Abstract
In the Logical Investigations, Husserl argues that “sign” is an ambiguous word because it refers to two essentially different signitive functions: indication and expression. Indications work in an evidential way, providing information through a direct association of the sign and the presence of an object or state of affairs. Expressions (when used to transmit knowledge) work in a non-evidential way, pointing to possible experiences and displaying that the speaker or someone else has had such experience. In this paper I show that Husserl went back to the distinction between indications and expressions in a much later text, a manuscript from 1931, in order to distinguish between two kinds of communication with different essential features. I call these indicative and expressive communication. My claim is that Husserl’s distinction between these two types of communication is a crucial contribution to the phenomenology of knowledge sharing. In knowledge sharing, we appropriate someone else’s knowledge as someone else’s knowledge. Husserl shows that only expressive communication, and not indicative communication, makes this appropriation possible. Since Husserl argues that only humans use expressive communication, his analysis of indicative and expressive communication is also a contribution to understanding the uniquely human capacity for accumulating knowledge.
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Notes
In this paper I will use “evidence” and “evidential” according to the current English meaning of “proof”, as these words are used in the contemporary epistemological debate in the English-speaking world. My reason for doing so, at some risk, is to suggest that Husserl has something to contribute to that debate. In any case, “evidence” should not be taken as a translation of Husserl’s technical term Evidenz, that indicates intuitive fulfillment. Evidenz is a notoriously hard term to translate. Following Findlay’s choice in translating the Logical Investigations, I will translate Evidenz with “self-evidence” and add the German original in brackets.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for having prompted me to reflect on these two intriguing features of Husserl’s account of communication.
Thus, even if Husserl thinks that language is needed for knowledge sharing, he does not think that language is needed for cognition. See Lohmar (2016) for original research and further development of Husserl’s doctrine on this point.
The following account of expressions focuses on the hearer’s, rather than the speaker’s point of view. This should be kept in mind in particular when Husserl talks of an “association” between expressions and sense-bestowing acts. In his reworking of the VI Logical Investigation in 1914, Husserl realizes the necessity of a more clear-cut distinction between the two points of view. Thus, in that manuscript he first sketches an analysis of expressions “from the speaker’s point of view” (Hua XX/2, p. 25) in terms of a peculiar form of egological activity. Then he assumes the hearer’s point of view and analyzes “how expressions are phenomenologically constituted for him” (Hua XX/2, p. 33). In the 1914 manuscript, the type of analysis offered in the Logical Investigations is clearly presented as given from the hearer’s point of view.
The exact interpretation of Husserl’s view on the relation between meanings of expressions on one hand, and objects or states of affairs on the other hand, is a matter of disagreement among scholars. For a recent discussion of the problem see Leung (2011). For sake of simplicity, in this paper I will follow the interpretation put forward, among others, by Sokolowski (2002, p. 174n): “the meaning or sense just is the objective content, the state of affairs, but taken as proposed or supposed.” However, I see my general account as compatible with different interpretations. For the sake of brevity, I will omit a discussion of the ideality of meaning.
Husserl takes imagination to be filled intention. I will not address this aspect of his analysis, but rather just focus on perception. Also, I will consider intuitive acts in ideal terms, without analyzing the interplay between manifested and hidden sides at play in them.
Consider the duck-rabbit figure. In order to take it as a fulfillment of the expression “duck”, it is not enough that I look at the figure. Rather, I must be able to see it qua duck. If I only see it as rabbit, a fulfillment of “duck” is still lacking. So, the perception of the intended object per se is not a fulfillment. Only the perception of the intended object as intended by the expression is.
While providing some crucial insights into Husserl’s treatment of expressions in the first Logical Investigation, Benoist adds: “So, there is no meaning, no ‘sense simpliciter’, without a corresponding ‘fulfilling sense’—that pertains to the way the thing would be given if it was given according to that meaning that intends it […]” (Benoist 2015, p. 105). Benoist also convincingly shows how this is the case even for expressions with impossible fulfillments, such as “square circle.”
Since the topic of the paper is knowledge sharing, the following discussion about expressions shall focus on their use in conveying knowledge. It goes without saying that expressions perform many other different functions (asking, ordering, praying, guessing etc.).
On this, see an excellent recent contribution by Chad Engelland (2014).
Husserl’s phenomenology of knowledge is incomparably more sophisticated and nuanced than the following remarks, which are limited to the scope of this paper. In particular, I am treating states of affair without addressing, as Husserl does, the complex intentional operations through which states of affairs are grasped as synthetic unities and generalized in language. I will just assume that such operations take place.
There is a distinction at play in the sphere of sense-bestowing acts between relational and non-relational acts—for instance, between predications, such as “the house is red”, and acts of naming, such as “the red house.” Husserl stresses that both kinds of act can carry out fulfillment and therefore provide knowledge: “If we now particularly consider the field of expressions, we need not concern ourselves with judgments as assertive intentions or assertive fulfillments; acts of naming can also achieve their adequation” (Husserl 1970b, p. 265). Even though I focus here on assertions (expressions of states of affairs), it should be kept in mind that naming can also be used in knowledge sharing. For an in-depth analysis of this Husserlian claim and its consequences for a theory of truth, see Dahlstrom (2001, esp. pp. 65-78).
Obviously, the outcomes of such experiments as Seyfarth and Cheney (2003) were not available in Husserl’s time. However, it seems reasonable to assume that, in the 1931 passage, Husserl himself was referring to experiments with primates. In fact, he even explicitly referred to Wolfgang Köhler’s experiments on cognition in apes (Hua XV, p. 478).
Further phenomenological analyses on these experiments and their relevance for contrasting indications and expressions (including the role of syntax, not developed in my paper) can be found in Sokolowski (2008), in particular ch. 3 and ch. 7.
For the sake of brevity, I will not repeat “experience of fulfillment.”
A possible objection might arise at this point: isn’t taking the sender as reliable a belief about the sender’s epistemic attitude? The answer is no. Being reliable is not an epistemic attitude. For instance, smoke is a reliable indication of fire, and this has nothing to do with epistemic attitudes.
This paper does not address Husserl’s claim that expressive communication is exclusively human. For an in-depth discussion on this point, see Di Martino (2014). In this paper, the variation on the monkey experiment is just meant to illustrate the difference between indicative and expressive communication, regardless of who is using them. Also, it goes without saying that humans use a lot of indicative communication as well (signals, alarms etc.).
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Averchi, M. Husserl on Communication and Knowledge Sharing in the Logical Investigations and a 1931 Manuscript. Husserl Stud 34, 209–228 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-018-9226-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-018-9226-7