 Okay, hi welcome back again to 19th and 20th century philosophy today. We're talking about Edmund Husserl Husserl was a German philosopher Born in 1859. So 11 years after Frege Born the same year as John Dewey and 30 years before Martin Heidegger 1859 is also the same year that both on Liberty by Mill and Mill And Darwin's origin of the species were published. So 1859 was a pretty big year Husserl died in in 1938 10 years after retiring Now Husserl is often regarded as the grandfather or founder of continental philosophy Certainly, he was the founder of the tradition of phenomenology Which became an important part of the continental tradition Um But like Frege before him probably better to think him of him as a progenitor rather than a practitioner of that tradition now, um Husserl was trained in mathematics and psychology His early work again much like Frege's was on logic the foundations of mathematics and the theory of meaning um Husserl's very earliest work focused on The foundations of mathematics particularly on the concept of number And on the nature of arithmetic and arithmetic knowledge Husserl tried to ground this in psychology, right? So at the beginning of his career, he was a follower of of his mentor Brentano's psychologism But by 1900 Husserl had given this up and had become one of the strongest proponents of anti-psychologism Now some interpreters have thought that this was due in large part to frege's critique Of husserl's views in their correspondence. They had they wrote letters to each other in the early 1890s um as well as uh frege published a review in 1894 of husserl's first book The Philosophy of Arithmetic But other interpreters have more recently argued that husserl started to independently recognize The problems with psychologism and little known writings from 1891 and to come to Some of the key ideas that he shares with frege Earlier than we had previously thought So after this point husserl's first major work was the logical investigations The first part of which is a major attack on psychologism The later parts of which he lays out his views And his method of phenomenology In the context of trying to understand the nature of logic Like frege, husserl's investigations of logic and mathematics lead him into considerations of the nature of meaning And many have said that husserl took over frege's distinction between sense and reference sin and bedoy tongue directly But again more recent commentators and interpreters have pointed towards this 1891 essay by by husserl Which is earlier than frege's discussion of sense and reference by about a year And the fact that husserl sent that essay to frege as part of their correspondence Is evidence that maybe husserl arrived at the distinction earlier Or even that husserl may have influenced frege's thinking And whichever way the influence goes it's certain that these were That there were these significant similarities and interactions between these two thinkers I think that's key And just as a as another side note if frege is a Progenitor of analytic philosophy and husserl of continental philosophy What does it say about the supposed analytic continental divide? That their interests were so close to one another and that they actively engaged ideas That's what we're thinking about now husserl never gave up on brentano's dream of making philosophy into A rigorous science. This is something that husserl took away from brentano Though husserl gave up on psychology as a method for doing this so instead Husserl came up with a new approach phenomenology to do the job And he thought this was going to be the key to turning philosophy into a strict science Now giving a full account of what phenomenology is and how it works and its history would be a whole course, right? But I think it's helpful to think about the differences between psychology As a as an approach to philosophical questions and husserl's phenomenology. So Both are concerned in some way with with consciousness with the mind or with experience especially the the sort of psychology of of husserl's time But phenomenology is purely a first person method Psychology is at least partly third person. It looks at it looks at The mind from the point of view of behavior and from an objective standpoint Psychology is empirical, right experimental But phenomenology is a priori, right? It's not only first person, but it doesn't depend on the content of any particular experience um And while psychology is concerned with the study of concrete mental activities unfolding in time Um phenomenology is concerned with with universal essences essences of consciousness Now One thing that's worth mentioning Given given that we're talking so much about the relationship between husserl and frega Husserl's phenomenology involves an expansion of the theory of meaning that husserl shares with frega from just language, right? So Whether whether he's talking about natural languages like german or english or constructed languages like logic and mathematics frega is focused on the meaning of language the meaning of expressions in a language um Husserl is interested in that but also expands his focus to include The the meaning of any kind of conscious Experience or or act, right? So he's also interested in The meaning of perceptual experiences for example So the structure of consciousness for husserl is is what he calls intentional it has intentionality means it represents something As being a certain way it stands for something, right? um Not only does it refer to something outside of itself, right? It also has a sense or content so he Uses that two-dimensional picture of meaning to talk about Experience like now It's also worth saying like frega this further content is not a mental picture It's it's another kind of objective thing that husserl sometimes calls the noema, right? The noema is is a lot like the freguin sin or sins And uh, it You know and then in different parts of of husserl's career. He thinks of this more platonistically, right? Or a more um, you know in a Kantian transcendental way Um, although that's that's a very complicated story Now for frega and husserl both I think there are puzzles about the relation between The expression or the intentional act its sense or sin or noema And its referent or the object it indicates Does the word or the experience Determine both its content and its denotation Or is the content of the Of the word or phrase um Or the experience Somehow involved in determining what the denotation of that thing is what the reference of that thing is So there's a set of of puzzles there for um Frega and husserl to solve and also for their interpreters to try to understand Now you've read husserl's expression and meaning When part of it which hope gives you a good sense both of the continuity with frega as well as what is distinctive about husserl's early phenomenological method There's a lot more to say about this and so I look forward to discussing it with you But that gives a sort of introduction to Some of the key ideas And some of the background here of husserl and his relationship to frega So thanks for thanks for joining me. Uh, I look forward to discussing with you And uh, I'll see you next time