Back to experience

pp. 134-145

in: Mohanty, Edmund Husserl's theory of meaning, Berlin, Springer, 1976

Abstract

Formal logic replaces the material words by logical variables. If material words do occur in a statement of formal logic, they occur only vacuously. Within formal logic, therefore, an appeal to experience (in the sense to be specified below) is not called for. [In the construction of a formal system, the only sense in which an appeal to intuition may be permitted would be through the process of construction: it is in this sense that the intuitionists oppose the so-called formalists in philosophy of mathematics.] Formal logic has, as a consequence, a claim to autonomy. This claim is certainly justified to a certain extent, especially inasmuch as no empirical consideration weighs in matters concerning any decision within the system. But the claim to autonomy, when made absolute, results in a naivity which should be exposed.¹ Such naivity shows itself in the conception of logic as a mere play with symbols against which Husserl spares no opportunity to combat. Just as one of the tasks of a philosophy of logic is to exhibit the immanent teleology of logical thought by showing its inner stratifications leading up to a mathesis universalis, similarly another of its tasks is to expose the limitations of the claim of formal logic to autonomy, by tracing it back to its origin in pre-predicative experience.