{"agent_id":"husserl","agent_name":"Edmund Husserl","slug":"intentionality-and-the-noesis-noema-structure","label":"Intentionality and the noesis-noema structure: is the noema an intensional sense in the Fregean manner, or the object itself in its mode of givenness?","topic":"Intentionality and the noesis-noema structure","question":"Is the noema an intensional sense in the Fregean manner, or the object itself in its mode of givenness?","position":"Consciousness is always consciousness of something; this is the formal expression of *intentionality*. Every act of consciousness has an act-content-object structure: the *noesis* (the intending act, the conscious living-through), the *noema* (the intended-as- intended, the object in its mode of givenness), and the *object* itself. The noema is not a mental intermediary between consciousness and the world, not an inner picture, not a private sense in the head; it is the object as intended, with the determinations through which it presents itself. The noema is no more an additional entity than is the *seen-as-seen* additional to the seen.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Consciousness is always consciousness of something; this is the formal expression of *intentionality*.","n":[]},{"t":"Every act of consciousness has an act-content-object structure: the *noesis* (the intending act, the conscious living-through), the *noema* (the intended-as- intended, the object in its mode of givenness), and the *object* itself.","n":[1]},{"t":"The noema is not a mental intermediary between consciousness and the world, not an inner picture, not a private sense in the head; it is the object as intended, with the determinations through which it presents itself.","n":[2]},{"t":"The noema is no more an additional entity than is the *seen-as-seen* additional to the seen.","n":[3,4]}]],"texts":"Logical Investigations Vol 2, Investigation V (On Intentional Experiences and their Contents) §§9-21 on the schema of act, content, object; Investigation VI on signitive and intuitive givenness, fulfillment, and categorial intuition; Ideas I §§87-96 on noesis and noema; Cartesian Meditations §§14-22 on the cogito-cogitatum structure. Reception: Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) on intentional inexistence as antecedent; Dagfinn Føllesdal, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema' (Journal of Philosophy, 1969) — the canonical Fregean reading; David Woodruff Smith and Ronald McIntyre, Husserl and Intentionality (Reidel, 1982) — the analytic systematization of the Fregean reading; John Drummond, Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism (Kluwer, 1990) and the East Coast continental reply; Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge, 2000); Dan Zahavi, Husserl's Phenomenology (Stanford, 2003), chapter 1.","works":["Logical Investigations Vol 2, Investigation V (On Intentional Experiences and their Contents) §§9-21 on the schema of act, content, object","Investigation VI on signitive and intuitive givenness, fulfillment, and categorial intuition","Ideas I §§87-96 on noesis and noema","Cartesian Meditations §§14-22 on the cogito-cogitatum structure"],"reception":"Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) on intentional inexistence as antecedent; Dagfinn Føllesdal, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema' (Journal of Philosophy, 1969) — the canonical Fregean reading; David Woodruff Smith and Ronald McIntyre, Husserl and Intentionality (Reidel, 1982) — the analytic systematization of the Fregean reading; John Drummond, Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism (Kluwer, 1990) and the East Coast continental reply; Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge, 2000); Dan Zahavi, Husserl's Phenomenology (Stanford, 2003), chapter 1.","status":"The Føllesdal-Smith-McIntyre Fregean reading (the noema as an intensional Fregean sense, analogous to *Sinn* in 'Über Sinn und Bedeutung') dominated American Husserl scholarship from 1969 through the 1990s and remains live in analytic philosophy of mind. The continental reading (Sokolowski, Drummond, Zahavi, Bernet) reads the noema as the object itself in its mode of givenness, not as an abstract sense-entity. Zahavi's *Husserl's Phenomenology* (2003) Chapter 1 makes the case for the continental reading on textual grounds. The debate is a structural feature of analytic- continental Husserl scholarship.","era":"1859-1938","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Ideas I","page":"p. 255","canonical":"","quote":"That carries over naturally to every generic and specific formation [of consciousness]. As a consequence of recognizing the essential two-sidedness of intentionality in terms of noesis and noema, a systematic phenomenology may not direct its attention one-sidedly at a real [*reelle*] analysis ** Fourth Section First Chapter: The Noematic Sense and the Relation to the Object 129 ** experiences and…","label":"Ideas I, p. 255"},{"n":2,"work":"Logical Investigations Vol 2","page":"pp. 176–177","canonical":"","quote":"One sees at once that the very same thing which, in relation to the intentional object, is called its *presentation*, i.e. the perceiving, remembering, picturing, symbolizing intention directed towards it, is also called an *interpretation,* *conception, apperception*in relation to the sensations really present in this act.","label":"Logical Investigations Vol 2, pp. 176–177"},{"n":3,"work":"Ideas I","page":"pp. 192–193","canonical":"","quote":"But talk of \"intending\" [*Meinen*] is normally restricted to narrower spheres that function, however, at the same time as sublayers of the phenomena of wider spheres. For this reason, the word (and the expressions akin to it) can come into consideration as a term only for these narrower spheres. Our new terms and the accompanying analyses of examples certainly serve us better for the generalities we are considering.","label":"Ideas I, pp. 192–193"},{"n":4,"work":"Logical Investigations Vol 2","page":"pp. 188–189","canonical":"","quote":"We shall first have to distinguish *three* concepts of the intentional content: the *intentional object* of the act, its *intentional material* (as opposed to its *intentional quality*) and, lastly its *intentional essence*. These distinctions will become familiar in the course of the following very general analyses, which are also essential to the more restricted aim of clarifying the essence of knowledge.","label":"Logical Investigations Vol 2, pp. 188–189"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"anti-psychologism-and-the-autonomy-of-logic","label":"Anti-psychologism and the autonomy of logic: are the laws of logic ideal and apodictic, or are they psychological regularities?"},{"slug":"the-transcendental-reduction-and-transcendental-idealism","label":"The transcendental reduction and transcendental idealism: does the epoché yield a constituting subjectivity that grounds the world, or does it lose the world it brackets?"},{"slug":"inner-time-consciousness-retention-protention-and-the-absolu","label":"Inner time-consciousness, retention/protention, and the absolute flow: does the privilege of the living present rest on a metaphysics of presence that retention itself undermines?"},{"slug":"embodiment-leib-vs-k-rper","label":"Embodiment, Leib vs. Körper: is the lived body structurally distinct from the body considered as object, or is this distinction collapsible?"},{"slug":"intersubjectivity-and-the-fifth-cartesian-meditation","label":"Intersubjectivity and the Fifth Cartesian Meditation: does the analogical apperception of the Other avoid solipsism, or did Husserl never escape the transcendental ego?"},{"slug":"the-lifeworld-the-crisis-of-european-sciences-and-the-husser","label":"The lifeworld, the Crisis of European Sciences, and the Husserl-Heidegger break: does the late phenomenology recover the meaning-foundation of science, or is it a relapse into philosophical anthropology that Heidegger's existential analytic surpasses?"}]}