The integrity of the mental act
Husserlian reflections on a fregian problem
pp. 235-262
in: Leila Haaparanta (ed), Mind, meaning and mathematics, Berlin, Springer, 1994Abstract
There is a general structure present in the event of something standing before us as the object of our consciousness. Obviously, for not just any event is an event of this sort. Such an event must be one with characteristic parts, interrelated in a definite manner, for it is a whole of a certain specific type. No one denies this, and it is hard to see what might be meant by a denial of it. But to give a plausible account of exactly what those parts are and of how they interrelate has good claim to being the problem of philosophy — and certainly so if we restrict ourselves to the modern and contemporary periods of Western philosophy. Of those who have focussed on this problem in the last one hundred years or so, none are of greater historical significance than Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl. The similarities and contrasts in how they approach the problem of the mind/object nexus, and in the results they achieve, suggests that a comparative study of them might be especially illuminating of "the fact itself.'
