one and the same; the synthesis is governed by Smith's
background principles of individuation, that is, by those of his background
beliefs that articulate principles of individuation fundamental to his concep-
tual scheme. Thus, the individual Billy Joe is individuated for Smith precisely
insofar as certain properties are attributed that same individual in Smith's
belief-structure. We might naturally describe the noematic structure of the
system of beliefs, then, in a Husserlian way: the Sinn of each of the beliefs
incorporates an X as sUbject-component, it is the same X that appears in each
Sinn, and the predicate-components of the various Sinne are "harmonious",
i.e., collectively consistent given the presupposed principles of individuation.
Then we may say it is that common X that appears in the Sinn of Smith's
judgment about Billy Joe.
Suppose, then, 'cf>t', ... , 'cf>n' are predicates that ascribe the various prop-
erties that serve to individuate Billy Joe for Smith, and suppose 'p(cf>t, .•• ,
cf>n)' is a complex sentence articulating Smith's principles of individuation
regarding things that satisfy 'cf>t', ... , 'cf>n'. Then we might expand our
original description (9) as follows:
(12) (3x) (Smith believes that p(cf>t, .•. , cf>n) & Smith believes that
x is cf> t & ... & Smith believes that x is cf>n & Smith judges that x
is the meanest man in town).
This form of description aptly indicates the noematic structure of the judg-
ment and the background beliefs and their connection; for quantifying-in is,
we have proposed, an appropriate means for ascribing an act whose Sinn
398 CHAPTER VIII

includes an X, and the recurrence of the variable 'x' requires that it be the
same X in the Sinne of all the beliefs and of the judgment. An appropriate
alternative to (12) is the following, since Smith has acquired the name 'Billy
Joe' for the individual intended in the beliefs described:
(13) Smith believes that P(cfJl, ••• ,cfJn) &
Smith believes that Billy Joe is cfJl & ...
Smith believes that Billy Joe is cfJn &
Smith judges that he [Billy Joe] is the meanest man in town. 20
(We use 'he' rather than 'Billy Joe' in the fmal clause only to avoid suggesting
that the name 'Billy Joe' is somehow passing through Smith's consciousness
as he judges.)
It is our central assumption that the individual Billy Joe is individuated for
Smith insofar as the indicated background beliefs are all about one and the
same individual and hence co-directed. But our analysis is not complete with
the description (12) or (13), or the Husserlian description of background
Sinne featuring a common X. For these descriptions assume that the relevant
background beliefs are themselves all defmite, sharing the same X, and we
need an account of their defmiteness. We need an account of how the X they
share entered Smith's consciousness. That is a matter of "genetic" phenom-
enology.
Perceptual acquaintance is one familiar port of entry for an X into a
person's consciousness. The acquainting sense in a perception introduces an
X (cf. Section 22). Subsequent beliefs or judgments anaphorically about the
object intended in that perception will include that X in their Sinne. It is
natural to assume Smith has seen Billy Joe on many occasions and long ago
learned to recognize him on sight. Each new perception of Billy Joe and each
act or attitude intending Billy Joe now includes an X tied anaphorically to
prior perceptions of Billy Joe that are now blurred together by the haze of
time.
More generally, we might speculate that an X enters a person's noematic
repertoire only by introduction in some indexical intention, that is, an inten-
tion that presents an individual as being in some contextual relation to the
subject. Perception presents an object as immediately before the subject and
perhaps as causally affecting his senses (cf. Part 2). Thinking of someone "by
name" - as Billy Joe or as William of Sherwood - may call on the thinker's
historical relation to the intended individual in a less immediate way. Here
we may assume a version of the causal or historical-chain theory of names.
Let it be a version, however, on which a speaker's use of a name is based on
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 399

his presumption of an appropriate historical relation between himself and the

intended nameeY A person's thinking of William of Sherwood, by name,
then, may have a content or sense that prescribes the individual so historically
related to him, "that" defmite individual. (Cf. Section 1.3 above; the sense
would pick out that same individual in any possible world, working somewhat
in the wayan acquainting or demonstrative sense does it la Section 2.2.) We
may assume that such a sense introduces an X. Thinking of a person by name
will thus be a quasi-indexical form of intention and will introduce an X. And
where Smith holds a variety of beliefs that could be expressed by use of the
name 'William of Sherwood', these will share a common X, that X introduced
into his consciousness in his original acquisition of the name.
Now, as we noted above, if the X involved in Smith's background beliefs
about Billy Joe was introduced into Smith's consciousness in some sort of
indexical intention, these beliefs are defmite but not necessarily individua-
tively definite. The indexical foundation introduces the X but does not
bequeath to it an individuative character. Individuative defmiteness does not
reduce to perceptual defmiteness or any other form of indexical defmiteness.
What makes Smith's system of background beliefs individuative is their pred-
icative, or descriptive, content clustered about their common X, a content
of predicate-senses that, according to the appropriate background principles
of individuation, prescribe collectively some significant fragment of the
identity of the individual intended.
Let us grant that an X can be introduced into a person's consciousness by
an indexical intention and enriched with predicative content so as to produce
a complex sense of an individual's identity, an individuating sense (in the
terms of Chapter VI and VII). But now, is it true, as we were tempted to
speculate, that an X can be introduced only in an indexical intention? Specifi-
cally, where individuating background beliefs involve an X, as (12) ascribes,
must that X necessarily be tied to some antecedent indexical intention? It is
by no means clear that it must.
Recall that anaphoric intention may be either indefmite or defmite. Now
suppose Sherlock judges that someone broke into the W. B. Smythe house,
then judges that he was a small man, and by further leaps of logic similarly
judges many other things about "him", that he was born and raised in Cock-
ney, that he now lives on Chatham Lane, etc. If this system of judgments
is rich enough to constitute a knowledge of who that "someone" is, then
Sherlock's judging that he is now seeking refuge in Madame Sophie's bordello
is surely an individuative act, and so defmite. This judgment's Sinn includes
an X anaphorically tied ultimately to a de dicto judgment that "someone"
400 CHAPTER VIII

broke into the W. B. Smythe house. The X starts its life in Sherlock's con-
sciousness bearing the character of indefmiteness. But as Sherlock acquires
enough knowledge of the right sort about that someone, "X", the X acquires
the character of defmiteness, as Sherlock in effect thinks, "That's the culprit".
Now we face a problem, especially in a case like Sherlock's "leap" to
individuative consciousness. It seems this leap is a leap of faith rather than
logic, for what in his phenomenological repertoire guarantees that his inten-
tion grasps a "defmite" individual, the same in each world compatible with
his individuative background belief-system? Generally, how can individuative
intention be rigid, directed toward the same individual in every world com-
patible with the act's content or background content? The problem sterns
from the elasticity of knowing-who in response to the transcendence of
natural individuals' identities.
The X in the Sinn of Sherlock's judgment was introduced into his phe-
nomenological repertoire with his de dicta judgment that "someone" broke
into the Smythe house. The X then accumulated about itself predications in
further judgments that would collectively constitute a sense of the identity
of the burglar ("the person who ..."). Not a complete sense of his identity,
but a sense full enough for Sherlock's investigative purposes. Let us grant
that this sense, associated with the X, confers a character of defmiteness on
Sherlock's contemplations about the burglar. But how can the X or the de-
scriptive sense of identity prescribe the same individual in all worlds? If the
X were introduced into his system in a perceptual acquaintance with the
burglar, then it would retain the rigidity of the perceptual acquaintance. But
since the X was introduced with a de dicta judgment, it inherits no rigidity
from that judgment. How then can it acquire rigidity as it picks up the ele-
ments of a sense of the identity of the intended? A likely answer lies with the
concrete view of individuation through time and across worlds that we found
in Husserl: necessary to the individuation of a natural object is its path
through time, through the history of the actual world or through diverging
possible histories in various possible worlds that coincide up to a point of
time. (Cf. Sections 3.3 and 3.4 above.) It is likely then that any Significant
sense of the identity of a natural individual will include some significant
"historic" property of the individual, e.g., that "he" (the burglar) actually
lived on Chatham Lane until one week ago today. A description like 'the man
who actually lived at Number 3, Chatham Lane, London, until one week ago
today' is somewhat like the quasi-indexical deSCription 'the man who is
actually before me now' (cf. Section 2.2 above). This sort of sense would
prescribe the same obejct in any world, so Sherlock's X could acquire rigidity
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 401

from a sense appealing to an appropriate historic property of the intended.

Then the rigidity of individuatively defmite intention in a case like Sherlock's
judgment would depend on the rigidity of a quasi-indexical intention; still,
individuative definiteness would not consist simply in the defmiteness of that
quasi-indexical intention, but would come with the full sense of identity
involved.
If individuative intention in a case like Sherlock's does not involve either a
properly indexical intention like perceptual acquaintance or a quasi-indexical
intention appealing to historic properties, then it would appear that some
cases of individuative intention are not rigid. The trait of rigidity would then
be a different and further trait not always secured by the phenomenological
trait of defmiteness. A firmer stand on whether historic properties are indeed
integral to individuative awareness requires further study, but our position is
a tentative endorsement.
Evidently, the exact phenomenological structure of individuative con-
sciousness is a complicated and elastic affair, owing to the latitude of know-
ingwho or individuation in consciousness. Nonetheless, individuative aware-
ness seems to have a distinctive phenomenological character and seems indeed
to attain rigidity in virtue of the historic element in our grasp of an individ-
ual's identity. Our study here is by no means the last word on individuative
awareness, but we hope we have advanced the understanding of the issues
involved and given a basic shape to the analysis.

NOTES

* This chapter was written by David Woodruff Smith. The version appearing here
incorporates important emendations and revisions originating in commentary and
criticism by Ronald Mcintyre.
1 This last kind of aboutness might receive a "causal" or "historica1-chain" analysis,
artalogous to recent causal or historica1-chain theories of reference for proper names
(e.g., those proposed by Donnellan and Kripke; see Note 26, Ch. IV above). However,
we have in mind a clearly intentionalized version. Aboutness, in this one important case
at any rate, is determined by the subject's knowledge of the individual's having been
perceived. However, what makes the judgment about that individual is not the chain of
events leading from the occasion of its being perceived to the occasion of the judgment
(say, someone who saw the individual was illterviewed by a newspaper reporter, the
reporter wrote a story, and eventually our subject read the story and then judged about
the individual). Rather, the aboutness is ftxed by the subject's awareness (however
imperfect) that there is such a chain. Importantly, then, we take aboutness to be an
intentional relation between the subject or the act of judgment and the object judged
about; it is not a physical or genetic relation between the act of judgment and the object
judged about. Here we echo a point made by F¢Uesdal in 'Reference and Meaning', a
402 CHAPTER VIII

talk delivered to an informal seminar at Stanford University in August, 1974. There

FI,611esdal offered the criticism that the causal theory of reference, in its more familiar
outlines, makes reference into a purely ontic relation between speaker or speech act and
referent, whereas it must be at least partly epistemic. An interesting beginning on a
"causal" theory of thinking-of is Zeno Vendler's 'Thinking of Individuals', Nous 10
(1976), 35-46. Our considerations show that Vendler's analysis is not general, however.
2 Putnam has described a somewhat similar case of referring to natural substances or
kinds: cf. his 'Meaning and Reference' (Note 26, Ch. IV above), esp. pp. 704-706.
3 A "causal" or "historica1-chain" theory, which holds that definiteness comes only
with a causal or historical relation between subject or act and object of intention, would
entail that the object of a definite intention exists or has existed in the past. An inten-
tionalized causal or historica1-chain theory (see Note 1 above) would require that the
object be posited as actual but not that it be actual.
4 For us to ascribe the Sinn of Smith's perceptual judgment would require a special
"quasi-demonstrative" form of 'this': cf. Hector-Neri Castaneda, 'Indicators and Quasi-
Indicators', American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1967), 85-100; and '''He'': A Study
in the Logic of Self-Consciousness', Ratio 8 (1966), 130--57.
5 Cf. Hintikka, 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes', in Models for Modalities (Note
6, Ch. I above), p. 98.
6 Hintikka has proposed two syntactically distinct styles of quantifiers appropriate,
respectively, to what we have called individuatively defmite and perceptually defmite
aboutness. Vide his 'On the Logic of Perception' (Note 6, Ch. I above), and 'Objects of
Knowledge and Belief' (Note 6, Ch. I above).
7 The basic idea here, that the de re character of a de re belief - in our terms, its
"defmiteness" - is to be explicated in terms of what we call the "rigidity" of its about-
ness, derives from Hintikka: cf. his 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes', in Models
for Modalities (Note 6, Ch. I above), pp. 10lff. It can also be discerned in his earlier
Knowledge and Belief (Note 2, Ch. VII above), pp. 152-53.
8 The issues of this part of the chapter have been discussed, in greater detail, in David
Woodruff Smith, 'The Case of the Exploding Perception', Synthese 41 (1979),239-
69, and 'Content and Context of Perception', Synthese, forthcoming. A full treatment
will appear in a book by Smith devoted to acquaintance.
9 Clark, 'Considerations for a Logic for Naive Realism', in Studies in Perception, ed. by
P. K. Machamer and R. G. Turnbull.
10 Cf. his 'On the Logic of Perception' (Note 6, Ch. I above), pp. 171-72; and 'Objects
of Knowledge and Belief' (Note 6, Ch. I above), pp. 45-47.
11 See Kaplan, Demonstratives (Note 31, Ch. IV above), and "Dthat" (Note 31, Ch. IV
above).
12 To see the difference in the two proposals we have considered, and the way the
sense of actuality rigidifies the acquainting sense of perception, it is important to see
how we are taking the word 'actually' to work. On the flIst, Hintikka-type, proposal,
the acquainting sense in perception is roughly a sense that, in every relevant possible
world, picks out the object that is before the perceiver; while on the second proposal,
which we prefer, it is roughly a sense that, in each world, picks out the object that is
actually before the perceiver. Now, in ordinary language, where worries about reference
in alternative possible worlds are latent at best, one would be hardpressed to fmd a
significant semantic difference between the descriptions 'the object that is q,' and 'the
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 403

object that is actually 1/>', assuming each to be uttered by the same person (say, Smith)
on the same occasion in a given world woo And, indeed, in Wo - the "home" world in
which the utterance takes place - both descriptions have the same referent, viz., the
object (if any) in Wo that is uniquely I/> in woo But let us consider their referents in an
alternative possible world, w. 'The object that is 1/>', as uttered by Smith in Wo on the
given occasion, would refer in w to that object (if any) in w that is uniquely I/> in w,
which mayor may not be the same object that is I/> in WOo 'The object that is 1/>', then,
may refer to different objects in different worlds and so is non-rigid. By contrast, the
description 'the object that is actually 1/>' is rigid, as we propose it be understood. On
our reading this description, as uttered by Smith in w o , would refer in w to that object
in w that is uniquely I/> in Wo - not to whatever in w is uniquely I/> in w, as the former
description would. Here the same object is required to exist in both wand wO ' and the
description, so uttered in wo ' takes the same referent in any world w. As we understand
it, then, the description 'the object that is actually 1/>' is not purely a defmite description:
the term 'actually' is somewhat like an indexical term, in that it always brings us back to
the "home" world whenever we evaluate the reference, in any world, of the description
as uttered in the home world. (However, we do not want to hold that actuality is merely
relative to a world in which the description is uttered; the actual world should be actual
in some absolute sense. But these are further matters we carmot go into here. Cf. David
K. Lewis, 'Anselm and Actuality', NoW; 4 (1970), 175 ·88; and Robert Merrihew
Adams, 'Theories of Actuality', Nous 8 (1974), 211-31.) And so the sense of actuality
makes a significant difference in the two proposals for explicating the acquainting
sense in perception. On both proposals, this acquainting sense is a sense that might be
expressed by 'this'. But on the fust proposal 'this' is understood as functioning like
'the object before me', while on our preferred proposal it is understood as functioning
like 'the object actually before me'. Thus, on the Hintikka-type approach perceptual
acquaintance is a non-rigid intention, whereas on our approach it is rigid. Notice that on
both accounts the perception is required to occur in the various worlds wherein the
"referent" is determined; but on our account it is the occurrence in the "home" world
that is relevant, for the object is intended as before the subject on the occasion of the
perception in that world.
13 Cf. Roderick M. Chisholm, 'Identity Through Possible Worlds', Nous 1 (1967),
1-8; and David Lewis, 'Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic', Journal of
Philosophy 65 (1968),113-26.
14 R. M. Chisholm has defmed the notion of haecceity in the present way, ascribing to
Aquinas a view of individuation based on the notion. See his 'Individuation: Some
Thomistic Questions and Answers', Grazer Philosophische Studien 1 (1975), 25·-41.
Robert Merrihew Adams has also defmed haecceity in this way and has amply demon-
strated the notion's utility in a wide-ranging discussion that is congenial in many respects
to the views on individuation we develop. See his 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive
Identity', Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 5-26. The terminology of "haecceitism"
is developed there, and Adams adopts the position we have taken, dubbing it "moderate
haecceitism" .
15 Cf. Benson Mates, 'Individuals and Modality in the Philosophy of Leibniz' (mimeo-
graphed; presented as a Mahlon Powell Lecture at Indiana University, 1970); and 'Leibniz
on Possible Worlds', in Logic, Methodology, and Philo!ophy of Science, III, ed. by B.
Van Rootse1aar and J. F. Staal (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1968).
404 CHAPTER VIII

16 Thus, we might defme the identity of an individual x either as the set of ordered
pairs <w, p) where w is any world and p is the complex property that includes all the
(appropriate) properties x has in w, or as the conjunctive property comprising all of x's
world-relativized properties of being thus-andojjo in a world.
17 For an interesting and detailed study of knowing-who, see Stephen E. Boer and
William G. Lycan, 'Knowing Who', Philosophical Studies 28 (1975), 299-344. Though
there are differences between their approach and our approach here, there is some
considerable common ground. See also Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief (Note 2, Ch. VlI
above), pp.131-32, 148ff.
18 Hintikka has proposed that (i) 's knows who a is' can be analyzed, or translated into
logical symbolism, as (il) '(3x) (s knows that x = a)' (where the variable 'x' ranges over
persons): cf. Knowledge and Belief (Note 2, Ch. VII above), pp. 131-32. These two
forms do seem to be equivalent, provided the quantifying-in is tied to "individuative"
defmiteness. However, (i) - or, presumably (ii) - does not itself ascribe a specific item
of knowledge but rather asserts that s has some system of specific items of knowledge
that constitute s's knowing who a is. Our concern is with the further analysis of knowing-
who in terms of the specific items of knowledge of which it consists.
19 Classical logic for propositional-attitude sentences - such as we have studied in prior
chapters - cannot provide an explication of ordinary English sentences with the form of
(A) Smith believes that the ~ is >/I, and Smith judges that he is x.
or
(B) Smith believes that someone is >/I, and
Smith judges that he is x.
The pronoun 'he' is obviously not a pronoun of laziness, replaceable by its underscored
antecedent; for that substitution would change the phenomenological structure ascribed
to Smith. Nor can the pronoun be rendered a variable of quantification in the familiar
syntax. If the quantifier binding the variable were outside the belief-operator of the flISt
clause, as in
(A') (3 !x) (</lX & Smith believes th.at >/Ix & Smith judges that xx)
(B') (3x) (Smith believes that >/Ix & Smith judges that xx),
then both the belief and the judgment ascribed would in each case be de reo But neither
the belief nor the judgment ascribed in either (A) or (B) is de re, as we understand (A)
and (B). The syntax we would seem to require in (A) (if 'the ~' is eliminated in terms of
quantification) and in (B) places the quantifier inside the scope of the belief-operator
and the variable bound to that quantifier inside the scope of the judgment-operator,
thus:
(A") Smith believes that [(3 !x) (~x & >/Ix]
& Smith judges that [xx])
(B") Smith believes that [(3x) (>/Ix] &
Smith judges that [xx] ).
But these sentences are not well-formed in classical logic: "quantifying out", as David
Kaplan has termed it, is not allowed. And again the judgment-clause is in each case de re,
where (A) and (B) do not ascribe de re judgments.
 DE RE INTENTION IN A HUSSERLIAN FRAMEWORK 405

In our discussion in the text, we assume that sentences of the forms of (A) and (B)
are meaningful English. We assume that both the ftrst and second clauses ascribe de
dicta attitudes or acts. That is in fact our ordinary understanding of such sentences, as
becomes evident on considering the following sequence of forms of English sentences:
(B) Smith believes that someone is 'ii, and
Smith judges that he is x;
(C) Smith said that someone is 'ii, and then
Smith said that he is x;
(D) Smith said "Someone is 'ii", and then
Smith said "He is x";
(E) Smith said "Someone is 'ii, and he is x".
Without going into the matter here, it should be clear that if (E) ascribes Smith an
indefmite, or de dicta, intention in saying "he", surely (D) does too. If so, surely in the
second clause (C) ascribes Smith a de dicta assertion. And if so, surely (B) in the second
clause ascribes a de dicta judgment. Sometimes, then, an anaphoric or relative pronoun
in a propositional-attitude context does not require a de re attitude, as does a proper
variable of quantifying-in. This fact must be reflected in a complete logic for proposi-
tional-attitude sentences.
The logical problem of (A) or (B) is essentially the same as that which Peter Geach
exposed for:
Hob thinks a witch has blighted Bob's mare, and Nob wonders whether she
(the same witch) killed Cob's sow.
Cf. P. T. Geach, Logic Matters (Blackwell, Oxford, 1972), pp. 147ff. Although the
Geachian sentence involves two thinkers where our (B)-(E) involve just one, a signiftcant
complication, still such Hob-Nobbing with witches is perfectly sensible. We cannot
pursue the issues here. Suffice it to say that classical possible-worlds semantics (cf.
Chapter VII) cannot interpret the sentences in question. For an insightful and extensive
study of the semantica1 issues involved and proposals for enhanced syntactic and seman-
tic machinery to deal with the problems, see Esa Saarinen, 'Intentional Identity Inter-
preted: A Case Study of the Relations Among Quantifters, Pronouns, and Propositional
Attitudes', Linguistics and Philosophy 2 (1978), 151-223. Thanks are due Professor
Saarinen for helpful discussions on the problems posed by Geach's puzzle.
20 Using the name 'Billy Joe' in (13) offers a natural and illuminating description of
Billy Joe's individuation in Smith's belief system. For a main function of the use of
proper names is to keep track of one and the same individual through changes in its
description, that is, through different assertions about it. (F~llesdal has stressed this
point about proper names in 'Reference and Meaning' (Note 1 above).) Thus, Smith
might give expression to the various beliefs we have attributed him by saing: 'Billy Joe is
1/>1" ••• , 'Billy Joe is I/>n'. The sequence of assertions he thus makes, all being about the
same individual by virtue of his recurrent use of the name 'Billy Joe\ then traces out
the individuation of the referent of 'Billy Joe' (that is, of the person he takes to be its
referent) in his belief system. And since Smith himself might express these beliefs in that
way, we may naturally describe them by the fragment of (13), 'Smith believes that Billy
Joe is 1/>1 & ... & Smith believes that Billy Joe is I/>n'.
21 See Note 1 above.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY*

Included here are most of the works .cited in the text and a few additional items of
special relevance to our main discussion. Works representative of the kind of Husserl
interpretation we have espoused are marked with '*'.

[1) Robert Merrihew Adams, 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity', Journal of
Philosophy 76 (1979),5-26.
(2) Robert Merrihew Adams, 'Theories of Actuality', Nous 8 (1974), 211-31.
(3) Karl Ameriks, 'Husserl's Realism', Philosophical Review 86 (1977),498-519.
[4) G. E. M. Anscombe,/ntention, Blackwell, Oxford, 1957.
(5) G. E. M. Anscombe, 'The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature',
in R. J. Butler (ed.), Analytical Philosophy, 2nd series, Blackwell, Oxford,
1965, pp. 158-80.
(6) Richard E. Aquila, 'Husserl and Frege on Meaning', Journal of the History of
Philosophy 12 (1974), 377-83.
(7) Richard E. Aquila, Intentionality: A Study of Mental Acts, Pennsylvania State
University Press, University Park, 1977.
[8) Stephen E. Boer and William G. Lycan, 'Knowing Who', Philosophical Studies
28 (1975), 299-344.
(9) Bernard Bo1zano, Theory of Science (ed. and trans!. by Rolf George), University
of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972.
(10) Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (ed. by linda L.
McAlister, trans!. by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister),
Humanities Press, New York, 1973.
[11) Franz Brentano, The True and the Evident (trans!. by Roderick M. Chisholm,
Use Politzer, and Kurt R. Fischer, ed. by Roderick M. Chisholm), Humanities
Press, New York, 1966.
(12) Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World (trans!. by Rolf George),
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1969.
(13) Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, 2nd ed., The University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1956.
(14) Rudolf Carnap, 'Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Languages', Philosophical
Studies 6 (1955). Reprinted in [l3), pp. 233-47.
[l5) David Carr, 'Intentionality', in Edo Pivcevic (ed.), Phenomenology and Philoso-
phical Understanding, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975, pp. 17-
36.
(16) Hector-Neri Castaneda, 'Consciousness and Behavior: Their Basic Connections',
in Castaneda (ed.), Intentionality, Minds, and Perception, Wayne State Univer-
sity Press, Detroit, 1967, pp. 121-58.

* We thank Judith Hesch for her help in compiling the Bibliography.

407
408 BIBLIOGRAPHY

[17] Hector-Neri Castaneda, '''He'': A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness',

Ratio 8 (1966), 130-57.
[18] Hector-Neri Castaneda, 'Indicators and Quasi- Indicators', American Philosophical
Quarterly 4 (1967),85-100.
[19] Hector- Neri Castaneda, 'Perception, Belief, and the Structure of Physical Objects
and Consciousness', Synthese 35 (1975), 285-351.
[20] Hector-Neri Castaneda, Thinking and Doing, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975.
[21] Hector-Neri Castaneda, 'Thinking and the Structure of the World', Philosophia
4 (1974), 3-40.
[22] Roderick M. Chisholm, 'Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Inten-
tional', in Edward N. Lee and Maurice Mandelbaum (eds.), Phenomenology and
Existentialism, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1967, pp. 1-23.
[23] Roderick M. Chisholm, 'Identity Through Possible Worlds', Nolls 1 (1967),1-8.
[24] Roderick M. Chisholm, 'Individuation: Some Thomistic Questions and Answers',
Grazer Philosophische Studien 1 (1975), 25-41.
[25] Roderick M. Chisholm, 'Intentionality', in Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclo-
pedia of Philosophy, IV, Macmillan & The Free Press, New York, 1967, pp.
203-204.
[26] Roderick M. Chisholm, 'Notes on the Logic of Believing', Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 24 (1963-64),195-201. Reprinted in [104].
[27] Roderick M. Chisholm, 'On Some Psychological Concepts and the "Logic" of
Intentionality', in Hector-Neri Castaneda (ed.), Intentionality, Minds, and
Perception, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1967, pp. 11-35.
[28] Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study, Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1957.
[29] Roderick M. Chisholm, (ed.), Realism and the Background of Phenomenology,
The Free Press, New York, 1960.
[30] Noam Chomsky, Rules and Representations, Columbia University Press, New
York,1980.
[3l] Alonzo Church, 'A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation', in Paul
Henle, H. M. Kallen, and S. K. Langer (eds.), Structure, Method and Meaning:
Essays in Honor of Henry M. Scheffer, Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1951,
pp.3-24.
[32] Alonzo Church, 'The Need for Abstract Entities in Semantic Analysis', Proceed-
ings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 80 (1951), 100-12. Re-
printed in Irving M. Copi and James A. Gould (eds.), Contemporary Readings
in Logical Theory, Macmillan, New York, 1967.
[33) Romane Clark, 'Comments', in Norman S. Care and Robert H. Grimm (eds.),
Perception and Personal Identity, The Press of Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, 1969, pp. 174-87. Comments on Jaakko Hintikka, 'On the Logic
of Perception', pp. 140-73 (reprinted in [79]); with Hintikka's 'Replies',
pp.188-96.
[34) Donald Davidson, 'Truth and Meaning', Synthese 17 (1967), 304-24.
[35) Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language,
D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1972.
[36] Daniel C. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology,
The M.I.T. Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, Mass., 1978.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 409

[37] Daniel C. Dennett, Content and Consciousness, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London, 1969.
[38] Keith Donnellan, 'Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions', in [35], pp.
356-79.
[39] Keith Donnellan, 'Reference and Definite Descriptions', Philosophical Review
75 (1966), 281-304. Reprinted in [145], pp. 42-65.
*[40] Hubert L. Dreyfus (ed.), Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science, The
M.l.T. Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, Mass., 1982 forthcoming.
*(41) Hubert L. Dreyfus, 'Husserl's Phenomenology of Perception: From Transcen-
dental to Existential Phenomenology', Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University,
1963.
*[42] Hubert L. Dreyfus, 'The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch's Crucial Contribution',
in Lester Embree (ed.), Life- World and Consciousness, Northwestern University
Press, Evanston, ill., 1972, pp. 135-70. Revised and reprinted as 'Husserl's
Perceptual Noema', in [40].
*[43] Hubert L. Dreyfus, 'Sinn and Intentional Object', in Robert C. Solomon (ed.),
Phenomenology and Existentialism, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, pp. 196-
210.
[44] Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language, Harper & Row, New York,
1973.
[45] J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, 2nd ed., Oxford Univer-
sity Press, Oxford, 1963.
[46] Jerry A. Fodor, Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of
Cognitive Science, The M.l.T. Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, Mass., 1981.
* [47] Dagfmn F¢llesdal, 'Brentano and Husserl on Intentional Objects and Perception',
in R. M. Chisholm (ed.), Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos, Rodolpi, Amsterdam,
1978, pp. 83-94. Reprinted in [40].
*[48] Dagfinn F¢lllesdal, 'Husserl and Heidegger on the Role of Actions in the Consti-
tution of the World', in Esa Saarinen et al. (eds.), Essays in Honour of Jaakko
Hintikka, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1979, pp. 365-78.
*[49] Dagfmn F¢llesdal, Husserl und Frege, l. Kommisjon Hos H. Aschehong & Co.,
W. Nygaard, Oslo, 1958.
*[50] Dagfmn F¢llesdal, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema', Journal of Philosophy 66
(1969), 680-87. Reprinted in Robert C. Solomon (ed.), Phenomenology and
Existentialism, Harper & Row, New York, 1972; and in [40].
* [51] Dagfmn F¢llesdal, Husserl's Phenomenology, forthcoming.
*[52] Dagfmn F¢llesdal, 'An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philoso-
phers', in Raymond E. Olson and Anthony M. Paul (eds.), Contemporary Phi-
losophy in Scandinavia, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1972, pp. 417-29.
[53] Dagfmn F¢llesdal, 'Knowledge, Identity, and Existence', Theoria 33 (1967),
1-27.
*[54] Dagfinn F¢llesdal, 'Phenomenology', in Edward C. Carterette and Morton P.
Friedman (eds.), Handbook of Perception, I. Academic Press, Inc., New York,
1974, pp. 377-86. Reprinted as 'Husserl's Theory of Perception', in [40].
[55] Dagfinn F¢llesdal, 'Quine on Modality', Synthese 19 (1968), 147-57. Re-
printed in Donald Davidson and Jaakko Hintikka (eds.), Words and Objections,
D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975.
410 BIBLIOGRAPHY

[56] Gottlob Frege, The Basic Laws of Arithmetic (ed. and transl. by Montgomery
Furth), University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
[57] Gottlob Frege, 'Review of Dr. E. Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic' (transl. by
E. W. Kluge), Mind 81 (1972), 321-37. Extracts also translated in [59], pp.
79-85.
[58] Gottlob Frege, 'The Thought: A Logical Inquiry' (transl. by A. M. and Marcelle
Quinton), Mind 65 (1956), 289-311. Reprinted in P. F. Strawson (ed.), Philo·
sophical Logic, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1967, pp. 17-38.
[59] , Gottlob Frege, (Translations from) the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob
Frege (ed. by Peter Geach and Max Black), Blackwell, Oxford, 1966. See esp.
'Begriffsschrift (Chapter I)', pp. 1-20; 'Function and Concept', pp. 21-41;
'On Concept and Object', pp. 42-55; 'On Sense and Reference', pp. 56-78;
and 'Review of Husserl's Philosophie der A rithmetik' (extracts), pp. 79-85.
[60] Gottlob Frege, 'Uber Sinn und Bedeutung', in Frege, Funktion, Begrift.
Bedeutung: Funf logische Studien (ed. by Giinther Patzig), Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, Gottingen, 1962, pp. 40-65. English translations in [59] and in
[104].
[61] Montgomery Furth, 'Introduction', in [56].
[62] P. T. Geach, Logic Matters, University of California Press, Berkeley,1972.
[63] P. T. Geach, Mental Acts, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1957.
[64] Nelson Goodman, The Structure of Appearance, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1951.
[65] Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, Duquesne University Press, Pitts-
burgh, 1964.
(66) Aron Gurwitsch, 'Husserl's Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness in
Historical Perspective', in Edward N. Lee and Maurice Mandelbaum (eds.),
Phenomenology and Existentialism, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1967,
pp. 25-57. Reprinted in [40].
[67] Aron Gurwitsch, 'On the Intentionality of Consciousness', in Marvin Farber
(ed.), Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1940, pp. 65-83. Reprinted in Joseph J. Kockelmans
(ed.), Phenomenology, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1967, pp. 118-37.
[68] Aron Gurwitsch, Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, Northwestern
University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1966.
*[69] Harrison Hall, 'Intersubjective Phenomenology and Husserl's Cartesianism', Man
and World 12 (1979), 13-20.
*[70] Harrison Hall, 'The Philosophical Significance of Husserl's Theory of Inten-
tionality', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 13 (1982), 79-84.
*[71] Harrison Hall, 'Was Husserl a Realist or an Idealist?', in [40].
[72] John Haugeland (ed.), Mind Design, The M.I.T. Press/Bradford Books, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1981.
[73] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (transl. by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson), Harper & Row, New York, 1962.
[74] Martin Heidegger, Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology (transl. by Albert
Hofstadter), Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1982.
[75] Jaakko Hintikka, 'Individuals, Possible Worlds, and Episternic Logic', Noris 1
(1967), 33-62.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 411

[76) Jaakko Hintikka, The Intentions of Intentionality and Other New Models for
Modalities, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975. See esp. 'The Semantics of Modal
Notions and the Indeterminacy of Ontology', pp. 26-42 (reprinted in [35));
'Objects of Knowledge and Belief: Acquaintances and Public Figures', pp.43-
58; 'Carnap's Heritage in Logical Semantics', pp. 76-101; 'Quine on Quantify-
ing In: A Dialogue', pp. 102-36; and 'The Intentions of Intentionality', pp.
192-222.
[77) Jaakko Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y.,
1962.
[78) Jaakko Hintikka, 'Modality as Referential Multiplicity', Ajatus 20 (1957),
49-64.
[79) Jaakko Hintikka, Models for Modalities, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1969. See esp.
'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes', pp. 87-111 (reprinted in [101) and
in [104)); and 'On the Logic of Perception', pp. 151-83.
[80) Edmund Husser! [for main citations, see pp. ix-x above).
[81) Edmund Husser!, 'Besprechung von K. Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und
Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, in Husser!, Aufsiitze und Rezensionen (1890-
1910) (ed. by Bernhard Rang), Husserliana XXII, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1979, pp.
349-56.
[82) Edmund Husser!, 'Intentionale Gegenstiinde', in Husser!, Aufsiitze und
Rezensionen (1890-1910) (ed. by Bernhard Rang), Husserliana XXII, Nijhoff,
The Hague, 1979, pp. 303-48.
[83) Edmund Husser!, Philosophie der Arithmetik (ed. by Lothar Eley), Husserliana
XII, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1970. [Main text fust published in 1891.)
[84) Roman Ingarden, On the Motives which Led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism
(trans!. by Arnor Hanniba!sson), Nijhoff, The Hague, 1975.
[85) David Kaplan, 'Dthat', in Peter A. French et al. (eds.), Contemporary Perspec·
tives in the Philosophy of Language, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
1979,pp.383-400.
[86] David Kaplan, 'On the Logic of Demonstratives', in Peter A. French et al.
(eds.), Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language, University
of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1979, pp. 401-12.
(87) David Kaplan, 'Quantifying In', Synthese 19 (1968), 178-214. Reprinted in
Donald Davidson and Jaakko Hintikka (eds.), Words and Objections, D. Reidel,
Dordrecht,1975;andin [101].
[88] Iso Kern, Husserl und Kant, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1964.
[89) William Kneale, 'Modality de Dicto and de Re" in Ernest Nagel et al. (eds.),
Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Stanford University Press,
Stanford, Cal., 1962, pp. 622-33.
(90) William Kneale and A. N. Prior, Symposium on 'Intentionality and Intensional-
ity', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 42 (1968), 73-106.
(91) Saul Kripke, ~Identity and Necessity', in Milton K. Munitz (ed.), Identity and
Individuation, New York University Press, New York, pp. 135-64. Reprinted
in (145), pp. 66-101.
(92) Saul Kripke, 'Naming and Necessity', in [35), pp. 253-355,763-69.
(93) Saul Kripke, 'Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic', Acta Philosophica
Fennica 16 (1963), 83-94. Reprinted in (101).
412 BIBLIOGRAPHY

*(94) Gl,lido Kiing, 'Husserl on Pictures and Intentional Objects', Review of Meta-
physics 26 (1973),670-80_
* (95) John Francis Lad, 'On Intuition, Evidence, and Unique Representation', Ph.D.
dissertation, Stanford University, 1973.
(96) David M. Levin, Reason and Evidence in Husserl's Phenomenology, North-
western University Press, Eval~ton, Ill., 1970.
(97) C. I. Lewis, 'The Modes of Meaning', Philosophy and Phenomenological Re-
search 4 (1944), 236-49. Reprinted in (102).
(98) David K. Lewis, 'Anselm and Actuality', Nous 4 (1970), 175-88.
(99) David K. Lewis, 'Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic', Journal of
Philosophy 65 (1968), 113-26.
(100) David K. Lewis, 'General Semantics', Synthese 22 (1970), 18-67. Reprinted
in (35).
(101) Leonard Linsky (ed.), Reference and Modality, Oxford University Press, Lon-
don, 1971.
(102) Leonard Linsky (ed.), Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, The Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1952.
(103) J. L. Mackie, 'Problems of Intentionality', in Edo Pivcevic (ed.), Phenomenology
and Philosophical Understanding, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975.
(104) Ausonio Marras (ed.), Intentionality, Mind, and Language, The University of
Illinois Press, Urbana, 1972.
[105) Benson Mates, 'Leibniz on Possible Worlds', in B. van Rootselaar and J. F. Staal
(eds.), Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, III, North-Holland,
Amsterdam, 1968.
(106) Linda L. McAlister, 'Chisholm and Brentano on Intentionality', Review of
.Metaphysics 28 (1974), 328-38.
*[ 107) Ronald McIntyre, 'Husserl and Referentiality: The Role of the Noema as an
Intensional Entity', Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1970.
*[ 108) Ronald McIntyre, 'Husserl's Phenomenological Conception of Intentionality
and its Difficulties', Philosophia, forthcoming.
*[ 109) Ronald McIntyre, 'Intending and Referring', in (40).
*[ 110) Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith, 'Husserl's Identification of Mean-
ing and Noema', The Monist S9 (1975), 111-32. Reprinted in part in (40).
[Ill) Alexius Meinong, 'The Theory of Objects' (trans!. by Isaac Levi, D. B. Terrell,
and Roderick M. Chisholm), in (29) , pp. 76.,..117.
(112) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (trans!. by Colin Smith),
Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1962.
*(113) Izchak Miller, 'Husserl's Account of Our Temporal Awareness', in (40).
*[ 114) Izchak Miller, Husserl's Theory of Perception, The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge,
Mass., forthcoming.
*[ 115) Izchak Miller, 'The Phenomenology of Perception: Husserl's Account of Our
Temporal Awareness', Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles,
1979.
*(116) J. N. Mohanty, The Concept of Intentionality, Warren H. Green, St. Louis,
1972.
(117) J. N. Mohanty, Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning, 3rd ed., Nijhoff, The
Hague, 1976.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 413

[118] J. N. Mohanty (transi.), 'Frege-Husserl Correspondence' (translated with notes),

Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (1974),83-96.
*[ 119] J. N. Mohanty, 'Husser! and Frege: A New Look at their Relationship', Research
in Phenomenology 4 (1974), 51-62. Reprinted in [40].
*[120] J. N. Mohanty, Husserl and Frege: A Historical and Philosophical Essay, forth-
coming.
*[121] J. N. Mohanty, 'On Husserl's Theory of Meaning', Southwestern Journal of
Philosophy 5 (1974), 229-44.
[122] Richard Montague, 'Pragmatics and Intensional Logic', Synthese 22 (1970),
68-94. Reprinted in [35].
[123] Thomas Nagel, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', Philosophical Review 83 (1974),
435-51.
[124] Maurice Natanson, Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks, North-
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[125 J Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.,
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[126 J Terence Parsons, 'A Prolegomenon to Meinongian Semantics', Journal of Philos·
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[127] A. N. Prior, Formal Logic, 2nd ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962.
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[129] Hilary Putnam, 'Meaning and Reference', Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973),
699-711. Reprinted in [145 J, pp. 119-32.
[130J Hilary Putnam, 'The Meaning of "Meaning"', in Putnam, Philosophical Papers,
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[131] Willard Van Orman Quine, 'Epistemology Naturalized', in Quine, Ontological
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[132] Willard Van Orman Quine, 'Grades of Theoreticity', in Lawrence Foster and
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[133J Willard Van Orman Quine, 'Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes', Journal
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[ 135 J Willard Van Orman Quine, 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', in Quine, From a
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[137 J Paul Ricouer, Husserl: An Examination of His Philosophy (transi. by Edward
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(155) David Woodruff Smith, 'Content and Context of Perception', Synthese, forth-
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*(158) David Woodruff Smith, 'Intentionality, Noemata, and Individuation: The Role
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 BIBLIOGRAPHY 415

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[162] Robert Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution,
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[163] Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Mediations, Northwestern University Press,
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*[165] Michael Sukale, Comparative Studies in Phenomenology, Nijhoff, The Hague,
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[168] Charles Taylor, The Explanation of Behavior, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,
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[169] James E. Tomberlin, 'Identity, Intensionality, and Intentionality', Syn these ,
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*[170] Robert S. Tragesser, Phenomenology and Logic, Cornell University Press, Ithaca
and London, 1977.
[171] Kasimir Twardowski, On the Content and Object of Presentations (trans\. by
Reinhardt Grossmann), Nijhoff, The Hague, 1977.
[172] J. O. Urmson and 1. Jonathan Cohen, 'Criteria of Intensionality' Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 42 (1968), 107-42.
[173] Zeno Vendler, 'Thinking of Individuals', Noils 10 (1976), 35-46.
[174] Georg H. von Wright, An Essay in Modal Logic, North-Holland, Amsterdam,
1951.
[175] Morton G. White, 'The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism',
in Sidney Hook (ed.), John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom, Dial
Press, New York, 1950. Reprinted in [102], pp. 272-86.
[176] Dallas Willard, 'The Paradox of Logical Psychologism: Husserl's Way Out',
American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1972),94-99.
 INDEX OF NAMES*

Adams, Robert Merrihew, 403 52, 154-56, 211, 222, 224, 353,402,
Anscombe, G. E. M., 44, 60, 84 405
Aquila, Richard E., 152 Foot, Philippa, 36
Aquinas, Thomas, 403 Frege, Gottlob, xvi, xvii, 35,40,45,61-
Aristotle, 13 7 82, 85-86, 88, 107, 118-19, 124,
Armstrong, D. M., 35, 38 151,153-56,160,170-78,192,205-
206,213, 223, 266-67,276-79,281,
Berkeley, George, 104 285-89,306, 308,317-23,327-31,
Boer, Stephen E., 404 334, 336, 346, 352, 354
Bolzano, Bernard, xvii, 108, 118-19, 151, Freud, Sigmund, 98
156, 16~ 172-73, 19~ 223 Furth, Montgomery, 85, 306
Brentano, Franz, xvii, 2, 10, 24, 35-36,
40, 47-54, 57-61, 80, 82-83, 89, Geach, Peter T., 36,405
109-110, 161 Goodman, Nelson, 265
Grossmann, Reinhardt, 223
Carnap, Rudolf, xvii, 21, 37-38,45,64, Gurwitsch, Aron, 154, 157-67, 222-23,
66-67, 69, 85-86, 169-70, 175, 265
265-71,276,278-87,289,291-92,
305-306, 308, 313, 316-17, 321, Heidegger, Martin, 264-65
329 Hintikka, laakko, xvii, 35-38, 276, 291,
Carr, David, 35, 39 306, 322-29, 331-34, 338-41,343,
Castaneda, Hector-Neri, 84, 223, 305,402 345, 349, 351-53,360,366-68,402-
Chisholm, Roderick M., 13, 36-38, 52, 404
58-59,78,82-84,403 Hume, David, 100
Church, Alonzo, 80, 85, 317
Oark, Romane, 38, 366,402 Ingarden, Roman, 152
Cohen, L. Jonathan, 38
Kant, Immanuel, xiv, 101, 103-104, 235,
Davidson, Donald, 318, 351 277,288,298,304,385
Dennett, Daniel C., 35 Kaplan, David, 38, 75, 86, 224-25, 306,
Descartes, Rene, xiv, xv, 94-98,103-104 352,367,402,404
Donnellan, Keith, 36, 207, 220, 224-25, Kerry, Benno, 163
401 Kneale, William, 39
Dreyfus, Hubert, 222-23, 226 Kraus, Oskar, 35, 82
Dummett, Michael, 85 Kripke, Saul, 207, 211, 224-25, 290,
306,322,324,351,401
Findlay, 1. N., 83-84 Kiing, Guido, 152, 223
F ¢lllesdal, Dagfinn, xvi, xvii, 38, 147, 151-

* We thank Eddie Yeghiayan for his assistance with the Index of Names.

417
418 INDEX OF NAMES
Lad, Joh.n Francis, 222, 224
Landgrebe, Ludwig, 265
Leibniz, G. W., 299, 319, 323-24, 374,
376
Lewis, C. I., xvii, 85, 278-83, 286-87,
306,353
Lewis, David K., 306,403
Lycan, William G., 404
Mackie, J. L., 39
Mates, Benson, 403
McAlister, Linda L., 82
McIntyre, Ronald, 222, 224, 401
Meinong, Alexius, xvii, 40, 47,54-58,80,
83-84, 109, 111-12, 119, 155,160,
166-67,170,199,315
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 226, 265
Miller, Izchak, 35,150-51,222.224
Mohanty, J. N., 35, 38, 151-52, 223, 306
Montague, Richard, xvii, 306, 351-52
Parsons, Terence, 84
Peirce, C. S., 267
Prior, Arthur N., 39,46,82
Putnam, Hilary, 224, 306, 402
Quine, Willard Van Orman, 32, 38-39,
60,84,224,274,305-306,328,351
Russell, Bertrand, 8, 36-38, 216, 290,
345,347,353
Saarinen, Esa, 405
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 100, 151
Searle, John R., 225
Smith, David Woodruff, 84, 222,224-25,
401-402
Sokolowski, Robert, 265
Stalnaker, Robert, 306
Tarski, Alfred, 317- 20, 345, 347, 351
Taylor, Charles, 38
Twardowski, Kasimir, xvii, 54, 109-13,
115,118-19,133,148,150-51,163-
64,170,173,223
Urmson, J. 0., 38
Van Fraassen, Bas, 353
Vendler, Zeno, 402
von Wright, Georg H., 39
White, Morton G., 306
Zimmermann, J., 110, 112
 INDEX OF TOPICS
Aboutness: defined, 8-9; as intentional
relation, 12-14,.18-19,51-53,76-
81, 129-30,293-94,336-43, 355-
58, 387-89, 391, 394-96; and inten-
sionality, 30-33, 72-74, 327-28,
331-32,349-50, horizon of a., 263
Acquaintance (perceptual definiteness),
20, 212-19, 225 (n. 32), 355-56,
358-60,362-69,398-99
Act (of consciousness): defined, 3-5; a.
vs. object of consciousness, 5-6, 89-
90; direct-object a. vs. propositional a.,
6-9, 23; Husserl's analysis of a., see
Content, Hyle, Noema, Noesis; "pure"
a., see Transcendental reduction.
Adumbration (Abschattung), 139
Anaphoric reference and anaphoric inten-
tion, 395-401
Appearance, 162
Appearing, 138-40
Background beliefs, 220-21, 246-55,
271-75,277,332-33,388-401
Bedeutung: as linguistic meaning for
Husserl, 171-82; as linguistic referent
for Frege, 63-66
Bracketing (epoche), xiv, xvi, 92, 96-101,
105,122-23,160,169,234
Co-directedness (of acts), 149-50, 202,
231-32,240,244-46,261,263
Comprehension, 279-85, 302-303
Conception-dependence (of intentional
relations): defined, 13-16; and failure
of substitutivity of identity, 26- 28,
62-63; in Husserl's theory of inten-
tionality, 90-91, 107, 148-49,206;
in object-theories, 41-44,50-52,56,
77 - 78; in possible-worlds theory,
341-43,390
419
Constitution, 103, 148, 149, 231, 235,
241-43
Content (lnhalt) (vs. object of act): xv,
54, 87-88,92-93, 108-40, 154-56;
Twardowski's theory of, 109-12;
quality and matter as constituents of,
113-15,133-36; real (reelle) vs. ideal
(or intentional) c., 115-25, 135-37;
ideal c. as act-type, 116-17, 141-42;
ideal c. as meaning, 112, 117-18, 121,
124-25, 154-56; c. as noesis and as
noema or Sinn, 119-27,131,133-36,
142-43, 154-56, 159-65; c.-theory
of intentionality, xv, 104-108, 141-
50; sensory c., 115, 136-40
De dicto: modalities, 31-33, 72-75,
326-27, 336-39; intentions, see In-
definite intention
Definite description: in act-sentences, 16,
25; d.-<1. model of reference and inten-
tionality, 204-13
Definite (de re) intention: 18-21,32-33,
79,202,208-19,261,294,339-41,
344-45, 354-69, 387-401; vs. in-
definite (de dicto) intention, 18- 21,
32-33; individuatively d. i., see In-
dividuative intention; perceptually
(intuitionally) d. i., see Acquaintance
Demonstratives: 204, 213-22, 290-91,
359-60, 362-69; and perception,
213-19, 359-60, 362-69; Husserl's
theory of, 213-19
Determinable X, see X
De re: modalities, 31-33, 74-75, 327-
28, 339-41; intentions, see Definite
intention
Direct-object act, 6-8, 27 -28
Ego: empirical vs. transcendental, 97-100;
420 INDEX OF TOPICS
and transcendental phenomenology,
95-104; role in intentionality, 102-
104,235,250-51,274-75,277
Eidetic: 20, 95, 100-103; insight, 101;
reduction, 95, 100-102; sciences,
101-102; variation, 10 1
Eidos: 100;see Essence
Epoche, see Bracketing
Essence: 6, 20, 100-103, 117, 124-25,
167-70,175, 375-79; act-e., 116-17,
120,124-25, 141-42, 175; individual,
291-92, 375-79; transcendent, 169,
378-79; transcendental, 100, 102-
103, 169; vs. noema and Sinn, 124-
25,167-70 .
Evidence, 139-40, 255, 267-68, 270-71
Existence-independence (of intentional
relations): defined, 10-13; and failure
of existential generalization, 29-30; in
Husserl's theory of intentionality, 90-
91, 106, 147-48, 206; in object-the-
ories, 41-42, 50, 52, 55, 77-78; in
possible-worlds theory, 339-41; of
definite intentions, 339-40,342,357-
58
Experience (Erfahrung and Erlebnis), 3-4,
35 (n. 3),92-93,242-45,268
Extension: 21-22,63-70,278-79,317-
18, 345 -47; in possible worlds, 279-
83, 319-24, 349, see Comprehension,
see Meaning functions
Extensional contexts or expressions: de-
fined, 21-23
Extensionality: principle of e., defined,
66-67
Frame of indeterminateness, 199, 211,
247
Fullness, see Intuitional fulfJIlment
Gegebenheitsweise, see Way-of-givenness
Horizon: xvi- xvii, 227 -64; defined, 229-
33; act-h. vs. object-h., 229-33, 239-
41; and background beliefs, 246 -56;
and possible worlds, 300-304, 310-
12, 348-50; counter-evidence in, 246,
255-56; generalized theory of, 262-
64; h. of inattention, 236- 39; internal
vs. external, 256-58; manifold as, 232,
244-46; perceptual h., 241-44; pre-
delineation of, 199, 231, 239-40,
246-56; temporal h., 258-59; verifi-
cation chains in, 259-61
Horizon-analysis: and possible-worlds the-
ory of meaning, 268-71, 276-77,
300-304, 312-13, 361-62; and verifi-
cation theory of meaning, 267-68,
270-71; as phenomenological analysis,
233-36, 254, 274-78; as pragmatic
analysis, 271- 74, 277 - 78
Hyle, hyletic data, 2-3, 136-40
Idea (Varstellung), 67-68,118,172
Ideal (ideell. ideal): 116-17, 123-25,
173-76; see Content, ideal
Idealism, 104, 159,235,288
Ideation, see Eidetic reduction
Identity: i. of natural individuals as tran-
scendent, 19-20, 291-92, 375-79;
principle of substitutivity of i., 26-28,
see Intensionality; trans-world i., 372-
73
Immanent, 6, 48-50, 53, 89, 110, 121-
23,160,166,169,221
Incomplete objects, 17, 43-44, 55-56,
111,165-67,315-16
Indefinite (de dicta) intention: 18-21,
30-33,51-52,78-79,209-11,213,
263,294,312,336-39,344-45,395-
96; vs. definite (de re) intention, 18-
21,32-33; role in knowing-who, 399-
400
Indeterminacy of intention, 16-18, 43-
44,198-200,227-32,238-40,343
Individual concepts or senses, 67, 285,
289-92,330-31
Individuating senses or meanings, 212,
290-92,331,340-41,362,388-91
Individuation: 369-87; Husserl on, 379-
87; in consciousness, 341, 355-56,
370-71,393-94; through time, 379-
82; transworld, 372-73, 383-87; i. of
intentions, 15-16
 INDEX OF TOPICS
Individuative intention, 19-20,212,290-
92, 340-41, 355-62, 368-69, 387-
401
Inexistence, 47-50, 89
Intension: 45,63,66-69,175,184,187,
278-92, 320-22; defined, 69; see
Noematic Sinn, Sense
Intensional: contexts, 21- 24, see Inten-
sionality; entities, 45, 69, 75-82, 175-
76,182,285-89, see Intension
Intensionality: defined, 21- 22; charac-
terized, 25-31; in Frege's semantics,
61-63, 69-75; in possible-worlds se-
mantics, 325-28; vs. intentionality,
24,33-35
Intention: defined, 5; see Act, Definite L,
Indefinite i.
Intentional: context, 23; modalities, 23;
content, see Content, ideal; objects,
see Intentional objects; relation, see
Intentional relation
Intentional objects: 42-47; ambiguities in
notion of, 44-47; Fregean senses as,
68-69; in Husserl, 93,175-76; moti-
vations for, 42-44; see Object-theory
of intentionality
Intentional relation: defined, 10-11; main
characteristics of, 11- 21; see Definite
intention, Indefinite intention, Primary
intention, Secondary intention
Intentionality: defined, xiii, 1-3; adverbial
theory of, xv, 142; content-approach
to, xv, 92-93, 105-108, 141-50;
Husserl's basic theory of, 141-50; in
Frege's semantics, 61-63, 75-81; in
possible-worlds theory, 308-16, 337-
45,361-62,366-69 ; mediator-theories
of, 80-82, 141-50; object-approach
to, 40-44, 61-63, see Object-theory
of i.; phenomenological approach to,
93, 102-105; pragmatic analysis of,
387-401
Intuition (Anschauung): 14,20,101,132,
136-37,140,185,213-19,229,245,
363-64; see Acquaintance
Intuitional fulfillment (fullness): 132,140,
185-86, 198,230,255; defined, 140
421
Knowing-who: 19-20,312, 319-401;see
Individuative intention
Language and thought, xvi, 34, 11 7 -18,
153,173,178-84,283-89
Manifold: 232,244-46; see Horizon
Matter (Materie) (as component of act-
content), 93, 113-18,121,125,127,
133-36,161,164
Meaning: ideal content as m., 112, 117-
18, 124-25,154-56; linguistic m., see
Sense (linguistic); noematic m., see
Noematic Sinn
Meaning functions, 281-95, 312-16,
320-22, 328-31, 334-43,362,366-
69
Modal: context, 22-23; operator, 22-23
Modalities: 22-23, 319, 321-22, 324-
25; de dicto vs. de re, 31-33
Motivated possibilities, 248-50
Natural attitude, 95-96
Noema: xv-xvi, 87-88,119-36; as ideal
content of act, 119-25,133-36,141-
42, 154-56, 159-60; as meaning, 121,
154-56, 159-60, 184-94; role of n.
in intention, 119-39, 142-50; struc-
ture of, 124-36; vs. essence, 124-25,
142, 167-70; vs. object of act, 87-88,
121-24,144,146,155-56,159-60
Noematic Sinn: 125-36, 153-219; and
linguistic meaning, 154-56, 159-60;
as ideal content of act, 133-36, 154-
56, 159-60; examples of, 127-30;
FiJUesdal's interpretation of, xvi, 147-
48, 154-56; Gurwitsch's interpreta-
tion of, 157-66; possible-worlds ex-
plication of, 292-95; structure of,
195-204; role of n. S. in intention,
126-27, 141-50, 194-222; vs. es-
sence, 167 - 70; vs. incomplete objects,
165-67; vs. object of act, 142-44,
146,lS5-65
Noesis: 119-22, 125-26; as real content
of act, 119-22, 135-36; role of n. in
intention, 119-22, 137-39, 142-46;
422 INDEX OF TOPICS
structure of, 125-26, 130-32, 135-
36
Noetic (phase of act), see Noesis
Object (of consciousness): 5-6, 10-11,
40-41, 89-91; of propositional acts,
8-9, 334-36, 343-45; vs. content of
act, 54, 92-93, 108-10, 113,117; vs.
noema and noematic Sinn, 121-24,
142-44, 146, 155-65; see also Object-
theory of intentionality
Object-theory of intentionality: 10, 41-
61,77-80, 157-67; Brentano's, 47-
54, 57-61; Gurwitsch's, 157-65;
Meinong's, 54-57, 165-67; Husserl's
rejection of, 81, 87-93
Perception: 3-4, 49-50, 89, 91-92;
Gurwitsch on objects of, 157-58;
Husserl's theory of, 136-40; role of
p. in horizon, 241-44; Sinn of p. as
demonstrative, 213-19, 362-69; see
Acquaintance, Hyle
Perceptual defmiteness, see Acquaintance
Phenomenological: description, 187-88,
195-96, 214, 358-61, 363-65;
method, see Reduction; psychology,
95-97; reflection, xiv, xvi, 96, 122-
23; p. sense of intentional verbs, 3-4,
24; p. sense of 'appearance', 162
Phenomenology: dermed, xiii-xiv, 87-88,
93-94, 102-103; as Cartesian, 94-99,
103-104; as eidetic, 101-103; as
Kantian, 101-104,235,277; as tran-
scendental, 97-104; Husserlian tran-
scendental p., 93-104
Positing character of act, see Thetic char-
acter of act
Possible worlds: 350-51 (n. 1); and hori-
zon, 300-304; and theory of inten-
tionality, 308-16, 333-45, 361-62,
366-69; in Husserl's philosophy, 296-
305; p.-w. explication of noematic
Sinn, 292-95; p.-w. semantics, 268-
69,278-92,316-33,345-50
Pragmatics: defined, 220; and phenom-
enological analysis, 219-22,271-75,
277,295,332-33,387-91
Predelineation (Vorzeichnung) of horizon:
199,231,239-40,246-56; see Back-
ground beliefs, Motivated possibilities
Predicate-senses (in noematic Sinn), 195-
200,203-204,363,365
Presentation (Vorstellung): xv, 10, 90,
110-12,118; cf. Idea
Primary intention (in propositional act),
8-9,129-30,343-45
Proper names, 14-15, 203-208, 211,
216,290-91,358-59
Proposition (Satz), 67, 71, 129-30, 134,
192-94,285-87,334
Propositional acts and attitudes: 6-9, 23,
129-30, 263; and Frege's semantics,
69-82; and possible-worlds semantics,
322-50; see also Aboutness, Primary
intention, Secondary intention
Psychologism, 156,171-73
Quality (as component of act-content):
15, 113-16, 125-26, 131, 133-36;
see Thetic character of act, Thetic com-
ponent of noema
Real (reell, real): 115-17, 173-74; see
Content, real vs. ideal
Reduction: eidetic, 95, 100-102; phe-
nomenological, 93-102, 158, 160,
168-69; psychological, 95-97; tran-
scendental, 95, 97 -100
Reference (linguistic): anaphoric, 394-95;
Frege's theory of, 63-66, 69-75;
Husserl's theory of, 176-78,214-19;
r. and intentionality, 34-35, 204-
208, 210-11, 213-19; r. in possible
worlds, see Extension in possible
worlds
Referent: vs. reference, 64, 65-66; see
Extension, Reference
Reflection, xiv, xvi, 92, 94-96, 98-99,
102, 111, 122, 160, 168, 194, 237,
254
Representation (mental): xv; see Presenta-
tion, Intention, Intentionality
Representationalism, 144,156
 INDEX OF TOPICS
Rigid meaning or sense, 290-91, 293-94,
331-32, 340, 350, 362, 367-69,
400-401
Secondary intention (in propositional act):
9; see Abou tness
Semantics: 21-35, 219-20, 278-92;
Frege's 63-75; Hintikka's, 322-33;
Husserl's, 170-84, 213-19,345-46;
Tarski's, 317-19; possible-worlds s.,
268-69,278-92, 316-33, 345-50
Sense (linguistic): demonstrative s., 213-
19, 363-68; descriptive s., 205-13;
s. (= Sinn) in Frege's semantics, 63-
82, 205; s. (= Bedeutung) in Husserl's
semantics, 170-82; s. in possible-
worlds semantics, 268-69, 278-92,
320-22, 328-32, see Meaning func-
tions
Sense (noematic), see Noematic Sinn
Sense-<iata, 138-39, 198
Sensory data, sensory phase of perception,
see Hyle
Sinn: implicit vs. explicit S. of act, 230-
33, 252;see Noematic Sinn, Sense
State of affairs (Sachverhalt), 8-9, 129,
269,285-87,335-36,343-45,347-
48
Synthesis, 103, 149,212,261
Thetic: 1. character of act, 4-5, 126, 130-
32, 135- 36; 1. component of noema,
126, 130-34, 136, 186-87,189-90,
423
192-94, 263-64; see Way-of-givenness
Transcendent (having unpresented aspects),
16-17,107-108,111,139,149,169,
198-99, 227-29, 286, 291-92, 304,
375-79, 392
Transcendent (outside consciousness), 5-
6,89,123,160,221
Transcendental: defined, 94-95, 97, 99,
103; ego, 97-100, 235, 250, 274-75;
egology, 102; entities, 122-23, 146,
169; phenomenology, 94-104; philos-
ophy, 103-104; reduction, 94-95,
97-100,104-105
Trans-world identity and individuation:
defined, 372-74; and definite inten-
tion, 290-94, 327,331,339-41,361,
367 -69; in Husserl's philosophy, 383-
87
Way-of-givenness (Gegebenheitsweise): as
phase of noesis, 131-32; noematic
correlate of, 130-33, 140; expressibil-
ity of, 184-87; see Thetic character of
act, Thetic component of noema
x (component of noematic Sinn): 195-
96, 200-204; as expressed by demon-
stratives, 204, 213-19, 363; role in
co-<iirectedness, 202, 261, 361; role in
definite intentions, 202-204, 213-19,
293,361,363-65,387-91,395-401;
role in perception, 213-19, 363-65
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