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Husserl on symbolic technologies and meaning-constitution: A critical inquiry

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Abstract

This paper reconstructs and critically analyzes Husserl’s philosophical engagement with symbolic technologies—those material artifacts and cultural devices that serve to aid, structure and guide processes of thinking. Identifying and exploring a range of tensions in Husserl’s conception of symbolic technologies, I argue that this conception is limited in several ways, and particularly with regard to the task of accounting for the more constructive role these technologies play in processes of meaning-constitution. At the same time, this paper shows that a critical examination of Husserl’s account of symbolic technologies, particularly as developed in his mature, genetic phenomenology, can be enduringly fruitful—if some of the specific conceptual weakness of this account are identified and properly accounted for. My discussion will proceed as follows. In the first part I briefly analyze the early Husserl’s account of the role the ‘method of sensible signs’ plays in arithmetic cognition. In the second, main part I critically examine the bearing the genetic-phenomenological concepts of sedimentation and technization have on the conceptualization of symbolic technologies in Husserl’s work. In the final part I summarize the major strengths and weaknesses of Husserl’s account of symbolic technologies, and in the process make a case for the ongoing relevance of some of the crucial elements of this account.

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Notes

  1. The term ‘symbolic technologies’ is derived here from the work of Merlin Donald, who defines symbolic technologies as those material cultural objects “that are specifically designed to represent, communicate and store knowledge” (2010, p. 71). A related and commonly used concept is that of ‘cognitive artifacts’ which refers to those “physical objects made by humans for the purpose of aiding, enhancing, or improving cognition” (Hutchins 2001, p. 126; see also Heersmink 2013).

  2. See Floridi (2014).

  3. E.g., Clark and Chalmers (1998), Rowlands (1999), Wheeler (2005), Menary (2007) and Clark (2008).

  4. See e.g., Rowlands (1999) and Wheeler (2005).

  5. Kelly (2005).

  6. E.g., Miller (1982), Willard (1984), Tieszen (1989), Hopkins (2002), Ierna (2003) and da Silva (2010).

  7. E.g., Klein (1940), Blumenberg (1981), Rang (1989), Buckley (1992), Woelert (2013) and Duke and Woelert (2016).

  8. Derrida (1978).

  9. Zahavi (2003, p. 73); and comprehensively Sokolowski (1964).

  10. Husserl (2003, p. 272).

  11. See e.g., Husserl (2003, pp. 200–203). Further, instructive discussions of this distinction and its potential merits and problems can be found in Miller (1982), Willard (1984), Tieszen (1989), Hopkins (2002) and Ierna (2003). There have been extensive debates concerning the ways and extent to which Husserl’s PA commits to the fallacy of psychologism—the failure to distinguish between subjective psychological experiences and the objective meaning-content that is instantiated in such experiences (see for recent, comprehensive discussions, e.g., Hopkins (2011) and Tieszen (2005)). These debates will not be rehearsed here, but as will be touched upon in Sect. 3, Husserl in his more mature writings on the constitution of ideal objects clearly does not commit to any form of psychologism.

  12. Husserl (2003, p. 138).

  13. Husserl (2003, p. 202).

  14. Miller (1982, p. 33).

  15. Husserl (2003, p. 202).

  16. Husserl (2003, p. 161).

  17. Husserl (2003, p. 272). That Husserl regarded the development and use of written symbols as essential for the development of a more sophisticated form of arithmetic is also highlighted by the following passage: “We will soon see that the distinction between oral and written signs is so essential for arithmetic that an inescapable restriction to the former would have made a development of arithmetic on a larger scale impossible” (Husserl 2003, p. 257).

  18. Husserl (2003, pp. 272–273).

  19. Husserl (2003, pp. 257–258). Husserl elaborates as follows: “The best signs, therefore, are written signs that are easily fixed, are formed to have the greatest possible capacity for comprehension in one glance, and at the same time are the shortest and most distinct ones possible” (Husserl 2003, p. 258).

  20. Husserl (2003, p. 257).

  21. Husserl (2003, p. 258).

  22. Husserl (2003, p. 257; my emphasis).

  23. Husserl (2003, p. 257).

  24. Husserl (2003, p. 253).

  25. Husserl (2003, p. 274).

  26. Husserl (2003, p. 272).

  27. See Husserl (2003, pp. 271–273).

  28. Husserl (2003, p. 256). Such a systematization of rules, one may add in broad reference to Husserl’s more mature texts such as the Logical Investigations and also the Crisis, is considerably easier to come by if the material symbols employed are both graphically and semantically emptied from any intuitive associations and meanings, that is, where there is “a contingent, external relation between matter and representative content” (Husserl 1970c, p. 26).

  29. Sokolowski (1964, p. 6).

  30. Husserl (2003, p. 200).

  31. Husserl (2003, p. 254).

  32. Husserl (2003, p. 255; also p. 251).

  33. Husserl (2003, p. 255).

  34. Husserl (2003, p. 200; my insertion).

  35. See on this point also Hopkins (2002).

  36. Husserl (2003, p. 255).

  37. Husserl (2003, p. 256).

  38. Willard (1984, p. 108).

  39. Husserl (2003, p. 273).

  40. Husserl (2003, p. 272).

  41. Husserl (2003, p. 256).

  42. Husserl (2003, p. 274). It is this precisely this theme of a ‘technization’ and ‘mechanization’ of thought through symbolic technologies that Husserl returns to and further develops upon in his more mature works (see Sect. 3.1).

  43. See comprehensively Sokolowski (1964).

  44. Husserl (1982, p. 73).

  45. See Bernet et al. (1993, pp. 195–204) and Sokolowski (1964).

  46. Bernet et al. (1993, p. 196).

  47. Bernet et al. (1993, p. 201).

  48. Husserl (1970b, p. 356).

  49. See Husserl (1970b, pp. 356–357).

  50. Husserl (1970b, p. 356).

  51. In Husserl’s own words, the particular task of a phenomenological theory of constitution is to consider “ideal formations (…) as essentially products of the correlative structures of productive cognitive life” without that the “ideal Objectivity” of those formations would be compromised in the process (Husserl 1969, p. 263; see on this point also Hartimo 2012; Tieszen 2010).

  52. See Duke and Woelert (2016).

  53. Husserl (1970b, p. 378).

  54. Ströker (1993, p. 185).

  55. Husserl (1970b, p. 378).

  56. See Husserl (1970b, p. 378). For a further discussion of Husserl’s concept of ‘internal history’ and the context of its conceptual development within Husserl’s work more specifically see Ströker (1993, pp. 175–197).

  57. Husserl (1970b, p. 371). In Husserl’s own words, internal history is the “vital movement of the coexistence [Miteinander] and the interweaving [Ineinander] of the original formations and sedimentations of meaning” (Husserl 1970b, p. 371, translation modification; my insertion).

  58. Husserl (1969, p. 245).

  59. Ströker (1993, p. 184).

  60. Husserl (1970a, p. 49).

  61. See Woelert (2011).

  62. Husserl (1970b, p. 362).

  63. Husserl (1970a, p. 26).

  64. Husserl (1970b, p. 361).

  65. See Husserl (1970b, p. 360).

  66. Husserl (1970b, p. 361). Notably, Husserl does not rule out the possibility that at least occasionally, reactivation can also occur in such a way that brings back to light the original meanings and the activity that constituted them (Husserl 1970b, p. 361). But overall Husserl regards such more ‘active’ reactivation as the exception rather than the rule.

  67. Husserl (1970b, p. 362).

  68. Klein (1940, p. 155).

  69. Husserl (1970b, pp. 360–361).

  70. Husserl (1970b, p. 361); see on this specific point also Derrida (1978, p. 87).

  71. E.g., Husserl (1970b, pp. 358–361).

  72. This said, considerations thematically related to what Husserl later on would label ‘technization’ feature already in his earlier and earliest work including the Logical Investigations and—as previously illustrated—the PA. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl takes issue with the notion of ‘thought-economies’—initially put forward by Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach—and in a way that anticipates his later conception of technization (Husserl 1970c, chapter 9). ‘Thought-economies’ for Husserl are prone to the mechanical use and application of methods, most of all of those (formal) methods “which are rendered secure because a general proof of the efficiency of the method has been once and for all guaranteed” (Husserl 1970c, p. 201).

  73. See Krämer (1988, pp. 1–3).

  74. Husserl (1970a, p. 45).

  75. Husserl (1970a, p. 46). One should note that Husserl resorts here to almost the same terminology already employed in the PA—a further indication that, in many respects, Husserl’s later, genetic reflections on symbolic technologies build directly onto those that one can find developed in his earliest writings.

  76. Buckley (1992, p. 91).

  77. See Blumenberg (1981, p. 28).

  78. Husserl (1970b, p. 377).

  79. Husserl (1970a, p. 46).

  80. See Husserl (1970a, p. 43; pp. 46–47).

  81. Characteristic of a symbolic conception of number is for Husserl an understanding of number as an abstract multiplicity. What made such understanding possible, Husserl contends, is a process in which numbers, qua their symbolic form, are ‘displaced’ from the original contexts that gave meaning to them, where all that is remembered in the end is that “the numbers signify magnitudes” (Husserl 1970a, p. 44). In his CR, Husserl refers to Descartes’ algebraization of geometry as the paradigmatic case of such a displacement. The conceptual shifts that have led to the modern development (and, as it were, reification) of a symbolic conception of number have also been explored, with great historical sophistication, by Klein (1968). For a recent, both seminal and comprehensive discussion of the relationship between Klein’s and Husserl’s work see Hopkins (2011).

  82. Husserl (1970a, p. 46).

  83. Husserl (1970a, p. 52).

  84. Rang (1989, p. 120, my translation).

  85. Woelert (2012).

  86. Husserl (1970c, pp. 197–211).

  87. Buckley (1992, p. 91).

  88. Buckley (1992, p. 91).

  89. Husserl (1970b, p. 366). Husserl however never committed to the view that such idealities are themselves originally constituted linguistically. Even in his later thought, Husserl is careful to maintain a distinction between “ideal geometrical objects”—which are understood to be constituted by intentional acts of consciousness—and “the idealities of geometrical words, sentences, theories—considered purely as linguistic structures” (Husserl 1970b, p. 357).

  90. See e.g., Husserl 1970b, pp. 357–358).

  91. Husserl (1970b, p. 358).

  92. Husserl (1970b, p. 360).

  93. See Husserl (1970a, pp. 43–44).

  94. See Woelert (2012, pp. 357–360).

  95. Ströker (1987, p. 209).

  96. See Husserl (1970b, p. 378).

  97. See on this point also Derrida (1978, p. 89).

  98. This tension in Husserl’s conception of the relation between internal and external history is reflective of broader tensions implicit to Husserl’s mature conception of the life-world, both as concerns the conceptualization of this world’s historicity as well as this world’s relation to the world of technology. With regard to the former aspect, Husserl’s notion of the life-world contains an unresolved tension in his attempt to posit the life-world as a universal “meaning-fundament” (Husserl 1970a, p. 49), while at the same time conceptually approaching the life-world in terms of its being a concrete historical world. The dilemma is obvious, as noted by Waldenfels: If the life-world (and every possible life-world) is indeed by its very nature concrete-historical, then this world can hardly be granted the function of a universal fundament or foundation; and if this world is granted precisely this function, then it can hardly be conceived of as being concrete historical (1985, p. 20). With regard to Husserl’s conceptualization of the relation between the life-world and the world of technology, one can observe a related issue stemming from Husserl’s tendency to posit the life-world as an originary sphere of ‘pure’ experience existing ‘prior’ to technological intervention. As pointed out by Blumenberg (1981, pp. 24–26), this stance of Husserl’s is already problematic in that the life-world thus construed is in truth already a methodological (and in this sense already ‘technical’) product of a process of abstraction away from the way human agents concretely experience their world. For as a matter of fact, and as stressed by various commentators (e.g., Claesges 1972; Blumenberg 1981; Murata 1987), any historical human life-world, and most of all our contemporary life-world is never just constituted as a world of ‘pure’ experience but also always already as a technical world, with technical artifacts being an intrinsic part of this world and the ways it is experienced (Claesges 1972, p. 90).

  99. Husserl (1970b, p. 355).

  100. Husserl (1970b, p. 356).

  101. See Husserl (1993, p. 173).

  102. See e.g., Zahavi (2003, pp. 109–125) and Zahavi (2001).

  103. Husserl (1968, p. 344; see also Husserl 1960, p. 30). The translation above follows that provided by Zahavi (2003, pp. 110–111).

  104. Klein (1940, p. 155; see similarly Derrida 1978, p. 87).

  105. See Husserl (1970b, pp. 357–358).

  106. Husserl (2003, p. 272).

  107. Husserl (2003, p. 200; also p. 255).

  108. Husserl (1970a, p. 33).

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Woelert, P. Husserl on symbolic technologies and meaning-constitution: A critical inquiry. Cont Philos Rev 50, 289–310 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-016-9408-y

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