The sense of the statement of number

pp. 169-177

in: Edmund Husserl, Philosophy of arithmetic, Berlin, Springer, 2003

Abstract

We now move on to the debate concerning the true subject of the statement of number. It is indicative of conceptual confusion when discord can prevail on this point, and one can hardly believe how far the opinions of philosophers deviate from one another here. J. St. Mill explains: "The numbers are, in the strictest of senses, names of objects. "Two' is certainly a name of the things which are two: two balls, two fingers, and so on."¹