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Phenomenology, possible worlds and negation

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Notes

  1. On this distinction, see Charles W.Harvey, “Husserl's phenomenology and possible worlds semantics: A reexamination”, Husserl Studies 3 (1987): 197–207.

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  2. On the transcendental subjectivity and transcendental reflexion, see J.N.Mohanty, The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy (Martinus Nijhoff: Dordrecht, 1985).

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  3. In Ideas I, § § 89–94, Husserl distinguishes between the complete noema and ‘a noematic Sinn’ which is an element of the neoma. The neomatic Sinn is just a meaning-entity. Husserl asserts that the neoma of judgment is the meaning of a sentence used within a given judgment.

  4. See David WoodruffSmith and RonaldMcIntyre, “Husserl's Identification of Meaning and Noema”, The Monist 59 (1975): 115–132.

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  5. In his “The World as Noema and as Referent”, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 3 (1972): 15–26 Guido Küng says that meanings are a special kind of noemata. Dagfinn Føllesdal asserts that noemata are a generalisation of the notion of meaning. See his “Husserl's Notion of the Noema”, The Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 680–687.

  6. See Ideas I, § § 84–85.

  7. Cf. Ideas I §§ 87–90 and 128. Føllesdal accepts this thesis, too. He writes: “The noematic Sinn is that in virtue of which consciousness relates to the object.” (“Husserl's Notion of the Noema”, ibid., p. 682.)

  8. Cf. Ideas I, § 124.

  9. On this distinction, cf. Ideas I, §§ 10, 11 and 134. Husserl says that formal apophantics investigates various ontological forms and syntactical categories, such as states of affair, relation, property, quantity, quality, etc. On the concept of formal ontology, cf. N. B.Cocchiarella, “Formal Ontology”, in HansBurkhardt and BarrySmith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology (Philosophia: Munich-Philadelphia-Vienna: 1991), Vol. 2: L-Z, 640–647, and Barry Smith, “An Essay in Formal Ontology”, Grazer Philosophische Studien 6 (1978): 39–62.

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  10. In Cartesianische Meditationen, §§ 14 and 17, Husserl distinguishes between the stratum of the ‘cogito’ and the stratum of the ‘cogitatum’. This is just another expression of the opposition between the noetic and the noematic stratum of consciousness.

  11. Cf. Cartesianische Meditationen, § 14.

  12. The concept of illocutionary force was introduced by JohnSearle in his book Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge University Press: London, 1977), esp. chapter 3.

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  13. See Ideas I, § 93.

  14. The concept of foundation is not clear in Husserl's works. However, there are attempts at the formalisation of this notion. But one must notice that they are not sufficient. These formal definitions are only employable in the filed of noematic contents. See BarrySmith and D.Murray, “Logic, Form, and Matter” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LV (1981), pp. 47–63, and Barry Smith and Kevin Mulligan, “Framework for Formal Ontology”, Topoi 2 (1983): 73–85.

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  15. See Charles Harvey and Jaakko Hintikka, “Modalization and Modalities”, forthcoming in Phenomenology and the Formal Sciences (Kluwer: Dordrecht).

  16. On the discussion of this question, see Ch. Harvey, “Husserl's phenomenology and possible worlds semantics”, ibid.

  17. See Harvey and Hintikka, “Modalization and Modalities”.

  18. Ibid.

  19. See Hua I, 52. Cf. Harvey and Hintikka, “Modalization and Modalities”.

  20. This is not explicitly asserted by Husserl.

  21. Cf. Experience and Judgment, trans. J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks (Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1973), §§ 17–21.

  22. Ibid., p. 272.

  23. Ideas I, esp. § 133.

  24. See Harvey and Hintikka, “Modalization and Modalities”.

  25. Mohanty accepts a similar conclusion. He writes: “The idea of pluralism of worlds has come to stay... The transcendental philosopher, therefore, cannot start with a preferred representation of the world.” (The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy, p. XXIV).

  26. NicolasRescher and R.Brandom introduce this concept in their book The Logic of Inconsistency: A Study in Non-Standard Possible-Worlds Semantics and Ontology (Blackwell: Oxford, 1980).

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I would like to thank Charles W. Harvey from the University of Central Arkansas and Leon Gumański from the University of Toruń in Poland for a number of useful criticisms of an earlier version of this paper.

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Krysztofiak, W. Phenomenology, possible worlds and negation. Husserl Stud 8, 205–220 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00373660

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