Three Conditions

In Chapter 2 we learnt a fair amount about the logical form of eidetic laws. They may be viewed either as universal essentialist propositions (i.e., as

essentialist propositions about all the possible instances or bearers of some pure universal) or as essentialist propositions about an arbitrary instance or bearer of some pure universal. As I argued in Chapter 1, Section 2.5, although both options are endorsed by Husserl, he regards the second as more fundamental: for he thinks that universal propositions as such derive from propositions about arbitrary objects. Despite that, however, since the logic of universal propositions is more widely known than the logic of propositions about arbitrary objects, it will be convenient to think of eidetic laws in terms of the former rather than the latter. But although we have some grasp on the form ofeideticlaws, we still know little about that of laws

about eide.

What we do know is that the latter are, for Husserl, essentialist propo- sitions about some pure universal, and that their functional role in the Husserlian account of necessity is to ground eidetic laws (immediately) and the latter’s instances (mediately). This gives us three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions that a proposition has to meet if it is to be a law about eide:

(30) A propositionαis a law about eide if and only if: (I) it is about some eidosF;

(II) it states the essence ofF;

(III) it is able to ground some eidetic law about the possible instances or bearers ofF.

Condition I is straightforward. Condition II is justified in Chapter 2, Section 1, on the basis that it is needed in order to rule out unwanted cases (i.e.,

contingent or even necessary propositions about F which, however, are clearly not laws). Condition III states the role that laws about eide have in the Husserlian account of necessity.

But just what do laws about eide look like? In fact, what do they have to look like, if they are to meet the conditions? Husserl’s view seems to be that laws about eide aregenericessentialist propositions, such as (I will maintain):

(31) A human is an animal.

I say ‘seems to be’ because, to my knowledge, Husserl never explicitly addresses the issue: he merely says that laws about eide are ‘general’ propositions – which, as I will argue later on, is not very illuminating as regards their logical form. From piecemeal remarks and his overall usage, however, the generic account, or at least a generic approach, may safely be inferred. I will mention one piece of evidence in particular, a passage

from The Deductive Calculus and the Logic of Contents (Husserl’s attempt at

outlining an intensional logic). The piece is from 1891, and thus belongs to an early stage of Husserl’s philosophical career; as far as I am aware, however, there is no reason to think he changed his mind on this particular issue in later years.

At one point in the article, Husserl wants to give intensional interpreta- tions of the formula ‘AllSareP’ .37 He distinguishes between an interpre- tation without quantification over contents and an interpretation with such quantification. I am interested in the second, which is:

37_{Husserl’s wording for what I call intensional interpretations is ‘interpretations purely}

‘The ideal content ofSincludes the ideal content ofP’. That is,the totality of properties belonging to anSas such(einem S als solchen)includes the totality of properties belonging to aP

as such(einem P als solchen). This is the fundamental form for the calculus of ‘ideal’ contents. (EW: 98)

The notion that ‘AllSareP’ should be interpreted as ‘The ideal content ofSincludes the ideal content ofP’ is, in and of itself, neutral with respect to whether Husserl endorsed the generic account of laws about eide (indeed, my own account, to be offered in Section 3, is compatible with it). What is not neutral is the fact that Husserl chooses to express that very same interpretation (‘that is’,d.h.) – which, unlike the original proposition, ‘AllS

areP’, is something like a law about eide, in that it is about properties rather than their bearers – by means of a generic (see boldfaced text): ‘The totality of properties belonging to an S as such includes the totality of properties belongingto a P as such’.

It is important, in this connection, not to confuse genericity and gener- ality. As we have seen in Chapter 2, Section 1, for Husserl a proposition is general if and only if it is about universals (or, as he sometimes puts it, about concepts). Generality, then, is a question of what a proposition is about, and is neutral with respect to logical form: a general proposition may be singular, plural, existential, universal, or what have you. Genericity, on the other hand, is not neutral with respect to logical form: if a proposition is generic, then it is neither singular nor universal (I suspend judgement on whether it might be plural or existential – though I would say ’no’). We

shall see as much presently. If this is true, however, then even though we know that laws about eide are general (which is what condition I states), at this point it is a substantive and yet undecided claim that they are also generic. Of course, if the generic account is correct, they are. But is the generic account correct? In the remainder of this section, I shall argue that it is not.