This paper aims to reassess a notion in the works of the later Husserl that is both historically important and philosophically insightful, but remains understudied, namely, that of type. In opposition to a standard reading which treats Husserl’s type presentations as pre-conceptual habits, this paper argues that these representations are a specific kind of concept. More precisely, it shows that Husserl’s account of type presentations is akin to the contemporary prototype theory of concepts. This is historically important, since the predecessor (...) of the prototype theory is usually said to be Wittgenstein. From a philosophical standpoint, the paper shows that Husserl has an innovative account of the connection between type concepts and their extension. Contrary to the standard view of extensions as sets and thus sharp entities, Husserl develops a correlationalist theory of concepts, according to which, for the specific characteristics in the structure of a concept, there are corresponding characteristics in the arrangement of its members, and vice versa. According to this theory, while sharp concepts lead to sharp extensions, vague concepts such as (proto)type concepts lead to vague extensions. The paper presents this understanding of Husserl in detail and explains its philosophical significance. (shrink)

Husserl is known to have oriented many aspects of his extensive analyses of phantasy around a contrast to perception: what phantasy and perception have in common, for example, is their intuitiveness; yet, while in perception something is encountered ‘in the flesh,’ in phantasy this experience is modified by its ‘as if in the flesh’ character. However, both in the majority of Husserl’s reflections on phantasy and in much of the secondary literature on the topic, we find few further details concerning (...) the difference between both modes of intuitiveness: ‘in the flesh’ and ‘as if in the flesh.’ In this paper, I draw on sources from Husserl’s later work in order to get clarification on at least one important point of difference, namely the ways in which individuation and identity, that is, constitutions of individual and identical objects, clearly set apart phantasy from perception. As we will see, this requires an understanding of Husserl’s account of objective time, and of the constitution of individual identical objects with their unique positions in objective time. After an introductory discussion of the meaning and the conditions of individuation in the methodical framework of phenomenology, I will lay out the different levels of the constitution of objective time. In the second part of the paper, I will try to follow and explore one of Husserl’s arguments that contrasts the constitutional performances involved in the constitution of phantasy objects with the individuation of real objects in objective time. The textual basis for this discussion is to be found in Husserl’s last book, Experience and Judgement. In what follows, I will begin with a short discussion of the concepts of individuality, individuation, uniqueness and identity, and also ask why these issues may be of special interest for a phenomenologist who is investigating the phenomenon of phantasy. (shrink)

Weak phantasmata have a decisive and specifically transcendental function in our everyday perception. This paper provides several different arguments for this claim based on evidence from both empirical psychology and phenomenology.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Edmund Husserl’s Experience and Judgement (Erfahrung und Urteil) are based on remarkably different conceptual frameworks and methodologies. After analyzing their respective accounts on the foundations of (formal) logic, I map out their common aims and different conclusions. I hold that Husserl and Wittgenstein both use the epistemic necessity of the existence of logical relations among things as an argument against philosophical scepticism, but their different epistemological convictions lead them to decisively diverging accounts of the nature (...) of those relations. Wittgenstein assumes a syntactic correspondence theory of truth, which identifies general logical form as a necessary condition for accurate representation, apparent in the existence of local truth-functions between propositions. As logical form is the (transcendental) necessary condition of every meaningful proposition, he infers that it is itself not representable and without ontological status. Husserl, by contrast, does not draw from a correspondence theory, but from a processual theory of certainty and truth, which offers genetic instead of categorical distinctions between perception and the logical relations apparent in conceptual knowledge. His theory of formal logic ultimately offers a coherent ontology for logical objects, which avoids logical mysticism. (shrink)