Noematic Sinn

Christian Beyer

pp. 75-88

in: Filip Mattens (ed), Meaning and language, Berlin, Springer, 2008

Abstract

In the first of his Logical Investigations (LI), sec. 26, Husserl introduces the semantic distinction between an expression's general meaning-function, on the one hand, and the propositional, or sub-propositional, content — the "respective meaning" — expressed in a given context of utterance, on the other.¹ If, for example, you and I both say "I", then our two utterances share the same general-meaning function but express different respective meanings, with different referents. According to Husserl, it is the respective meaning, rather than the general meaning-function, that determines the expression's referent, in the sense that two expressions sharing that meaning are bound to refer to the same object(s), if any.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund