This article accomplishes two goals. First, the paper clarifies Edmund Husserl’s investigation of the historical inception of the number system from his early works, Philosophy of Arithmetic and, “On the Logic of Signs (Semiotic)”. The article explores Husserl’s analysis of five historical developmental stages, which culminated in our ancestor’s ability to employ and enumerate with number signs. Second, the article reveals how Husserl’s conclusions about the history of the number system from his early works opens up a fusion point with (...) his investigations from his mature texts, The Crisis of the European Sciences and “The Origin of Geometry”. On the one hand, the essay shows that Husserl’s methodology was similar, as he sought in both his early and late writings to uncover the essence of the history of the formal sciences and was not executing mere intellectual history. On the other hand, the article discloses that Husserl’s insights from both time periods are strikingly analogous. Already in his early texts, Husserl saw that the sciences emerged from pre-theoretical experiences of the world and that the sciences are the result of a historical process, which involves the psychic activities of past individuals and the maintaining of discoveries over time by intersubjective communities. I conclude by showing how, in light of the analysis of this paper, we can rethink the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy. (shrink)

This paper examines the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy of nonintuitive intentions. The analysis has two stages. First, I expose a mistake in Husserl’s account of non-intuitive acts from his 1901 Logical Investigations. I demonstrate that Husserl employs the term “signitive” too broadly, as he concludes that all non-intuitive acts are signitive. He states that not only meaning acts, but also the contiguity intentions of perception are signitive acts. Second, I show how Husserl, in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical (...) Investigation, amends his 1901 theory of non-intuitive acts, which he now calls “empty” intentions. He there accurately distinguishes empty meaning acts from the empty intentions of perception. In the conclusion, I reveal how Husserl’s alterations to his theory of non-intuitive intentions can inform our understanding of a larger shift in his philosophy. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, the essay demonstrates that Edmund Husserl’s theory of meaning consciousness from his 1901 Logical Investigations is internally inconsistent and falls apart upon closer inspection. I show that Husserl, in 1901, describes non-intuitive meaning consciousness as a direct parallel or as a ‘mirror’ of intuitive consciousness. He claims that non-intuitive meaning acts, like intuitions, have substance and represent their objects. I reveal that, by defining meaning acts in this way, Husserl cannot account for our experiences (...) of countersensical, absurd, or impossible meanings. Second, I examine how Husserl came to recognize this 1901 mistake in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. I discuss how he accordingly reformulates his understanding of non-intuitive meaning acts from the ground up in those Revisions, where this also allows for him to properly account for the experience of impossible meanings. Instead of describing them as mirrors of intuitions, Husserl takes non-intuitive meaning acts to be modifications of intuitions, where they have no substance and do not represent their objects. Finally, in the conclusion to this essay, I demonstrate how this fundamental change to his understanding of meaning consciousness forced Husserl to revise other central tenets of his philosophy, such that the trajectory of his thought can only be properly understood in light of these revisions to his theory of non-intuitive meaning consciousness. (shrink)

RESUMO O artigo tem por objetivo analisar a mudança no regime do signo que ocorreu na filosofia de Husserl entre os anos de 1890 e 1901. Para tanto, partimos da reconstrução da teoria do simbolismo apresentada em Sobre a Lógica dos Signos, de 1890, e analisamos a recepção de algumas de suas teses centrais em Investigações Lógicas, de 1901. Querse, com isso, sublinhar a relevância histórica deste pequeno tratado de 1890 para a fenomenologia madura de Husserl. Ver-se-á, específicamente, que a (...) crítica ao princípio da economia do pensar apresentada em Prolegômenos à Lógica Pura é o prolongamento de uma tese de 1890 e que o conceito de intenção simbólica vazia de 1901 é a resposta de Husserl aos impasses de sua primeira teoria do signo enquanto substituto. Conclui-se, por fim, mostrando como essa mudança no regime do signo é condição de possibilidade para a análise correlativa característica de Investigações Lógicas. ABSTRACT The article aims to analyze the changes in the regime of sign that occurred in Husserl’s philosophy between the years of1890 and 1901. To do so, we start with the reconstruction of the theory of symbolism presented in On the Logic of Signs, from 1890, and analyze the reception of some of its central theses in the Logical Investigations, from 1901. It is intended to emphasize the historical relevance of this small treatise of 1890 for Husserl’s mature phenomenology. It will be seen specifically that the critique of the principle of the economy of thought presented in Prolegomena to Pure Logic is the extension of a thesis from 1890 and that the concept of symbolic empty-intention from 1901 is Husserl’s answer to the impasses of his first theory of the sign as a substitute. We conclude, in the end, by showing how this change in the regime of sign is condition ofpossibility for the correlative analysis characteristic of the Logical Investigations. (shrink)