Why phenomenology could not commit the linguistic turn

HOW DOES BEDEUTUNG ARISE? FREGE'S AND HUSSERL'S REFERENTIAL SCHEMES

As to (3), this point is apparently not supposed to cause any doubt. Both philosophers are consentaneous about this criterion of the linguistic turn. They admit that certain a priori logical relations underlie statements or other acts. But if we consider this matter in terms of problems of reference in more detail we can see differences in the scholars' approaches.

According to Frege, denoting reference emerges as follows: each representation has a corresponding “reference” to an object. Yet this reference is active only if the object falls within the concept or meaning involved in this representation. According to this scheme, Frege understands meaning (Sinn) as a particular way of specifying the signified (die Art des Gegebenseins), i. e. as a way an object is given in a mental act (Frege, 2008, 24). The essence of reference, however, is precisely in categorical relations, predication, falling under the concept, and finally, in relation of a concept/function to an “argument” they are attached to in order to complete their “incompleteness.” Referential connections result from these initial logical structures. It follows from the fact that Frege interprets Bedeutung primarily as truth-value (Frege, 2008, 30). For this reference to take place, clear limitations have to be applied to concepts. For each argument, concepts must have a certain truth-value as a reference, so that it could be determined for each object whether it falls under a particular concept or not (Frege, 2008, 14; 1984, 148).

Frege's opinion of the reasons for the origin of meaning should obviously be referred to (3). He regards the logical structure as the basis of the language, though it is not expressed in it explicitly. Language always merely outlines logical relations, affording ground for guessing the issues which have not found any direct expression in it:

A rigorously defined set of forms of inference simply does not exist in language. Therefore, we cannot distinguish a sequence of inferences without gaps from one in which intermediate steps are omitted. One could say that such an uninterrupted sequence hardly ever occurs in language; such strictness runs contrary to our intuitive use of language because it entails an unacceptable verbosity. (Frege, 2019, 80)

And yet, Frege admits something concealed beyond primary logical structures. It is obvious that meaning is associated with such a phenomenon as a concept. Every time Frege mentions that a common name may have no reference, and that a concept word may be absolutely invulnerable logically (Frege, 1997a, 179-180), he means that concepts represent a mode of meaning, not that of reference, and therefore may not be regarded from the point of view of their truthfulness. Hence, the possibility of meaning is founded by the existence of such a phenomenon as concept (Begriff). Begriff in itself is an undetermined phenomenon which defies definition, like an indecomposable chemical element. What is logically simple cannot be defined -- no definition in the proper sense of the word can be provided for it:

What is simple cannot be decomposed, and what is logically simple cannot have a proper definition. [...] If something has been discovered that is simple, or at least must count as simple for the time being, we shall coin a term for it, since language will not originally contain an expression that exactly answers. On the introduction of a name for something logically simple, a definition is not possible. (Frege, 2008, 47-48; 1984, 182-183)

This is where we encounter the limit of cognition, a logical apriori This is not the only example of a logical a priori. T. Arnold notes that the term “object” is similarly “non-analytical” in Frege's works (Arnold, 2020, 107).. In Husserl's phenomenology, Frege's concept (Begriff) can be compared to intention-a unity of a descriptive sort, a typological property of an act (Aktcharakter) which precedes all psychological facts as a certain a priori.

To Frege, the source of reference is initial logical relations implicitly represented in language and having analytical limits. Husserl's position regarding (3) could be considered as similar if not for its duality. Husserl indeed declares the necessity “of investigating the a priori system of the formal structures which leave open all material specificity of meaning” (LU IV § 10, Husserl, 2001b, 64). But do the a priori formal structures have a logical nature? Here, it is appropriate to recall the disagreements between Husserl and Frege on the way of forming a concept word and general name described above. For Husserl, general name is not a sum or a combination of equal contents. On the opposite, the general name is the peculiar form of reference.

Yet it should be taken into account that meaning, according to Husserl, is polyphonic: it unfolds on the three levels. Each form on the side of representation (thought) should have a corresponding form on the side of meanings, and each form of meaning needs to have a corresponding grammatical form. Wherein the forms are far from one-to-one correspondences. The relations of these three levels were problematical for Husserl; in virtue of this fact, the crucial questions of the Fourth Investigation arose: “whether all verbal (sprachlichen) articulation and form counts as expressing a corresponding semantic articulation and form (Gliederung oder Form der Bedeutung)?” “Whether the things that names and sentences are said to `express' are themselves experiences of meaning, or how they stand to meaning-intentions and meanings (Bedeutungsintentionen, bzw. Bedeutungen)?” (LU IV § 14, Husserl, 1968, 302-303; 2001b, 53-54).

Comparing Frege's and Husserl's referential schemes is representative. Willard emphasizes a fundamental divergence in the way they see the mind/object nexus. It implies the connection of a mental or linguistic act and the sense (thought) and that between the act of meaning (expression) and the object. According to Frege, in the act of utterance senses are “aimed” at their object. It seems to be analogical to the way an object is “meant” in intentional experiences: an intention is aimed (abgezielt) at it in different modes (such as representations, judgments, etc.) (LU V § 11, Husserl, 1968, 372). However, as to the reference (Bedeutung) itself, Husserl never regards it as an object of the act with the help of which it is designated. It is rather an intentional nature of an act or expression. Reference is simultaneously immanent to experience, since it determines what sort of experience it is, and transcendent to it, since its existence does not depend on this experience. The Bedeutung achieves its objectivity and transcendence not by being an object, as Frege sees it, but by being a property (Willard, 1994, 242, 256).

As Smith remarks, according to Frege, the experience of cognition successfully addresses an object when the experience accepts (supports) descriptive content, and this content prescribes or is satisfied by this object, where the prescription remains a single-meaning, a multi-meaning, or a functional relation. Husserl regards an experience of cognition as intentionally related to an object when an experience involves the content which includes an X-content given that an X-content prescribes this object or is satisfied by it.

According to Husserl's scheme, for every occasion of acquaintance there is an X-content that corresponds to and prescribes the object of acquaintance and is entertained by the acquainting experience. Smith characterizes such referential relations as mysterious. The X-content prescribes the proper object “directly,” without appealing to the object's properties: “It seems that the X would simply `zap' that object.” It means that Husserl's scheme does not imply a predication and an attributive work. For unclear reasons, the X-content not only determines an object but all by itself succeeds in prescribing an object. Paradoxically, for each occasion, the right object of acquaintance is always prescribed (Smith, 1989, 147-150).

The difference between the referential schemes points to the difference between the initial foundations of linguistic acts in Frege's and Husserl's theories of meaning. There is every reason to believe that, despite the ideas stated in the Logische Untersuchungen, Husserl's a priori constitution of the realm of meanings does not have a logical nature. The observations by Smith, Dummett, and Rump maintain this view.

We infer that Frege and Husserl diverge to a certain extend regarding (3). Husserl considers that sense does not arise due to certain a priori logical relations that underlie statements or other acts; sense arises in the pre-logical phase. But this is where we would like to emphasize the moment of the implicit consensus of the philosophers, and Frege states the primary pre-logical layer manifested on the level of logically decomposable concepts.

Conclusion

We have intentionally considered the linguistic turn in its radical version which will be subsequently developed by analytical philosophers. We have aimed to give point to the problem of possibility for phenomenology to make this turn and demonstrate the demarcation line between phenomenology and analytical philosophy drawing it where it is the most principled and expected, i. e. within the scope of meaning and reference.

Dummett's opinion is widely known. For phenomenology, the linguistic turn is not possible because Husserl generalizes the notion of sense or meaning to the limit: “Something like sense, but more general, must inform every mental act” (Dummett, 1993, 26). Thus, a meaning-conferring act cannot demonstrate any linguistic nature here. For Frege, on the contrary, the possibility of meaning roots in linguistic structures for which true-value and false-value statements were constituted. Our study affirms this version (see Sect. 5). For Frege, it is propositionality that makes a content of statements meaningful or “sense-like.” For Husserl, Bedeutungsintention is non-linguistic; furthermore, in general, no acts of consciousness have a symbolic nature.

However, the reasons for the impossibility of the linguistic turn for phenomenology go beyond these statements. Our study allows considering this issue in a well-argued manner. Let us summarize the characteristics due to which phenomenology could not commit the linguistic turn.

1. Contrary to the principles of the linguistic turn, the basis of reference is something more profound than certain a priori logical relations. It explains why meaning is not compositional and contextual for Husserl. Although in Husserl's analysis of linguistic statements as essentially occasional, indexical, and demonstrative expressions, we can find following the principle of context, on the a priori level of formation and combination of references, this principle is irrelevant, as has been demonstrated in Sect. 6. Besides, Husserl does not emphasize the principle of compositionality according to which the reference of a complex expression is a function of the references of its parts. In addition to this, Husserl does not regard concept as predicative (see Sect. 4) at the phenomenological level, due to the transition to categories cannot be described as the assignment of properties, i. e. as a subsequent development of varieties given in perception. Intentions of attributing references and intentions of perception are the work of consciousness in different intentional registers which cannot be reduced to each other.

Husserl's position in the matter of contextuality, propositionality, and compositionality of sense leads him away from the linguistic turn. But Ch. Parsons does not find any fatal obstacles here. Following Dummett, he regards the fact that Husserl generalizes the concepts of reference as an area where neither contextual nor compositional theories are possible (Parsons, 2001, 133) as an obstacle to the linguistic turn of phenomenology.

Pre-logical nature of sense is revealed by Husserl, but we could see it in Frege's works, though less explicitly. Primary logical relations speech acts and grammar are based upon are preceded by the prelogical stage of analytical indecomposability, such as Begriff described by Frege and Husserlian fundamental subjective structure of consciousness.

1. The role of sensory data in the emergence of meaning (reference) generates Husserl's interpretation of propositionality and predicativity that is incompatible with the principles of the linguistic turn. To Frege, signs are correlates of representations, whereas ideas or general concepts are centers of stable groups of sensory impressions (Frege, 2019, 77), which allows him to generally share the views of methodological nominalism. To Husserl, the meaningfulness of something does not depend on the presence of illustrating contemplations or a sensory image which represents this meaning (see Sect. 5). This fact explains why he does not share the views of methodological nominalism, i. e. the intentional content of any sorts of acts, even those of imparting reference and fulfilling reference (sinngebende undsinnerfullende Akte), is not propositional from his point of view.

2. The linguistic turn is primarily associated with overcoming the issues rooted in the deceptive ways of functioning of unformalized, unstructured linguistic expressions, and this thesis in its utmost expression results in the statement that philosophy is supposed to be aimed at providing better ways of expression instead of discovering specific philosophical truths (Rorty, 1967, 36). In this case, the idea of independence of sense from its language expression asserted by Husserl overlaps the direction to the linguistic turn for phenomenology. But we can infer the same regarding Frege's point of view. The issue revealing the both philosophers' attitude towards the linguistic turn is their view of the nature of meaning. As T. Burge notes,

A trademark of a sense or Fregean thought component is that it can in principle be expressed on indefinitely many occasions. For nothing in its expression or in its being thought affects its referential relations. Its relation to its referent(s) is atemporal and depends purely on its own nature and the inventory of the world. (Burge, 1979, 430)

Husserl and Frege give meaning the same ontological status. To both scholars, thought (Sinn) is something objective, communicable, universal, independent of its carriers, and non-linguistic by its nature. Concepts and logical truths are objective and ideal. The process of judgment does not create thought -- true thought was such before it was cognized and comprehended (Frege, 1918, 68).

3. Consequently, the paradigm of the linguistic turn, implied or expressed meaning does not exist independently from language. Any attempts to “burrow beneath language” must be unsuccessful.

Husserl, however, made such attempts. He understood the formation of references and the ability to language as parallel and independent forms of conscious activity (2). Again, we do not find any cardinal difference between Husserl's and Frege's standpoints here. To Frege, the structuring power of the formation of meaning and the generation of references is in primary logical relations which seem to be stronger than language in a certain sense. They imply both language and meaning. To Husserl, the power forming meanings is the spontaneity of consciousness itself, i. e. “ideally governed, operative belongingness of the ideatively graspable act-essence in question, which have their `being' and law-governed ontological order in the realm of phenomenological ideality” (LU V § 35, Husserl, 2001b, 154).

We have pointed out the ideas that lead the phenomenology away from the linguistic turn. At the same time, we could see how fundamental these ideas are for both of thinkers, Frege and Husserl: these are independence of reference from language, objectivity and ideality of references (Sinn, Gedanke), the admission that a priori logical relations bring forth Sinn and Bedeutung, and the admission of both pre-linguistic and pre-logical nature of sense. All of it makes us formulate the question in a different way: why was the linguistic turn possible for analytical philosophy?

The probable reason is the difference of the role assigned by the philosophers to sensory data in the process of formation of meanings. This is one of the reasons why Frege approaches the linguistic turn much closer than Husserl does (see Sect. 5). This discrepancy is due to the specificity of their interpretation of the “ideality” of senses and the relation of senses to acts noted by R. McIntyre. For Husserl, senses are universals that act instantiate; for Frege, they are ideal particulars that acts apprehend or “grasp” (McIntyre, 1987, 530). If we continue this comparison, Cobb-Stevens concluded that the cardinal difference between analytic and Husserlian philosophies is in their characterizations of the relation between perception and predication (Cobb-Stevens, 1990).

In the light of the markers we have been guided by, phenomenology moving away from the linguistic turn. Nevertheless, it was Husserl who affirmed the significance of phenomenology precisely from the perspective of the linguistic turn. As R. Rorty notes, if it were possible to answer traditional philosophical questions without involving the reduction of questions about the nature of things either to empirical questions (to be turned over to the sciences) or to questions about language, then the linguistic turn would probably be treated as having led to a dead end (Rorty, 1967, 34). However, among the existing directions, phenomenology is the closest to suggesting exactly this way of solving philosophical problems.

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