HUSSERL'S IDENTIFICATION OF MEANING AND NOEMA*

1. N oema as Meaning

This essay is a study of Edmund Husserl's conception of meaning. In this first section we indicate its importance for his conception of phenomenology. In Section 2 we see that Husserl's conception of linguistic meaning, of its nature as "ideal" and its role in mediating reference, is almost exactly that of his contemporary Gottlob Frege. In Sections 3 and 4 we further argue that, for Husserl, linguistic meaning and noematic Sinn are one and the same. For, according to Husserl, every linguistic meaning is a noematic Sinn expressed, and every noematic Sinn is in principle expressible and therefore a linguistic meaning. Section 3 argues the former; Section 4, the latter. Phenomenology as Husserl conceives it is the study of various modes of intentionality.1 The intentionality of an act, its "directedness" toward an object, consists in its having a particular "noema". The noema of an actspecifically, that component of the noema called the "noematic Sinn"determines which object is intended and thereby mediates the intentionality of the act. 2 Husser! says: "Every intentional experience [Erlebnis] has a noema and therein a Sinn, through which it is related to the object" (Ideas, p. 329). Phenomological analysis of intentional phenomena concentrates on noemata: transcendental-phenomenological reduction consists in turning one's attention away from the object intended in an act of consciousness and toward the noematic structures in virtue of which the object is intended-specifically, toward the noematic Sinn of one's act, or, as Husserl often calls this component of the noema, "the intended as such". Husserl says: What "lies" evidently in the whole "reduced" phenomenon? Now in perception there also lies this, that it has its noematic Sinn, its "perceived as such". [Ideas, 90, p. 226. J In memory we find after the reduction the remembered as such; in expectation, the expected as such; in imaginative fantasy, the fantasied as such. [Ideas, 91, p. 226.]

* The material in this essay will appear in somewhat different form in Chapter 3 of our forthcoming book, Intentionality and Intensions: Husserl's Phenomenology and the Semantics of Modalities (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co.).

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[In describing] the "intended [Vermeinte] as such", . . . it was really noematic structures that were thereby described. [Ideas, 128, p. 315.]

Given this central place of noemata and noematic Sinne in phenomenology, we should want to know all we can about these entities. Husserl conceives of noematic entities as "meanings". As we have noted, he calls the object-determining component of a noema a noematic "Sinn". He sometimes also calls the whole noema a "Sinn" in a broader sense (cf. Ideas, 90, p. 223); indeed, he conceives of the noema as "a generalization of the notion of Sinn to the field of all acts." 3 And 'Sinn' is ordinary German for <meaning'. The force behind Husserl's characterization of noematic entities as "meanings", we claim, is that for Husserl noematic meanings-the meanings (Sinne) that attach to acts (strictly, the noematic-Sinn components of noemata )-and linguistic meanings-the meanings (Bedeutungen) that are expressed in language-are the same. The Logical Investigatio1lS includes Husserl's most detailed discussion of the nature of linguistic meanings and also his view that the meanings expressed in language are themselves the noematic Sinne of underlying acts of consciousness. (What is called "noematic Sinn" in Ideas Husserl calls the "content" or "matter" of an act in Logical Investigations.) Ideas, however, includes his most detailed discussion of noemata, as well as his thesis that all noematic Sinne can be expressed in language and are therefore linguistic meanings. Combining these two strands of Husser!, we get his identification of linguistic meaning and noematic Sinn. What he takes the nature of linguistic meanings to be is thereby transferable to noematic Sinne and, indeed, to other noematic components too. In this manner Husserl's antipsychologistic account of meaning in Logical Investigations generalizes to noemata: noematic entities turn out to be a special kind of "ideal", abstract entities, probably sui generis. Noematic Sinne also turn out to play structurally the same role in intentionality that linguistic meanings play in linguistic reference. Noting Husserl's characterization of noemata as meanings, Dagfinn F011esdal has argued that we get a clear view of Husserl's theory of intentionality by comparing it with Frege's theory of reference: acts intend objects in virtue of their noemata-specifically, their noematic Sinne-in just the way that Frege said expressions refer to their references in virtue of their meanings. 4 In this essay we find in Husserl a strong reason why he should have considered noematic Sinne to be linguistic meanings: noematic Sinne are expressible in language, and noematic Sinn expressed in language just is linguistic meaning. And we find in Husser! a deep reason why intention should be in structure parallel reference a la Frege: Husserl's own theory of reference is virtually

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Frege's, and Husserl believes in addition that reference itself as it were embodies an intention whose noematic Sinn serves as the linguistic meaning expressed and whose object is the object of reference. This latter view of Husserl's indicates the importance of intentionality theory for our understanding of linguistic meaning and reference. Indeed, given Husserl's identification of linguistic meaning and act-meaning, theory of intentionality and theory of meaning and reference shed considerable light on one another.
2. Husserl's Conception of Lingtlistic Meaning

In the first of his Logical Investigations 5 Husserl explicitly discusses linguistic, or semantic, meaning-which he calls "Bede"tun g". 6 Husserl's theory of meaning and reference is almost exactly Frege's and appears, in fact, to have arisen from his own reading of Frege. Husserl (like Frege) begins by distinguishing the meaning of a linguistic expression from the object to which the expression refers. "The distinction between meaning [Bedeuttmg] and object [Gegenstand]," he says, is "wellestablished" (LI, I, 13, p. 289). Now this distinction is important because it marks a break with attempts to accowlt for problems of meaning and reference by appeal to the objects of reference alone. The distinction 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 threefold 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 Husserl is opposing a view which in logical or semantic theory he calls "psychologism". It is a view he himself had adopted earlier in his PhiloJOphie der Arithimetik (1891). 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 mathematics based on a repudiation of psychologism, and he took opposition to Hussed's use of the view. Reviewing Hussed's Philosophie der A rithm etik, Frege criticized Husserl for "a blurring of the distinction between image and concept, between imagination and thought." 7 Subjective ideas, Frege argued, are peculiar to particular thinkers or speakers; as such, psychological "contents" are distinct from the objective "contents" of thought

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or speech (senses or meanings) which can be common to many. In his review of Husserl he thus said: A man never has somebody else's mental image, but only his own ..
It is quite otherwise for thoughts [Gedanken; propositions]; one and the

same 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.s These arguments led Husserlto appreciate the works of the early nineteenthcentury logician Bernard Bolzano, who even before Frege had made much of a distinction between "subjective ideas" and "objective ideas" in semantic theory.9 Husser! came to recognize, as he says in the foreword to Logical Investigations, that psychologism cannot account for the objectivity, i.e., the intersubjectivity, of logic and mathematics or of knowledge in general. He thus rejects psychologism in Logical Investigatioi1f and in all his subsequent writings and begins to seek a better account of "the relationship .... between the subjectivity of knowing and the objectivity of the content known" (LI,

p.42).
HusserI's own account of the objective nature of linguistic meanings, in the first of the Logical Investigations, is thus 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 under:;tand 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. Husserl says:
If we or others repeat the same sentence [Satz] with like intention [Intention], each of us has his own pbenomena, his own words and his own

instances of understanding [Verstalldnismomente]. Over against this unbounded multiplicity of individual experiences, 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 judgment in the ideal, logical sense remains single. [LJ, I, 31, p. 329*.] If meanings are intersubjective, "shareable" entities then, as Frege had noted, the meaning of an expression must be quite different from the subjective 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 thus not events of consciousness. But the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions, Husserl believes, is nonetheless integrally related to intentional

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experiences. The use of sounds or marks to express meaning is dependent upon conscious activity. Still, the meanings 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" entities. This "ideality" is Husserl's version of the objectivity Frege and Bolzano had sought for meanings. It is the heart of Husserl's antipsychologism and sets his objective meaning entities (ideal "contents") apart from the subjective mental events (psychological contents) invoked by the psychologists of his day. Thus:
The essence of meaning [Bedeutttn g] is seen by us, not in the meaningconferring experience, but in its "content", the one identical intentional 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 experience. 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*.]

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. Husserl uses two different terms that might translate as 'real', both of which carry implications of temporality.lO 'Reell', which he uses to characterize events in the stream of consciousness, seems to mean "occurring in internal, or phenomenological, time". His other term 'real', he says, "keeps the notion of thinglike transcendence which the reduction to reel! immanence in experience is meant to exclude"(LI, V, 16, p. 577, n. 2*): 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 individuals occurring in both external time and external space. l l To say that meanings 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' .12 Husserl's characterization of meanings as "ideal" 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 onto logically independent of consciousness. Hussed says explicitly:
What I mean [meineJ by [aJ sentence ... or (when I hear it) grasp as its meaning [Bedeuttmg], 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

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of all types of meanings [Bedeutltngen] , subject-meanings, predicatemeanings, relational and combinatory meanings, etc. [Ll, 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 contents 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. 13 Husser! considers different kinds of entities to be ideal: in particular, meanings, "species", and numbers. "Species", so-called in Logical Investigations, are a kind of universals; in Ideas and his later writings Husser! calls them (along with numbers and perhaps other sorts of abstract entities) "essences". The recognition of meanings as ideal entities thus does not precisely determine their ontological category. Husser!'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), Husser! emphasized the "shared" character of meanings: the acts of consciousness underlying a speaker's utterance and a hearer's understanding seem to involve a commoll entity as' meaning. Husser! thus assumed meanings to be a kind of "species", or "universal objects", which are instantiated by such particular acts but which-in keeping with their ideality-exist independently of their instantiations (cf. LI, I, 31, p. 330). On this view, meanings are properties shared by speakers' and hearers' acts of intending the same object or the same type of object, properties characterizing them as directed to these entities. Even at this point Husser! 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. 14

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By the time of Ideas (1913), when Husserl had developed a more general notion of act-meaning (Sinn), the view that meanings are actessences, properties literally instantiated by acts, had been abandoned. 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 acts. Apparently he came to think of them as sui generis, perhaps as a special sort of abstract particulars. 15 Since Rudolf Carnap, meaning entities have come to be called "intensions" or "intensional entities". Though various philosophers in the Fregean tradition (e.g., Husserl, Carnap, Alonzo Church) have chosen various entities to play the role of meanings, Husserls Fregean view of meanings as abstract, "ideal" entities provides good reason for our saying that he considered them to be "intensions". The term 'intensional entity' is also suggestive of one of Husserl's own uses of the term 'intentional object'. Husserl admits to using the word 'intentional' in two quite different senses (vide LI, I, p. 327, n. 1). 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 "intentional objects" are often (though not consistently) meaning entities, specifically noematic Sinne (cf. Ideas, The term 'intensional entity' has the advantage of avoiding the ambiguity of 'intentional object'; its meaning seems to be just that of 'intentional object' as Husser! applies it to meanings and to noematic Sinne. Husserl's "intentional objects", taken in the sense of 'intensions', are like Frege's meanings not only in that they are abstract entities; Husserl's view of their role in mediating the reference of expressions is also Fregean. Indeed, although there are other differences, Husser! shares with Frege the following key theses concerning the relation of linguistic meaning to referent. (1) The meaning of an expression determines which entity (if any) the expression refers to (LI, I 13, p. 289). (2) The meaning of an expression is always distinct from its referent (LI, I p. 287). (3) An expression can have a meaning, and thus be a meaningful expression, even though there is no entity to which it refers (LI, I, pp. 292-93). (4) Different meanings can determine the same referent; expressions with different meanings can thus refer to the same entity (LI, I, 12, p. 287). Husserl's conception of linguistic meanings as ideal and of their relation to objects of reference turns out also to characterize "intentional objects"

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generally (noematic Sinne) and their relation to intended objects. For, as we shall now see, linguistic meanings (Bedeutungen) are further characterized by Husserl as themselves being the meanings (noematic Sinne) of acts underlying linguistic use of expressions.

3. Every Lingttistic Meaning is a Noematic Sil111

Linguistic meanings, as intensional entities, are onto logically independent of consciousness. Yet, Husserl maintains, they stand in a close relation to consciousness, 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 processes [psychischen Erlebnisse].
[LI, I, 7,

p. 277*.]

These "thoughts" or "meaning-giving" acts of the speaker are, Husserl says, "intimated" (klmd gibt) or-in ordinary language-"expressed" by the speaker's utterance of the expressions (Ll, 7, p. 277). We shall argue that for Husserl the meanings (Bedeutungen) ex pressed by words are the noematic Sinne of the "meaning-giving" acts of consciousness underlying and intimated by the utterings of the words. So, on Hussed's view linguistic meanings are themselves act-meanings. 16 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 Hussed 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. Hussed 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*. Cf. also Ideas, 124, pp. 303-304.] Linguistic behavior may be initiated by various volitions, depending on just what the speaker hopes to bring about by means of the behavior. But in any case (except soliloquy), the speaker aims to achieve his end by conveying a certain meaning to the hearer by uttering certain words. In every speech act (even soliloquy), Hussed says, the speaker must be acting with

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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 [Absieht] of "expressing himself about something" by its means, in other words, when in certain mental acts he lends [verleiht] it a meaning [Simi] which he wants to communicate with the hearers. [LI, I, 7, pp. 276-77*.]

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" (t'erleiht) his words their meaning (Sinn). These acts Husser! variously calls meaning-giving acts (sinngebenden Akte; Akte welche Bedeutung geben) or meaning-lending (sinnverleibenden, bedeutungverleihenden) acts (cf. LI, I, 7, 9.). "In virtue of such acts," he says, "the expression is more than a merely sounded word. It means [meint] something ... " (LI, 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 SinnY 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 constitute the expression as a physical object, our "interest" does not belong to this object; rather, we live in the meaning-giving [sinngebenden] acts, we are exclusively tumed toward the objective [Gegenstlmdhehell] that appears in them, we aim at it, we mean [meiJlen; intend] it in the special, preglltlll! sense [i.e., attentively] [LI, V, 19, p. 584*.]

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 Husser!, the meaning expressed as the Bedeutung of the words is the meaning, the noematic Sinn, of the tlnderlying 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.

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In Logical Investigations Hussed seems usually to presuppose rather than explicitly to state this key point, that a Bedeutung expressed in language ;s the noematic Sinn of an underlying, meaning-conferring act. 1S But opening his later (1929) Formal and Transcendental Logic he is both explicit and clear. In on "Language as an Expression of 'Thinking'," Hussed says:
In speaking we are continuously performing an internal act of meaning [act of meaning = 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]. [Husserl here footnotes LI, 1.] [In] this act of meaning [Meinen] ... there is constituted ... the meaning [Meimmg ]-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 statement, a unity of judging, of inwardly "thinking" asserting. No matter what other psychic producings may also be effected, . . . we shall pay attention only to what is fused on, namely the acts of judging that function as meaning-giving [sillngebende] acts, i.e., that bear in themselves the judicial meaning or opinion [Urteilsmeinung] that
finds its expression i17 the assertoric se171e11(e. 19

So, Hussed says, the meaning expressed in an assertively uttered sentence

is the meaning (the noematic Sinn) of the speaker's underlying act of judg-

ing; 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 coming to believe that the murderer is in this very room. This judgment is an act of consciousness: its object, on Hussed'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's judgment is directed to this state of affairs. Now let us suppose that Holmes wishes to share this bit of information with Watson: he turns to Watson and says, "The murderer is in this very room." It is part of Holmes's 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 commtmicating with Watson, in "sharing" that Sinn, only because the meaning (Bedeutung) expressed by his words iJ 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 Hussed takes as a more general account of the relation of expressed meaning to acts. The acts whose meanings are expressed will be

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different for different kinds of speech acts. And the acts whose Sinne are expressed in any case need not 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 themselves 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 .... T hinkitlg includes ... every mental process [Erlebnis] in which the Sinn that is to become 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 willing, an asking, or an uncertain presuming. 2o

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 Husser! 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.
4. Every Noematic Sinn is a Linguistic Meaning

Husserl, we have argued, sees linguistic meanings as the meanings, the noematic 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 expressible in language. This thesis is the basis of our claim that noemata and their components are "intensional entities". In assertion we express the noematic Sinn of, say, a judgment. 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-

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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 Husser! 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.... We use the word 'Sinn' ... 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, 'Sinn' refers to the component of an act's noema that accounts for the act's directedness to its object. But the whole noema, Husser! 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, remembering, 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 these acts are expressible in language. Indeed, any Sinn, the noematic Sinn of any (actual or possible) act whatsoever, is in principle expressible through language. And when the Sinn of an act is expressed, we saw in Section 3, it is the Bedeutung of the words that express it. \'7hether a Sinn actually is expressed or not, Husser! 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 [Meinllng] in the noematic Sinn ... of any act whatsoever is expressible through "linguistic meanings" [durch f/ Bedeuttmgen"] . ... "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.] The expressibility of noematic Sinne finally makes good the claim that they are intensions. Where we first saw that every Bedeutung is a Sinn expressed, we now see that every Sinn is expressible and hence (at least potentially) a Bedeutung. In short, we have here just one class of meaning

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entities-noematic Sinne-that play a role both in language and in acts of consciousness generally. The intensional entities that get expressed in language and the noematic entities that mediate the intentionality of acts are the very same entities. With this identification of noematic Sinn and linguistic meaning, the antipsychologism we noted in Hussed generalizes from a thesis about logic and semantics to a thesis about phenomenology and theory of intentionality generally: noematic Sinne are nonpsychological intensional entities. The expressibility thesis is important for understanding Husserl. But let us take care that we not misconstrue the claim it makes. In the first place, the thesis does not claim that every Sinn has actually been expressed. Nor does it claim that actually existing natural languages--or even humanly possible languages-are rich enough to express every Sinn. Hussed says in
Logical l111Jestigations:
There is . . . no intrinsic connection between the ideal unities which in fact operate as meanings [Bedeutungen], and the signs to which they are tied. . . . We cannot therefore say that alI 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 numbersin 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.]

A second point warranting care is that the thesis as formulated applies specifically to the noematic Sinn of any act. But, in addition to its expressible Sinn, the noema of an act includes other components, correlated with what Hussed calls the "Gegebenheitsweise", or "way of given ness" of the act (Ideas, 91, 92, 99, 132, 133). These components relate to the degree of clarity with which the object of an act is intended, the features of the object that are singled out for attention, the "intuitional fullness" (if any) of the act, and the act's "thetic character". Husser! argues that when an act is brought to expression these further components are not part of the Bedeutung expressed. The reason seems largely to be that the meanings we share when we communicate 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,"

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Husser! says in Logical Investigations, "points to something which does not vary in the varied acts thus brought to expression" (V, p. 617). And, because of the "generality" of expression, he says in Ideas, "never can all the particularities of the expressed be reflected in the expression" p. 310). Husserl specifically cites clarity and attentiveness as such particular features of acts, features whose noematic correlates are too idiosyncratic, apparently, 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 perceiving an object, and the noema of a nonintuitive presentation of the same object (merely thinking of it, for example) may have the very same Sinn (Ideas, Ll, V, But merely to think of an object is far from actually seeing, "intuiting" it. In the intuitive act the object is sensuously given, experienced with what Hussed calls "intuitional fullness" (cf. Ll, VI, esp. 21-29). This "fullness" is reflected in the act's noema, as a noematic correlate distinct from the act's noematic Sinn. But when a perceptual act is brought to expression, Hussed says, the expressed "content" is "the identical meaning [Bedeutung] that the hearer can grasp even if he is not a perceiver" (Ll, I, p. 209*). Since the noema of a nonperceptual 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. Another component of an act, also reflected in the act's noema, is what Husserl calls the act's "thetic character", the kind or species of the act, marking it as an act of perception, or memory, or whatever (Ideas, 91, 92, 99). In Logical Investigations, VI, 2, Hussed effectively maintains that, when an act is brought to expression, the noematic component correlated with its thetic character is not part of the meaning expressed. HusserI's point there has nothing to do with "generality". Rather, 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". (The latter would be the Sinn of a different act, Holmes's 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. Nonetheless, Hussed's discussion of different senses of "expressing" an act in Logical Investigations (VI, suggests that further noema components are expressible in a more indirect way. When I judge that p and I say "p", I express the Sinn but not the thetic component of the

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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, Ideas, p. 313). Now, although Hussed does not explicitly say so, this second Sinn includes both the Sinn and the thetic component of the noema of my first judgment. In HusserI'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 Hussed's second sense of "expressing" an act, my second utterance "expresses" my first judgment: both Sinn and thetic components of my first judgment's noema appear in the Bedeutung of the uttered words; for both are included in my second judgment's more complicated Sinn, the Sinn that serves as that Bedeutung. In this way the thetic component of my first judgment's noema is "expressed" as a Bedeutung in my second utterance. Intuitiveness, and also clarity and attentiveness, probably ought also to be expressible in this indirect way. To generalize, it thus seems that all noematic components are capable of serving as components of some Sinn and are in that sense expressible as linguistic Bedeutungen. This point, though Hussed does not formulate it himself, would assure that all noematic components are intensional entities. Indeed, there is evidence that Hussed did conceive of the noema and all of its componentsand not just of the noematic Sinn-as meanings or intensions. Of the Gegebenheitsweise components Husser! says, "As characters of the, so to speak, 'ideal' ['Ideellen'] they themselves are 'ideal' and not real [reell]" (Ideas, 99, p. 250) . And Husser! sometimes uses the word 'Sinn' to describe the complete noema. When, as is the rule, he reserves 'Sinn' for the objectoriented component of the noema (the "objective Sinn" or "noematic Sinn"), he suggests that the word 'Satz' ('proposition') would appropriately describe the combination of the noema's Sinn component and thetic component (Ideas, 13 3, p. 324). Either terminology reinforces the interpretation of the whole noema and its components as intensions. The importance of expressibility, we have seen, is that it is what finally identifies noematic Sinn and linguistic meaning. And the importance of that identification is twofold. That noematic Sinne are expressible and hence linguistic meanings shows that noemata as conceived by Hussed are more familiar than we might have thought. Because noemata and specifically Sinne are the heart of Husser!' s theory of intentionality (and, hence, of his phenomenology), Hussed himself spent an extraordinary amount of effort and ink on describ-

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ing how to become acquainted with noemata and noematic Sinne. The method he called "epoche" or "transcendental-phenomenological reduction". The result he sought is a direct, reflective acquaintance with noemata--or, more generally, with that which is "transcendental", including noemata and also "noeses", "hyletic data", and the "transcendental ego". The difficulty with phenomenological reflection, though, is not so much whether we can do it as just how to do it. And Husserl's descriptions of how to do it, in terms of "bracketing" or "suspending" any positing of the existence of the object of consciousness, are not terribly helpful. We do, however, already know and understand a good deal of language. If Husserl's view of language is correct, we thus already have a working acquaintance with lots of linguistic meanings. And since these meanings are themselves noematic Sinne, that means that we already have, by way of our language, a working acquaintance with lots of noematic Sinne. Even in the absence of a clear description of how noemata are grasped, the expressibility of Sinne assures us that they are familiar and that we do grasp them all the time. Just as Husserl's identification of noematic Sinn and linguistic meaning illuminates his notion of noema, so also it puts the notion of linguistic meaning itself into a broader perspective. That linguistic meanings are themselves noematic Sinne emphasizes the fact that referring, asserting, and linguistic activities generally, are founded on underlying intentional phenomena. Independently of whether he is completely correct on the details of how language and intention mesh, Husser!' s valuable insights into the role of meaning in intentionality generally deserve the closest attention of philosophers of language.
RONALD McINTYRE AND DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

NOTES
1. Edmund Husser!, Ideen, I (Husserliana edition; Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), 84, pp. 203-4; 146, p. 357. In the following, page references to Ideas are to this edition, and all translations from Ideen, I, are our own. Our references will include section numbers to facilitate use of other editions, such as W. R. Boyce Gibson's English translation, Ideas (New York: Humanities Press, 1931). 2. See David W. Smith and Ronald McIntyre, "Intentionality via Intensions," Journal of Philosophy 68, No. 18 (Sept. 1971): 541-6l. 3. Husser!, Idem, III (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), p. 89.

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4. Dagfinn Fellesdal, "HusserI's Notion of Noema," Journal of Philosophy 66, No. 20 (Oct. 1969): 680-87; and "An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers," in Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia, eds. Raymond E. Olson and Anthony M. Paul (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp.417-29. 5. Trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), from Logische Untersuchungen (2d ed., Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1913). References to Logical Investigations (abbreviated 'Ll') will be to Findlay's translation. At some points we have slightly modified the Findlay translation; all such instances are noted by ,*, following the page reference. 6. In this choice of terminology Husserl differs consciously from Frege. In everyday German 'Bedeutung' means "meaning" or "significance", as does 'Sinn' in one of its senses. Frege, however, uses 'Bedeutung' somewhat unusually for the referent of an expression, reserving 'Sinn' for meaning or sense. HusserI uses 'Bedeutung' where Frege uses 'Sinn', for specifically linguistic or expressed meaning. And Husserl uses 'Sinn' for what he calls specifically noematic Sinn-the meanings of acts-which he sees as a more general notion than linguistic meaning (d. sec. 4, this paper). In LI, I, 15, Husserl comments on Frege's terminology. 7. Parts of Frege's review are included in Peter Geach and Max Black, eds., Translations from the Philosophical Writings ot Gottlob Frege (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966). The line quoted is from p. 79. A translation is also now available in Mind: Gottlob Frege (trans. E. W. Kluge), "Review of Dr. E. HusserI's Philosophy of Arithmetic," "'find 81, No. 323 (July 1972): 321-37. 8. Ibid. Cf. Frege, "The Thought: A Logical Inquiry," in Philosophical Logic, ed. P. F. Strawson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). 9. Cf. Bernard Bolzano, Theory of Science, ed. and trans. Rolf George (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), esp. 48, 270, 271. This edition is an abridgement of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre, first published in 1837. 10. Husser! does not define these terms; our hypotheses about their meanings are based on his extensive and selective use of them. But they are at least coextensive with the notions we associate with them. 11. Husserl sometimes uses 'wirklich' in a broader sense, characterizing anything which may be the object of an act prior to the phenomenological (and, especially, the transcendental) reduction. In this broader sense mathematical entities and natural essences, though nontemporal and nonspatial, are "wirklich" (but meanings and noemata are not). 12. Cf. Husserl's contrast of the noema as a meaning ("intentional") entity with entities that are reel, real, and wirklich in Ideas, 87-91, 97-99. 13. "The Thought: A LogicalJnquiry," in Philosophical Logic (see note 8 above), p.29. 14. Guido Kung makes this point nicely in "HusserI on Pictures and Intentional Objects," Review of Metaphysics 26, No.4 (June 1973): 675. Also, d. LI, I, 33. 15. Cf. Ideas, 88-89. Kung, "Husserl on Pictures," p. 676. n. 11, has cited textual evidence that from Logical Investigations to Ideas Husserl's view of meanings underwent just this change.

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16. Husserl's development of this view is perhaps the definitive statement of the classical "idea" idea of language, lately disparaged by W. V. Quine. See, for instance, Quine's Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 27; Donald Davidson and Jaakko Hintikka, eds., Words and Objectio1lS (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1969), p. 304. 17. We know this primarily from Ideas, 88-91, 128-31: see Smith and McIntyre (note 2 above). But the essentials are also present in Logical Im1estigatio1lS, esp. V, 20-21, where Husserl speaks of "ideal content" or "matter" rather than of "noematic Sinn" (d. Husserl's comments on LI, V, 21, in Ideas, 94, pp. 234-35, and 133, p. 324). 18. Its most explicit statement in LI is in V, 21, p. 590 (where "semantic essence" "matter" "Sinn"). The point is well confirmed by Husserl's conception of expression in LI, VI, 1-15, as well as in Formal and Tra1lScendental Logic, 3, and Ideas, 124 (both of which we discuss in this section). 19. Husserl, Formal and Tra1lScendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. 22-23 (our italics). (N.b. We have substituted 'meaninggiving' for 'sense-bestowing' in the Cairns translation and at one point have retained the German 'Bedeutung' and 'Sinn' where Cairns has 'signification' and 'sense' respectively. ) 20. Ibid., pp. 23-24. (Again we have retained 'Bedeutung' and 'Sinn'.)