Husserl on Meaning and Grammar

46th Husserl Circle Meeting Helsinki 2015

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Husserl on Meaning and Grammar

Matteo Bianchin

Università di Milano-Bicocca

Abstract

In the Logical Investigations Husserl sets out the idea of a Logical Grammar as a theory intended to explain how complex expressions can be constructed out of simple ones so that their meaning turns out to be determined by the meanings of their constituent parts and the way they are put together.

Meanings are therefore classified into formal categories that match the syntactic categories of linguistic expressions, so that the logical properties of expressions turn out to reflect their grammatical properties. As long as linguistic meaning reduces to the intentional content of mental representations, however, it is not trivial to account for how they relate to syntax.

Husserl’s take on these issues suggests the following:

1) The syntactic form of representations (both mental and linguistic) carries information about their semantic role;

2) The logical form of representations supervenes on their syntactic form;

3) The phenomenology of thought is broadly language-like.

1. Representations, rules and recursion

Husserl (1913a) sets out the idea of a Logical Grammar as a theory intended to

explain how complex expressions can be constructed out of simple ones so that their

meaning turns out to be determined by the meanings of their constituent parts and

the way they are put together. Husserl’s argument here mimics the fregean argument

for compositionality. Since expressions have a determinate meaning, it must be


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possible to break down the meaning of complex expressions into a finite number of

primitive units whose form is simple, so that infinitely many complex forms can be

constructed out of these units according to corresponding combinatorial laws

(Husserl 1900: 243, Husserl 1913a: 295-96, 334 ff.). A theory of such “essential

structures of meanings” will state the primitive forms and the “operational laws”

according to which indefinitely complex constructions can be obtained by iterating

the application of a finite number of rules to a finite number of simple forms

(Husserl 1913a: 329, 331-32, 336).

Although no theory of recursion was available when Husserl wrote the Logical

Investigations, he seems to have had a clear intuition of the recursive character of

the operations governing such constructions. Combinatorial operations iteratively

apply to the results of their applications, so that structures can be embedded into

structures by substituting simple forms with complex structures of the same kind, to

the effect that infinite expressions of growing complexity are produced from a finite

set of primitives:

If we now make gradual substitutions in the primitive forms set forth, and for a

simple term repeatedly substitute a combination exemplifying the same forms, and

we always reapply our primitive existential law, we arrive at ever new forms of

deductively proven validity, encapsulated in one another with any degree of

complexity […]. We see at once that the compoundings go on in infinitum, in a

manner permitting comprehensive oversight, that each new form remains tied to the

same semantic category, the same field of variability as its terms, and that that, as

long as we stay in this field, all framable combinations of meanings necessarily exist,

i.e. represent a unified sense (XIX/1: 332)

By conjunction, for instance, we can obtain a complex proposition (M and N) from

the simple propositions M, N; we can then take (M and N) as an input to obtain [(M


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and N) and P], and so on in infinitum: the truth value of the resulting proposition

will always depend on the truth values of its constituents (the same holds for all

logical connectives).1 Similar considerations apply to the basic forms of syntactical

connection governing the composition of sub-propositional constituents into simple

propositions. We can combine, for instance, noun phrases with adjectival phrases to

obtain progressively more complex nominal phrases, or build complex noun phrases

by substituting a complex nominal construction to proper names. From “Napoleon

lost the battle of Waterloo” we can get “[(Napoleon) the winner of Jena] lost at

Waterloo” and then again “[(Napoleon) the winner of [(Jena) the city where Hegel

wrote his first Philosophy of Spirit] lost at Waterloo”, and so on. The recursive

structure of syntactic rules holds both for constructing complex propositions out of

simple propositions and for constructing simple propositions out of basic sub-

propositional constituents (XIX:1, 330-31). Also we can obviously combine different

forms of combination. This explain how we can produce “an infinity of complex

forms legally engendered”;; here in fact

[we] rise to the insight that all possible meanings are subject to a fixed typic of

categorical structures build, in a priori fashion, into the general idea of meaning, that

a priory laws govern the realm of meaning, whereby all possible concrete meaning-

patterns systematically depend on a small number of primitive forms […] out of

which they flow by pure construction. (Husserl 1913a: 333)

This combinatorial structure is crucial to all kinds of syntaktische Gebilde, that is to

any kind of entities provided with a syntactic form, including both expressions and

numbers (Husserl 1929, p. 265). This coheres with Husserl’s view that formal logic

1 Husserl’s actual example goes as follows (Husserl XIX:1, 331): (M and N) and P (M and N) and (P and Q) (M and N) and P and Q


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and mathematics are to be united in a general formal science purporting to realize

Leibniz’s ideal of a mathesis universalis (Centrone 2010, xi). Operations here are

defined both for arithmethics and grammar as procedures to construct complex

structures from a finite set of “normal” or “primitive” forms, and to reduce the first to

the latter, so that “terms” can be taken to occur in logical laws as variables, whose

range of variability is bound by the relevant meaning category (Husserl 1901, pp.

328-29, 331; Husserl 1929, p. 265). Centrone (2010) has shown how it works for the

number system in the Philosophy of Arithmetic and concluded that the class of

arithmetical operations envisaged by Husserl is extensionally equivalent with the

class of partially recursive functions. This accords finely with the treatment of

grammar in the Investigations and suggests that recursion is a property of any

combinatorial system of entities equipped with a syntactic form. If this is right,

Husserl significantly anticipated the view that recursion is the fundamental feature

of minds, as it underlies the productivity of both arithmetical and grammatical

operations (Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch 2002, Corballis 2011).

2. Propositions, syntax, and logical form

Meanings are thus classified according to the form which is to be bestowed upon

their “matter”, if they are to play a role in propositions. Thus, if we decompose the

meaning of linguistic expressions, we will find at the bottom just shapeless “nuclear

matter”, that is lexical contents or simple termina which works as the material basis

of meanings. As a “nuclear form” is then bestowed upon them they originate a

“syntactic stuff” such as a noun phrase or an adjectival phrase. Talks of “stuff” might

be confusing, as it may suggest that syntactic stuffs just supply – rather traditionally

– the logical category of objects which can occur as a subject of predication, but


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cannot be predicated of other things2. In this context, however, syntactic stuffs are

taken to be formal structures covering all primitive syntactic functions. That is, they

make for the deep formal structures of logical grammar.

Syntactic stuffs provide a repertoire of basic syntactic formations out of which any

logical construction can be composed. Syntactic forms are finally realized in the

grammatical structure of a public language according to a limited set of variations.

For instance, noun phrases can occur in a sentence both in a subject and in the object

position, but not in the predicate position. Adjectival phrases instead are

“predestined” to attribution and predication. Thus, while attributes can be

transformed into predicates without changing their adjectival function, a noun

cannot be transformed in a predicate unless a corresponding change occur at the

deeper level of the underlying syntactic stuff – in fact a change affecting the nuclear

form imposed on lexical contents.

Syntactic stuffs thus constrain syntactic forms. Nuclear matters, however, impose no

constraint on nuclear forms. Nuclear matter have no form in themselves – not even

nominal: basic nominal forms are obtained by combining simple lexical items with a

determiner, or they are proper names. They provide the elementary units of semantic

content, which can be shaped according to any nuclear form. Hence they do not

divide into kinds according to putatively “natural” functions. This suggests that, on

the one hand, they are individuated atomistically, on the other hand they only occur

under a syntactic form or another according to the role they play in the context of a

complete thought. As a matter of fact nuclear matter are abstract moments of

expressions, those which turn out to be invariant under all possible transformation in

syntactic form – that is, they are non independent entities and therefore cannot

occur without being couched in a syntactic form (Husserl 1913a: 324-25). One is

2 Here Husserl significantly departs from both Aristotle and Frege; Husserl’s distinction between nuclear matter and nuclear form suggests that logical form depends on the syntax rather than on some intrinsic feature of the content expressed, while Frege seems to imply that senses are inherently carved to refer either to objects or to concepts, therefore suiting the logical form of expressions by nature (see Dummett 1973: 257-59)


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tempted to speculate, in a chomskyan vein, that this is evidence of a division of labor

between two different systems. While a prelinguistic conceptual-intentional system

supplies lexical contents, thought emerges as they are recruited by the syntactic

structures of something like an internal language.

The relevant laws of thought will operate on such forms, indeed, telling us how to

build the meaning of complex expressions from “syntactic materials falling under

definite categories […] in the realm of meaning […] according to syntactical forms

which are likewise fixed a priori” (Husserl 1913a: 321). Bar Hillel (1953) thus

suggested that Husserl’s semantic categories are nothing but the counterparts of

(traditional) grammatical categories. It seems safer to say that they are individuated

by syntactic properties shaping the intentional contents expressed as linguistic

meanings (Husserl 1913a, 310-12, 320, 483, 498). As linguistic meaning here reduces

to the intentional content of mental representations, a major problem is to show how

such contents are given a syntactic form.

Although syntactic forms may be read here as contributing to what is meant by a

linguistic expression (Rizzoli 2002), they do not behave as a part of the sense it

expresses as linguistic meaning. In particular, they do not contribute to the

descriptive characterization of the corresponding referent. Rather, they carry

information about its ontological category and the way it fits into the state of affairs

that is represented by a complete sentence (Husserl 1900: 243-46; Husserl 1921: 157-

58). This does not pertain to the notion of sense, as it is outlined in the fifth

Investigations, but to the “function of the specific forms belonging to the reference

[of each member of a proposition]” (Husserl 1929: 263). That is, it pertains to the

way an expression contributes via its reference to determine the state of affairs

represented by the sentence in which it occurs. Rather than being an ingredient of

meaning, syntactic forms seem to convey the semantic role of expressions.

What binds together the constituents of propositions and imposes structure on them

is a relation into which they enter by virtue of the syntactic form bestowed upon

them. Unlike Frege, Husserl took concepts to be representations of “general objects”

rather than something analogous to functions, so he took them to be what predicates

express, rather than what they refer to, and took predicates to express complete


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senses (Husserl 1913a: 134, 216-17, 1921: 134, 179, 184). Indeed, as general terms

express a concept, they refer to a species in the same way singular terms refer to

individuals, and can occur both in nominal and predicative position. What marks off

predicates from names here is not their being intrinsically incomplete, but their

grammatical function. So Husserl did not think of propositions along fregean lines,

as resulting from saturating the incomplete sense of “conceptual terms”, although he

shares with Frege (1892) the view that some part of a thought must be unsaturated.

Predicated terms like “red” or “horse” are not intrinsically incomplete and thus must

be distinguished form predicative syntagmata like “… is red” or “… is a horse”, whose

incompleteness arises from combining a general term with the copula, which counts

as the only unsaturated element in the structure (Centrone 2010). The copular “be”

can be read as a predicate-forming operator on adjectives, common nouns etc., as

suggested in a different context by Salmon (2005), so that the inflected copula

conveys the form of the proposition because it performs a predicative connection of

terms, making complete sentences to represent the purported fact that the object

designed by their subject instantiates the property designed by their predicate

(Husserl 1921: 129, 137, 140).

Here the unity of propositions does not require the sense of predicates to be

peculiarly designed to match the sense of names, because the syntax of

representations carries all the information we need to construct a proposition out of

its constituent parts: the unity of members in a proposition is indeed a “syntagma”

(Husserl 1929: 268). So a traditional problem affecting analytic philosophy since

Russell (1903, cf. Soames 2010) was elegantly solved by Husserl in a way that nicely

coheres with the view about compositionality reviewed in the preceding section and

more generally with the view that thought is governed by the principles of a universal

grammar, a view Husserl traces back to the tradition of 17th century’s linguistic

rationalism (Husserl 1913a: 336).

Now this is to be a logical grammar because here logically simple expressions are

coincident with syntactically simple ones and the rules to form complex expressions

convey the information about how to combine them so that a complete sentence can

be interpreted by constructing what it represent out of what is represented by its


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constituent parts. As a consequence, logical properties of expressions turn out to be

“grounded” in their grammatical properties (Husserl 1900: 243-245; 1913a: 329,

340). This seems to entail a perfect matching of logical and grammatical form that is

far from obvious in natural languages. Yet Husserl’s reading does not call for a

revisionist attitude about natural language, as long as it takes the structures of logical

grammar to shape an “ideal framework which each actual language will fill up and

clothe differently” (Husserl 1913a: 339). That, is, logical form supervenes on syntax

as an abstract property of expressions accounting for the “rational” moment of

language (Husserl 1913a: 336-38). Therefore, it cannot be deeply disguised by

natural language, as it must turn out to be realized in any language as the aspect in

its grammar that is relevant to semantics: logical form captures what the syntactic

structure of expressions determines about their meaning.

3. A language for thought?

This takes us to a general point. Husserl’s intentional semantics is designed to reduce

linguistic meaning to the content of mental representations, while the view that

meaning categories are individuated formally is to account for the compositionality

of meaning. Intentional contents are therefore supposed to undergo a process of

“syntactic formation” in order to count as constituents of a proposition. That restricts

what can count as a mental representation, since symbols looks like the only

representational devices that display the relevant syntactic properties – this is why

pictures and sensory contents are not compositional (Fodor 1985, 2008, cf. Husserl

1913b: 68). As long as mental representations are thought to be logically prior to

linguistic representations, it looks as if mental phenomena must have all features of

symbolic representations except that of being expressions. That reduces the

structures of language to the structures of thought, but it also suggests that the latter

are built on something akin to language.

Solutions are not legion. First, one can expect the structure of thought to depend on

subsuming mental contents under the grammatical categories of the corresponding


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linguistic expressions. The matter of acts would be given a structure in the process of

being connected to a symbol by the meaning intention that accounts for its

expression. Second, one can take mental representations to be symbols of a language

of thought more or less along the line suggested by Fodor’s language of thought

hypotheses.

As for the first view, Husserl seems at times ambivalent: he generally resists the idea

of making thought dependent on language, but admits that linguistic expressions are

necessary to perform any judgment pertaining to the “higher intellectual sphere”

(Husserl 1913a: 3-4, 12 ff.). So he holds that linguistic intentionality is derived from

the original intentionality of acts, but also that (a) language provides a reliable access

to thought, as linguistic structures roughly parallel mental structures and that (b)

logical analysis must take into account “the grammatical aspect of logical

experiences”, as logical form is a syntactic matter. The first claim is an

epistemological claim about the use of linguistic analysis, given the difficulties

affecting the direct analysis of thought. The second suggests the metaphysical claim

that natural language is at least partially constitutive of thought.

As for the second view, Husserl could not even think about it, as he took for granted

that, as a matter of principle, symbolic representations cannot enjoy intrinsic

intentionality. Yet his argument rests on the assumption that they are always

“indirect”. And there is no principled reason for that. Here Husserl seems to conflate

a claim about representational content – if intentionality is real, it must be non-

derived at least in some fundamental cases – with a claim about representational

vehicles – they must be non symbolic for representations to be blessed with non

derived content. While the first claim must be true if we take intentionality to be real

(Crane 2001), the second claim is arbitrary: as a matter of principle, any

representational vehicle – sensory or symbolic, or whatever – can carry both derived

and non derived contents. Once that conflation is removed, then, there remains no


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reason to think that mental representations cannot be both symbolic and “direct” –

that is, both linguistic and intrinsically intentional. 3

Be it as it may, the general point that thought must be somehow language-like is

made stronger by the passages suggesting that the “synthetic” activity of judgments is

grounded on the formal structures of logical grammar, rather than the contrary:

Plainly, the analysis of each act that is not straightforward in its objectification must

pursue the series of backward references contained in its nominalizations, until it

comes own upon such straightforward act member, simple both in form and matter.

We may finally note that the treatment of possible articulations and synthetic

formations leads to the pure logico-grammatical laws discussed in our Fourth

Investigation. In this respect only matters (objectifying act-senses) are relevant, and

in these all forms of structured objectifying synthesis express themselves. Here the

principle obtains that our self-contained objectifying matter (and therefore any

possible non-dependent meaning) can function as a member in every synthesis of

every possible forn. This entails the particular principle that each such matter is

either a complete propositional (predicative) matter or a possible member of such a

matter. (Husserl 1913a: 483)

3 Husserl’s argument is that, if intentionality is real, some representation must be intrinsically intentional, as long as the hypothesis that all intentionality is derived leads to infinite regress. Original or “proper” representations are then “direct” because the intention to refer is not carried out by means of a further representational device. And they are fundamental because intentionality flows from them to the derived representational devices on which it is bestowed – linguistic symbols, for instance. Taken as a claim about the primitive nature of intentional phenomena this is hard to question. Taken as an argument about the format of original representations, however, it hardly proves that original representation must come in a specific vehicle. At best, it suggests that they must be mental. Of course one may think that the symbols of natural language cannot be intrinsically intentional because they are external physical items upon which meaning has been bestowed. Yet that entails nothing about the format of original representations. Husserl just takes for granted that linguistic symbols are expressions in a natural language, and concludes that fundamental representations cannot be linguistic. Nothing, however, intrinsically prevent symbols to be endowed with non derived content, and mental representation to be symbolic rather than sensible: in this respect, at least, symbols fare no worse than other representational devices – like pictures or sensory contents. Thus it is an open question whether original representation can be symbolic, provided that symbols can be mental and endowed with non derived content.


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What seems clear is that (i) all analysis should come to nominal matters as basic

constituent of judgments, that (ii) the “synthetic formation” of judgments that

provides for their predicative structure must be traced back to grammatical laws, and

therefore that (iii) propositions are not generated by a mysterious capacity for

“intellectual synthesis”;; rather the contrary is the case: judgment display a

propositional content because they instantiate propositions that are generated by the

way nominal matters are combined according to the laws of a logical grammar.

The intentional psychology of the Logical investigations would benefit form the light

such reading shed on two crucial issues. One concerns the phenomenological format

of original, non derived intentionality. The other concerns the relationship between

the so-called “laws of direct and of indirect thought [Gesetze des eigentlichen und

uneigentlichen Denkens]” (Husserl 1921: 181 ff.). As for the first point, the quality

and the matter that make for the essence of an act type only occur as moments of a

token act as they are couched in a representative content which makes for their

phenomenal character, which is provided either by the linguistic symbols of a natural

language, or by the “sensuous contents” of intuitive acts (Husserl 1913a: 90). Yet

neither of the two can make for the phenomenal format of original intentionality. The

first only has derived intentionality. The second only supply a vehicle to the

intentional matter in sensible perceptions (Husserl 1921: 90-94, cf. de Boers 1978, p.

138. Mulligan 1995) and they are absent in categorial acts concerning mathematical

and logical truths, or a priori material truths. 4

As for the second point, we need to account for the parallelism between the laws of

direct [eigentliches] and of indirect [uneigentliches] thought. In fact, the categorial

structures displayed by direct thoughts are isomorphic with the structures of their

symbolic counterpart and undergo identical combinatorial laws. So it looks like the

4 Although categorial acts are “founded acts”, sensible intuitions here only serve as auxiliary examples, that is they play an enabling, not an evidential role in abstraction; therefore their sensible contents are no proper part of categorical acts (Husserl 1922: 178-80, 183-84). “Non positional” representations involved in linguistic understanding must also be proper, although they are neither perceptual acts – perception is positional – nor meaning-intentions – they do not consist in the act of bestowing a meaning upon a sign, but in the act of grasping such meaning-bestowing act (Husserl 1913a: 452-453).


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categorial forms of direct thought are just syntactic forms under a different name.

Husserl indeed maintains that “categorical” and “syntactic” are synonymic

expressions (Husserl, 1913b, pp. 21 ss., 1929, pp. 1939: 247 fn. 1). Thus, if we follow

Husserl in taking thoughts to be compositional by virtue of their syntactic form, we

are to conclude that there must be something like a language of thought which is

constitutive rather than expressive of direct thoughts. This seems even more strict if

we are to design a phenomenology for thought, since we are given only sensory

contents and symbolic expressions as representational vehicles, and the first have no

constituent structure.

A possible conjecture is that the structure we find both in direct and indirect

thoughts mirrors the syntax of a language of thought which has no phenomenology

and only shows up through linguistic expression. Another is that, although lexical

contents – that is, nuclear matters – may not be linguistic, symbolic representations

are constitutive of thoughts, as long as what binds contents together in the structure

of a proposition is a syntactic relation in which representations may only enter by

virtue of their form. The point here not only concerns how propositions can be

phenomenologically instantiated in conscious occurrences of thought. It concerns

what propositions are. It does not entail, however, that they are just linguistic items.

As I said in the first section, one can speculate that, while a pre-linguistic conceptual-

perceptual system supplies the lexical contents expressions, propositional thought

only emerges as they are recruited by the syntactic structures of language. This does

not entail that thought only comes out in linguistic expressions. It means, however,

that the structure underlying propositional thought must be something language-

like.


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Husserl on Meaning and Grammar

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