Contra the Fregean Approach

Abstract

Any appraisal of the positive arguments for the Fregean interpretation of the noema must begin with Føllesdal’s “Husserl’s Notion of Noema” and must take account of Smith and McIntyre’s detailed expansion thereof. Føllesdal argues for twelve theses concerning the noema,¹ the first and chief of which is that “the noema is an intensional entity, a generalization of the notion of meaning (Sinn, Bedeutung)” (“HNN,” 681 [HICS, 73]). While it is clear from Ideen I (203 [241]) that noemata are to be considered senses (Sinne), Husserl also makes clear that he is using “sense” with an extended meaning. And we cannot assume that this extended meaning is a simple generalization of the notion of linguistic sense, i.e. the sense of a linguistic expression, which, at least in the first edition of LU, Husserl shares with Frege. In the first place, Husserl himself indicates that this extended meaning of “sense” is to be distinguished from and involves a modification of the more ordinary meaning of “linguistic sense,” for which he reserves the term “Bedeutung” (Ideen I, 285 [294]). While this distinction is essentially a limitation of the term “Bedeutung” to a certain class of acts, the fact that the acts to which the notion is generalized have different characters underlies the possibility that the generalized notion might find different applications in those acts.