HusserlÕs Psychologism, and Critique of Psychologism, Revisited

Transcription

1 Husserl Studies DOI /s Ó Springer 2006 HusserlÕs Psychologism, and Critique of Psychologism, Revisited BURT C. HOPKINS Department of Philosophy, Seattle University, Seattle, WA, , USA 1. Introduction HusserlÕs mature statement of his views on the nature of psychologism and on the four decade phenomenological war 1 against it identifies three kinds: logical, epistemological, and transcendental psychologism. In what follows, I argue that the psychologism of HusserlÕs earliest work, The Philosophy of Arithmetic, 2 does not correspond to any of these three types identified in Formal and Transcendental Logic. I show that this lack of correspondence is significant, and not only because HusserlÕs final account of how phenomenology overcomes the three kinds of psychologism identified in FTL does not address the kind of psychologism that characterizes the PA. Beyond this, I also show that this accountõs appeal to the numerical identity of the objects of thought, as the definitive mark of their trans-psychological status, represents an appeal to the very same logical structure that the psychologism in the PA attempted, unsuccessfully, to account for. That is, I show that the logical structure of the one over many unity belonging to the authentic cardinal numbers (Anzahlen) investigated in the PA also characterizes the unity of the numerical identity appealed to in HusserlÕs account (in FTL and Experience and Judgment) of phenomenologyõs victory over psychologism. I conclude my remarks with two suggestions: (1) rather than signal the failure of HusserlÕs mature thought to achieve victory in the war against psychologism, its appeal to the numerical identity of the objects of the understanding signals the only way to ensure its triumph; (2) the proper context for establishing the phenomenological priority proper to the numerical mode of being that Husserl attributes to the meaning of the omnitemporality of these objects is the

2 philosophical reconstruction of PlatoÕs unwritten doctrine of eidetic numbers (arithmoi eidetikoi). Pinning down the exact nature of the PAÕs psychologism is no simple task, in part because of the workõs philosophical immaturity, which is exemplified by the maddening fluidity with which its author uses terms such as actõ, presentationõ, conceptõ, contentõ, and object.õ Also, it is difficult not to approach this work through the double perspective of the conceptual level belonging to HusserlÕs later works and the historical self-interpretation that is inseparable from them. (Viewed within this context, the PAÕs psychologism appears as a mistake that is as principled as it is ephemeral.) Nevertheless, the original problem to which the psychologism of PA is the response can be precisely identified, as can HusserlÕs ex post facto characterization of the inadequacy proper to the psychological reflection in BrentanoÕs sense 3 with which his first analyses attempted to solve this problem. 2. The Psychologism of the Philosophy of Arithmatic The problem addressed by the PA concerns the origin of the logical unity of collections, both in the indeterminate sense of the unity of the concept proper to multiplicity (Vielheit) 4 and in the determinate sense of the unity of the concepts proper to the determinate amounts, the cardinal numbers (Anzahlen), that answer to the question How many? These two unities are closely related for Husserl, as this question is directed to the items that fall under the concept of multiplicity. In the case of either unity, the Husserl of PA was acutely aware that, as he put it in 1913, The collection is not an objective (sachliche) unity grounded in the contents of the collected things. 5 This is not to say, however, that Husserl thought that the unity of the collection is not objective. The objectivity of its unity is never in question for him. He was, however, profoundly concerned with the problem of how to account for the objectivity proper to the logical unity of the concepts of indeterminate and determinate collections. His training in theoretical mathematics had, no doubt, sensitized him to the fact that it is impossible to ground the unity of a collection in either the things (Sachen) that compose it or in any combination of the qualities and relations belonging to them. In the PAÕs idiom, neither the physical nor metaphysical (in BrentanoÕs sense of the unification of wholes out of partsõ like color, extension, and intensity) combination of the elements composing a collection can account for the whole of the collectionõs logical unity.

3 HusserlÕs reason in the PA for distinguishing the logical unity of the items belonging to a collection from the logical unity of the collection itself is deceptively simple. Each item that belongs to a collection does so only insofar as it falls under the generically empty concept of anything (Etwas) (or, as he will later say, of anything whatever [Etwas u berhaupt]). Thus, on the one hand, each such item has the logical status of one arbitrary thing, that is, of an arbitrary unit. On the other hand, however, the logical unity of the collection as a whole is not one in this sense but precisely as a collection it somehow encompasses the ones of the units that it functions to unify collectively. Because the logical unity of each of the items composing a collection is inseparable from something that is singular, and because the logical unity of the collection itself is multitudinous, Husserl realized that these two unities are incommensurable. Hence in the PA and not just there, as we shall see Husserl recognized the need to appeal to something other than the singular (and therefore individual) qualities of these items in order to account for the logical unity of indeterminate and determinate multitudes. The problem of accounting for the logical status belonging to both of these kinds of collective unity, then, is the problem that Husserl sought to resolve in the PAÕs analyses by appealing to acts of collecting and counting and to the psychological reflexion (Reflexion) directed to the presentation (Vorstellung) of the collective combination yielded by these acts. He held that acts of collection initially produce indeterminate aggregates (Inbegriffe) or multitudes (Mengen) and that acts of counting initially produce determinate aggregates or multitudes (in the guise of the authentic cardinal numbers). Psychological reflexion directed toward the acts of collective combination responsible for the production of both these indeterminate and determinate multitudes was held by Husserl to yield (respectively) the logically objective concepts of collection and cardinal numbers. Two points are worth noting here in connection with the question of the character of the PAÕs psychologism. One, HusserlÕs appeal to the psychological reflexion toward acts was an appeal made in the service of accounting for the logical unity of the objectivity belonging to the concepts of the two kinds of multitudes identified in the PAÕs logical analysis of arithmetic. Such reflexion, therefore, was manifestly not understood by him to equate this objectivity with its occurrence in the psyche. Two, this appeal grew out of HusserlÕs recognition that the peculiar multitudinous unity proper to the logical unity of the collection or cardinal number cannot be accounted for (or otherwise grounded) in the singular unities proper to the individual items comprising either.

4 These points are worth noting, because HusserlÕs rejection of the psychologism operative in the first point does not in any way entail the rejection of the problem to which it was the response. This problem is succinctly characterized as follows: the logical objectivity characteristic of the collective unity of either multitudes or cardinal numbers cannot be derived from (or otherwise reduced to) either the logical objectivity characteristic of singular unity or the individual objects that comprise the abstractive ground of such unity. Indeed, as we shall see, it is precisely HusserlÕs consistent avowal of the logically distinct qualities of collective and singular unity that will raise and decide the question of whether his mature thought on the phenomenological resolution of psychologism addresses the initial problem that the PAÕs psychologism attempted to address. This is the case, because from this logical distinction it follows for Husserl that the constituting acts correlated to each type of unity are also distinct. The PAÕs psychologism, then, is inseparable from the logical problem of the origin of objectivity proper to the concept of collective unity, a problem that is logical in the sense that the conceptual character of collective unity was something that Husserl clearly recognized is non-psychological and therefore objective. The puzzling reason why Husserl would appeal to psychology to account for a unity that he clearly understood to be objective 6 becomes apparent when the peculiar non-singular nature of this unity is considered. Given HusserlÕs arithmetical focus in PA, the logical irreducibility of a multitudinous unity to a singular unity is something that, arithmetically speaking, is wholly uncontroversial, because many and one are numerical opposites. Hence, because the physical or metaphysical qualities of the items that compose a collection have to be ruled out, on the basis of their singularity, as being capable of yielding the origin of the collectionõs logically multitudinous unity, accounting for this origin in the acts that combine these items into a collection in the first place, seems most reasonable at least at first glance. The reflexion directed to such acts abstracts from inner experience the presentation that results from the psycheõs spontaneous capacity for conceiving-as-one (Ineinsbegreifen) the items that compose a collection, and it does so in the cases of either indeterminate collections, aggregates or multitudes, or of determinate collections, the authentic cardinal numbers. In the instance of either type of collection, it is the similarity of the partial presentations of the ones or units that compose their members, together with the elemental similarity of the acts that combine these partial presentations that provide a basis for abstraction. What is abstracted are, respectively, the indeterminate

5 concept of multiplicity, and the well-characterized class of determinate cardinal number concepts (see Hua XII, p. 82). 3. HusserlÕs Critique of Psychologism It is significant to note that HusserlÕs initial concerns about the PAÕs psychologism were not focused upon its patent appeal to psychological acts in order to account for the origin of concepts per se. HusserlÕs expression of these concerns clearly grants that the inner perception (reflexion) directed toward acts has the capacity of conceptual apprehension, albeit and this is the crux of the matter he comes to recognize that the concept that results from the reflexion directed to the act of collection can only have the status of the concept of collecting. In other words, HusserlÕs initial concern about the PAÕs psychologism was not that its analyses attempted to account for concepts on the basis of inner (psychological) experience, but that these analyses did not recognize that the concept of number is something different from the concept of collecting, the latter being, in HusserlÕs words, all that can result from the reflexion directed to acts [Aktreflexion]. 7 On the PAÕs view, the word and expresses precisely the nature of the act of the collective combination. It does so in the sense that it is the combining of one, and one, and one, and so on, and this alone, that initially yields insofar as it is not delimited an indeterminate aggregate or multitude, and, then again insofar as it is limited the determinate cardinal numbers. However, once Husserl rejects the reflexion directed to acts as the source of the logical concepts of collection and cardinal numbers, the logical basis of the and together with that of all the other logical categories changes for him. As he puts it in the Sixth Logical Investigation, it is not in reflexion directed toward judgments, nor even in the fulfillments of judgments, but in the fulfillments of judgments themselves (Hua XIX, p. 669/783) that the basis for the objects of logic is established. Accordingly, rather than express, as the PA had it, the psychological act of combining the presentations of singular objects, the and now (in the LI) means [meinen] the being together [Zusammen] of the objects A and B (Hua XIX, p. 689/798). And it means this in a manner that avoids, as Husserl puts it in the same investigation, the essential mistake made by those eminent modern logicians who have tried to explain the conjunctive association of names or statements through a mere conscious coexistence of nominal or propositional acts, and have so surrendered and as an objective logical form (Hua XIX,

6 p. 689/799). Hence, the logical status and content of the and, which is non-psychological and therefore objective, is characterized by Husserl to depend upon the fact that there is given here a unitary intentional relation and a unitary object that corresponds to it. Husserl, however, significantly adds that this unitary object, the being together of A and B, can only be constituted in this act of binding together, even though it is now clear that he no longer understands the reflexion toward this act to be capable of yielding what, in another context, he refers to as the character of an authentic intuition of the collection as such (Hua XIX, p. 690/798). The LIÕs appeal to the necessity of the act of binding together for the constitution of the logical unity belonging to the collection as such must be viewed within the context of his appeal, likewise, to acts in the case of the constitution of a state of affairs. Of the latter, he writes that they can only be constituted in the relational binding of [acts] of presentation [Vorstellungen] (Hua XIX, p. 689/799). In both cases, Husserl makes it clear that the unity involved is no longer to be understood as arising from the reflexion directed to the act or acts involved. This context is significant, and not only because it concerns the well-known controversy over whether the appeal to acts here represents a relapse into the logical psychologism that was the target of the critique of psychologism in the Prolegomena to the Logical Investigations. It is also significant because the employment of the same term ( act ) in the instance of acts of collection and acts of relation can easily conceal the fact that Husserl radically differentiates in the LI and in all his latter works these two kinds of acts (later, spontaneous judgments) together with their corresponding objectivities. In the LIÕs terminology, the essential character of the acts involved in collecting is different from that of those involved in judging. To this essential distinction in acts there corresponds the distinction in the essential character of their corresponding objectivities, indeterminate and determinate collections (these latter having numerical qualities) in the case of acts of collecting, and predicatively formed state of affairs (founded in individual sensible objects) in the case of acts judging. Moreover, Husserl distinguishes the multitudinous unity of the former from the singular, copulative unity of the latter. Before addressing the larger issue of the relationship to the problem of psychologism that the appeal to a constitutive role of acts in relation to logical unity presents, our consideration of whether HusserlÕs mature statement on psychologism addresses the problem to which the PAÕs psychologism was a response needs to stay focused on what, at present, appears to be a narrower issue. What demands our

7 attention now is the question of how Husserl accounts for the logical unity of the collection subsequent to what, on his own and, of course, not just his own recognition, was the PAÕs failed attempt to provide such an account on the basis of the psychological reflexion directed toward acts. 4. The ProlegomenaÕs and the VIth Logical InvestigationÕs Incomplete Accounts of Objective Collective Unity in Cardinal Numbers and Collectiva The clarity with which the LI points to the distinction between the objective unity of a collection and that of a state of affairs Husserl says point blankly that Collectiva (Hua XIX, p. 688/798) are not themselves states of affairs [nicht selbst Sachverhalte] is in inverse proportion to the light its analyses casts on how the intentional relation connected with the and is related to the corresponding unity of the collective object to which Husserl maintains it is directed. Significantly, the ProlegomenaÕs analysis of number, while very keen to maintain a distinction between number as the object of a presentation and number itself, as the ideal species of a form, makes no mention of the and. Moreover, the presentation of number as an object, at least in the case of its authentic presentation, is clearly articulated by Husserl as something that involves a determinate multitude. Thus, to this extent, his articulation of this is consistent with the PAÕs analyses. However, the exact nature of the relationship between number as the objectivity of an empirically presented multitude and number as the ideal species that is responsible for the objective unity of the object to which this empirical presentation is related, is not articulated clearly by Husserl. To say, as Husserl does, that [i]ntuitively given in this presentation is the collection [das Kollektivum] in a certain articulated form and with this an instance [Einzelfall] of the number species in question (Hua XVIII, p. 174/180), does not address the crucial issue of whether the number species itself has the status of a non-empirical which is to say, an ideal or formal collection. This issue is crucial, because in the absence of its clarification, the question of precisely what it means in this case to say that something empirical is the instance of something ideal remains unaddressed, much less answered. The empirical presentation of a number as an object involves a collection precisely delimited as the number in question of any objects whatever. The articulated form belonging to this collection is maintained by Husserl to be the instance of the ideal species that

8 is responsible for the articulated formõs objectivity. It is legitimate to ask, therefore, whether the ideal species itself, as the paradigm for its collective instantiation, is itself a collection, albeit an ideal one. That is, is the species fiveness a determinate but nevertheless ideal set, composed of the amount (Anzahl) of ideal units whose collective unification presents the pure concept five? If so, the origin of both the unity and objects belonging to the ideal collection would need to be accounted for, as well as the character of the bond 8 that instantiates it in the articulated form of the empirically presented collection. If the ideal species characteristic of each number itself were not an ideal collection, then the question, in what sense can an empirical collection be understood as an instance of a noncollection, that is, the non-collective species of fiveness, would become acute. Corresponding to the ProlegomenaÕs lack of a discussion of the and in its analysis of numbers, is the lack of a discussion of numbers in connection with the Sixth Logical InvestigationÕs discussion of collections. Hence, beyond this investigationõs claim that the copulative nature of the unity of a state of affairs is distinct from the collective unity of a collection itself, no light is shed on precisely how the intentional relation to objective unity, in the case of the synthetic form of the conjunction, is different from that of the synthetic form of the copula in the case of the state of affairs. 5. The Logical Distinction Between the Unity of a State of Affairs and that of a Collection and Experience and JudgmentÕs Account of the Constitution of the Object Set The absence of such clarifying analyses in the LI has, understandably, led many commentators to draw the mistaken conclusion that the intentional relation is, in both cases, the same or at least isomorphic. 9 However, that such a conclusion is not HusserlÕs can be seen from his analyses in Experience and Judgment. 10 HusserlÕs account there of how a collection becomes an object begins by reaffirming the LIÕs distinction between the objectivities proper to states of affairs and to collectiva. In line with this, he maintains that [s]tates of affairs are not the only objectivities of the understanding which are constituted in predicatively productive spontaneity (EJ, p. 292/244). This is the case, because the collective as such, the object set [Menge], is also constituted in the predicative judgment, albeit in a manner that is different from the manner in which states of affairs lead to logical

9 formations of sense. The difference concerns primarily the pre-predicative and, in this sense, pre-constitutive level of the acts in which the object substrate posited in the copulative judgment is formed and the higher level of acts in which the collective becomes formed as an objective substrate. Both forms of predicative spontaneity, the narrower copulative linkage and the broader conjunctive linkage, are founded judgments and therefore lead to the preconstitution of their respective objectivities on the basis of acts of pregiven syntheses together with their contents. Husserl, however, maintains that the collective linkage, to be sure, does not lead to the logical formation of sense, to deposits of sense in object-substrates in the same way as copulative spontaneity. The collective as an objective substrate is not what is preconstituted in the predicative spontaneity that leads, like all predicative spontaneity, to the preconstitution of a new objectivity, that of the object setõ (EJ, p. 292/245); rather, what is preconstituted in collective predicative spontaneity is the noetic unity of a consciousness but not yet the unity of an object in the proper sense, that is, in the sense of a thematic object-substrate (EJ, p. 294/246). The collective initially emerges in what Husserl refers to as the domain of receptivity (EJ, p. 292/245), wherein there is already a plural contemplation [mehrheitliches Betrachten] as a collective taking of things together. Involved here is not merely grasping one object after the next, but a hanging onto the grasp of the one object with the grasping of the other, and so forth. However, in this unity of taking objects together, the collection is still not one object. That is, in the plural contemplation of objects, the pair, the collection, more generally, the set of both objects, is, properly speaking, not constituted; rather, we have, more than ever, only a preconstituted object, a pluralityõ (EJ, p. 293/246). Thus, for Husserl, as long as we carry out a merely collective grasping together [kollektives Zumsammengreifen], the apprehension of the collection as such, as an authentic object, something identifiable (EJ, p. 293/246) as one object (EJ, p. 293/245), does not come about. In order for the collection, e.g., the pair, to be grasped as such, that is, as a total object A + B, a turning regard is first required (EJ, p. 293/246), by which Husserl means to indicate a retrospective apprehension [Ru ckgreifen] in which the set, as a thematic objectsubstrate, is apprehended following its preconstitutive active formation [aktive Bildung] as a plurality. The active formation of a plurality comes about insofar as

10 we can direct the regard of advertence [Zuwendung] and apprehension toward the pair, toward the one and the other of the pair, whereby these are objects. If we do this, then the repeated individual concentration [Einzelkonzentration], the concentrated partial apprehension, now of the A and then of the B, functions as a kind of explication, as an act of running through the total object A + B. (EJ, p. 293/245). Only in this manner, in what Husserl calls the act of plural explication (EJ, p. 293/246), can the assemblage of the total object be given, in order that it may be apprehended in self-givenness and contemplated [betrachtend] as such. Husserl goes on to characterize the active formation that leads up to the self-givenness and contemplation of the collection as a total object as a collective synthesis (EJ, p. 294/246). In this regard he characterizes, for instance, the collective synthesis A and B and CÕ as the noetic unity of a consciousness, but not yet the unity of an object in the authentic sense. By noetic unity of a consciousness Husserl understands that aspect of the colligating consciousness, which, in its act of plural explication, contains a plurality of objects encompassed in unity. According to Husserl, the noetic unity at issue here is not the collective, in the sense of a unique object that has many members: it is not, therefore, the unity of an object in the authentic sense, namely, in the sense of a thematic objective-substrate. The unity of an object in this sense, rather, is only pre-constituted in the synthetic collecting, such that the presentation [Vorstellung] (A, B) has priority over the collection (A + B) in which the aggregate [Inbegriff] is an object (293/245). In order for the pre-constituted plurality of the collective combination [kollektive Verbindung] (EJ, p. 293/246), originally sprung from the plural explication of A and B, to become an objective substrate and thus an authentic object, something else is required. What is required is a retrospective apprehension [ru ckgreifendes Erfassen] (EJ, p. 294/246) that follows the completion of the colligation [Kolligieren], and by doing this, the set is rendered thematic in a manner that is given to the ego as an object, as something identifiable. As Husserl presents it, the manner in which the noetic unity of the pre-predicative plurality is transformed into the authentically objective, and (presumably noematic) unity of the set, is the same as that of all objects produced in predicative spontaneity: a syntactical objectivity is pre-constituted in a spontaneity, but only after it is completed can it become a theme, it being an object only in retrospective apprehension [Ru ckgreifen] (EJ, p. 293 f./246).

11 6. The Proximity to the Philosophy of ArithmaticÕs Discredited Psychologism of Experience and JudgmentÕs Account of the Objective Constitution of the Collection Of course, the content of what is pre-constituted in the case of the objectivity of a collection is not the same as what is pre-constituted in the case of a state of affairs, because the relational syntax of the latter objectivity is founded in prepredicative relational syntheses, while the collective syntax of the former objectivity is founded in prepredicative collective syntheses. Indeed, beyond affirming that subsequent to the presentation formed by collecting in the mode of plural explicating, the collection as such becomes a thematic object (the set) and therefore an objective substrate, Husserl sheds no light on the following: how the ru ckgreifendes Erfassen transforms the noetic unityõ belonging to the predicatively productive spontaneity of collecting objects together into the noematic unityõ of the collection itself. The objective unity of the collection, the set, must have the status of an object that stands out from both the collecting that pre-constituted it and the individual objects that now belong to the set individual objects that, prior to the constitution of the set as an objective unity, were encompassed by the (pre-objective) unity of the colligating consciousness. The necessity that the setõs objective unity possess this status stems from the dictates of Husserl critique of the PAÕs psychologism and the logical problem that is presented by the peculiar character of collective unity as a whole. In the case of this critique, we have seen that its most basic tenet is that the content belonging to logical unity per se cannot be established on the basis of reflexion directed to psychological acts, processes, or contents. In the case of the logical problem, collective unity as a whole cannot be established by qualities inhering in either the individual members or, in the relations between the members that belong to the collectivity as its parts. In other words, what remains obscure is precisely how it is that a redirection of the regard (Blick) of consciousness is able to turn the non-objective unity characteristic of the presentation of collected objects into the objective unity proper to a collection of objects, a unity that is an object like any other. Husserl does not say, either here in EJ or anywhere else in his works, how this is possible. Of the collection, as an objective unity, he does say, however, that not only can it be totally identified as the identical element of many modes of givenness, but it can be explicated in an ever renewed identification, an explication that is again and again a process of collecting (EJ, p. 294/246).

12 The particular force behind the question being raised here derives its impetus from the strong suspicion that HusserlÕs appeal to the ability of the retrospective apprehension to apprehend a collection as such, by, in effect, thematizing the presentation [Vorstellung] yielded by a completed process of collectively combining objects, is vulnerable to the very critique of psychologism that he himself leveled against the PAÕs account of the origin of the objectivity proper to collective unity. To wit: the basic claim here is that the result of a synthetic process that does not have a proper objective correlate, nevertheless yields or otherwise originates when grasped post factum a synthetic object as its proper objective correlate. The objective correlate of the act of collecting is, properly speaking, the objects collected into a multitude, not their collection as such. Husserl is both clear and consistent on this point. There is nothing in these objects, taken in either their individuality or their relations to one another, that can be considered to preconstitute the collection to which they belong, once they are colligated. This is why Husserl characterizes the status of the preconstitution proper to the collection as such as a noetic unity. The unity in question is therefore manifestly not noematic at this stage in EJÕs account of the constitution of the collection as an objectivity, that is, as an object capable of functioning as a substrate in predicative judgments. Again, and on the contrary, Husserl is quite clear that this only comes about when the presentation yielded by the act of collecting, and not its objective correlates (which, as we have seen, are individual objects and their relations), is thematized and posited in a retrospective grasping. This account of thematization and positing must be radically distinguished from the one Husserl makes in the case of the relational synthesis that preconstitutes the objectivity belonging to a state of affairs. What is preconstituted in this case is the overlapping synthesis of a noematically given thing and its property (or properties), which function as the objective substrate for the thematization and consequent positing that is characteristic of the predication belonging to the copulative judgment. In the case of the collective synthesis that preconstitutes the collection as such, as we have seen, there is no objective substrate in this sense. Rather, Husserl maintains that it is the collective presentation yielded by the act of collecting that preconstitutes, as a noetic unity, the collective unity as such. The objectivity of the collection, that is, the set, is therefore characterized by Husserl as originating in the thematization of a pregiven unity that is manifestly not presented as the objective correlate of an act. Rather, it is in the presentation that is inseparable from and therefore characteristic of the act itself that Husserl says the preconstitution of the collection as

13 such resides. And it is precisely this claim that justifies the suspicion that his account of the origin of the objective unity proper to the collection as such in EJ does not advance beyond the discredited account in the PA. Of course, the language in EJ and PA is different: colligating consciousness instead of psychological acts, retrospective grasping instead of reflexion, noetic unity instead of collective presentation, and so on. But the conclusion that the basic account remains the same is difficult to avoid, that from a post hoc attentiveness to the (noetic) unification of objects that occurs in the act of combining them together into a collection there arises the (noematic) unity of the logical form of the collection itselfõ. Moreover, HusserlÕs account here does not even address, let along provide clarification, of what role, if any, signification and meaning intentions play in both the initial process of collecting objects together as well as in the retrospective apprehension of the results of this process. More precisely, the issue whether symbolic acts and their intuitive fulfillment (to use the language of the LI) are involved in the pre-constitution (to use the language of EJ) of the collection as an object accomplished in the process of collecting, or in the retrospective grasping of it as an objective categorial form, is passed over in silence. 11 In connection with our suspicion here about the proximity of EJÕs account of the constitution of the unity of the collection as an objectivity in the authentic sense (as a thematic object substrate, a set) to the PAÕs discredited psychologism, HusserlÕs remarks in FTL on the nominalization of the plural are instructive. He notes there that in the plural judgment, the plural... is not the object in the precise sense, it is not the object about whichõ judgment is made, and thus the plural is not the substrate of determinations (Hua XVII, p. 69). The transformation of the plural into the object about which judgment is made, as the substrate of determinations, requires operations that are found in the formal theory of judgments, as a theory of pure forms. Husserl maintains that in this theory, operations are present by which the plural judgment form can be transformed into the form of the singular predication about the collection. His term for these operations is nominalization. Considered within the context of our discussion of the account of the constitution of the collection as an objectivity as such, three things stand out in what Husserl writes here about nominalization. One, neither plural judgments nor singular predications about collections themselves are his concern. He is concerned, rather, with the forms of such judgments and predication. Two, the transformation Husserl characterizes here presupposes that the collection, as the result

14 of a plural judgment, has already been constituted. This is evident in his talk of operations that yield the (form of the) singular predication about the collection. Hence what is at issue in nominalization is not the constitution of the objectivity of the collection, as a logical structure whose unity is distinct from (1) the objects that fall under its unity and (2) from the act of collecting in which this unity is presented. Three, Husserl does not describe the operations that he credits with bringing about the transformation of a plural judgment form into a singular judgment form about the collection as such. Regarding the operations belonging to nominalization, what he does discuss concerns the universal judgment form, S is p. He says that this form can be converted, by nominalizationõ, into a judgment about the state of affairs, S is p, or into the judgment about the quality p, in the form p belong to S (Hua XVII, p. 69 f.). But he does not elaborate here (or elsewhere) how this occurs either. 12 Later in FTL Husserl returns to the topic of nominalization, and he again mentions how the plural that makes its appearance in judging and, on being nominalizedõ, on being transformed into the object in the preeminent sense (substrate, the object about whichõ), yields the set [Menge] (Hua XVII, p. 95). As in the earlier discussion, nominalization is characterized under the rubric of the theory of the forms of judgments, which again means that the pre-predicative constitution of the objectivity of the collection is something that is presupposed rather than accounted for in his talk of the plural being nominalized. This is particularly evident when Husserl acknowledges, that one can collect and count without forthwith incorporating the produced formations [Gebilde] 13 in actual predications. His acknowledgement of this clearly implies that the plural, in the guise of collections and cardinal numbers, has the status of formations that are distinct from collecting and counting, and are such prior to being nominalized (incorporated in actual predications). In line with this, Husserl goes on to say, [c]ollecting and counting are objectivatingõ (doxic) activities like the predicative activities (Hua XVII, p. 95 f.). This means for him they have the same modalities of believing as predicative activities, as they can brought to bear on all conceivable substrates (anything whatever), their formations consequently being modes of the same formal categories (Hua XVII, p. 96). Husserl does not mention how this happens, that is, how a collective modality of belief can be objectifying in a manner that yields collections themselves as formal categories, but he instead refers (in a footnote) to the PA, 14 where already essentially the same point was made. But he does mention, the essential nature of these formations is such that all of them can be incorporated into predicative judgments and given

15 additional forms in these. And this again bears out my point, that rather than account for the constitution of the objectivity of the collection (and cardinal numbers) as a logical structure distinct from (1) the act of collecting (and counting) and (2) the individual objects that compose the collection (or the cardinal number), the logically formal operations of nominalization presupposes both this objectivity and its constitution. 7. EJÕs Incomplete Account of the Constitution of Cardinal Numbers HusserlÕs discussion of cardinal numbers (Anzahlen) in EJ does not resolve the issue of the constitution of their objectivity as determinate collections, and it also departs from the PAÕs account of the generic emptiness (and therefore formal universality) of the contents belonging to their concepts. The account of cardinal numbers in EJ occurs within the context of HusserlÕs consideration of the pluralities that occur under the heading of what he calls [t]he particular [partikula re] judgment (EJ, p. 446/367). Particular judgments are differentiated from singular judgments (EJ, p. 446/368), inasmuch as the latter refer to individually determined terms, e.g., this rose is yellowõ, while the former refers to some A or other in general [irgendein u berhaupt]õ (EJ, p. 447/368). Hence, the forms an AÕ, an A and an AÕ, or, likewise, an A and anotherõ, an A and another A, and again another A, and so on, and likewise, the indeterminate plurality (EJ, p. 446/367 f.), are particular judgments in which we stand with them near the origin of the primitive numerical forms [Zahlformen] (EJ, p. 446/368). We so stand, because for Husserl these arise here as formations having the function of indicating the some or otherõ [irgendein]. Nevertheless, with both the formation indicative of the some or other as well as the indeterminate plurality, we are only near but not yet coincident with the origin of such forms, because for Husserl (in EJ) the [c]ardinal numbers [Anzahlen] are determinate pluralities of particular terms. Particular judgments emerge according to Husserl when the direction of interest (EJ, p. 445/367) shifts, from what it is when the intention is involved in the explication of individual objects (EJ, p. 445/366), to an other form of intention (EJ, p. 445/367). In the explication of individual objects, the intention is directed to an individual object in a manner that allows the progress of predication to unfold, to judge predicatively (EJ, p. 445/366) about the objectõs specific qualities. In the particular judgment, the interest of the intention is indifferent (EJ, p. 445/367) to the individual specificity

16 (EJ, p. 446/367) of an individual object, as it is instead constituted as a form of meaning singulars in which it is only concerned with the identical validity [Gleichgeltung] of any one A or other, as a general type. Such an intention thus no longer judges the rose is yellowõ, but a roseõ, or perhaps still anotherõ, or some roses are yellowõ some meaning one and one, and so forth. For Husserl, then, it is thus this active and productive attitude, which determines the activity of [the particular (BH)] judgment and saturates it in a characteristic manner (EJ, p. 446/368). Indeed, it is precisely this manner that is responsible for what arises here as formations having the function of some or otherõ, formations that bring judgment near the origin of primitive numerical forms. The cardinal numbers arise when a particular plurality yielded by the formations having the function of indicating the some or otherõ is rendered a determinate particular plurality (EJ, p. 447/368) and when the latter is brought under a corresponding form-concept [Formbegriff]. The latter belongs to the meaning of a cardinal number, in the sense that by way of comparison and concept forming [Begriffsbildung], for example, some apple or other and some apple or other, some pear or other and some pear or other, and so on, the form-concept of some concept or otherõ emerges. It emerges insofar as what is conceptually common to the compared items in the determinate plurality expresses itself as some A or other and some additional A or other, where A is some concept or otherõ. Husserl explicitly states: [t]hat is the cardinal number concept [Anzahlbegriff] two, which means that this concept is the conjunction of some concept or otherõ and (another) concept or otherõ and, he goes on, likewise for three, etc. HusserlÕs account here of cardinal number concepts as determinate particular pluralities composed of some concept or otherõ and some concept or otherõ, and so on, does not resolve the problem of the constitution of the objectivity of the collection under discussion. No description is provided of an objective referent that would correspond to the collection as something that is irreducible to either the items that are combined by the and or to the noetic unity of the combining intention. Thus neither the objectivity of an indeterminate plurality nor that of the determinate pluralities is established as something that, on the one hand, is other than the individual items belonging to either type of collection. Likewise, on the other hand, the objectivity in question is not established as something that encompasses these individual items as items that belong either to the set or to the cardinal number. What HusserlÕs descriptions articulate is, rather, the combination by the and of particular judgment forms

17 proper to some object or other and, on the basis of the comparisons of such forms, the combination (again effected by the and ) of judgment forms proper to some concept or other. His claim that the conjunction of some concept or other [A], and some concept [A] or other is the concept of the cardinal number two, and that with the conjunction of an additional and together with another A, the concept of the cardinal number three is generated, and so on, therefore fails to account for the objectivity of the purported concepts in question, two and three. Stated as succinctly as possible, this failure has two aspects. One, the objective referent of the and in the case of either an indeterminate plurality or determinate pluralities (cardinal numbers) is not established. By this I mean, on the one hand, that the logical problem to which HusserlÕs psychologism in the PA is the response is not resolved. The objectivity of the collection, as a unity that can neither be grounded in nor based on predications directed toward individual objects, is not accounted for. On the other hand, I mean that the shortcomings of the PAÕs psychologism are not transcended, because EJ does not provide a descriptive articulation of the objectively collective referent of the and that is demanded by his own critique of psychologism. Two, what J.N. Findlay noted with respect to the account of cardinal numbers in the PA likewise applies here, namely, that HusserlÕs discussion of the determinate pluralities that compose the concepts of cardinal numbers has not considered what may be involved in the necessary diversity of the abstract somethings collected, since something and something and something is not three if the somethings are one and the same. 15 Thus, even if one were to maintain what I have argued cannot be maintained, that HusserlÕs account of the retrospective apprehension of the noetic unity manifest in the act of colligating the individual items unified in an indeterminate collection is sufficient to establish the noematic unity of the collection as the objective correlate of a judgment, the problem of accounting for the diversity of the objectivities proper to determinate collections would remain. To wit: the differentia responsible for the determination of each cardinal number as a well ordered whole that is not only different from all the other cardinal numbers, but also (beginning with two ), that is successively related to the preceding cardinal number, cannot be established on the basis of HusserlÕs descriptions of the combination of homogeneous elements into collections. Finally, in connection with this last mentioned point about the homogeneity of the elements in HusserlÕs account of cardinal numbers, it is both significant and noteworthy that the account of the

18 scope of their universality in EJ deviates from the PA. The terms that comprise the determinate pluralities in EJ are particular, namely, some A or other, or, some concept or other, which means that they contrast with the formal universality that characterizes the cardinal number concepts in the PA. The PAÕs account (as we have seen) of the and characterized it as combining any object whatever that falls under the generically empty concept of the anything. Indeed, in his self-interpretation of this matter in ILI and FTL, Husserl characterizes the units belonging to cardinal number concepts as falling under the formal concept of the anything whatever, the meaning of which he explicitly articulates as encompassing any arbitrary object or objectivity whatever. This, of course, contrasts with the judgment terms that are presented as belonging to the cardinal number concepts in EJ, which we have just seen concern some concept or other, but not what Husserl will call there the arbitrary something in generalõ (EJ, p. 452/372). In fact, in EJ Husserl refers to the latter as a completely new form, and he not only contrasts it with the particular judgment form, but he also characterizes it as being dependent upon it. 8. HusserlÕs Mature Account of the Refutation of Psychologism in Formal and Transcendental Logic and its Basis in Analyses in Experience and Judgment To continue harping on these loose ends surrounding HusserlÕs post PA accounts of the constitution proper to both indeterminate and determinate collective unities, especially in their relation to the discredited psychologism of the PA, would no doubt be an extreme exercise in Husserlian arcanum, were it not that case that the very crux of HusserlÕs statement in FTL about how phenomenology overcomes psychologism appeals to, in his words, an original evidence (Hua XVII, p. 138) of something that is numerically [numerisch] identical. The difference between the ideal and the real, 16 as is of course well known, is for Husserl an essential or principled separation. It is grounded in a fundamental law of intentionality (Hua XVII, p. 143), which states the following: Absolutely any [Jedwedes] consciousness of anything whatever belongs a priori to an openly endless manifold [Mannigfaltigkeit] of possible modes of consciousness, which can always be connected synthetically in a unity-form of conjoint acceptance (con-posito) to make one consciousness, as a consciousness of the Same. To this manifold belong essentially the modes of a manifold evidential consciousness, which fits in correspondingly as an evidential having,

19 either of the Same itself or of an Other itself that evidently annuls it. (Hua XVII, p. 143) The mark of the evidence that confirms the Same itself as something that is had with evidence in the synthetic unity-form of the one consciousness is precisely its the SameÕs status as something that appears as numerically identical in the manifold of different modes of consciousness united by this form. The manifold of these modes of consciousness are individually different and separated (Hua XVII, p. 138), in the sense that they are temporally outside one another in objective time, when viewed as real psychic processes in real human beings. Not so, however, the irreal objective formations [Geistesgebilde] yielded by these processes: their characteristic essence excludes both spatial and temporal individuation. Husserl therefore refers in the case of logical judgment to the supertemporality (EJ, p. 313/261) of the temporal manifold that constitutes the unity of the identical as the correlate of an identification (EJ, p. 316/ 263). The concatenation [Verkettung] (EJ, p. 310/259) of acts of judgment, each one temporally discrete, enter[s] into the unity of an inclusive total identification: they are composed of manifold acts, but in all of them there is an identical judicative proposition. The objectivities of the understanding are therefore objectivities of a higher level (EJ, p. 310/258) than the objectivities either belonging to, or characteristic of, the temporally discrete acts that belong to a lower level in relation to them. In contrast to the localized spatiotemporality of the lower level acts in which they are constituted, the higher level objectivities are everywhere and nowhereõ, and, in this sense, they are characterized by the timelessness (EJ, p. 313/261) of a privileged form of temporality, a form that distinguishes these objectivities fundamentally and essentially from individual objectivities. For Husserl, then, the total identity of the irreal objectivities, which is essentially characterized by the ability of such objectivities to appear in many spatiotemporal positions as numerically identical as the same (EJ, p. 312/260), is the consequence of a supertemporal unity. He maintains that this supertemporal unity pervades the temporal manifold within which it [the object of the understanding] is situated. Because this supertemporality implies omnitemporality, in the sense that [t]he same unity is present in each such manifold, and it is such that it is present in time essentially, Husserl stresses that the implied omnitemporality is not something that is outside of time. Omnitemporality is in time, as a privileged form of temporality, in the sense that the what of the judgment, the judicative proposition, is present to consciousness in the mode of the now. As present to