The Phenomenological Dimension of the Theory of Meaning: a Critical Inquiry through Husserl and Wittgenstein Pubblico

Abstract

Given the undeniable influence of the linguistic turn, it is common to characterize epistemology in the twentieth century as centrally concerned with meaning. But many of the early twentieth-century figures who helped to inspire that turn did not characterize meaning exclusively in terms of language. In response to contemporary accounts that tend to limit the scope of meaning to the semantic, pragmatic or conceptual, I use the work of Husserl and Wittgenstein to argue for the importance of non-linguistic aspects of lived experience (Erlebnis) to the theory of meaning, situating the project historically as a legacy of Kant's Critical epistemology and systematically in terms of contemporary debates about the role and status of nonconceptual content.

I argue in Chapter One that a robust theory of meaning must take account of the way the conditions of the possibility for meaning are determined by intrinsically value-bearing features of everyday experience, features that are not themselves inherently linguistic or conceptual. Most contemporary nonconceptualist accounts of perceptual experience fail to adequately theorize the role of the nonconceptual on its own terms, reducing nonconceptual elements of experience to that of mere "fodder" for conceptualization and ignoring the epistemic role the nonconceptual plays in determining structural conditions of possibility. This can be overcome through a transcendental-constitutional approach that examines the full range of experiential structures--including those not mediated by language or concepts--by which meaning is constituted.

Tracing a series of parallel developments in the theories of meaning of Husserl and Wittgenstein in Chapters Two through Five, I argue that--despite important differences--both authors' later conceptions of meaning necessarily include accounts of its relation to an inexact, non-linguistic dimension of experiential life: the lifeworld (Husserl) or form(s) of life (Wittgenstein). What appears from the standpoint of linguistic and conceptual analysis to be an unfortunate inexactness is in terms of the later conceptions of both philosophers not the result of incomplete analysis, but of a recognition of the ontological primacy of the lived and fundamentally social phenomenon of meaningfulness that characterizes our experience in a way that outstrips conceptual and linguistic representation.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction

I. Terminological Preliminaries and Theoretical Framing of the Project

II. Background and Historical Starting Point of the Inquiry

III. Systematic Situating of the Project: The Contemporary Debate about Nonconceptual Content

IV. Chapter-by-chapter Overview of the Dissertation

V. A Final Word on our Systematic-Historical Approach

Chapter Two: Beginnings in Transcendental Logic

chapter introduction

I. The Critique of Psychologism as an Insufficient Theory for the Founding of Pure Logic

II. Husserl's Early Transcendental Theory of Logic and Meaning

a. Pure Logic as the "Theory of all Possible Theories"

b. The Analysis of Essential Meaning as a Pre-linguistic Task for Pure Logic

c. Intentionality as Requiring Logic's Relation to Experience

d. The Self-referential Character of Pure Logic and Ideal Material Content

e. The Real and the Ideal

f. Pure Logic as A Priori Theory of Science and of Meaning

g. The Levels of Logic in the Logical Investigations

Table 1: Levels of Logic in the Logical Investigations

h. Ideal vs. Individual Meaning-Species

i. Tensions in Husserl's Early Conception of Meaning

III. The Transcendental Theory of Logic in Wittgenstein's Tractatus

a. The Isomorphic Structure of Reality and Representation in the Tractatus

Table 2: The Logical Schema of the Tractatus

b. The Main Problem of Tractatus Interpretation

c. The Picture Theory and Logical Form

d. Tractarian Transcendental Logic and the Role of Projection

e. The Transcendental Role of the Mystical and the Question of the Ineffable

f. Kantian Limits: the Transcendental and the Transcendent

g. The Mystical as Precursor to the Phenomenological Dimension of Meaning

IV. The Limits of a Pure Transcendental Logic: the Problem of the "Closed" A Priori

Chapter Three: The Turn to Experience as "Opening Up" of the A Priori

chapter introduction

I. The Husserl-Frege Fork

II. Husserl's Rethinking of the Ideal and the Real

a. The Reell-phenomenological and the Intentional

b. Act and Meaning in Correlation in the Second Edition of the Logical Investigations

c. The Meaning/Essence Distinction and the Turn to Experience: The Role of the Wesensschau

III. Wittgenstein's Move Away from the Tractarian Theory of Meaning

a. The Turn to the "Phenomena Themselves"

b. Projection Revisited

c. The Question of Phenomenological Language

IV. The Phenomenological Reduction and the Beginnings of the Transcendental Turn

chapter conclusion

Chapter Four: Transcendental Paths to the Phenomenological Theory of Meaning

chapter introduction

I. Husserl's Transcendental Theory of Meaning

a. Phenomenology as Teleologically-ordered "Infinite Task"

b. Meaning as Correlation

c. The Status of the Noema and Husserl's Transcendental Idealism

d. The Ontological Status of the Formal and Material Regions

e. Intentional Analysis as Non-conceptual Theory of Constitution

f. The Critique of Anthropologism and the Turn to Transcendental Subjectivity

II. Wittgenstein's "Phenomenological Period" and the Transcendental Problem of Knowledge

a. The Color-Incompatibility Problem arising from the Tractatus

b. Color-Incompatibility and the Synthetic A Priori

c. Schlick's Critique of Phenomenology and the Synthetic A Priori

d. Wittgenstein's Remarks on Husserlian Phenomenology

e. The Empirical and the Experiential

f. The Ineffability of Immediate Experience

g. The Temporality of Experience

III. The Object of Immediate Experience as Transcendental Clue

Chapter Five: Lebenswelt and Lebensform: Two Accounts of Meaning and Experience

chapter introduction

I. Wittgenstein on Meaning, Language, and the Form of Life

a. The Relation of Meaning to Immediate Experience in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy

b. The Transcendental Account of Meaning, Language, and the Experiential in On Certainty

c. Do We Experience Meaning?

d. Phenomenology and the A Priori in the Remarks on Color

II. Husserl on Non-conceptual Content and the Logical Necessity of the Lifeworld

a. Husserl on Kant's Synthetic A Priori and the Move to the Lifeworld

b. Husserl on the Logic of Color

c. Prepredicative Meaning Constitution: Types, Horizons, and the "Weight of Experience"

d. The Orienting Function of Prepredicative Experience

e. The Role of Language in Husserl's Late Genetic Account of Meaning and Experience

III. Between Apriority and Temporal Immediacy: Language, Life, and Meaning

a. Language as Calculus and as Universal Medium: Uses and Limitations of a Distinction

b. Two Methods of Transcendental Inquiry

IV. Conclusion: The Phenomenological Dimension of Meaning

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Philosophy
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Philosophy Language, General
Parola chiave	history of philosophy philosophy of language epistemology meaning form of life lifeworld phenomenology transcendental philosophy
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Carr, David, Emory University
Committee Members	Flynn, Thomas R, Emory University Risjord, Mark, Emory University

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